What should we do?

What should we do?

After this, a group of politicians brought a family before Jesus to accuse them.

“We caught these foreigners crossing our borders without permission,” their leader said. “How should we deal with them?”

“What do your laws say?” he asked them.

“Our laws permit us to send them far away, where they can be locked up among barbed wire, mosquitoes and despair,” said the leader.

“What have you to say for yourselves?” Jesus asked the family.

The man stepped forward. “Our land was filled with fear and fighting,” he said.

His wife stood at his side, as the children clung to her. “We gathered what we could and fled. We came here hoping to find a place of refuge; where our children could be safe and grow and thrive.”

“There!” exclaimed a woman. “You have heard it from their own lips, they deserve to be sent away. What do you say?”

Jesus crouched, and drew with his finger in the dust. Then he stood, looked about him and spoke. “Let the one who has never feared an election defeat be the one who turns the key.”

The crowd became enraged. They seized him and handled him roughly.

Their leader spoke. “You are nothing but a bleeding-heart lefty!” he said. “What would you know?”

Then they cast him headlong into a ditch; and dragged the family away.

Some other people saw what happened, and wept for shame. They went looking for Jesus. He was sitting on the side of the ditch, wiping the blood from his face.

“This is all wrong,” they said. “What should we do?”

Jesus stood up. Looking into their eyes he embraced each one, and said, simply, “Everything. We must do everything that we can.”

© Ken Rookes 2016.