Many of us get caught in shallow or simplistic arguments about security which don’t match scripture or tradition. Here’s how we can change that.
Immigration is always in the zeitgeist. We can’t not talk about it. Some raise it to stoke fear or denigrate our government. But for Christians, immigration is always a pressing political issue.
That’s because a radical, generous welcome of the stranger is central to the Christian faith like few other concepts. And few real world issues jump straight to the heart of love for “the other” like immigration.
Last week, I described our “do-unto-others problem”. Jesus defined for his followers the central focus of his work: love of God and neighbor. But he didn’t just make it up. This was gleaned from his knowledge of God and his reading of scripture. Then we looked at that same scripture to see it for ourselves.
I wasn’t simply building a case for what I already believed, but showing how central this all is to the faith itself. How the very roots of Christianity are built around these ideas of radically-inclusive welcoming, hospitality and generosity, and raising up all of our neighbors as equals in the eyes of God.
These are the foundational concepts which build the architecture of the Christian tradition. They are the supports upon which the drywall is hung, the roof is laid, and windows are framed.
So then, what does this really mean for us today?
It starts with love, not tribalism and defense.
Love is hard to do.
Learning to love our neighbors is often treated like a simplistic argument. Certainly there are plenty of seemingly unlovable people in the world, right? So of course we think it’s impossible; as if we’re seeking perfection.
That’s why so many of us disregard the central teaching of Jesus the Christ. We disregard it and can’t event admit it because we think it’s just too hard.
But Jesus has something to say about that. It’s like he’s mocking us in the Sermon on the Mount: you think you’re only supposed to love the people it’s easy to love? How about this: love your enemies.
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?”
Jesus argues that the fact that its a challenge is not a disqualifying argument. Do it anyway. What’s the bigger point of loving only who you’re supposed to love? We’re building a kin-dom where loving all our neighbors is central. So we have to start loving even the people who hate us.
How? Well, that’s the sticky part.
When we wrestle with this, we’re suddenly driven to be practical. We become Peter, stepping between Jesus and his appointment with Jerusalem. And we all know what Jesus called Peter for doing that.
Our sudden practicality comes from confusion; we don’t know where to go or what we’re supposed to do. But it isn’t as undirected as we imagine.
Each of the four canonical gospel stories shows us how to love in the midst of hate. Chapter after chapter show person after person fearing and threatened by the incarnate Christ building a kin-dom beyond the confines of Jerusalem. Each is full of rich guidance for just such a move. Gosh, it’s almost as if they were written for that very purpose!
They show division: political, social, theological, intellectual, economic, you name it. People divided and searching for the way an incarnate God would continue to be faithful to a people who clearly don’t deserve it.
And in the midst of it is the Christ come to us. And each word and action is a chance to learn and an invitation to seek throughout time and space.
We see a gospel which is perpetually present. Like it is always us, here, today.
Beyond Simplistic Faith
Of course, it would be easy to take certain parts out of context. Or perhaps focus on the particular instances when the gospels come up short in revealing the gospel. But these are also illustrative exceptions, rather than the norm.
That individuals can use these exceptions to craft a new normal doesn’t disprove the thesis. But it does reveal our intolerance for the more cohesive story of love and generous mercy behind the gospel.
This conflict over the gospel even reflects back at us from the pages! The writers themselves weren’t perfect. But we pretend like even that forces an all-or-nothing death spiral.
But when we start here, with love, with God’s love, we start something else. We begin to build up a theology based on God’s abundant love and our necessary participation in incarnating that love rather than imposing a theology of scarcity, cruelty, or division upon the text.
It means we don’t go searching the Bible for answers, but reflections on its central theme and the outcomes God has in mind.
The divisions we find in the Bible aren’t some justification for our divisions today. They don’t get to be proof of the immutability of division, but the constancy of our struggle with it. It doesn’t justify a static inevitability of division but reveals how easy it is to be divided when we fail to love our neighbors with Godly love.
In other words, the conflict comes from our avoiding the very love Jesus reveals in the gospels. And the very love God has been revealing all along.
Wrestling with the very truths of our faith, we can begin to develop theologies for the world in which we live.
Building Theologies
So we might build a theology of immigration which fairly engages the centrality of love and just equality in dignity and community which wrestles with our nations, borders, and structures for redesigning our laws.
We can see the big picture of how God responds to power and how we order ourselves: God’s opposition to empire, abuse, and oppression. As Walter Brueggemann names this relationship
“The Hebrew word for steadfast love is hesed. I translate it as tenacious solidarity. God is in tenacious solidarity with Israel in the Old Testament, particularly with widows and orphans and immigrants and poor people. God is tenaciously in solidarity with them and with the community that participates in God’s faithfulness. We are called to be in tenacious solidarity with the vulnerable which then leads to all kinds of actions and policy formation out of this tenacious solidarity.”
This is our theological foundation.
Love, incarnate divine relationship, and tenacious solidarity.
Because it is built in that divine communion of God to humanity. Brueggemann again:
“My favorite text about this is in Jeremiah 22 where the prophet is contrasting the wicked king Jehoiakim with his good father Josiah. He says about the father Josiah, “he cared for the poor and the needy, is this not what it means to know me?” Jeremiah does not say, “If you care for the poor and the needy, you will get to know me.” He does not say, “If you get to know me, you will want to care for the poor and the needy.” It is the act of caring for the poor and the needy that IS knowledge of God. And it seems to me that ties the two great commandments intimately together with each other. And what we try to do is separate those commandments.”
We try to separate them because we can’t handle the truth. That the two are bound together.
Loving God and loving neighbor are inseparable.
We can build theologies of immigration, express hopeful solidarities with the oppressed, and lift up deep devotions with our wallets, bodies, and prayers.
This is the material from which a life of learning and an ongoing devotion to God can begin to simplify the argument. Just as Brueggemann does to that evocative phrase “tenacious solidarity”.
Toward a Simple Faith
As I begin to simplify my own argument for that tenacious solidarity with God and neighbor, it all comes clearer. The more I wrestle and argue and ruminate, the simpler it gets for me.
That God’s tenacious solidarity with the poor, the migrant, the laborer, the widow, the orphan, the imprisoned is my tenacious solidarity with each and all of them.
Outcomes and purpose begin to fall in line with the foundation and those squishy matters in the middle become all the more doable. Tenacious solidarity doesn’t lead to simplistic conclusions of open vs. closed borders. It encourages us instead to embody our faith; to engage with our neighbors and dignifying every sojourner who comes to our border looking for a better life.
It focuses on the dignity and the love which transform unjust structures and obliterate hostilities, centering on the principals of love and welcome which are central to our faith.
That when we as individuals, we as people of faith, and we as a nation of immigrants are the Christ at our borders, we’ll see the Christ is staring back at us.