Blessings in the Tall Grass (John 6:1 - 15)

It was springtime, the time that Kings go out to battle, as Samuel once wrote, and also the time of Passover, which was very near. It was springtime, and the temperatures had not yet gone through the roof: it was just warm enough that I didn’t need an outer cloak, yet not so hot as I’d want to take it all off, thereby embarrassing myself, my parents, my ancestors, my spiritual leader and my fellow disciples. Not that I’d ever do such a thing, good Jewish boy that I am.

Anyway. After the master’s sermon about how he was the Son of the Father, who’d been sent by the Father, and who’d been given the power to give life through the Father, not to mention the authority to judge by the father, we all piled into a boat and crossed the Sea of Galilee, and I don’t know that we did it to escape the wrath of the Temple authorities, but the sermon had been given in Jerusalem, and by crossing the Sea we were going into Gentile lands and thus out of their reach . . . just saying.

So we got to the other side, the Gentile side, and Jesus went on doing what he did: signs of the coming kingdom like healing folks and casting out demons, and just like on the Jewish side there was quite a crowd following us around, so that none of us could go anywhere and be alone, we attracted people like flies, and they occasionally could get a bit rowdy, as folks in crowds were liable to do, but mostly they made it impossible to get a spiritual moment in. As everybody knows, signs and miracles run on prayer and also on more prayer, and listening for God’s voice, and recharging the old batteries, then praying and listening some more, and . . . well, you get the picture, and with the crowd roiling and crashing around us we couldn’t hear one another much less God, so Jesus took us up to a mountain to get away from it all.

And like I said, the Passover was near, and next thing you know, the crowd was up there with us, and it was getting on toward dark, and Jesus turned to Philip and said “Where are we gonna buy bread for all these people?” And it was obvious to me that it was a loaded question—Jesus used those as teaching tools—but it must not have been to Philip, ‘cause he said “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t be enough to feed all these people,” and he was right: you could have over half a year’s wages and you still wouldn’t have enough to feed everybody even a little bit. But as I said, it was a loaded question, because Jesus already knew what he was going to do, and then Andrew chimed in saying there’s a boy with five loaves and two fish, but what good would that do? It wouldn’t even feed the front row.

And Jesus didn’t say anything about our cluelessness, he didn’t say “O ye of little faith” as he’d been known to do, he just smiled an enigmatic little smile and said “Get them to sit down.” And there was quite a lot of grass up there on the mountain side, which was unusual in that barren land, and looking back on it I think that was a sign in itself, a portent pointing to what was about to happen: the lush, unlooked-for green of the abundant grass foreshadowed the outpouring of abundant, unexpected grace we were about to witness.

So we sat them down in that wild, unexpectedly verdant green, and Jesus himself took the bread, thanked God for the bread, broke the bread and gave it to them there in the tall grass—and the fish as well—and everybody ate until they were satisfied, until they were sleepy and lolling and full, lying back in the grass and drowsing away the afternoon. And I remember that a profound peace descended upon us all: there was no sound but the soft calling of doves in the nearby bushes and the hum of insects in the grassy verge. A soft breeze blew and clouds scudded across the sky, and the afternoon was perfect, even with thousands of people crowded around.

And it seems to me now that the grace offered there was more than just the fish and loaves, more than just full bellies and sleepy eyes. It seems to me that that peace passed all understanding, passed my understanding, anyway . . . we were caught up in a bubble—no, that’s not right, for a bubble breaks when you penetrate its skin. We were caught up in some kind of, of energy . . . we weren’t locked away from the wilderness around us so much . . . the wilderness was still there, we were still in it, but wefelt a timelessness, a wonder, that was greater than just the miracle we witnessed.

Which was pretty amazing, don’t get me wrong. It was expansive, all-embracing, gracious, bounteous . . . people remember his raising of Lazarus, and rightly so, but this was just as miraculous, in my book. To be sure, Jesus gave life in the raising of Lazarus, but here he did the same, for what was life in the wilderness but bread? Was was it but fish? Do not doubt it: that was what Jesus brought to the multitude—abundant, overflowing life.

