Refugee Sunday – Genesis 12:10-20 &16 (Deut 10:12-13,17-19 & Heb 13:1-2,12-16)
Today is Refugee Sunday so I am deviating, slightly, from the lectionary readings. For your information these include the wonderful story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18 entertaining three men or angels or God-Godself (the text keeps this vague), and receiving – again – the promise of a child and of descendants. It is one of the stories that inspire the verse in Hebrews – “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” But I wanted this morning – considering Refugee Sunday – to look at two other stories from the Abraham and Sarah saga.
The first is Genesis 12:10-20 – just after last week’s reading – the call to Abram – as he was called then.
Here we read that there was a famine in the land and Abram was forced to flee with his family to Egypt to find food. But, as someone fleeing, as a refugee, he is vulnerable and afraid, that when the Egyptians see how beautiful Sarai is, they will kill him and take her. So Abram says to Sarai: “Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.”
Sure enough, reports of Sarai’s beauty reach Pharaoh, and she is taken into his household, and it does go well with Abraham. He escapes death – and even receives a bride price of sheep, oxen, donkeys, camels, and slaves. But it does not go well for Pharaoh. He and his house are afflicted with ‘great’ plagues, the text says, and Pharaoh divines – perhaps with divine help – why, and sends Abram and Sarai packing – but alive!
If you’ve studied Genesis, you’ll know this wife-sister swap occurs three times in the text, and scholars debate whether this is evidence of this being a collected oral history or whether each of these accounts are intentionally crafted. The distinctive aspects of Genesis 12 are the famine, the flight to Egypt, the real danger they are in, the plagues, and their eventual deliverance. In other words, Genesis 12 prefigures what the people of Israel will experience in their captivity and deliverance from Egypt. In the same way, the story of Jesus’ flight into Egypt in Matthew 2 postfigures (if there is such a word) what they did experience. They share – the text tells us – Abraham, the father of faith, Israel, the people of faith, and Jesus, the source of our faith – they all share the experience of being refugees.
And what the Genesis 12 account also emphasises is the real danger – the real vulnerability – of this experience. The famine described here is extreme, the threat to life is real, and the experience of Sarai – taken as the sexual partner of another man – is not explained away as it is in the other accounts. Furthermore, as the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women comments, adultery in the ancient world was considered a very grievous offense, possibly even worse than murder. This story does not shy away from the vulnerability of refugees – the terrible choices they are forced to make.
Common Grace, who provide individuals and churches and communities with justice resources, have prepared a four-part Bible study series for Refugee Week (I am happy to forward this on to anyone who would like it) and in it they tell the story – a story familiar to those of you who walked beside refugees on Manus – of Fazel (fo-zell) Khodayar (ho -do-ya).
Fazel is a refugee from Ahwaz, Iran, who spent years in offshore detention on Manus, before being medevacked to Australia and detained in Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Central Hotel. His story includes a reference to self-harm, so please be mindful of this for yourself and for others.
Fazell explains that detention had gone on for so long he lost hope. He started collecting tablets in his room to end his life, but the guards found them. Then they decided to try and protest. “We wanted to make banners,” Fazell writes, “but we had nothing [so] we hid black plastic garbage bags and took paper from the activity class. One of the guards gave us the sticky tape. It was hard because we had no scissors to cut paper and tape. We hid razor blades we’d taken from disposable shavers. We worked on the banners after the last head count at night and hid them when our rooms were searched.
When people saw us and supported us, it gave us hope. After so many years offshore, we felt …we are not alone, people do care about us and about democracy…. After many months of protests, it was hard to keep hopeful. They took the banners, some of us got sent back to Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation, and they locked off the balconies, but still I remembered all the people who cared.
I got my freedom in March 2021. When I first got out, I was scared all the time. Even if someone smiled at me, I felt scared. I couldn’t trust. I would think it was a trap and I would get sent back to jail. I am still scared when I see the police…. After so much suffering, friendship is so important to me. I hope I can stay here where I have so many good friends.”
It was strangers at first, people who waved and smiled at the protestors, who also protested outside the hotel, who became those good friends who made such a difference to Fazell.
One of them was Lisa Bridle. She says that, until 2020, despite being disturbed by Australia’s treatment of refugees, she’d only attended an occasional refugee rally. In April that year, however, just as COVID hit, refugees in the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel began hanging a banner over two levels that read, “Where is justice? 7 Years Torture. No Crime. 7 Years in Detention.” She joined the group staging COVID-safe walking protests and rallies and Sunday prayer vigils.
