A Theology of Refuge: How the Good Samaritan Helps Us Come Alongside Refugees

The imago Dei informs how the Church can respond to refugeeism with the eyes and fingerprint of the Father. The Spirit of Pentecost reveals how Christians are radically helped, accompanied, and sustained by the Holy Spirit, and how we can do the same for refugees, thereby bringing hope. Jesus, too, provides a more explicit theology of refugeeism, in his life and in his words. There is perhaps no better example than the story of the Good Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan is a microcosm of the gospel—both how it has played out in our lives and how we must incarnate it. Along with the parable of the prodigal son, it is perhaps the best encapsulation of what it means for Christians to live and love well. It goes:

He asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” – Luke 10:29-37

The story is simple enough: a man was down-and-out, he was passed up and left for dead, a foreigner came to his rescue, and the foreigner insured his future well-being.

It is interesting that the lawyer who asks the question phrases it self-centeredly: Who is my neighbor? After Jesus relays the parable, he rephrases the question to focus on the person in need. Who was the neighbor to the one in need?

The Church’s question with regard to refugees—and to all those in need—should begin with Jesus’s take on the question. We should ask, Who is the neighbor to refugees?

The expert in the story figures it out, and Jesus confirms. The neighbor is the one who shows mercy. This naturally raises another question: What is it to show mercy?

The upcoming blogs in this series are brimming with rationales and concrete actions to embody mercy, compassion, welcome, love, and solidarity with refugees. At this point, I merely want to raise two points of action that will help to shape our truly neighborly perspective on refugeeism and our intimate relation to it: intentional neighborliness and sacrificial neighborliness.

Intentional Neighborliness

The first point is that the goal of the Christian is not only to have neighbors, but to become a neighbor.

Having neighbors is stagnant, a given. It requires no movement.

Becoming a neighbor is active and deliberate.

Surely potlucks and posting fliers and opening the windows so the worship music pervades the parking lot is all well and good, but it is not intentional neighborliness. It allows the Church to remain in its bubble, to be content to let people come to it. That mentality serves us only to stay put, to serve those we are already serving or who are brave enough to seek us out. It keeps us on our safe, traditional, churchy road.

But the Church must be about seeking people on their road, even when it is far.[1] This is the path to a growing, risky, outward- and upward-looking Church. It’s a mentality that makes it more important for us to actually speak with refugees, rather than just read their occasional stories in the newspaper. It requires us to visit migrant neighborhoods and resettlement agencies. Finding refugees in the flesh is the only way for the issue to no longer be a lifeless issue, but an incarnated one.

We must go beyond mere goodwill. We cannot be content with simply decrying the problem of refugeeism from within our own bubbles. Words alone are not piety. It is becoming neighbors—showing mercy—to those outside our own spheres that is the work of the good neighbor.

There will always be questions raised: How can I be a neighbor to a Yazidi toddler dying of malnutrition eight thousand miles away?

How can I be a neighbor to Congolese woman who resorts to prostitution?

How can I be a neighbor to a young man who recites “Death to America”?

I suggest we approach those questions with a further question, one with which we should always approach the matter of refugeeism. The question is: What if this poor refugee was my mother or brother or child?

It is a question that threatens to paralyze us, but should ultimately inspire us to action. It is not the whole question, nor the only question—more questions will be posed in later chapters—but it is a deeply Christian question and a good place to start. It will frequently lead us to uncomfortable answers, but Jesus did not call us to comfort, except the eternal comfort we know is ours in him. And when we remember that all people are equally image-bearers of God as our mothers, brothers, and children, we can overcome the despairing numbness and move toward a spirited, far-reaching response.

The plainest answer to the question is simply that which Jesus affirmed long ago with his tale of the Samaritan, singular, uncomplicated, unprecedented: mercy.

Merciful, intentional neighborliness entails going out of our way to help refugees. Meeting them on their road, not waiting for them to venture down ours. We know we would show such deliberate, exploring, audacious mercy to our family members. In the Church, the Mexican laborer, the Yazidi toddler, the Congolese prostitute, and the brainwashed migrant male are our family.

Sacrificial Neighborliness

The second point is that true neighborliness costs something. Being a neighbor to refugees will require sacrifice at a level that will make some in the Church uncomfortable.

Perhaps now, if it has not happened already, the reader will point out that the Church already does emphasize and inject resources into assisting refugees and migrants. Perhaps it could be claimed that the Church has sacrificed enough.

Haven’t we written our joint-church statements, scribbled our blogs, even invented new programs and sponsored projects? We have done our duty—just like the Good Samaritan.

But, I submit, we have been too careful in our duty, careful to not be stained, to not have our image tarnished. We have not permitted our church’s name to be truly connected—and contaminated—by the neighbors, refugees, migrants, poor, we have come upon. We do a great deal, so long as the Church is still popular in the eyes of the people and respectable in the eyes of the authorities. We do not upset the powers. We help, but only insofar as our reputation remains protected, only to the point where going further might raise a few eyebrows, scare away a few church-hoppers.

We aid the low, but are afraid to become low.

This, however, was not the way of the Good Samaritan or of Christ. Neither ended their work at the inn. Both returned, willing to pay whatever price was required. When the Good Samaritan said he would pay “any extra expense,” and when Jesus went to the rack and then the cross, neither was concerned with his own interest. Both were ready to give all they had—to empty themselves.

We Christians can never experience such a kenosis [an emptying] as long as we are in privileged positions in our society. We have, by choosing neighbors, learnt to survive and not to sacrifice. We have loved neighbors who do not upset our modus operandi of hierarchical servitude to the system.[2]

The system, however, is neither our master nor our savior. As long the Church is smitten by it, given to a love of comfort and power, of popularity and programs, of money and security, it can never be a devoted and undistracted neighbor. It can never truly and fully demonstrate love as the Samaritan did.

The Church’s task with refugees is to empty itself for the good of the lost and dispossessed, in whom it must remember to see Christ. The Church must seek to identify with the powerlessness of wounded neighbors, not passing them by, not doing just enough to sleep at night, but doing everything required.

This will cost money and time and resources. It will cost attractiveness points with the non-Christians and even some of the congregants. It will cost the admiration of the powers that be. It may, in the end, cost everything.

But in all these ways—knowing refugees by the imago Dei, seeing refugees with eyes enlightened by the fires of Pentecost, coming alongside them in the way of the Good Samaritan and of Christ—neighbors are made, and all the eternal things are prefigured. By grace through faith, they are gained.

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[1] Victorio Araya Guillen. “The Samaritan’s Diakonia: an Option for Life”. Called to be Neighbours: Official Report, Larnaca Consultation 1986. World Council of Churches. 1987. p. 51. I most stirringly encountered the notion of “intentional neighborliness” in Guillen’s work, which has inspired this section.

[2] Nirmalka Fernando. Called to be Neighbours: Official Report, Larnaca Consultation 1986. World Council of Churches. 1987. p. 57-58. Fernando’s work was the inspiration for this “Sacrificial Neighborliness” section.