The Crucified Stranger

They always paint Him still,

haloed, tamed, framed in light.

But I have seen Him run.

*

Not triumphant.

Not enthroned.

Running.

Through ash and wire,

through alley smoke and refugee dust,

through checkpoints paved in scripture and steel.

*

He is not safe.

He is not slow.

He flees.

Not because He is afraid,

but because love refuses to belong to power.

*

With mothers gripping formula tins

and children named after bombed-out cities,

He flees.

Through borders scribbled by colonizers,

through deserts that spit up the dead,

through embassies that mistake mercy

for paperwork.

*

He was a refugee before He could speak.

He wore exile like a second skin

before He wore a crown of thorns.

*

He fled to Egypt once,

swaddled in brown arms

by a mother too tired to sing.

He still walks its alleys now,

not as Pharaoh’s guest

but as the stranger your government

forgets to feed.

*

And still,

we cage Him in liturgies,

and name Him patron of the empires

that exiled Him.

*

You have heard it said:

“He is found in the pews.”

But I tell you:

He is found in the queues,

for bread,

for water,

for asylum,

for the dignity stolen by drones.

*

He waits, not at the pulpit.

but beside the border wall,

where “love your neighbor”

was paved over

by concrete and nationalism.

*

You say He sits

at the right hand of power,

but I’ve seen Him

squat on cardboard in detention camps,

stand on the deck of a sinking boat,

sleep beside the baby

with no crib,

no papers,

no name.

*

He never left the borderlands.

He is there,

in the bootprint,

in the blood-slick slab,

in the woman pressing a Quran

to her chest, like a shield.

and whispering His name

in a language they do not approve.

*

He does not pass by.

He does not close His gates.

He does not forget

that you were strangers once in Egypt,

and He remembers what it felt like

to be turned away

by those who called themselves holy.

*

For it was said,

Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,

For some have entertained angels without knowing.

*

He is not the sponsor of your kingdom.

He is the ghost at its edge.

He is not a general.

He is the one trampled beneath the horses.

*

He is the smoke in Rafah.

The silence in Sudan.

The ash in Lahaina,

the world's lungs blackened,

still searching for a pulse beneath the stone.

He is the cry in Haiti,

the hum of breath in Gaza’s rubble,

still praying for a heartbeat

under the weight of concrete

*

And if your gospel cannot see Him there,

hungry, hunted,

stripped of His visa and name,

then your gospel is not His.

*

He told us once

“I was hungry, and you gave Me no food.

I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink.

I was a stranger,

and you did not welcome Me.”

*

And when we asked,

“When did we see You, Lord?”

He answered:

“As you did not do it to the least of these,

you did not do it to Me.”

*

But even before that,

He commanded:

Leave grain at the edges for the poor.

Do not harvest it all.

Leave some behind

for the orphan,

the widow,

and the foreigner among you.

*

He is the Lord

who said there shall be one law

for the native and the sojourner.

He is the Lord

who said:

Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.

*

Let me ask you,

preachers, politicians, gatekeepers of “values”:

*

What will you do when He knocks again?

When He comes through Rafah

tonight,

and this time,

He’s carrying you?

*

Or Aleppo.

Or Del Rio.

Or Calais.

Or the village whose name

you’ll never bother to learn.

*

If your gospel cannot see Christ

in the hungry,

the poor,

the undocumented,

the unwanted

*

then what you call "faith"

is only permission with a halo.

*

Tell me then:

Is it truly the Gospel He died for?

Or just a mirror

with His name scratched in gold?

*

He is not the Christ of the polished cross.

He is the one crucified outside the city.

Every time.

Again.

*

Not to be adored.

But to be followed.

*

And if He runs,

it is not from fear.

It is to tear the flag from your altar.

To burn down the gates you erected in His name.

To unmake every sermon

that forgot to mention the poor.

*

He is the Lord

who executes justice for the orphan and widow

and gives food and clothing

to the sojourner.

He is the voice behind every prophet

who thundered,

“Do not oppress the foreigner,

for you know the soul of the sojourner,

you were once the stranger, too.”

*

You say you wait for His return.

But He has already returned,

in train stations,

in tarpaulin tents,

in the breath of a baby

wrapped in salt and swaddled fear.

*

He does not knock now.

He walks through walls.

*

Not to be let in,

but to let you out.

Out of your fortresses,

your theologies,

your fenced-in mercies.

*

The question was never

“Where is Christ?”

The question has always been

“Where are you?”

*

And when you see Him,

you will not know whether to kneel,

or weep,

or run after Him barefoot,

through the rubble,

into the dark,

toward the place

where love forgot to be clean

and learned instead

to be crucified.