Introduction
Luke’s story, while alluding to divine patience, commends compassionate patience to us, but within limits. Migrant camps represent a scandal; over-crowded, insanitary, degrading to their inhabitants, sometimes a focus for crime, hatred and violence. Is bulldozing Calais’ camp the answer? Or does it have any potential for good of the kind recognised in the barren tree? What positive steps would be equivalent to first trying digging and manuring around it? What scope is there for providing better accommodation elsewhere in France or in other countries? For more generous granting of UK immigrant visas? For sharing the load of the refugee crisis around EU members? For charitable relief work?
Or will no measures help?
Context
The French authorities, patience exhausted, are poised to destroy Calais south, but a charity has counted three hundred plus unaccompanied children there. Neighbouring communities are no more welcoming to migrants, and some further away are openly hostile.
Reflection
The story suggests that we are not obliged to make our charity altogether indiscriminate: the unresponsive tree gets its come-uppance. But does keeping migrants there with our closed border at Calais mean we, equally with Donald Trump, stand condemned by the Pope’s comments? Are we refusing to recognise the human potential of these would-be immigrants? Are we, like the owner (v.8), too focused on the economics of the case? In this and other contexts what should we do when humane considerations and regulations collide?
Are all migrants dangerous? Deserving? Vulnerable? The story concerns a specific, valued, fig-tree. What criteria should animate our decision-making in regard to economic migrants and refugees, men, women and children, singles and those in family groups, Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis or others? Do we look to need, to economic status, or to our fear of threat?
The year is not just an arbitrary limit: it represents time for the tree to respond. How long should our patience with Calais or other aspects of the migrant crisis last? What does ‘being Christian’ or ‘building bridges’ in the Pope’s terms entail? How do we know when the proper limit has been reached? Are we entitled to look for some responses from migrants, obeying the law, conforming to our ways, keeping the peace?
Are we taking refuge in ignorance here? Can we enter into what it is like to inhabit the camps at Calais or to be a Calais resident upon whom this humanitarian nightmare has been visited? Do we want to? Or are we like those (v.1) worrying about the guilt of sufferers and distancing ourselves?
Is this crisis quite unlike the fig-tree problem? Does patience here need to be unlimited because the suffering is unlimitable? Look at verses 1-5, about random suffering in an imperfect because sin-tainted world. Are the migrants, so to speak, barren fig-trees or are they rather like victims of a falling tower (v.4)?
Prayer
A prayer for a time of meditation (it could be give out to take home).
The central narrative of the Christian faith tells us that God could and did step into the shoes of humanity. Jesus lived and died, walked and talked with his disciples, ate and drank and told stories, like this one. And he shared in his disciples’ griefs, their joys, their fears.
But that ‘identifying with’ and ‘trying to understand’ another person, just someone different, younger, of a different gender, more or less confident, gentler or more aggressive, is often beyond us ordinary human beings. And when it comes to people of another nationality, or creed, or race, or language, we often don’t even try. How quick we are to raise the barriers of difference.
‘They’ are lazy, greedy, violent, deceitful – but ‘we’ are not.
They pick fights, waste opportunities, oppress their women. – ‘we’ never do any of these things.
As we travel through Lent to the point where Jesus identified most completely and painfully with human suffering, in his death on the cross, may we become more sensitised to our own sins and shortcomings. May we become more willing to accept that all those who suffer are God’s children, human, fallible, sometimes strong and sometimes weak, just as we are. Sometimes violent, sometimes reckless, sometimes bullying, just as we are. And sometimes, as we are, loving, courageous and desperate to see a better world.
Amen.
Questions
- Would your community be able to accommodate and welcome refugees?
- Does your locality already have an integration problem or a housing crisis?
- What should our priorities be?
Action
Is there a charity helping refugees, asylum seekers or the homeless in your area? Find out what local action would help it.
Young people
Is there too much emphasis on the threats presented by minority communities, economic, in respect of security, in respect of cultural identity. Think about your local schools and communities and in groups make lists in two columns, ways in which you feel enriched by people from other backgrounds and ways in which you feel threatened. Does the result surprise you?
Brenda Vance is a retired university teacher and a URC Elder.
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