Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Migrants' Sunday
Readings: Ezekiel 18.25-28 / Responsorial Psalm: 55 (R/v 6a) / Philippians 2.1-11 / Matthew 21. 28-32
"Choo-Choo. Choo-Choo." When my nephew Glenn was younger, he made this sound every time he played with his favourite toy train. "Choo-choo," he cried out as he rolled Thomas the train towards me. "Choo-choo," he gleefully laughed when a nursery rhyme video about trains ended.
“This train is bound for glory / This train is bound for glory / This train is bound for glory / Children get on board” are the simple lyrics of this nursery rhyme. Its tune is catchy and the image it presents is vivid.
What if human life is like a train ride, a journey, each of us is being invited onboard for? Where will our train ride take us? What is this promise of glory that we are bound for?
Train rides are how some migrants seek out the good life. Their rides are movements from poor economic conditions to better, brighter possibilities for them and their loved ones. Many poor, rural South Americans do this to try to enter the USA. They make long, dangerous journeys on trains for the green, green grass of another country, another way of life, another standard of riches they yearn for. They do this in hope.
Around us, the Bangladeshi and Indian workers who are building the condos, houses and HDB flats we live in have the same hope. So do our Filipino, Myanmarese and Indonesian domestic helpers who cook for us, clean after us, care for our young. They are migrants hoping in the promised new life of peace, prosperity and progress.
Migrants fleeing from homelands ravaged by war also share this hope. The persecuted Vietnamese who braved oceans wide and stormy in the 1970s sought this. Today, Christians and ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq do likewise; they seek safety and survival as the ISIS continues to ruthlessly persecute them.
Pope Francis recently reflected on migrants and the Church in his Message for the 2015 World Day of Migrants and Refugees. Migrants leave their homelands with suitcases full of fears and desires. Their trips hope for more human living conditions; often they turn dangerous as they face suspicion and hostility by many.
Francis denounces those who harm migrants. “Who are they to judge them alien and discriminate them different when they know nothing of these migrants’ lives, stories or histories?” he asks. We call such people prejudiced, bigoted, xenophobic and their actions hurtful, damaging, ruinous. Some of these people are Christians. But for Francis they are unchristian.
These actions by our fellow Christians should sadden us. But less we act self-righteously and condemn them, Francis warns us that we can also be like them in how we treat migrants. He explains: “though we sense in our conscience the call to touch human misery and to uplift the sufferings of migrants by loving them as neighbors, like Jesus did, the weakness of our nature can also tempt us to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length.”
Migrants, like refugees and exiles, are the Lord’s wounds; they are the living marks on the risen but wounded Body of Christ that we are. You and I make up this body; the migrants also make up this body. We are one with them; they are one with us.
Some of us might be so embarrassed that they pockmark our community that we use social, institutional and governmental makeup to hide their existence, if not fade out their presence on our conscience.
Some of us might be pained that their sufferings scar the communal body we share as nation, church and world that we reach out to help and heal, to repair and save, to bring them to health again.
And there are some of us who only want to see their different language, colour, education and skills as problems that must be pressed down, controlled and policed. But don’t their faces look like ours? Even more, don’t they resemble the one who once called us friends and who then laid his life down for our salvation? Jesus is “waiting to be recognized in migrants,” Francis assures us. Do we really want to see him?
This is why it is right that our Opening Prayer is directed to Jesus. To him, no refugee, exile or migrant is a stranger and none is without his compassion. We asked Jesus to restore them to a homeland, that place of being with God. This is the glory they are bound for, like we are too. And we asked Jesus that we each can have a kind heart for the needy and for strangers.
But how can we ask for such a heart if we don’t honestly understand that we are also and already migrants? We are not economic migrants. We are not war-torn refugees. We are not political or cultural exiles. We are spiritual migrants. As a people of faith, we are on a migration from the earthly to the divine. This is why the Church repeatedly reminds us that we are God’s pilgrim people.
It is as spiritual migrants on our journey to God that we can share in the plight of our sister and brother migrants on earth. Like them, we struggle to hope and not despair. Like them, we suffer misunderstanding, hate and abuse from others for our Christian faith and way of life. Like them, we grapple with poverty—not so much of want or riches in this parish but of spirit, a poverty of living more honestly and or loving more selflessly. If we are indeed like our fellow migrants, especially those who have come into our midst to work with and for us, who are we to judge them lesser or to treat them poorer?
We can only look at, live with but, most importantly, love the many migrants in our lives anew when we truly interiorize Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel reading. Make a change of mind. This is today’s good news. Jesus teaches us its importance in example of the change of mind the first son makes. His initial answer to his father was honest: he never intended to be obedient, but he "changed his mind" and did what his father asked. In contrast, the second son's seemingly obedient "Yes, sir" in fact was dishonest—he "did not go." Changing one's mind—choosing conversion of self—is a matter of utter honesty with self, God, and others.
Today, Jesus is challenging you and me to seriously change our minds, our attitudes and our interactions towards migrants. But we can always say, “no, thank you.” I think that if we do this, we will be no better than the dishonest chief priests and elders whose self-righteousness Jesus condemns.
Any change is always difficult. Even more difficult is a change of self—changes of one’s values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors. As difficult as change is, it is the necessary element for living the Christian life better. I believe this is why Jesus is exhorting us to change our minds and hearts to better care for our migrants. Only then our love for God is authentic.
Making this change involves practicing Christ-like humility that Jesus modeled for us in his life and ministry. This must be the better response you and I can make to God’s invitation that we continue our migratory journey into that space of glory, being at home with God.
"Choo-choo," the train sounds. We hear the all board call. Its destination, heaven. Its host, God. The train of our lives is indeed bound for glory. "All board," Jesus calls out to us once again. Will you, will I, will we, humbly climb onboard today, not alone but together with others, and always with the migrants in our midst?
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: wsj blog (Internet)
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