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.