Tonight, I lit a candle for my country. For all of us. I sat with my phone tuned into Facebook and participated in prayers offered by my friend Robert. As our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has said, what Christians do is that we pray. We send up petitions to God in the hope and trust that our collective cry will be heard. And once we've prayed, we must act.
Prayer is not a monologue; it is a dialogue and is meant to give us the calm and the strength to go out into the world in peace and bring light to the darkened streets. And on this night, like last Saturday when millions of us marched for women world-wide, I saw hundreds, if not thousands, being the light crowding Terminal 4 at JFK airport in New York to protest the executive order of our new president to crack down on refugees coming from seven predominantly Muslim countries, leaving even dual citizens and green cardholders stranded at customs. There are crowds gathered at other international airports in Dallas, Boston, Washington, and San Francisco chanting to let the people come in. Foreign nationals are posting that they are among those currently trapped in limbo, unable to get back to their families, their homes, their jobs. The president even went so far as to order that universities release the immigration status of their college students. The University of Michigan has said it will not give up that information.
The president? Of the United States? Asked for immigration status of college students? This is surreal, and, sadly, it is true. More candles. More lights. More tears for what is happening to my country.
Tomorrow morning, I will be reading the assigned lesson from the prophet Micah. It contains one of the most famous and repeated statements from the Hebrew Scriptures to us Christians, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God?" (Micah 6:8) If I were to take each of those parts and apply them to today's news, it's enough to set my hair on fire. How is it justice to deny people who are not criminals re-entry into the country that, for some of them, is the only home they've ever known because it was their parents who came over here first? To love kindness, to me, would require us to dip back even further into our Judeo-Christian tradition to remember that we were once the strangers in Egypt. And even in the First Century, the followers of The Way were a persecuted and tormented minority group within the Roman Empire. In fact, as I have noted, Jesus was an early proto-type of what it is to be part of a Resistance Movement. And his movement was entirely based on loving God to the fullest extent. In doing that, one could (and should) feel love toward others...all "others" in the society. And that's when one can walk humbly with God as we step beyond our own egos, our own comfort zones, and enter into the experience of the other to be a friend, a mediator, an advocate. In other words, we finally live into our call to be Christ in the world. If we commit ourselves to follow this directive, how can we not see how the actions taken against foreigners and refugees flies in the face of our Judeo-Christian ethic?
Tomorrow's Gospel lesson is the Beatitudes from Matthew. I challenge us to read these words aloud as we think about the chaos caused by our president:
"Blesssed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
These words of Jesus are for me the song of my heart and that of so many of us who believe in his mission of Love, inclusion, and mercy to those being pushed out into the margins. "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." Take heart, all those who are finding themselves in the crosshairs of our president's peculiar xenophobia: you are not forgotten as those thousands crowding airport terminals were showing the world. You will not be abandoned as the ACLU and the federal courts have told you tonight coming to your aid. You do have Christian sisters and brothers who are linking arms with people of all faiths and no faith at all to be the resistance to these anti-Christ policies. If I am to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God, I can do no better than to start with standing up for you in saying, "This is not my America."
1 comment:
If my printer was not acting up, I would print copies of this for my congregation.
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