Welcomed By Jesus and Sent to Welcome
On a recent trip, I grabbed an Uber with a few friends. As we chatted with the driver, we learned he was from Afghanistan, and had served as a translator for the U.S. military. We didn’t ask many questions, but my guess is that he fled to the U.S. after the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021.
My other guess is that he misses home.
People migrate from all over the world to the U.S. or other countries for all kinds of reasons. They want to live somewhere safer or less chaotic or in a place where they have better opportunities for work and school.
But I don’t think I’ve met many (or maybe any) migrants who haven’t missed home.
I recently had a conversation with someone who fled Yemen, a country torn apart by civil war and entangled in international conflict. He’s thankful for his new home in a safer country, but he also said: “I miss the smell of dinner cooking in my mother’s house.”
No place has spices like the ones he remembers in Yemen.
EXILED FROM THE START
The story of the Bible is also a story of people on the move: God exiles Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because of their sin. He tells Abraham to pack up and move to a place he’ll show him. The Israelites are slaves in Egypt, but delivered through the Red Sea. They wander through the desert before coming to the Promised Land, before eventually being exiled again.
God told the Israelites their experience should shape how they treat others: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19).
It’s true that the civil laws of the Old Testament don’t apply in the same way today. This isn’t a template for modern nations’ border policies. But the heart of those laws do remain the same. And the New Testament picks up that language too.
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR STILL APPLIES
The Apostle Peter calls us “sojourners and exiles.” In Luke 10, Jesus says to “love your neighbor as yourself.” A lawyer desiring to justify himself asks Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan and a punchline the lawyer probably didn’t expect: Whoever you see in need is your neighbor. It doesn’t matter where he or you are from.
That’s because the gospel now shapes how we treat others.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus saves sinners, and he makes them part of his family. People from every nation, language, tribe, and tongue become united in Christ with one another. Paul tells the Ephesian believers from a Gentile background: “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”
This has huge implications for how we live in unity with fellow believers in the church. But it also has implications for how we treat strangers in the world. In gratitude for Jesus reconciling us to God, we can live with a posture that seeks the good of others, no matter where they’re from.
A posture that preaches the gospel of grace.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t live as faithful citizens in our own country. Or that we don’t have laws or borders. It doesn’t mean some migrants won’t break the law or abuse the system or come with bad intentions. All of that can be true, and we should take it seriously.
But there are so many migrants who miss home and need a welcome. So many from hard-to-reach places where they may have never heard the gospel. And there are so many opportunities for those of us who have been welcomed home by Jesus to extend a kind of hospitality that lives out the gospel we enjoy.
The kind of hospitality that literally opens the door to someone who misses the smells of home, and offers whatever we’re having for dinner, and also the aroma of Christ.
