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.
