Chapter 25
Good Monday Morning to this week 25 of 2021
Middle Eastern cultures are famous for their hospitality. For example, Abraham invited the angelic visitors into his tent and provided a lavish meal for them. Even so, strangers among the different tribal groups were looked at with suspicion, often conned or taken advantage of, and not treated well, especially if they were poor. God’s instructions were countercultural. Jesus follows the Old Testament pattern and takes it a step further by saying that how we treat strangers indicates whether we are his followers. We are to invite the stranger in if we are his disciples.
Maskoun was a privileged but average young man in Syria before the war broke out. His father owned an international jewellery business in Aleppo and his mother was a professor of Arabic. He’d already completed his engineering degree and his siblings seemed ready to follow in his footsteps. “I had everything that I needed,” Maskoun says in fluent English. “I had my education, I did my engineering, I had my car, my friends, the little house I thought I’d get married in one day.”
Then, suddenly, he didn’t. It was a clear choice: flee or be killed.
The Maskouns fled Syria and made their way across borders and nations, mercifully safe and eventually together to the outskirts of Paris. By being granted asylum in France, Maskoun had a chance to start a new life. But at first, it was hard to feel anything but lost, and lonely.“The refugee is a broken person when he arrives in a new country,” Maskoun says.
The foreigners residing among you must be treated as native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.—Leviticus 19:34
You won’t find the term “refugee” in the Bible but it has plenty to say about people called “strangers” and “sojourners” or “foreigners” referring to people who were from other ethnic groups and had chosen to live with the Jews in Israel.
For instance, Ruth the widow from the tribe of Moab who chooses to accompany her mother-in-law, Naomi, back to Israel and live there with her. We see her ask Boaz, in whose field she is gleaning, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me — a foreigner?” She understands her status as being outside the tribe of Israel.
Right after Maskoun arrived in France he did receive much, but quite soon after he started to give. He made friends and invited them to his home to eat Syrian food. When he was recruited for an internship and later an enviable job as a project engineer, he always looked for ways to extend opportunities to former classmates. He paid his taxes, and got involved in political life. He taught math and physics to refugee kids for free.
“They call me refugee, but I consider myself a guest,” Maskoun says. “I start my lectures in French so they think I’m a French person,” he says. “Then I switch to Arabic, tell them my story, tell them I was in their place, didn’t speak French, got two masters, learned the language and inspire them. I quote Maskoun: “The main thing we try to work on is to empower refugees, and make them believe in themselves and that they can do it again, “They are here, they are alive. With some effort, they can do it again. We tell them their first responsibility is to the country that took them in. The second is to their own country, to gain skills to take back.”
Refugees, strangers, foreigners, sojourners should be viewed as people, not a crisis. With an effort on everyone’s part, they can be a value added to society. Maskoun feels at home now as he walks through the streets he feels that France is his country. But he has not forgotten Syria. And although he is as much a part of French society as the next monsieur, he reminds himself that he is still a guest. Because someday, he hopes, he will return to his homeland.
Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for by doing that some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.—Hebrews 13:1-2
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household. Ephesians 2.19
This verse lays out how we are also the “foreigners” and “strangers” a used metaphor for our condition before our new found faith. Now because of His grace we are now part of God’s community — strangers who have been welcomed in.
Praying for displaced persons, refugees, migrants, immigrants, asylum seekers, stateless persons and many more fitting one of these many categories.
Wishing a good start to this new week.
Philemon