What Can We Do?

We never catch a glimpse of the terrain. But when Jesus Christ appears after his resurrection we catch a feel of the climate towards which we are all migrating.

Frequently church members and faith leaders ask about immigration, our broken systems, our confusion and conflict, the collision of our core Christian values with legislation, and the undeserved pain inflicted on so many immigrants and their families: “What can we do?”

We can focus on the crosses: those punctuating the desert landscape and those which arise in each act of hatred directed against children of God.

We can resolve to stand against the slow, persistent legislative agenda of racism and worker oppression and relocation promoted by groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and FAIR with prayer and united action.

We can decry a law like SB 1070 which states “the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” “Attrition through enforcement” - making life so intolerable that people migrate again for safety.

We can ask ourselves with considerable hindsight that might teach us something about our time “What could churches in the southeast US in 1831 have done as five nations of indigenous peoples were marched west in the trail of tears?” Or “What could churches in Nazi Germany in 1941 have done?”

We know this terrain. But this is not our final home. We’re all passing through, together. And we’ve received a feel of life beyond the crosses.

Evil and brutality will be overwhelmed by the fragrance of the power of Love. Solid structures which seem impenetrable will be permeable and filled by the gentle breath of Peace. Fear will be overcome by the brightness of Joy. Anxious, uncertain journeyers will be met by warm Companionship that feeds their souls.

If we stake our lives on that climate: hope, promise, life - what we can do.

I join two very dedicated, learned, and experienced UCC colleagues whose work with immigration issues and migrants’ lives is humbling. I hope to help us all recall, as Christian sojourners, that which will be.

Golden Calves

Beginning where God begins with us in the moment where two holy cells join together in God's infinite genius creating a human being.  Well, that process actually creates a lot of creatures, and there are many creaturely ways in which humans are in the world.  Not how we aspire to be, not how we organize ourselves into a thought, or a goal, or an aim, but just how we are.

If we are honest with ourselves about our inherent creature-ness, we just know - in the depths of our being - that we are capable of so very much and so very little.  And we would know that God is a continual invitation to be our best and highest selves, to be in the place of so very much.  When we inhabit the place of so very little, and stay there, we live what William Sloane Coffin said is hell: truth seen too late.

What is the truth of the so much and the so little from inside of the immigration firestorm?  The so very little is the moment at which we can look another human being in the eye and say that, because of the color of your skin, or because of who your parents are, or because of the soil of the earth on which you were born, you do not belong here.  We slink even further away from God's invitation when, in all self righteousness, we justify ourselves in saying, not only do you not belong here, we will inflict violence upon you in order to convince you of that "fact."

This week, a religious institution once again surrendered its place in the possibility of so very much to wallow in the place of so very little.  See the story of Jose Gutierrez Guzman to know the depth of our capacity for so very little.  In this case, it's not even possible to look this man in the eye and disabuse him of any human dignity whatsoever.  Which is what tortures my sense of who we are as creatures and the place of so very little that we inhabit.

Back to Rev Coffin: "What is intolerable is for differences to become idolatrous.... Human beings are fully human only when they find the universal in the particular."  Jose's case is symptomatic of what idol worshippers we have become.  We worship the idol of Violence in the name of You Don't Belong Here.

Can you see the truth yet?

The Arizona Immigration Crisis is a Journey of 18 Inches

by Rev Randy J. Mayer, Good Shepherd UCC, Sahuarita, AZ

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Father Dan Groody, immigration scholar and professor at the University of Notre Dame.  Dan has spent the last 20 years or so of his life researching, writing, and speaking about the global phenomenon of immigration.  He has worked with the Vatican, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the World Council of Churches, he has been an adviser and has given briefings to the US Congress.  He can dazzle folks with his knowledge about the intricacies and details of policy and procedure of immigration and he can break your heart in recalling the countless face to face encounters and interviews he has had with migrants in the field.  However, the most powerful story he tells about immigration is the story of going on a family vacation as a boy and having someone leave a religious tract on the car window.  He recalls that the tract said something to the effect that the distance between your head and your heart is just 18 inches.  The implied meaning was that those 18 inches are the distance between heaven and hell---accepting Christ or not.   Dan goes on to reflect that those 18 inches of immigration are the most important in the volatile conversation about immigration.  Do we have the courage to immigrate from our head to our heart and back again, for that is really what Jesus was asking?   It wasn’t just about belief(a head thing)---it was about following and living out Jesus call to love the neighbor(a heart thing). 

     Clearly that is the struggle when it comes to the issues of immigration in Arizona or for that matter the United States.   It isn’t hard to see once you wade very far into the conversation that the anti-immigrant position and the accompanied heated rhetoric has a heart of stone and has no rhythm of compassion.  From a head perspective you might be able to contort yourself into agreeing that the United States is a nation of laws and that we have the right to secure borders, but once you hear the stories of struggle, poverty, the push/pull effect of economics and the life and death situation of those who are forced to migrate, you begin to make that journey.  Only the hardest of hearts and heads can’t make that 18 inch immigration journey.

      There is no doubt that we have an immigration crisis on our hands in Arizona, but it isn’t about more fence along the border, more checkpoints on our roads, or more Border Patrol agents in the field.  No our crisis is a spiritual one that only involves a simple 18 inch immigration journey.   And the question is:  Do our political leaders and the people that elect them have the faith and courage to immigrate those 18 inches?