Jesus, the “Illegal:” The Moral Imperative of Hospitality
By Vicki Gray
It’s May Day and thoughts of Christmas intrude.
Ever think of the Holy Family as refugees, of Joseph as a migrant worker, of Jesus as an “illegal?”
Remember Joseph’s dream in that Bethlehem hovel? An angel of the Lord called to him: “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And so they set out for Egypt, refugees from terror and persecution.
Matthew provides scant details – a mere three or four verses – to this story of a dream and of flight. And his is the only account in all the Gospels of the Holy Family’s escape into Egypt, that powerful, prosperous safe haven for refugees.
Have you ever really wondered about this story? I have! But I’ve thought of it not so much as a conclusion to the Christmas story, but rather as an historically-based parable of the continuing nature of the journey we are all on. It also suggests an intriguing gap in the biography of the historical Jesus. How long did the Holy Family reside in Egypt? Where did they live? What did they do?
Tantalizing hints at answers are suggested in sources outside Matthew’s Gospel, beyond the four canonical Gospels we’re familiar with. They beg us to stretch our minds, our understanding of Jesus, and the limits of our beliefs.
For potential answers, one must look at non-canonical sources such as the so-called “Infancy Gospels” of James and Thomas. One must also look at the traditions of Egypt’s Coptic Church.
According to those traditions, Holy Family traveled far up the Nile - to Deir al-Muharraq in Middle Egypt – and back down to Tel Basta in the Delta, with some twenty stops along the way.
Try to retrace the steps of the Holy Family in Egypt. Can you picture them fording that shallow stream at El-Arish, wetbacks making their way across the harsh Sinai desert to safety and a new life, wandering up and down the Nile, looking for work and a roof over their heads…refugees in a strange land?
How many times have you thought of Jesus and his parents as the archetypes for migrants and exiles? How many times have you thought about the hospitality of their Egyptian hosts as the model for our behavior toward the strangers and the dispossessed among us?
“For as much as you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.” Did the Egyptians Jesus met along the way know whom they were offering their hospitality to? Did they care? Do we?
On a Christmas Eve two years ago, these were the sorts of questions that were on my mind, as I read an op-ed column in the New York Times. It was entitled “The Kindness of Strangers.” In it, Ruben Martinez asked:
Is pure hospitality practicable in a world of human unpredictability? Or is hospitality
an indispensable practice precisely because of human unpredictability? In the post-9-11
world, we ponder the question more in terms of national security. How does one
discern between the stranger to whom hospitality should be extended, and the stranger
who poses a threat? Does war automatically exempt us from showing hospitality?
Does “war without end” permanently suspend such values?
“No!” he responds emphatically. It is a profoundly moral value “based,” he says, “on the notion of pilgrimage, a spiritual journey undertaken through the flesh.” “Without the hospitality of those who live along the roads of one’s pilgrimage,” he writes, “one would never arrive at one’s destination. Hospitality implies reciprocity: the pilgrim received with generosity will one day have the occasion to return the favor. To shut the door on the wayfaring stranger would be to negate the possibility of one’s own journey.”
Martinez ends by recalling the Christmas Eve tradition of the posada and those little luminaria – you know, the candles in sand-filled paper bags that light the path for Joseph and Mary looking for a room at the inn. They “light the path,” he says, “toward that place where Jose and Maria will finally be recognized for who they are: pilgrims seeking shelter on the road, faces that serve as mirrors to our own.”
Next Sunday, look at the person next to you in your pew. Do you see the face of a stranger? An immigrant? An alien? A threatening “other?” Or do you see a face like yours – like that of Jose, Maria…or Jesus - a simple human face? Won’t you take the hand of that person next to you and pledge to walk together…two pilgrims…seeking shelter on the road?
The Rev. Vicki Gray is a deacon at St. James, San Francisco.
