I really like this painting by David Hayward, entitled "RefuJesus".

Jesus was a refugee, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, taken as a child out of his birthplace to a neighbouring country. This country, Egypt, had a history of being somewhat unwelcome to Jesus' people. But it was considered safer than staying at home, where madmen were visiting violence upon his fellow children.

In certain, very biblical ways, Jesus is still a refugee. How we treat the most vulnerable is how we treat Jesus. How we fail to treat them is how we fail to treat Jesus.

Even if we see certain refugees as our enemies - even if they ARE our enemies - we still have a Christian mandate for how to treat them.

I do not suggest that this mandate is operative upon the State. The State is not Christian. It is, however, operative upon Christians. We should be fighting to be first in line to open our doors, our tables, our homes, to welcome Jesus. And we should be calling the State at least to justice. In Canada, certainly, most of us are of immigrant if not refugee stock. Fair play is fair play.

I sincerely hope this is a live conversation happening in all North American Churches these days.

And as an aside, if you are one of the folks saying that we should be taking care of our own homeless/mentally ill/veterans etc...before we take care of refugees (and we should be taking care of them as well), well, then you'd better be looking to befriend and bring those folk in as well.