The Exodus and Modern Refugees
PROPER 21 – (2017) Year A – Trinity 16
The people quarrelled with Moses, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ Ex 17:2ff
How often have we heard that said, how often have we said that ourselves? Maybe we have been on a journey and there is a choice about which route to take. After maybe a heated discussion, we head off down the narrower roads. After sitting behind a tractor hauling bales of hay for a couple of miles, one will turn to the other and say, ‘I told you that this would happen!’ ‘Didn’t I tell you that I knew this wouldn’t work?’
I thought of that as I read our Old Testament Lesson this morning, and in particular the words; ‘The people quarrelled with Moses … and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ Ex 17:2ff
As I reflected on our reading for today and our previous readings from Exodus that we have read over the last few weeks, I began to see a different story. This is a story of a refugee people that is repeated in every generation down through the years. It is a story of a people on the move; a people facing harassment as they leave their place of suffering; a people who do not know where the next meal is to come from; a people not even sure of where they are going and what faces them when they arrive.
Two years ago we watched as thousands, fleeing from persecution in Iraq and Syria faced perilous journeys in flimsy boats. We saw the image of the body of a young child washed up on a Mediterranean beach. These people knew what it was like to face harassment as they left their homelands. They knew what it was like, as they moved out of Greece and across Europe, to find themselves confronted by barbed wire fences with little shelter, uncertain as to where they were going to get food and water. Unsure of what welcome awaited them.
In 2015 Germany gave a remarkable lead in opening up its borders to nearly a million refugees. The integration of these refugees has not been without its problems and Angela Merkel certainly paid a price at the recent polls. But what has struck me this week is her insistence that this was the right thing to do, that a Germany that did not welcome the stranger was not her country.
The refugee on the open sea, on the road knows what it is to be vulnerable; the refugee knows what it is to be frightened. ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’ Does God even know, does God even care about what we are facing?
Mercifully we know nothing of what it is physically to be a refugee. But at different stages in our life, we do all know what it is to be vulnerable, what it is to be frightened; what it means, even in the midst of crowds, to feel lonely. And the world goes on around us. And which of us hasn’t found ourselves saying, ‘Does anyone know, does anyone care?’ And of course there are people who do know, people who do care.
‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ He is among us in the people he has placed alongside us; the family member, the friend and sometimes the complete stranger who sits alongside, listening, encouraging, or just being there. He is there – and we can be that presence for others. He is there, even when he doesn’t seem to be there bearing our pain, sharing our fears. He is there, breaking through in signs of hope in even the darkest of times. He is there on the road with the persecuted, the despairing. He is there, even in us, in simple acts of kindness and understanding.
Go, and know that the Lord goes with you: let him lead you each day into the quiet place of your heart, where he will speak with you; know that he watches over you – that he listens to you in gentle understanding, that he is with you always, wherever you are and however you may feel.