When I was a young apricot, I used to love pretending to be a superhero. In those days, the “Caped Crusader” was the protagonist I wanted to be. To emulate the enemy of the “Joker” and the “Penguin,” I had to don a mask and cloak and disguise my real identity.

The theme of “mistaken identities” runs through the scriptures. Both Moses and Joseph were mistaken for Egyptians. Abraham was visited by three strangers who were really God, and Mary of Magdala thought the resurrected Jesus was a gardener.

In the fourth century, Saint Martin of Tours gave half his cloak to a beggar, only to discover in a dream that the poor man was Christ.

Are each of these examples “mistaken identities”? Or are they clever ruses by God to make us consider that everyone who is a stranger is a potential Christ?

I live in a society which prides itself on promoting and teaching the value of Equality. Legislation protects people from discrimination because of their age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. There are no “mistaken identities”—everyone is treated with respect.

Unless you are an asylum seeker or migrant.

Then you are publicly ridiculed by elected leaders as “murderers and drug dealers” or “having bad genes.” Your presence is seen as evidence of an “invasion,” which will mean “law-abiding citizens” are in danger of living in an “island of strangers.”

These dehumanising labels are “mistaken identities” of the cruellest kind, and they stop society from seeing these vulnerable men and women as people—like you and me.

Where is God in all of this? Well………. perhaps God is in clear sight and is in the disguise of a migrant or an asylum seeker.

Fr Apricot will now be away on retreat for a little while.