I know, I know: there are some, especially in these skeptic times, who discount the miraculous, discount the supernatural in all of this. They say that the boy’s giving up of his loaves and fish shamed all the others, that they brought out caches of food hidden somewhere there in the back country, which, when you think of it, would be kind of silly . . . why would anybody hide anything out there on the mountain in the first place? What purpose would it serve? At any rate, all I can tell you is what I saw: Jesus began to pass out those loaves and that fish, and he just kept on passing. I saw no pulling-out of hidden provisions, no passing back-and-forth of anything other than what was given to them by the Master. Jesus took five loaves and two fish, thanked God, broke the bread and passed it out. And it was enough.

In fact, it was more than enough—when we gathered up the leftover bread it added up to twelve whole baskets, an overwhelming amount, given that we started with only five loaves. But I guess that’s how God’s grace is: overwhelming. Abundant. Surpassing. Like at Jacob’s well, where the Samaritan woman got living water, gushing up to eternal life. Like at the wedding at Cana, where the wine filled the jars right up to the very brim, God’s grace is more than enough. I am sure that if the numbers of people on that mountain were to suddenly double, or triple, if all of the thousands already present were to go get their aunts and uncles and in-laws, Jesus would have taken those twelve baskets full and handed them out and there’d still be twelve left over.

And don’t think I didn’t get the symbolism of the number twelve. Twelve baskets, twelve tribes of Israel . . . despite all the threats and plots to kill him by the Jewish authorities, Jesus would gather up the Jewish people. Jesus said to gather up the fragments so that nothing might be lost, and he meant what he said. You know? And the more I think on it, the more I realize it applies to us all: in the wildernesses of our lives, when there doesn’t seem to be enough to nourish us, or slake our thirst, or calm the raging seas, Jesus is there, right there in the wilderness with us. I guess that’s why they call it good news. Amen.

Be Careful What You Promise (Mark 6:14 - 32)

Not for the first time—or, I suspect, the last—I disagree with the lectionary’s slicing up of our scripture into bite-sized chunks. Oh, I don’t disagree with the need to slice things up . . . after all, if we read the whole thing each Sunday, we wouldn’t have time for my pithy and cogent observations. And before you say “what’s your point?” let me just say that the lectionary ends our passage with verse twenty nine, and for reasons that will hopefully become clear, I chose to read through verse thirty two.

Anyway, this is another strange interlude, kind of like last week’s, a break in the main action, which has been following Jesus around as he goes about his ministry, healing folks and casting out demons . . . last week, the break in the action involved Jesus coming home and getting no respect, and sending the disciples out, two by two, to continue his mission. And while we concentrated last week on the homecoming, and the scandal that ensued, this week’s passage is arguably more related to the sending, and its establishment of the disciples as, as Paul would put it, members of the body of Christ.

Mark is generally considered to have been the first gospel written, and it’s certainly the most direct and straightforward. But nevertheless, Mark was a master at creating meaning by juxtaposition, by which episodes he chose to place next to which others, and this is no exception: It’s not an accident that he places the story of the execution of John right after that of the commissioning of the disciples.

It’s constructed in the same way as a previous episode, the story of the dual healings of Jairus the synagogue official and the hemorrhaging woman. Remember? Jesus lands on the Jewish side of the Galilee Sea and he’s met by Jairus, who tells him his daughter’s deathly ill, and could he come to the house and heal her? And when Jesus and his followers head that way, a woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years—and thus was massively unclean—touched his cloak on the sly. And Jesus stops to heal her—aka make her clean—and they hear the official’s daughter has died, whereupon Jesus goes to Jairus’ house and heals her anyway.

And the juxtaposition of these two healings makes additional meaning, meaning that either story alone wouldn’t convey. First, it makes a statement about who Jesus’ ministry is for: it’s for both the comfortable insider—personified by the synagogue official Jairus—and the ultimate outsider, a woman (doubtless unattached) who has been considered untouchable in the same sense as the Indian caste of the same name (actually, since Gandhi, they’re not called that anymore). Second, the fact that it’s embedded within and interrupts the story of Jairus’ daughter hints at their relative importance: in Hebrew literature, the take-home lesson, the most important one, is often placed at the center of the action. And finally, there’s the connection of the woman’s twelve-year unclean-ness with the little girl being twelve years old. Do these two stories together say something about the nation of Israel which, after all, had twelve tribes?

And Mark uses a similar structure here to point to the importance of John’s beheading: the first part—the commissioning of the twelve, which we read last week, is interrupted by the tale of Herod and his execution of John the baptizer. And it’s even more obvious because of Mark’s rather clumsy narrative device: he says Herod gets wind of Jesus and thinks he’s John the Baptist resurrected and he should know, ‘cause he’s the one who had him killed in the first place. Then Johns beheading is recounted as a flashback. Mark has to work to include the story of John’s beheading.

