Moving through world as I do, I am daily dependent on the kindness and knowledge of strangers. Most of these are strangers I will never meet, like the people maintaining ocean buoys that track water temperatures and aid in forecasting dangerous storms in time to allow evacuations and preparations. Or like whoever it was who trained the staff at an area restaurant not to block the space the wheelchair sits in the lavatory in order to allow for a lateral transfer, unlike most of the places where folks see that space and fill it will stuff that can’t be moved. I depend on road crews and farmworkers and distribution center workers and pharmacy techs and manufacturers of the medical devices I need. The fact is we all depend on strangers, even when we ourselves belong to one of these groups I’ve named. I’m also a farmer, but I’ve never met the person who grows my rice or who made the balsamic vinegar I adore. We are a world of strangers, dependent upon one another, and in that dependence, vulnerable. We’re vulnerable to someone’s meanness or tyranny, to unjust laws, to climate disruption and violence interrupting or shattering our lives.
In Parashat Mishpatim, we are presented with lots of exploration of applying the Ten Commandments. One of the rules that apparently needed some clarification for the recently freed people was how to treat strangers. “You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourself know the feelings of s stranger, for you were also strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) This is a reminder about empathy and open-hearted justice for everyone. The people ended up in Egypt because of persistent famine and hunger drove them out of where they made home and into dependence in another land.
As our climate changes and historic rainfall patterns are disrupted, parts of the world have experienced drought for half a decade or more. If you grow everything you have to eat, no one has stores from a good year to make it that long. And so we have today people displaced by climate disruption, making the same awful choice that faced the ancient Israelites: stay and starve for sure or go elsewhere and maybe survive. A great many who are from western Honduras and Guatemala in the migrant caravans along the Mexico-U.S. border are there because of violence and unrest, which always accompanies persistent widespread hunger, and became climate disruption has forced them into the second awful choice: go elsewhere and maybe survive.
The loving and faithful response is not to huff impatiently about migrants seeking compassion or to be arrogant enough to believe we ourselves could not be displaced by the changing world or to demonize people who are hurting, afraid and desperately seeking a chance at life. We can focus on four actions as faithful people:
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Immediately relieve, welcome, and make way for these climate and violence-driven refugees
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Change our laws and policies to protect the vulnerable, the stranger, the one who could be us, and may have been us in the past, to treat all with dignity and compassion rather than belittle and demonize
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Seek to help communities adversely affected by climate disruption here and around the world mitigate what’s happening and adapt to what we can well predict
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Be dedicated about adapting our economies globally to slow and adapt to climate disruption
What faithful people with loving hearts cannot do is turn away. Love asks more than that from us. We are dependent upon strangers and we are strangers others depend upon. We can be the people who help and harbor others in need. Climate change is real and is disrupting lives and communities, erasing once viable places to live and sending for waves of displaced people needing compassion and a chance to bring their gifts to bear in a place that is still fruitful.
Once, today, tomorrow, always we were and are strangers, needing each other. In this time of climate disruption may we remember we need one another, love boldly, and make way for those fleeing for their lives. For we have been and are strangers and may today, tomorrow, or some day also need protection, welcome, and loving care.
