Pastor Moves in With Refugees

The Wired Word for the Week of December 25, 2016

Editor's Note: At the request of the subject of the lesson, we are using pseudonyms to protect his and his family's privacy. Since the source articles we used in developing this lesson do identify the couple by name, we are also taking the unusual step of leaving out links to those sources, in order to respect the pastor's request for anonymity. While we dislike not supporting our "In the News" section with links you can check, we decided it is warranted in this case.

In the News

Andy Smith had stable employment as a government contractor and his wife Sally was a nurse in a neonatal intensive-care unit of a hospital (names have been changed at the request of the pastor). But in 2012, Andy quit his job to take an unpaid internship at a non-profit, where he helped refugees adjust to life in America.

We learned about the Smith family last month from a news report contrasting their response to the global problem of displaced people with anti-refugee rhetoric expressed by some people in America and other nations in recent months.

Andy increasingly felt that he couldn't truly identify or empathize fully with the refugees unless he was willing to pull up stakes from his comfortable suburban neighborhood, uproot his family and start over in a strange place just as the refugees had.

After presenting the idea to Sally, they researched an apartment complex where a large number of refugees from Afghanistan, the Congo, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Syria lived. Online reviews were not encouraging.

One reviewer wanted to move out after living there only six weeks. Others warned of drug dealers, prostitutes, child molesters and criminal activity, rats, roaches and bedbugs, leaky pipes, no heat in winter and a sub-standard school system.

"That's exactly where the gospel is needed," Sally said.

So with their two toddlers in tow, the couple packed up their belongings and moved into the neighborhood.

That doesn't mean they didn't have some anxiety and fear. After they moved in, Andy said, "I began thinking, 'What in the world did I get our family into?' and 'What am I doing?' I began having doubts, fears, second-guessing this path. I yearned for what was familiar and comfortable and safe. 'Why are we downgrading? It's going to be uncomfortable.'"

But they were motivated by their faith. "The most compelling reason we chose to move into the neighborhood was really the story of Jesus," Andy said. "From the scriptures, I see God sending his Son, Jesus, into the world, so that he would dwell among the people."

On any given day, refugees may call upon the Smiths for a wide range of services: translation, job interview preparation, help securing driver's licenses, answering questions about medicine, tutoring, child care, social work, counseling, etc. The Smiths see this kind of holistic ministry as reflective of Jesus' own message and ministry. As they care for various needs of their neighbors as Jesus cared for people, they find they build trust and earn the right to speak about Christ.

"For myself, personally, this good news of Jesus is the best thing ever in my life. It would not be consistent if I didn't want others to at least hear it," Andy said, suggesting that it is as natural to talk about Jesus as it is to mention his wife and children to people as they get acquainted. "As they learn about me, I can't help but talk about Jesus, because he's so important to me."

Andy now serves on the pastoral staff of a church located in the suburb where he used to live, but his job description states that he is to spend half of his time working in his new neighborhood.

Applying the News Story

The incarnation of God in Christ is efficacious for our salvation, and also for our development as we mature in Christ. First God prepared a physical body for Christ (Hebrews 10:5), so that Jesus shared fully in our humanity. God also prepares us so that the Spirit of Christ now inhabits the body of Christ, his church (1 Corinthians 6:19). In this lesson, we want to examine these twin truths, to better understand the blessings and responsibility we receive because God acts in this way.

The Big Questions

1. Have you ever been uprooted or forced to start over in a place very different from what you were used to? If so, describe what that was like for you. If not, do you know someone who has? What do you know about their experience?

2. What does it take for you to truly empathize and identify with people who are quite different from you in some way?

3. What legitimate concerns might prevent a person from taking the kind of radical step the Smith family took? What part of the Christian message might motivate people to take radical steps to reach out to "the other" in spite of the risks?

4. Why does it matter that Jesus was a real historical person who was fully human?

5. What difference does it make that this person who entered our world and fully shared our humanity was also fully divine?

Confronting the News With Scripture and HopeHere are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

John 1:14, 18And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. ... No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. (For context, read 1:1, 11-15, 18.)

John identifies Jesus as the Word God spoke to reveal himself to humanity. But what that Word communicated was not empty phrases, platitudes or promises. The Word became flesh and lived among us, to reveal God's character of grace and truth to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The word here translated "lived" comes from the Greek word meaning "tabernacled," which refers to the portable house of worship that traveled with the Hebrew people during their 40-year sojourn in the wilderness en route to the Promised Land. Later they built a stationary temple to which the people had to travel to worship God.

To say that Jesus "tabernacled" among us is to say that he fully shared in the human experience, coming to us even when we did not go to him, coming to seek and to save the lost even when we did not seek him. Just as the tabernacle was a sign of the presence of God among God's people, Jesus is the ultimate sign of God's presence, since he is not only a sign pointing to God, but he is Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23).

Questions: How have you experienced the Word made flesh and living among us? What has God the only Son made known to you about the Father's heart?

John 4:5-7So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (For context, read 4:5-14.)

We quote this passage to illustrate the reality of Jesus' human nature. Here we read that Jesus was tired and thirsty. Elsewhere we learn that after fasting, he was famished (Matthew 4:2). On another occasion, he was so tired that he fell asleep in a boat during a storm (Matthew8:24). His suffering and thirst as he hung on the cross were very real. And yet the very person who asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water described himself as the source of living water (John 4:10 and 14).