So here’s the sequence: Jesus sends the apostles out, two-by two, Herod hears about it and we are told about John’s execution, and then the apostles return, exhausted, to tell Jesus what they’d done. And the ministry is so tiring, so stressful, that they need to go on a little retreat to rest up. Thus, the execution of John is embedded in the story of the disciples’ commissioning, it interrupts it, in fact. And it’s very placement and function as an interruption of the main narrative underscores its importance.

The scene is a party that Herod has given in his own honor—hey: somebody’s gotta do it—and all the hangers-on, hangers-out, stars and wanna-be stars, celebrities and wanna-be celebrities, yes-men, yes-women and toadies—especially the toadies—were there, lounging around in Herod’s ballroom, drinking Herod’s booze and hitting on his wife’s ladies-in-waiting. In fact, everybody who was anybody, or wanted to be anybody, was there: Roger—the dodger—Asclepius, star of stage and proscenium, was over by the window, hair pomaded to an impossible height, along with his fifth—or was it sixth?—wife, who was almost wearing a diaphanous confection that would have embarrassed Lady Godiva. On the opposite side was Bill—the shill—O’Rivera, the prime-time anchor at Hare News, the Governor’s favorite network. Bill was thinking that the party was so boring he’d have to make something up—hardly rare at his network—and was plotting over whom to slander.

Herod himself was bored: he’d long ago grown tired of his toadies’ antics, and he kept nodding off, head slipping off his hand, and starting himself awake. His guests pretended not to notice, because after all: he was the man upon whom all their fortunes lay, who had the ear of the emperor and the power of life and death over them all. He could do whatever he wanted.

The governor perked up his ears when they led his daughter Herodius in, and she was all decked out in her best toga—and was as cute s a bug’s ear to boot. Herod had a soft-spot for the little girl, and could deny her nothing, including the dance lessons the fruits of which she was about to demonstrate. And she did it so winsomely, so preciously, that the governor was completely overcome, along with all his wits and common sense, and he said: “I’ll give you whatever you want, even up to half my kingdom.”

Now, Herod fancied himself something of a scholar, which was why he’d kept John the Baptizer around so long. They’d get in these long theological discussions about all these arcane subjects which nevertheless were endlessly fascinating to Herod, and he kept putting off and putting off John’s execution for treason, for telling him what he should and shouldn’t do, because after all: he wasn’t going anywhere and he could kill him whenever he wanted, whenever he got bored with him, which would happen sooner or later, because Herod got bored a lot.

But because Herod was something of a scholar, he remembered his history, to wit: what happened the last time a ruler promised somebody up to half his kingdom. It was King Ahasuerus, who ruled one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. He went so gaga over Queen Esther that he told her “What is your request? It shall be given you, even to the half of my kingdom.” And the upshot of that was the loss of one of Ahasuerus’ favored advisors and oh yes: the incidental salvation of the Jewish people, which Ahasuerus could care less about, but there it was.

Even though he knew the story, as every Jew did, in the glow of pride at his little girl’s performance, he promised the same thing as Ahasuerus, but he thought: what the worst that could happen? After all, Esther was an adult woman; daughter Herodias only a little girl. What’s the most she could want? A complete collection of My Little Pony’s? There’s a Toys ‘R Us down on the Damascus Road. A real pony? Herod had a whole farm of them in Siluria because . . . well, don’t ask. The point was that yes, Herod had behaved rashly, maybe even foolishly, but hey: how bad could it be?

Of course, Herod wasn’t reckoning on his wife’s interference, and this is where the biblical proclivity to blame the woman for everything comes into play. So many times in the Bible a man’s foolish or evil behavior is blamed on a woman that I’m surprised that the saying isn’t “behind every woman hides a man.” Who really knows why she asked for John’s head? Was she angry with him for calling her adulterous marriage what it was? Was she in some way getting back at Herod for taking her from Philip? Because make no mistake: women were chattel, possessions, and she likely had no more say in the matter than she could’ve flown to the moon.

