I have watched a lot of films in my time and one of the familiar motifs involves a protagonist who is having a bad time – one thing after another has gone wrong – they are in unfamiliar territory, maybe on a journey and now they have arrived somewhere – they need help, and we are rooting for them.
Appearances are against them. They are looking dishevelled, with the wrong crowd, in the wrong place. Maybe the odds are stacked against them because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.
They meet a person that can help them – or slam the door in their face.
Will they meet with openness, welcome, a helping hand?
Have you also had the experience of watching that scene in the movie and willing the other person to look beyond appearances and see the human being?
I wonder about how to become the sort of person that would respond positively in this situation.
It seems to me that it requires not just individual decisions – specific acts in the moment – but an orientation of the heart.
Our reading from Deuteronomy speaks about a very fundamental decision we are asked to make – and this might be a good way of thinking about that orientation of the heart:
“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity … I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses…. Choose life”
The people of Israel, on the frontier of entering the promised land, are being asked to choose life – not just for themselves individually – but for their descendants, for the whole community.
What does it mean for us, individually and as a community, to choose life?
Does it not mean an openness to strangers – to people in need, people who are running for their lives?
Choosing life is also what refugees do.
Maxwell Smart is a 94 year old Holocaust survivor, living in Montreal since 1948. I read an article recently about him – as a young child, his mother told him to flee, saying “you must live!” He had promised his mother that he would live. He said that promise kept him going – and he survived although 62 members of this family died in the Holocaust.
We differentiate refugees from immigrants because they are forced to flee, while immigrants choose to immigrate.
But even though we rightly talk about “forced displacement”, there is also a choice that is made to leave. Those who flee see the possibility of “life and prosperity” if they leave and the threat of “death and adversity” if they stay, and they choose life.
And while their choices are constrained in flight, they cannot simply be passive and just wait to arrive in a place of safety.
There are constant decisions to be made once you have chosen to leave.
Choosing whether to trust a smuggler – whether to risk crossing the desert or the dangerous and impenetrable Darien Gap – whether to get into a boat that is overcrowded and quite likely to sink.
A report just published on the experiences of migrants crossing from East and West Africa to the Mediterranean coast has the title ON THIS JOURNEY NO ONE CARES IF YOU LIVE OR DIE – the words of a migrant who was interviewed for the report.
The “unimaginable horrors” on that route include death, sexual and physical violence, torture, kidnapping for ransom, trafficking in persons, robbery, arbitrary detention and collective expulsions.
It is hard to contradict the person who said “no one cares if you live or die” – the boats of migrants crossing the Mediterranean get some coverage in the media – mostly because European countries are not happy about the boats arriving on their shores. But how often have you heard about the horrific journeys through various African countries before they even get to the boats? Or the horrors in the Libyan migrant detention centres?
It takes a considerable will to live to survive a journey like that.
Even when people arrive in a place of relative safety, there are huge challenges. Here locally some people are locked up in the immigration detention centre in Laval – they thought that Canada would offer them protection, but they begin their life here behind bars, often because they don’t have satisfactory identity documents with them. As many of you know, Action Réfugiés Montréal, an organization supported by the Diocese, plays a crucial role in accompanying people in this frightening and confusing period of their life. Even if they are not detained, people face enormous struggles when they make a refugee claim – finding somewhere to live, finding a lawyer, navigating a society without guideposts and often without speaking the language, looking after their children, all with little or no money.
Some understandably descend into depression, but many bring energy, a sense of opportunity and a new chance. A feeling that they have had set before them life and prosperity, death and destruction – they have seen them up close and chosen life.
Some of us have had to flee as refugees – if so, you have your own experiences – and each one is unique.
Even if we are lucky enough not to have been forced to flee, most of us have at least some experience of being in the position in the film, at least in a minor way – finding ourselves in a bad situation and needing, hoping for openness of heart.
Do refugees arriving here today meet with open hearts and welcome? Sometimes yes – Canada has a strong and proud tradition of protecting refugees. So many communities across Canada have been enriched as a result of participating in the refugee sponsorship program that allows them to welcome newcomers. This cathedral community is one of them. And Canada’s refugee determination system is considered a model for the rest of the world.
But we also regularly see suspicion, incomprehension, scapegoating, racism – not as much as in some other countries where political parties rival each other in who can be tougher on refugees, encouraging their citizens to see refugees as a threat and a problem. But even if it is not as pronounced here in Canada, recent trends are worrying.
We can think about the responses to people crossing into Canada at Roxham Road in order to make a refugee claim, before that route was closed by the Canadian government in March 2023. We had dehumanizing ways of talking about them and loud calls to close the border.
The letter to the Hebrews urges us: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
As it turned out, this is exactly the story of Roxham Road.
A good number of those who had entered at Roxham Road trained as préposés aux bénéficiaires – patient attendants – including many Haitians – and when the pandemic came along, and we became aware of the extreme shortage of health care workers, and the dangers of their work, they were recognized as guardian angels. The government introduced the Guardian Angel special program which allowed some of them to become permanent residents as an acknowledgement of “the significant contribution of the work of some refugee claimants during the pandemic”. Where would we have been without them? A few years after politicians and others had said that they were not welcome, that they were too numerous, that they were a burden – it turned out that in fact far from being a burden, we needed them and they were caring for our community.
We should not welcome people in order to gain benefits for ourselves – but that is often how it works.
In our gospel reading this morning we heard that Jesus sent out the Twelve with these instructions:
“Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt….. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”
Refugees often arrive with little or no material luggage – and they depend on others to welcome and listen to them. But unlike the disciples, they don’t necessarily have the option of just moving on if they are not welcomed. Canada is the end of the road for most.
Can we see refugees as God sees them – each an individual loved child, perhaps even with a message for us if we listen?
Unfortunately it is easy to be drawn in by those who see them not as individuals but as a mass – a “flood” of people – too many, too expensive, too much of a burden.
Not seeing refugees as fully human leads to bad policies that cause immense harm. For example, over the coming months the government will decide on how many newcomers in each immigration category to admit next year – this is known as the immigration levels exercise. If the government continues on as it has been doing in recent years, it will mean refugees are condemned to wait years. This applies to those overseas waiting to be resettled to Canada – many who have been sponsored by groups in Canada.
The same thing also applies to those in Canada waiting to be reunited with their children and spouse overseas – current processing times show they can expect to wait 50 months!! – over 4 years!!
Why doesn’t the government allow them to come more quickly? Because the government is listening to voices from all sides urging them to give priority instead to immigrants we select for their economic contribution. As a country we are choosing economic interests over the protection of refugees and the right of children to be with their refugee parents.
Deuteronomy warns us against being “drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them” – are we at risk of the bowing down to the gods of populist prejudice? Of economic self-interest? Of rejecting vulnerable strangers who are asking for openness, choosing on their behalf not life, but death, not blessings, but curses?
Can we instead choose life – for ourselves, and for our community?
Part of choosing life means opening our eyes and extending our welcome to people who are at a moment in their lives where appearances are against them. We may not know what they have fled, what they have endured while getting here. We may not know what cares they continue to have – for people left behind or lives lost. Nor do we know what gifts they bring to our community or how they will enrich our lives.
But we can join them in choosing life – and work to make ourselves the sort of people who open the door to the stranger, confident that sometimes it means welcoming an angel.
Amen