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The stranger in our midst – Jacob’s family in Egypt

August 22, 2026

Pentecost 13 – 2026

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Marian Free

In the name of God whose welcome embraces all. Amen.

I’m a bit over Facebook, but every now and then someone posts a real gem that manages to get through the algorithm. This week there were several gems, one of which was a cartoon by Wilcox from THE AGE. Over a number of frames, a woman responds to a question from a journalist on the issue of migration. His opening question is: “Do you think Australia is taking in too many migrants?” The woman responds. “I don’t know. I mean, are we talking about the immigrants who look after my mother in the aged care home?” “Or the ones who come in and pick fruit for low wages so that we can have affordable fresh produce?” “Or the ones working in construction to build our housing and infrastructure?” “Or those who are training to be the medical specialists we are short of?” “I really don’t know,” she concludes, “maybe you could ask the government they should know.”

As the cartoon suggests, migration is a particularly contentious issue at the moment. In this country those who are and who are not welcome has always been a matter for political point-scoring and public debate. Elsewhere the issue of migration has reached a crisis point. Those deemed to be illegal residents of the United States are being hunted down, arrested and sent to awful prisons in impoverished third-world countries with no hope of release. And in many other nations of the world today migrants and refugees are being scapegoated for all the ills in the countries in which they find themselves.

I am not claiming to have answers, but I often wonder why the issue has to be so divisive and polarizing. There must be a compassionate way of determining a balance between the economic needs of our country and the need to ensure that our citizens are not unduly penalized by pressure on housing, jobs and other resources. Once we have welcomed migrants or refugees we have to ensure that they are not demonized, scapegoated or used to further political agendas.

When I read Exodus in preparation for this morning, I couldn’t help but see some parallels with the current political situation. Some background is important. The Israelites are in Egypt because a generation before they were welcomed as migrants orr refugees from a drought-ravaged country.

You have to read from Genesis 40 to the end to get the full story, but it goes something like this. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers – a cruel and selfish act, but one which after a time proved of benefit to his family. Joseph experienced some hard times, including being thrown in prison. However, while a prisoner, he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and as a result was appointed to the most powerful position in Egypt – second only to Pharaoh. Joseph was given authority to buy and store grain during seven years of plentiful harvests so that there would be sufficient food to feed not only the Egyptians, but the whole world, during seven years of famine. As predicted, the famine, when it did come, impacted a vast area, including the land in which Joseph’s father and brothers lived.

Jacob, Joseph’s father, knew that there was food in Egypt, so he sent his sons to buy grain. After some comings and goings (you’ll have to read them for yourselves), Joseph made himself known to his brothers, insisted that they move to Egypt and offered them the land of Goshen in which to live.

Meanwhile, the drought continued and the Egyptians, who had spent all their money on Pharaoh’s grain, were forced to offer themselves to Pharaoh as slaves in order to feed themselves and their families. Joseph not only bought their land, but he also imposed a 20% levy on everything that they grew. This means that the Egyptians are completely impoverished and totally dependent on Pharaoh. Jacob’s family meanwhile have been living on the best land, have retained their position as free men (and women), and have not been burdened by heavy taxes. They have flourished such that they have grown in number and “become so strong that the land was filled with them”.

Of course, this account is told from the perspective of the Israelites, so we do not know whether there is some exaggeration and we certainly do not know how the ordinary Egyptian felt about the situation. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that, as they were struggling with debt and facing starvation, they would have been more than a little resentful of the Israelites who, though not Egyptians, who were perceived to have received special treatment and had benefited from and been enriched at their expense.

Joseph and his generation die – including the Pharaoh who had given Joseph’s family such a warm welcome. It is no surprise that a new Pharaoh, one who owes no loyalty to Joseph or his family, seizes an opportunity to unite a disgruntled, over-taxed people against a common enemy, to unite them in a joint cause, and to give them leave to denigrate, abuse and enslave those whose relative wealth and number has been the cause of so much bitterness.

The story of the Israelites in Egypt occurred something like 4,000 years ago, but in many essentials, the world has not changed. Millions upon millions^[1] of people continue to flee their homelands as a consequence of drought, war or political persecution and they hope for a welcome in countries where there is wealth and plenty, only to find doors shut in their faces or to experience suspicion, prejudice and even fear. The account of the Israelites in Egypt under a new Pharaoh reminds us that in every age people have sought to guard their borders and their resources, have regarded outsiders with suspicion and have felt threatened when those who are supposed to be vulnerable and dependent succeed where they have not.

Our task, as people who follow Christ, is to welcome the stranger, to break down barriers and to share what we have with those who have less. History, it seems, will always repeat itself. We are charged with disrupting the cycle, and contributing to a society in which all are valued, all are able to offer their gifts, and in which all can live in peace and security.

^[1] 117.8 million at the end of 2025.