Maybe she was just exercising what power she could, which wasn’t much, but whatever it was, the story goes that big Herodias instructed little Herodias to ask for the head of John the Baptist. And Herod was deeply grieved, he hated to do it, just hated it, you understand, because he really liked John, he liked to listen to him, but hey: an oath was an oath, he couldn’t be seen as a weakling in front of all his guests, now could he? What would the media think? He could see the lead story on Bill O’Rivera’s newscast now: King Herod revealed as a welsher. Film at eleven. Much better to be seen as tough on crime, or on terrorism, or whatever John could be labeled by . . .

So he did it, or had an underling do it: he sent a soldier down to do the deed, and the dripping head was presented to the little girl, complements of her daddy, and Shen in turn gave it to her mom who, presumably, mounted it on her living room wall. And the disciples came and took his body, and laid it in the tomb, much like the Christ he had foretold would soon be.

And of course, that’s what this episode is: a foretelling, in literary terms, a foreshadowing, of the story of Jesus, who—like John—was executed at least in part for speaking truth to power. Every healing, every cleansing, every demonstration of the power available in this mysterious Kingdom of God through the equally mysterious Spirit of God, every miraculous deed we’ve seen so far in Mark’s gospel was a shot across the bows of the religious establishment and the Roman government. Each transgression of religious and civil law—no difference, remember—brought the authorities—both Jewish and Roman—closer to a killing rage. If they executed John just for telling Herod he’d sinned, how much more would they execute Jesus for all his in-your-face transgressions?

Well, I guess you can only be killed once, although a beheading seems like a much easier way to go than suffocating on a cross. And it goes to show you that Christianity didn’t start out being “safe,” as Peter and Thecla and Paul and Justin would discover. In point of fact, It’s why Mark very carefully—if somewhat clumsily—embedded an act of high cruelty within the story of the sending of the twelve. It serves as both a warning and a promise that the Christian faith can and will be costly even, as Paul would write, unto death on a cross.

I think if you are following Jesus, if you are doing what he did, using the same methods and tactics and theology that he did, there’s a good chance you’re going to at least get roughed up once in awhile. If the faith we practice is faithful, why isn’t it dangerous? Herod isn’t the only one who should be careful what they promise: when we promise to follow Christ, shouldn’t it mean all the way?

Of course, the same as it ever was, the flesh can be weak while the spirit is willing, and that’s why faith means, in the words of the old hymn, standing on the promises. The promise that Jesus will be with us, even unto the ends of the earth. The promise that he will send an advocate, a comforter, who will teach us with sighs too deep for words. And the promise that he will abide in and with use even as God is in and with him. And if that isn’t a promise one can stand on, I don’t know what is. Amen.

Home-town Boy Makes Good (Mark 6:1 - 13)

We’re still early in Jesus’ ministry, still early in the fulfillment of his mission which, as we noted last week, is defined over in Luke: it’s to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free. And up until now, we’ve seen him going about that mission: healing a guy with an unclean spirit and Simon’s mama-in-law, going on a Galilean preaching tour, healing a paralytic dropped down through a roof, teaching in synagogues, demonstrating against wrong-headed laws, teaching in parables, tangling with the weather, healing a demoniac, a hemorrhagic woman and a synagogue official’s daughter. . . and if you go back and look at his ministry up until this point—it’s easy to do in versions like the New Revised Standard, which have helpful headings that follow the action—if you go back and summarize his ministry, you’ll see a remarkable balance between teaching and practice, between saying and doing. Everywhere he practiced he taught and everywhere he taught he practiced.

And now we have kind of a strange interlude, where he comes to his hometown from Capernaum—by the sea—further inland to Nazareth. He comes to Nazareth and as was his custom, he heads to the synagogue and begins to teach. And “many who heard him”—aka his own people, his own family and friends—are astounded.  “Where did he get all this,” they ask, “What is this wisdom that’s been given him? Look all this stuff he’s doing, all these deeds of power . . .isn’t this the son of the carpenter and Mary? Don’t we know all his sisters and brothers, didn’t we ride him around on our backs, didn’t we dandle him on our knees?”. It reminds me of the reaction of some of my friends and family when I went to seminary . . . you? a minister? What about that time when . . . and they’d trot out some episode in our mutual past that wasn’t exactly ministerial . . . or when I got out of my dissertation defense, the last hurdle before a PhD, and all my teachers gravely shook my hand and said “Congratulations, Dr. Olson” and all my fellow grad students asked “Can we still call you jerk?” (I always answered “yes, but now it’s Dr. Jerk to you.”)

Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the saying goes, and that’s what seems to be going on here. A home-boy comes home, and people just assume he’s putting on airs, trying to be better than them, no matter if he is or not. And Mark says that they take offense at him, and it’s instructive, I think, to note that the Greek verb translated here as “to take offense” is scandalidzo,” from whence we get the word scandalize. Thus, we could render the phrase as “they were scandalized by him.” They were scandalized by his behavior, by his teaching and wisdom, by his deeds of power.

And it behooves us to explore a little bit the meaning of the word whenever we encounter it, because it’s importance in the New Testament far outweighs its frequency. So in what sense did Jesus’ actions—his healings and making clean and general making the last first and the first last—in what sense did what he was doing “scandalize” his homies? Let’s look at the anatomy of scandal: in its basic form, it involves two parties and an object, often called the model. Say Aunt Tillie is scandalized because young Mary is wearing white after Labor Day. The two parties are Mary and Aunt Tillie and the model is in this case a model of behavior: wearing white after labor day. And the scandal arises because Aunt Tillie—on the surface, at least—doesn’t think that Mary ought to be wearing white after labor day because it contradicts the model behavior.

But there’s a couple of things to remember here. In a scandal, it takes three to tango, not just two: a model, in this case a model behavior, and two people or parties or nations. So Aunt Tilly and Mary are both caught up in the scandal, not just Mary who is the perpetrator in Tilly’s eyes. And in fact, that brings up the second thing we should remember about scandals: it’s about two parties both striving to obtain the model. Tilly secretly would like to be able to wear white after Labor Day—she often says it outright: “I’d like to wear white too, but not everybody can be a fashion rebel.” And we should take her at her word: she really would like to do the forbidden behavior, but the rules—often what we call taboos—stop her. And what about Mary? She has reached out and taken the model behavior to heart, she has grasped it even knowing that it is taboo. She is contending for the model, in this case for the ability to break a taboo.

But there’s a third thing we need to know about scandals: they tend to be mimetic, imitative. That is, the two parties contending for the model want more than just to possess it, they want to—in some sense—be it as well. Thus, both Aunt Tilly and Mary want to be that person who flaunts the rules, who is—as Aunt Tilly calls it—a fashion rebel.

Theologian Robert Hamerton-Kelly calls the model in a scandal that which “both attracts and repels,” and we see it all the time, don’t we? Often, the most virulent haters turn out to be exactly the thing they are railing against. That’ always been apparent in religious circles: Jimmy Swaggart, the TV preacher and railer against adulterers. Guess what? Ted Haggard, the preacher who stood alongside presidents and bashed gays. Guess what? In politics, it has become equally obvious. Back when we lived in Mississippi, Governor Kirk Fordice carried the torch for “family values.” Guess what? More recently, Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina, also outspoken supporter of “family values.” Guess what?

But you say: preacher. If this passage describes a scandal as you (and Mark) seem to think, what is the taboo Jesus is breaking? What is the model that his homies simultaneously desire to be and deride? Why, it’s that old human failing: the desire to be like God. You remember ol’ Adam and Eve? Desiring to eat from the tree of knowledge, and God says “Before long, they’ll be just like us?” Well, in this case, Jesus’ countrymen were jealous of his acting like a priest, acting like a stand-in for God, making clean that which is unclean, righteous that which is un-righteous. Curing the Garasene demoniac of his madness. Healing the hemorrhaging woman. Bringing the Temple official’s girl back from death, the ultimate unclean. The taboo Jesus broke—and to which all his friends and relatives themselves aspire—is acting like a priest which, of course, is acting like God. And if they couldn’t do it, why should Jesus be able to? After all, they say, is this not the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And, Mark says, they were scandalized by him.

Where are the scandals in our own lives? What do we envy our neighbors, our fellow church members, our co-workers? If we look within the ubiquitous framework of scandal, we can see it everywhere. A church stands empty, unused by anyone but the pastor and secretary 150 out of 168 hours in the week, yet when a program expands or a new program tries to get a foothold, the congregation gets all defensive. Rivalries for supplies, space and decision-making power tend to all be in this mold . . . we are envious of others for using space that often stands empty 90 % of the week. We are envious of session-members or other leaders the decision-making power, even when we consistently refuse to serve on session or committees. Scandal—the rivalry for something desirable—tends to tear up churches, it tends to cause dissension and strife within a community of God, it drives members to other churches, it makes others withdraw from service, it can even drive folks away from organized religion altogether.