He did perform miracles (changing water into wine, walking on water, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead, just to name a few), but Mark 6:5 tells us that in Nazareth "he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them."

The gospel hymn "Ten Thousand Angels" contains these words describing what Jesus could have done when he was on the cross: "He could have called ten thousand angels to destroy the world and set him free; he could have called ten thousand angels, but he died alone for you and me."

Questions: How do you react to the human frailty of Jesus? Would you rather he exercised super-hero powers without showing any human weakness? Why or why not?
Why do you think he limited the expression of his divine power while he lived on earth? Why didn't he call a host of angels to take him down from the cross? Whydidn't he answer his critics when they scoffed at him as he hung there dying, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one" (Luke 23:35)?

Philippians 2:5-8Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death --
   even death on a cross. (For context, read 2:1-8.)

When their home church ordained the Smiths and commissioned them as missionaries to their new neighborhood, Andy gave this testimony about why they moved into the apartment complex to live among the refugees:

"The Good Shepherd ... pointed me to what Christmas is all about, the coming of Jesus, his incarnation. God became flesh, and dwelt among his people. ... How could the God of the universe, maker of heaven and earth, all glorious, all powerful, perfectly holy, worthy of all worship, the one who speaks things into being, the one who is not bound by time or any other limits. The infinite one.

"How could God lower himself, humble himself, downgrade himself to be confined to, restricted to, limited to a human body? Not only that but live among a people who were enemies and opposed and despised him. How could Jesus do such a thing? Why would he move towards us like that and put himself through that? And at the moment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me of the truth that Jesus was compelled by his great love."

Questions: How does Jesus' exhortation to his disciples that they are not to behave like tyrants but rather as servants (Matthew 20:25-27) relate to Paul's depiction of Christ in the Philippians 2 passage quoted above? Can you think of a person who didn't exploit his or her position of authority, but rather served you in this manner? How did that person's behavior impact you?

1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 27
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. ... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (For context, read 12:12-14, 18, 27.)

In this passage Paul compares the people of God to the human body, which has many organs and systems. The metaphor points to the essential unity of the body of Christ, even though it is made up of many diverse parts.

For our purposes today, we want to focus on the idea that the Word that lives within us -- individually as believers and corporately as the people of God who make up the church -- and becomes incarnate in us as we allow the Spirit to birth Christ in our lives and in our relationships. So we pray in the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" these words:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray!
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born to us today.

Now we believers, collectively, are the body of Christ. We celebrate that reality every time we come together at the Lord's table.

The story is told about a church in Strasbourg which was destroyed by bombs during war. As parishioners cleared away the rubble, they discovered a statue of Christ, which was undamaged except that both hands were missing.

One day a visiting sculptor offered to repair the statue by carving new hands, but the members of the church declined his offer, saying that Christ "has no hands to minister to the needy or feed the hungry or enrich the poor -- except our hands. He inspires. We perform." The story calls to mind the poem by St. Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours.

Questions:Where have you seen the Word made flesh in Christ's body, the church, recently? When are you most aware that you are the body of Christ, that Christ is depending on your feet to do good, your hands to bless the world, your eyes to look compassion on the world? How do you respond to such a challenge?

For Further Discussion

1. Discuss the following: The church Rev. Smith serves has acknowledged on their website that our country has legitimate interests in national security and in vetting refugees who are applying for asylum in the United States. At the same time, they assert that "complete rejection of refugees and/or Muslims is another" issue entirely. "Our Christian gospel response must not be inaction or distancing or rejection, driven by fear," they state, "[but] ... action and extending of love, aid and the gospel itself, all driven by faith."

With that in mind, they offer these tangible ways Christians can assist refugees and displaced people (half of whom are children) with providing basic necessities such as shelter, clothing, food, water, hygiene, trauma therapy and medical care:

• Pray for the safety of the 65 million refugees spread throughout the world (more refugees than ever recorded in history). More than one of every five refugees is Syrian.
• Give online through trusted aid organizations.
• Donate clean winter clothing to local thrift stores.
• Consider becoming a conversation partner to help people from other countries learn English. Such programs are also available for those working with international students, some of whom come from war-torn nations such as Iraq and Syria.
• Consider moving to an apartment complex or neighborhood where refugees reside, so that you can literally love and serve your neighbors and possibly reach them with the gospel without ever going overseas.

2. Does your denomination or church have a refugee response or resettlement program? How might you become engaged in such a ministry?

Responding to the News

1. Take a few moments to meditate on this beautiful rendition of a prayer by St. Teresa of Avila, Christ Has No Body Now But Yours (David Ogden). Or you might like this version: St. Theresa's Prayer (John Michael Talbot). Or yet another: Christ Has No Body Now On Earth But Yours (David Basden).

2. Consider as a congregation doing some of the actions suggested in question 1 under "For Further Discussion."

3. You may want to check out these resources for further study of incarnational living, suggested by the pastor who is profiled in this lesson: The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating Apostolic Movements by Alan Hirsch, Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth by Hugh Halter, and Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement, by Michael Frost.

Prayer

Christ, may we view the world with your compassion this day.

May we always walk in the steps your nail-scarred feet have trod.

Bless the world through our hands today. Amen.

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