We must welcome migrants and newcomers

Address at Opening of the new joint Anglicare Migrant Services Office and Cabramatta Anglican Church Facility

Some time in the 1870’s, a young Irish girl named Annie Dougherty and a young Danish man named Frederick Christian Jensen met and married in Queensland. He arrived in Townsville with his brother in 1870: she was only sixteen when she came entirely on her own to Australia. To their dying days they spoke highly accented English; he was especially difficult to understand.

I often think of them, for they were my great grandparents. In one respect there is nothing flash about them. I am sure that all here have stories they could tell. But in other respects, they were extraordinary, because they were migrants, and all migrants are special people.

Recently I was in another country on my own for a couple of days. It was so easy to become nervous and even a bit disoriented. The language was English, but the customs were strange and no one within a hundred miles knew me or really cared about me. It was a tiny taste of the migrant experience.

The things we cherish most, food, climate, environment, language, friends, are all new and different. The changes are so many that it is very hard to adjust. We keep comparing it with the old country and noting that it is not as good here, or that they simply do not understand. We feel that our skills and customs are undervalued, and that barbarians are over us. This is the migrant experience.

Indifference and misunderstanding about us is one thing; hostility is another. Part of the migrant experience is often a name-calling hostility; a sense that we do not belong and that our presence in the new land is even resented. This is compounded when our language skills are small and when we are racially different. Our hands and our feet and our tongue which are so beautifully skilled in our own culture, become clumsy and foolish in the new. It is so easy for us to lose our bearings and become twilight citizens, neither of the new or of the old.

Australia is one of the world’s great migrant communities. Sometimes, this is resented, as though those of us who arrived in the first wave of European migration have the right to keep the place to ourselves. In fact, the successive waves of migrants have been to our great benefit, and the Australia that we are all building is truly wonderful place. The challenge for us is not to be hostile to these precious newcomers, not to be indifferent, but to be genuinely welcoming. How can we achieve that?

The miracles of Jesus are truly extraordinary things, not so much because they are miracles. After all, of we believe in an all powerful God who rules over all things, I do not imagine that the odd miracle is any problem for him, even if it astonishes us. If he wants to feed ten thousand people with five small loaves and two small fish, then he will do it. I have seen too much of the way God works in the world to be troubled or puzzled by that.

No, the extraordinary thing is not the miracle, but the reason for the miracle: what it tells us about Jesus and his priorities. Some people think that God is all about the spiritual part of life and has not got much to do with ordinary human needs like hunger and thirst. Jesus saw a hungry crowd of people who had come to hear him, and he feeds them. It is a constant reminder that he and his followers have an abiding interest in this world and the needs of this world, even the really basic ones, like food and shelter and family and companionship.

Migrants may need all sorts if things like jobs and accommodation and language help. But the delivery of this assistance is done best by people, people who care. It is not just a job, but a ministry of service which is needed; an act of love and genuine friendship. For after all, it is friends who will help the newcomer not lose his or her bearings, but to be incorporated – in their own terms – without losing part of themselves – into fellowships of love an concern.

It is no accident that churches are meant to be such fellowships, and when they operate at their best, that is what they are. God ahs not created us to be individualists, nor collectivists but to be ‘communalists’. The Bible teaches us to call God our Father and those who belong to him are brothers and sisters; in other words, the churches are inclusive families of ordinary people. It is not the high-profile institutional church which matters much; it is the huge network of local churches such as this one here, which are part of the very backbone of this nation.

The Diocese of Sydney has given itself a special aim. It is to multiply local churches, congregations and fellowships and to make them welcoming and nurturing groups of people. In a society which values individualism and personal autonomy at the expense of community and fellowship, such groups are going to be absolutely vital for the good health of our nation. But more than that – in a nation which is still committed to welcoming thousands of migrants, it is essential that we have the human resources to meet them and care for them and to incorporate them. We cannot pay for this; we are not talking about professionals; we are talking about volunteers and people trained to be outward looking carers of others.

What motivates people to be outward looking? That is the second extraordinary thing about the miracle of Jesus in which he fed the ten thousand. It was not just a pointer to the importance of food and caring for the basic necessities of others. It was a pointer to the true meaning of life: ‘Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty”.’ It is no accident that belief and action go so closely together; it is no accident that it is trust in Jesus which yields the deepest satisfaction in life, and then express itself – as it has always done – in practical care for others.

It is no accident that this facility has come into existence. ‘Miracle’ may be too strong a word, but three were great difficulties to be overcome, and we certainly see the hand of God at work here. He has heard and answered prayer. Let me finish with another extraordinary story which shows how the living God uses ordinary human beings to meet the basic needs of the ordinary people who are extraordinary and precious because they are migrants and strangers in our midst.

Truly, Jesus still feeds the hungry; truly Jesus is the bread of life.

Peter Jensen
Archbishop
July 31, 2003