As in our passage, scandals can be so debilitating that the ministry of God—deeds of power—is no longer possible in a particular church, even in an entire denomination. Witness, for example, the long-running conflict over ordination and marriage standards, which impeded the mission of the Presbyterian Church USA for decades, and continues to do so to this day.

But you know what? Christ came to show the futility of this kind of rivalry, to show that we don’t need to contend for God’s grace, that it’s freely given, that there is plenty enough to go around. Like those disciples of old, he confers his power and authority upon us through the Holy Spirit and sends us out, two by two, and three-by-three and congregation-by-congregation. And we are powered and empowered by that Spirit, and given the wherewithal to continue Christ’s ministry in our home communities and beyond. Amen.

Jesus Was a Refugee (Immigration Sunday)

The Presbyterian Church has designated today as Immigration Sunday, and the timing couldn’t be better. In fact, given that it was scheduled some time ago, long before the current mess, proves that even our own stodgy denomination can be prophetic once in a while. In the last weeks we’ve been treated to images of children crying alone after being ripped away from their parents, toddlers in cages and detention centers—a slightly nicer term than “concentration camps”—blooming in the wastelands. That has been the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. Even though the policy of separating children from parents was overridden by executive decree, the images have been burned into the national psyche, and there’s no plan to reunite the 2400 children still being held in the camps anytime soon.

Now, to complement the images of children alone in the camps, we have stories told by volunteers lawyers about their toddler clients—some as young as three—who are in immigration hearings by themselves, stories about their clients climbing on the table, bursting into nursery songs at the drop of a hat. The stories might be charming if the circumstances were less horrific, to wit: young children on trial. Alone, without anybody they know nearby.

Politicians and talking heads on all sides are always going on about what a complex issue immigration is, and I suppose that’s true, at least in the sense that there are a lot of moving parts. There are questions of refugees, asylum seekers, so-called “illegal” immigration, immigration quotas, border security, and I think it’s safe to say that it’s the defining political issue of the day, and will have a huge part to play in our elections for some time to come. And we who call ourselves Christians have two basic options: Option A, which is to put our heads in the sand and stand behind our duly-appointed government’s actions on the issue, and that’s certainly safe, it won’t ruffle any feathers, it won’t cause any fights or lose anybody any members.

But there’s another way to respond, we’ll call it Option B, and that’s to discern a Biblical response to the problem, and then and follow it, advocate for it, do something about it. It’s not as safe as Option A, but perhaps a bit more satisfying . . . after all, it assumes that our faith means something more than just fire insurance, or providing a place to come and feel good for a couple of hours a week. It means putting our faith in action, joining tens of millions of Christians world-wide who attempt to follow Christ’s mission statement, which is found in Luke, Chapter 4: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.

Where we ever got the notion that Christianity was supposed to be safe and warm and fuzzy I have no idea. They killed prophets, for Pete’s sake, and crucified Jesus. They hounded Paul from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, and martyred him during Nero’s great purge. John the Baptist was beheaded after questioning the Emperor’s morals, aka sleeping with his brother’s wife. Perpetua was trampled by a bull and, when that didn’t kill her, beheaded for speaking about her faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed for opposing the lawfully elected leader of his government. And thousands more, all killed while living out their faith; not one of them worried about being too political, or mixing politics with faith.

For at least the length of this sermon, let’s follow Option B. First, Scripture, for one, is unambiguous as to how immigrants should be treated. Both the Old and New Testaments tell compelling stories of refugees forced to flee their homelands because of oppression. Exodus tells the story of the people of Israel, who were victims of slavery in Egypt. They were utterly helpless by themselves, but with God’s intervention, enabled to escape and take refuge in the desert where they lived as refugees for forty years. The Israelites’ experience was so painful, so frightening, that God ordered his people for all time to have special care for the stranger. It’s recorded in the book of Leviticus: “When an alien resides with you in your land, do not mistreat such a one. You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt”. Notice the use of the same word we use: “alien,” only we often precede it with the pejorative “illegal.”

