Seeing Christ in the Refugee
Dear Park Avenue,
This Latino Heritage Sunday, I am reflecting not just on our cultural contributions—the music, the food, the vibrant faith. (We have all of that planned for Sunday!)—but the deeper, biblical calling to see the sacred value in every person who journeys to a new land.
The Bible is clear and strong with commands to honor and protect people who come to our country from other lands.
From the laws in Leviticus—“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34)—to the New Testament injunction to “show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). Scripture places the “newcomer” at the center of our moral imagination.
Receiving immigrants well is not merely a political position; it is a core of our faith and practice.
This truth finds its ultimate expression in the person of Jesus Christ. When God chose to reveal Himself to humanity in the most concrete way possible, He did so in the body of a Jewish child under the shadow of an empire. And almost immediately, He and his family were forced to flee. They became refugees, escaping the massacre of innocents ordered by a terrified ruler in a nation with no autonomy that the Romans called Palestine (Matthew 2:13-18).
The Savior of the world, in His most vulnerable state, knew the grief and displacement that so many of our Latino brothers and sisters seeking refuge know today.
This reflection is not meant to simplify complex stories. (For example, Puerto Ricans like our family have status through war, and annexation, not immigration per se). But the goal is to re-center our hearts. As we celebrate Latino heritage, we celebrate a spirit of perseverance that is deeply aligned with the gospel. We honor the contributions of those who have come to this nation seeking refuge and opportunity. And we are reminded specifically that our calling as Christians is to see the face and presence of our savior especially in refugees regardless of status. For more than 2000 years we have affirmed that a child and refugee is precisely how God chose to reveal himself to us.
And God's promise to his people is that by embracing those who are “foreigners” among us, we may just be entertaining angels—or even welcoming Christ Himself.
Simon Joel Trautmann Cordova