The
great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said that you should preach the Gospel with a
Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. God cares about the whole
world, after all, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the whole world. Well,
the newspapers and their digital equivalents have recently been filled with a
world of pain. As we all know, for a number of weeks our government has been
forcibly separating children from their parents when those parents have tried
to enter our country illegally. The images and stories have been heartbreaking,
and have included young children, even toddlers and infants, being physically
taken from their mothers’ arms; parents hearing the cries of their children and
not being allowed to go to them or touch them or comfort them; children being
warehoused in detention centers and camps, some of which are disturbingly
cage-like; authorities refusing to tell parents where their children are and
when or if they will see them again; and some of those authorities, federal
workers at the border, breaking down in tears and being overwhelmed by the
awfulness of what they are being asked to do. After a huge uproar, an executive
order was issued this week, stopping this practice from continuing, at least
for now. But there are still some 2,ooo to 3,000 children separated from their
parents, with no certainty about when or if they will be reunited with their
families. The human pain in all of this is immeasurable.
And
the Church of Jesus Christ cannot be silent. As a preacher in that Church, I
will not be silent. I hope what I’m about to say is glaringly obvious:
systematically separating children from their parents to deter and/or punish
people trying to enter the United States is cruel, inhumane, and morally
abhorrent. This is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and people of
both political parties and all political persuasions have rightly expressed
their outrage and horror.
You
don’t need a Bible to know this is wrong: just a working heart. But in case it
is not abundantly clear, it is incumbent upon me as the Rector of this parish
to remind all of us of the compelling and consistent message of Scripture
concerning the treatment of aliens and foreigners, a message which runs from
the beginning to the end of the Bible. The Law addresses it directly, multiple
times, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy: When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the
alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you;
you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt:
I am the LORD your God (Lev. 19:33-34).
And then the Law goes on in numerous
passages to flesh that out, saying for example that the Israelites should not
gather the gleanings from their harvests but leave them for the aliens among
them (e.g., Lev. 23:22; Deut. 24: 19-22). And towards the very end of the
Torah, in one of the last things that Moses does before he dies, he sums up the
law and says, “Cursed be anyone who
deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall
say, “Amen.” (Deut. 27:19)
And
this theme runs throughout the rest of Scripture. The Psalmist affirms it, as
in Psalm 146: The LORD watches over the
strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow (v. 9). And the prophets
drive the same message home, over and over again: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Malachi — there is no avoiding it. As the prophet Zechariah writes, Thus says the LORD of hosts: Render true
judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow,
the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts
against one another (Zech. 7: 9-10).
And
there is no mistaking Jesus’s teaching here. Matthew records that Jesus himself
was a refugee as a child, when his family fled to Egypt for safety. And
throughout the Gospels Jesus shows mercy to Romans, Samaritans, and Gentiles
all the time. And in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus insists that
the only criterion for judgment is whether people see him in the poor and the
needy: For I was hungry and you gave me
food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and
you welcomed me . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least
of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 25: 35,
40).
I
could go on, but the point is beyond dispute. This is not a minor side note in
the Bible; we’re not talking about a few obscure verses we can easily overlook.
Dozens of passages strongly state that God cares about how we treat strangers
and foreigners. And that message is embedded in our Baptismal Covenant, which
we affirm every time we baptize someone and which we will affirm again today.
In that covenant, we promise “to seek and serve Christ in all persons” — not
some persons, not many persons, all persons — “loving your neighbor as
yourself.” And we promise “to strive for justice and peace among all people,
and respect the dignity of every human being” — not some human beings, not many
human beings, every human being. This is true regardless of whether we are
conservatives or liberals, it is true regardless of what our particular views
on immigration policy may be. The people who cross our borders are human
beings, many of them desperately seeking a better life for their families. God
loves them; Jesus identifies with them; he is on their side. They must be
treated humanely, with decency, respect, and charity. Anything less than that
is clearly unacceptable to God, and should be unacceptable to us.
In
light of that, I have two admonitions for you today, one specific and one
general. The specific one: if you have not already done so, please join me in
contacting our elected officials. I have called the offices of Congressman
Garrett and Senators Warner and Kaine to express my strong feelings on this
matter and to urge them to work in a bipartisan way to reunite children with
their families as quickly as possible and to fix our immigration system so that
such a horrible thing cannot happen again.
But
on a more general level, I urge you to keep the faith. We cannot give into
cynicism, hatred, or despair. The problems in our world can feel overwhelming:
it would be all too easy to hunker down in our various factions and hurl
insults at each other; it would be all too easy to give up hope and give up
trying. But that is not an option for us. We follow the Crucified and Risen
Lord, who met the pain and violence of a broken world with the saving and
invincible love of God. We are his Body in the world, and his mission is our
mission. So pray fervently and act bravely and love generously — and trust that
God’s Holy Spirit, who never grows weary and never gets discouraged, will move
through us, even us. Believe it and live it. God knows the world needs it.
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