Today is a historic day. The Supreme Court of the United States will begin hearings to determine the fate of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). DACA is currently a socio-economic life raft for 700,000 young adults who were brought to the United States as children. In the face of congressional inaction and political stalemate, DACA was implemented by presidential order in August 2012 as a means of expressing compassion towards these young adults and their families. History, and God, will judge the United States for its compassion (or lack of compassion) towards Dreamers, just as Egypt was judged 2,000 years ago by its treatment of the Holy Family.
As we are told in Scripture, the baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, fled to Egypt to escape violent persecution at the hands of a jealous king named Herod:
“When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod.” Matthew 2:13-15
Christian tradition instructs us as to the treatment which Jesus, Joseph, and Mary received when they were refugees in Egypt. According to tradition which has been preserved by the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Holy Family were refugees for three and a half years. During that time they received hospitality in some places, but were rejected in others. Churches and monasteries have been built in the sites where Jesus visited, and to this day, on December 26, followers of Jesus in the Orthodox tradition commemorate the flight to Egypt with this prayer:
"Rejoice, Oh Egypt; O, people of Egypt and all ye Children of Egypt who live within its borders, rejoice and lift up your hearts, for the lover of all mankind, He who has been before the beginning of ages, has come to you.”
The Egyptian Monastery of al-Muharraq contains a bed of stone which served as the bed of the Baby Jesus for six months. 2,000 years later, this bed of stone serves as an altar for the service of communion, and indeed it is the oldest known Christian altar in the entire world. The oldest Christian altar in the world is an altar of hospitality. “In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border.” –Isaiah 19:19
Quite interestingly, and unbeknownst to most people, the rejection of Jesus and the Holy Family has also been commemorated for 2,000 years by an ongoing, reported miracle. According to Orthodox tradition, El-Matarya district in modern Cairo marks the specific street in which Jesus, Joseph, and Mary were refused bread and hospitality during their sojourn in Egypt. To this day, 2,000 years later, bread which is baked in El-Matarya will not rise or leaven, though it leavens normally in all the other surrounding streets!
As followers of Jesus in the United States today, we have a choice to make: Will we reflect biblical hospitality to Dreamers as they face such a monumental decision before the Supreme Court, or will we harden our hearts like the residents of El-Matarya two millennia ago? Hundreds of years from now, will we be known as “the Church of the Bread Which Does Not Rise,” or the “The Church of the Bed of Stone”? History, and, most importantly, Jesus, will judge us.