“As a Christian,” she writes, “I felt compelled to be there, standing with my sign on the streets of Kangaroo Point, called by the words: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25:35-36) I wanted to say to the men ‘You are not forgotten. You are seen. We are fighting for your freedom.’ [And] two years on, …after nine years of detention, these men from that Kangaroo Point balcony are free. Fazel, one of those men, is a warm, funny, joyful man who has become a loyal and supportive friend, sharing Christmas day, holidays, meals and visits at his home and ours….”
How do we live out the values we hold as Christians – compassion and justice for those who are vulnerable, hospitality and care for strangers, strangers created in the image of God? We may find another way to that of Lisa, but as she reflects, “I once felt powerless [to help those who were suffering], but I’ve learnt that holding a sign, forming a community of resistance, and offering and receiving friendship, all make a difference, no matter how small.”
The second story in the Abraham and Sarah saga is one that is even more uncomfortable.
In Genesis 16 Sarai decided that as she has not had a child, she will give her slave-girl Hagar, her Egyptian slave girl, to Abraham as his concubine and take this child as her own. Abram agrees and Hagar conceives, but her subsequent attitude to her mistress antagonises Sarai who treats her harshly – so harshly that Hagar runs away into the desert. There she encounters the angel of the Lord who tells her to return but promises that her offspring will become a great nation. And Hagar returns to Abram and Sarai astonished that she has seen God and remained alive. She gives God a name – the one who sees – perhaps the one who sees someone who is just a slave.
This story reveals a far less flattering picture of Abram and Sarai. It was common practice, in the Old Testament, for men to take concubines, marital companions with lower social and legal status than wives, but they were to be treated fairly. According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Sarah’s “experience of servitude in Egypt perhaps… made her feel threatened by the Egyptian Hagar rather than sympathetic to her.” That she chooses an Egyptian slave – that this is mentioned in the text – may reveal her deep trauma. But the text also clearly states that this episode inflicts further trauma – that treating Hagar as a human commodity is a violation of the command – mentioned no less than 36 times in Scripture – and in our Deuteronomy reading, “love the stranger for you were strangers in Egypt.”
The Common Grace material includes another story of loving the stranger – a more positive story.
Safina Stewart is Common Grace’s Relationships and Storytelling Coordinator and a proud Wuthathi and Mabuiag Island woman. She writes, “May I tell you the story of three mothers who inspire me? One Aboriginal, the other an asylum seeker, and another, a Jewish refugee.
My great, great, great grandmother, Para Pablo, fled our Wuthathi homelands, on the North Eastern coast of Cape York Peninsula, with her baby daughter, Granny Tidja, to escape trackers hunting and removing Aboriginal children under the Aboriginal Protection Act.
She faced unthinkable decisions, extreme loss and danger, leaving family and homelands to keep her daughter safe. Fleeing north on foot, they were given secret passage into the Torres Straits and immediate protection by the Torres Strait Islanders. It is through her risky courage and this gift of welcome, that our family line has survived and now boasts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage….
One of my dearest friends, Gomathy, is another strong and courageous woman…. She was a young Malaysian Indian asylum seeker who had just moved into our town, when I met her almost seven years ago. I recall her tenderly nursing her four-month-old son. We fumbled at correctly pronouncing each other’s names, yet we knew innately that we could trust each other with the weight of our stories…. Gomathy is my sister, I have adopted her and she has adopted me….
I identify with Gomathy’s story because it resonates the same courage of my Ancestors. I am also reminded of Mary after the birth of Jesus, fleeing Bethlehem and the targeted violence of King Herod. Gutsy women reaching for safety for their family…. My Ancestors have passed down wisdom about the preciousness of people, sacredness of place and importance of belonging. It fits with my faith and urges me to pass this wisdom down to my children. Am I living out and modelling this wisdom?”
Most of us are people whose families and ancestors came from other places. We, too, have stories of what it is to be strangers, stories, perhaps, of suffering and trauma, and stories about welcome and belonging. And this is our story as people of faith. We have been called as Abraham and Sarah were, seen as Hagar was, embraced and forgiven and welcomed into God’s family through the love – the lived-out love – of Jesus. We are therefore called again – as our Hebrews reading says – to go beyond our safe boundaries to identify with Jesus, to travel on – to look for a city that is to come – to do good and to share what we have “for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
May we remember to love the stranger. May we show hospitality to strangers. For by doing that some have found they are entertaining God without knowing it.