Tags:Exodus, famine, Genesis, migration, refugees, resentment
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Telling it how it is

November 12, 2016

Pentecost 26 – 2016

Luke 21:5-19

Marian Free

In the name of God who gives us courage to carry on when all hope seems lost and the future is out of our hands. Amen.

“We are lousy, stinking, ragged, unshaven and sleepless. Even when we’re back a bit we can’t sleep for our own guns. I have one puttee, a dead man’s helmet, another dead man’s gas protector, a dead man’s bayonet. My tunic is rotten with other men’s blood, and partly splattered with a comrade’s brains. It is horrible, but why should you people at home not know? Several of my friends are raving mad. I met three officers out in No Man’s Land the other night, all rambling and mad. Poor Devils!” so wrote John Raws from Pozieres on the fourth of August 1916[1].

That same day the Australians joined the attack at Fromelles. It was a disaster. Five and a half thousand young Australian men died – the greatest loss of soldiers in a single day during the war. Fighting continued on the Somme through the autumn mud and a bitterly cold winter. Australian casualties continued to mount, and the men’s health deteriorated in the conditions.

In November that same year, Hugh Anderson wrote home to his mother in New South Wales from Fromelles: “The Big Push has a 12 mile front and a depth of 6 miles and a curved front,” he wrote. “It has cost us half a million casualties at least and goodness knows how much money and animals. This is in six months. The German line is bent but not broken, at this rate to blow the Germans back to the Rhine, Britain will be broken for money and men. How it will end is very hard to say. I give him two years more at least. That’s my opinion from what I’ve seen and read.”[2]

This year marks 100 years since the Battle of the Somme. Between the 1st of July 1916 and the 18th of November, the Allied forces took on the Germans along the Somme River. The battle front was 30 kilometres long, the Germans well entrenched and when it was over the British and Dominion forces had lost an astounding 430,000 young men and the French 200,000 soldiers. In three and a half months the troops had advanced only 12 kilometers.

Three years later on the 11th of November, the Armistice of Compiegne went into effect. At the time, what we now know as the First World War was called the Great War – the war to end all wars. One hundred years later, we have witnessed a second world war and Australian troops have been involved in countless other engagements in countries too many to name.

Despite lessons from the past, the world has barely changed since 1916. Humanity, it seems, is destined to live with conflict and war, rioting and revolutions, oppression and injustice – not just in the last 100 years, but from the beginning of time. Not only must we contend with our inability to live together peaceably, we are also subject to the instability of the planet, the earth’s uncontrollable weather systems and the constant threat of illness or disease. For many people life is a daily struggle simply to survive and most of us at some time or another face some sort of adversity as a consequence of belonging to the human race on planet Earth.

It is important then to recognise that the words of today’s gospel are not prophetic in the sense that Jesus is predicting what might happen in a far distant future. Nor is he providing a check-list of signs that will precede the end. He is speaking of the world as it is – a world that is flawed, erratic and often dangerous. Jesus is describing the world as the disciples will experience it. His words are prophetic only in as much as he is describing the difficulties and dangers that the disciples in every age can expect to encounter. His words are prophetic only in as much as every generation has lived through wars, earthquakes, famines and plagues. At the same time, his words are not prophetic in the sense that though these events have occurred over and over again in the last 2000 years, they have not presaged the end.

In fact Jesus makes it clear that we are not to look for signs or to come to any conclusions as to the timing of the end. He cautions about being led astray by those who think that they know better than God when the end will come.

Rather than foretelling the future, Jesus is telling the disciples what they can expect in the present. Their lives might have changed as a result of their coming to faith, but the world will remain much the same. The only significant change in the disciples’ external environment is the risk that they will be misunderstood, that their faith in Jesus’ message may expose them to ridicule, misunderstanding, isolation and even arrest and imprisonment. He does not want them to be unprepared for a future that will be uncertain and ultimately unpredictable.

Behind the warning Jesus offers assurance and encouragement. “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” No matter how hard it gets, no matter what external or internal threats present themselves, Jesus assures that God will not abandon us. No matter what adversities we face, God will give us the courage and strength to endure. If we are able to trust in God’s steadfastness, if we maintain our faith to the end – no matter what life throws at us – God will keep faith with us. If our relationship with God through Jesus remains unbroken, we are assured that that relationship will defy even death and that in the present and for eternity we will be alive together with God.

Jesus doesn’t promise that life with him will be without challenges or will isolate and protect us from suffering, but he does assure us over and over again that life with him will give us the ability to endure. Let us thank God that, relatively speaking our lives are not subject to the desperation of poverty, displacement, disease faced by millions. Let us trust God that whatever life throws at us, we will find the courage to endure and face the future with confidence in God’s love for us and the certainty that we are destined for life eternal.

[1] Lieutenant John Raws, 23rd Battalion, 4 August 1916

[2] http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/stories/stories_war=W1_id=99.html