Pentecost 13
Refugee Sunday 2004-08-28
Jeremiah 2.4-13, Psalm 81.1, 10-16, Hebrews 13.1-2, 15-16, Luke 14.1, 7-14
Today is Refugee and Migrant Sunday, a day on which we remember and pray for refugees and immigrants. Usually on this day I would be delivering my usual leftist diatribe, which would be highly likely to be inflammatory and more than a touch party political. I’m not going to today. Or at least I’ll try very hard not to. Now its not that I don’t think there is a place for political comment from the pulpit – I’m sure I’ve said before that I think our political views should be influenced by our faith. And as we could be on the verge of a federal election campaign, in some ways it would probably be a good idea, very topical, to consider the issues from a faith perspective. But whilst doing some research for this sermon I read the material released by the National Council of Churches, and found myself moved by a story of a very young refugee. I decided that it rather than me rehashing it, it would be better to let it speak for itself. As you listen to this story of this child, keep in mind the reading from Hebrews, especially the bit about remembering those who are in prison as though we are in prison with them. Attempt some empathy. Try to imagine yourself in his predicament.
This is the story of Shayan.
Six year-old Shayan lay in his father’s arms. He stared into space as his father rocked him back and forth. His skin was pale and the room small and dull.* Shayan’s parents had fled from Iran to Australia a year before in April 2000. They fled in fear of being persecuted and hoped that Australia would provide protection for them. However, like all refugee children arriving without visas, Shayan and his family were automatically placed in a detention centre while their refugee claim was processed.
Detention had a terrible impact on Shayan. In late 2000, protests and unrest broke out in Woomera detention centre as the despair and tension grew among refugees who had been unfairly locked up. In June, 480 detainees broke out of Woomera. In August, there were three days of riots and fires, involving 60-80 detainees. Tear gas and water cannons were used. In November 30 detainees went on hunger strikes. During this time, Shayan’s mother and father were unable to prevent Shayan being effected by the despair, the protests, the violence and the suicide attempts going on around him. In November, he saw a man slashing himself with pieces of glass and then try to kill himself by jumping from a tree. One day, he stopped talking. As the impact of this trauma worsened, he stopped eating and drinking, began biting his nails and crying under his blanket. At night he wet the bed and would wake up repeatedly, gripping his chest and screaming “They are going to kill us”.
Despite repeated recommendations from psychologists to relocate or release Shayan, he was kept in detention. After stopping drinking, Shayan was hospitalised suffering from dehydration. At Westmead hospital he was diagnosed as being acutely traumatised and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. As soon as he was better, Shayan was sent back to Villawood detention centre in Sydney. There his condition again declined and he was hospitalised for 8 weeks. He was hospitalised another 6 times, and every time he got better, he was re-detained. Then he would stop eating and drinking, become silent and withdrawn. Soon he would be hospitalised again, suffering dehydration. Medical staff saw Shayan 70 times between March and August 2001. Hospital and detention staff wrote to the Immigration Minister 13 times asking for his release.
Finally, Shayan’s story reached the media in August 2001, and after images of his suffering were broadcast around Australia, public pressure grew and he was released in 2002.
It’s a tragic story. It’s a tragic story that we are all, every one of us, responsible for. We are the jailers, we are the oppressors, we are the ones who have let this treatment go on in the name of so-called border security.
Let’s go back to the letter to the Hebrews.
Verses 2 and 3: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. 3Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
And verse 16 - Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Are we, as a nation, showing hospitality to these strangers, these refugees? No, quite often we don’t. Are we considering those in detention as if we were in detention? No, we aren’t. Nor do we remember those who are tortured, and tortured this child was, perhaps not intentionally, more through neglect and political expediency. We are neglecting to do good and share what we have, and as such, we are not making sacrifices pleasing to God. We don’t mean to harm children like Shayan, but we are harming them, and that’s a fact we must face up to. We must ask ourselves “Is this what Jesus would do?”
We act like Pharisees with our rules and regulations on who is and who isn’t a refugee. We create names for those we don’t want so that the humanity of the people involved is lost amongst a derogatory term – illegals, boat people, whatever. These terms make it easier to forget that these people are men, women and children. It makes it easier to imprison them. I noticed a sign on a stobie pole last night, pasted there by that enlightened group of right wing bully boys National Action. It read “Deport Boat People”, which is a lot nicer than others I’ve seen that included “Blow the boats out of the water”. Now I’m sure that most of us would have seen these posters about the place, and I think that most of us would feel shocked, or angry about them, and would imagine that there is a lot of distance between those right wing thugs and us. We’re just not like them, are we? Yes we are. It is our inaction in this area that aligns us with them, the way we allow successive governments to maintain policies that degrade the humanity of another person, the way we allow inhuman treatment and detention of children to go on. We are no better if we do not act against these practises.