As a child, Jesus was a refugee, fleeing with his family to Egypt. And note that it was for the same reason that many seek asylum on our southern borders: they feared for their lives, running from a government hit squad. And though I don’t know about the Egyptians’ motives—they weren’t known for their kind-hearted treatment of visitors—I do know they didn’t send them back to face certain death, nor did they take Jesus away from Mary and Joseph and put him in a cage. And when Jesus grew up, he was an itinerant wanderer, a kind of perpetual immigrant, trudging from one nation to another: “Foxes have holes, birds have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

As an adult, he advocated unequivocally for the values of God, whom he called Abba: one of his core sayings was “love your neighbors as yourself,” which he elaborated over in Matthew when he said “whatever you do to the least of these, you’ve done it to me “ And children on trial without their parents, children in cages without their parents, anybody fleeing persecution and near-death, and anybody desperate enough for food and shelter to pay a smuggler to sneak them across the border qualifies as the least of these in my book. And Jesus makes it clear that we will be judged by how we fulfill this mission, how we feed and water and shelter the strangers among us.

Then there’s the summary statement of Jesus’ entire mission: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” How many of us would want our neighbors to do unto us as we’re doing to our Southern neighbors? How many would like them to forcibly separate us from our children, to send families back to be murdered in their beds, or to face sure starvation? Can I have a show of hands?

Not only did Jesus preach inclusive justice but he practiced it as well: he healed the child of the Syrophoenician woman, certainly a stranger in a strange land, and gave water to the Samaritan at the well. He told stories about good strangers to folks for whom the only good stranger was one who was deceased. And he welcomed the little children into his warm and forgiving lap, it didn’t matter where they were from or what their parents had done.

You know, I often hear Romans 13 quoted to justify obeying secular law: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” Never mind that this has been used to justify everything from feudalism to slavery to Apartheid, it is clear from his life that Paul didn’t intend for this to mean laws that are unjust, that go against the word of the Lord. As we’ve already noted, Paul disobeyed authority right and left, refusing to knuckle under to orders to quit preaching the fledgling Christian faith which was, remember, illegal until 313 CE. But Paul wasn’t the only one: Peter was crucified upside down for breaking the law, and Christians were routinely tortured and murdered for doing the same. Sometimes we say piously that these people were martyred for their faith, but this kind of whitewashes what they did. What actually happened was that they were executed for disobeying the law, for preaching and practicing an illegal religion.

In all this, they were simply following the Gospel, as embodied and modeled by Jesus himself, who had no problem disobeying the law right, left and upside down. He disobeyed all kinds of laws from working on the sabbath to eating with outsiders to driving those hard-working businessmen off of the Temple grounds. And as we talked about a few weeks ago, he often disobeyed the law in very public, in-your-face ways, ways that Henry David Thoreau would label “civil disobedience.” So based on the record of Scripture, the idea that Christians must obey all the laws of the land, including those that go against the will of God, is just not tenable.

Well. We’ve just about covered the first part of Option B—discerning the Christian stance—and it’s pretty simple, really: treat the least of these, treat those tired and weary yearning to be free, as you would treat Jesus if you met him on the street. Heck, treat anyone as you would treat Jesus if you met him walking down the street. Treat the people trying to come into this country to have a better life, treat those seeking asylum from brutal governments, treat the children living in cages, without their parents involvement or presence as you would treat Christ. In fact, do unto others as you would have them do unto you . . . that summarizes all the laws and all the prophets you ever heard of.

Now, on to the second part: doing something about it. And this is where it gets personal, both in terms of us individually and as a local community of Christ. I’ve done what you hired me to do, and that’s interpret scripture to the best of my ability, and relate it to y’all in words. But you know the saying: preach the Gospel in words, if necessary, so I’ll tell you what I’m doing, and invite you as individuals to join me. I’m working with two organizations intimately concerned with immigration issues, one local with national connections and one national with local connections. The local one is the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC), headquartered in Over the Rhine, and the national group is The Poor People’s Campaign, the revival of Martin Luther King’s organization. Both are headed by Christians: IJPC by Roman Catholic nuns; The Poor People’s Campaign, as in Dr. King’s day, is led by clergy. Both are dedicated to grass-roots change through education and demonstration. If you are not down with the latter, with public action, they offer excellent educational opportunities, especially the local IJPC. Another way to contribute is financially, because they are chronically short on funds. I would be glad to introduce anyone interested to these organizations and help them get involved.

Of course, there is another way to speak out on the subject—really, anything that you feel goes against the mission statement of Christ—and that is to vote. Although we in our country believe—rightly—in separation of church and state, that doesn’t mean we can’t bring our Christian convictions into the voting booth. Really, if we believe in preaching the Gospel in words only if necessary, how can we not? So, what I do is examine the platform of every candidate, regardless of political party, and compare it to the mission statement: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free. Amen.