REFUGEES

South Asia is home to some five million people who have fled natural disasters, dictatorial regimes, ethnic or religious persecution and civil war. How should we as Christians respond to these people?

First, we must recognise that their situation is not a new one. The Bible abounds with stories of sojourners, wanderers, immigrants, aliens and refugees, beginning with Adam and Eve who were banished from the garden of Eden (Gen 3:22-24). It ends with John writing the book of Revelation as an exile on the island of Patmos.

The biblical story which began with displacement and migration ends in persecution and exile.

Tsunamis and floods create refugees whose position is not completely different from that of Noah and his whole family who were forced to flee to escape the great flood. Those fleeing volcanic eruptions have something in common with Lot and his family who fled from Sodom (Gen 19). When crop failures and famine force people from the countryside into the cities, they are acting like Jacob, who moved his family to Egypt to escape a great famine (Gen 46:1- 7). God had compassion on these people; why is it that we refuse to treat those displaced by natural disasters as refugees and deny them ways to resettle elsewhere?

War is another common theme in the OT, and it too creates refugees and internally displaced persons. In Sri Lanka alone, a thirtyyear war has left 400,000 people internally displaced and more than a million living as refugees outside the country.

The OT also knows the kind of political and ethnic persecution that has left thousands of Bhutanese political refugees living in Nepal.

Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to escape political oppression. Religious persecution, too, was experienced by early Christians. They fled (Acts 9:1-2; 11:19) just as thousands of Christians have fled the Indian state of Odisha and hundreds of Pakistanis have fled to Sri Lanka.

Jesus and his parents were refugees when they fled to Egypt (Matt 2:13-15). In his life, he identified with the stateless, the displaced, the marginalised, the migrant and the refugee. In his death, he died “outside the gates”, rejected by the city and the nation (Heb 13:12).

Jesus instructs us to care for strangers, offer hospitality to sojourners, feed the refugee and the displaced, and provide water to migrants crossing the desert (Matt 25:35-40). He teaches us to open our homes and churches as we clothe and provide medical care for the displaced and to visit detained asylum seekers or immigrants in prison. It was in obedience to this command that churches in Sri Lanka provided emergency relief to 400,000 internally displaced persons who were held in detention camps for ten months.

The church should not only deal with the immediate needs of the displaced but also with the issues that caused them to become refugees. We need to stand up for human rights and insist that all are created in the image of God and that all have worth and deserve dignity. The church must exercise a prophetic role, calling on national and international leaders to find a just and lasting solution to problems.

The God who cared for the refugees of the exodus is still the living God who cares for each refugee in faraway Palestine or neighbouring Pakistan. May we as the church show his character and fulfil our calling to care for the despised and forgottens.

Godfrey Yogarajah