There are alternatives, and I have copies of information on alternatives available for anyone who would like to read it. Just let me know by way of a message at the office on Monday.
Jesus would not treat people like this. We should not either.
The Lord be with you.
What is really really important for us?
Luke 12.13-21, Col 3.1-11.
It’s very easy to get obsessive about wealth. We can put so much energy, time and effort into making money and gathering wealth that we can totally miss out on life. There’s so much emphasis on making money, on managing investment portfolios and things like that in the media that we end up thinking this is the only way to live. Stock market reports invade news items. Advertising portrays successful wealthy beautiful people. All this leads us towards the idea that a successful and full life is a life rich in material goods, cash and superficial beauty, that we will never be happy without these. Unfortunately most of us come to believe this is the truth. It is only when the brevity and fragility of life is brought into focus for us that we realise it ain’t necessarily so.
There’s a common phrase that people use when they have been in a life-endangering situation – “I saw my life flash before my eyes”. I’m not sure I’ve had an experience like that, perhaps someone here has, but I’ve certainly had cause to reflect at times on the important things in life after a traumatic event. However, often the reflective mood is short lived. I saw a movie a few years ago called Grand Canyon. Steve Martin played a Hollywood movie director who specialised in making violent movies. One day he is robbed at gun point for his watch, and in the process he is shot. He reflects on his life and his work during his recovery, and vows to make only films about the good things in life, about nice things, not violence. He wants to change the world. This is short lived however, and within a few months he is back to his stock in trade, telling his friends he is “over” the nice film stage. He forgets that he came close to the edge of existence, that he once feared for his life. As he becomes more and more comfortable with the material world again, he goes back to the old way. He makes violent movies again. He forgets what is really important in life. He allows the material world to seduce him back to his former life. His obsession with making marketable violent movies overrides his very temporary fixation on what he can do to make a better world. His fleeting glimpse of the meaning of life vanishes. The only meaning he seeks is the meaning of wealth. Just like this man we hear about in the gospel reading this morning, who is in dispute with his brother over money.
This man’s focus in his dealings with Jesus was not to ask for spiritual enlightenment. He didn’t want the scriptures to be interpreted nor to ask for healing. Rather it was to sort out a financial dispute with a brother, a request that Jesus finds rather distasteful. What I think he finds distasteful is that the man doesn’t want to resolve the relationship differences - he just wants his slice of the pie. Jesus tells him that the wealth is not as important as the way life is lived and the meaning that can be derived from it. It needs to be a life lived for God.
This is what Jesus is talking about when he says that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Life is a word that should be emphasised here, written in big bold capitals, because chasing after wealth is not living. As the author of the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes wrote, reflecting on his wealth and achievements, in chapter 2, verse 11:”Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
A rather sobering thought, that in the end, all we are worth is who we are, and the relationships we have made, especially with God. When the time comes for us to depart this world, we can’t take our earthly possessions with us. We leave this world as we came into it, naked and penniless. And perhaps looking towards the end of our time here on earth, I think I can pretty much guarantee that none of us will be wishing we’d spent more time at work. My guess is that it is more likely we’ll wish we’d spent more time with our kids, our spouses, or our friends, or having some sort of fun. We will wish we’d spent more time in activities involving love. It’s on this note that I would like to finish with this little story I found on the internet, written by Father M. Greely, Priest and Sociologist.
Once upon a time there was a man, a father of a family, who had made a lot of money in the stock market (he had also made a lot of money in the commodity markets too). For every dollar he had invested in 1994, he now had five dollars. Starting with a rather modest amount of money, he had become a millionaire. However, he was not the kind of person who could make his investments and stick with them because he knew that in the long run they would continue to grow. Quite the contrary, he was a real investor, that is to say, he bought and sold stocks almost every day to make money even more rapidly than did the ordinary investor who left it to his brokers and advisers to watch the daily opportunities. Our hero earned his living – and it was a good one – in other areas. However, he became obsessed with the daily fluctuations in the market. He was overjoyed when his holdings went up, and he grew depressed when they went down. He called up the Dow Jones Average on his computer several times every day and then explored his portfolio in detail. Well, one day he went on vacation with his family and of course brought his laptop computer along. It happened to be one of those times when the Dow Jones Average rose and fell like the tides. So he spent most of his daylight hours on his laptop. As a result he wasted his vacation, even though the weather was beautiful every day, the lake was warm, the winds were light, and everyone else in his family had a wonderful time.
So then. What’s it to be? Spend our lives in pursuit of the dollar, or in the search for what it truly means to be alive? Live a life worth living, a life lived in generosity of wealth and spirit, a life lived for the kingdom, a life lived for the shear joy of living, a life lived for Jesus. Make sure you really really live.
