Six years ago today, at 10:09pm, the Baltimore Sun published a day of articles[i] about announced immigration raids in the Baltimore area. The subject centered on Governor Larry Hogan’s hesitance on taking a position on the contentious issue. Our governor at the time, a centrist Republican, had been successful in demonstrating support and concern for all of Maryland – not just the people who elected him into office, but even the people who voted for his opposition. He stood out and stands out in a sea of polarizing politicians who benefit from gerrymandering to secure power and to drive policy further to the extremes.

Extreme positions are the norm. We are partly responsible for it, choosing to live among peers who share our views, striving to move away from people whose needs are different from ours, or watching with resentment as people move away from us. We tend to live with others whose economic futures depend on the same policies and priorities on which we depend. So, it becomes more difficult for us to be able to relate to people who value other priorities over ours.

But that’s only one aspect of the issue. Another aspect of political discourse is that it is rarely divorced from moral discourse. There are some issues where our leaders find leeway to change course. They may be ambivalent toward fiscal conservatism versus deficit spending, as long as they believe they can establish a plan for paying for what they are going into debt for, or for wisely saving over the economic expansions to endure economic recessions and recoveries. That kind of question, which itself is divisive enough for our country, is one of strategy and priority, and less so about morality. 

But other questions are entangled with the deep values of our hearts, and there is rarely a middle ground on which to stand. One such question is how we treat people who have come into this country illegally. Even the way that we phrase the issue is different, depending on what side you are on. You refer to immigrants as undocumented or illegal, based on what matters to you. If the rule of law matters the most, then you may be affronted by the fact that people are flouting the law to be here, to work here, to take jobs away from “honest Americans.”

But if what matters to you is that we have a country which is welcoming to those who need a place of stability and security to pursue happiness and tranquility for their families, then maybe you would examine the requirements of the immigration process and question its fairness. As an immigrant to this country, brought here by my parents when I was ten-months-old and naturalized by my parents when I was seventeen-years-old, I tend to empathize with other immigrants, documented or not. 

And as a pastor, someone who reads the Bible regularly, I can promise you that I could out-argue anyone who wants to claim that God is on the other side, the side of the rule of law, the side of following the “rulers and authorities” in this world (see Romans 13). But that’s what you and I do, when we come across a moral issue. We start to believe that God is on our side. And we start to believe that God is calling us to take a stand, to form a coalition, to go to a rally, to support our politicians, to make a statement on Facebook, to donate to a political campaign or an advocacy group, or to do whatever it is we have to do, because we must. Morally, we must.

I think it must be difficult to be a politician, to try to balance the moral positions of one group with those of another, both of which are your constituents. I think it means you have to examine your own moral position, and at times ignore it, to be a better representative of those who entrust authority to you. I’m not sure I’d ever want to be a politician.

But I do wonder what they think about the lawyer in the Gospels who asks Jesus about the moral law. Here is a man, full of power, full of wisdom, who has studied, who is lettered, who is respected. He, respectfully, asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25-37), and, in turn, Jesus respectfully asks the lawyer to suggest an answer from the scriptures. The lawyer answers correctly to love God and to love one’s neighbor, with all of one’s soul, strength, and mind, unreservedly, wholeheartedly, absolutely, completely.

And the lawyer, the one who has studied, the one who knows full well that in loving one person, it is difficult to love another with as much commitment, that in helping one people group flourish, another people group’s needs will be deprioritized, that in giving land to one body of people, another body of people may be asked to leave, or to see their culture marginalized, the man who knows all of this to be how the world works, is unsure he can love his neighbor, all of his neighbors, with the kind of commitment declared in and demanded by the scriptures.

And he wants to justify himself, in facing his own failure, his own precarious fate, his self-condemnation. He asks, I think in earnest, which neighbor should he focus on? The one like him? The one easiest to love? The one who is closest, so he does not have to worry about the one locked outside the gate? The one who is already well provisioned, “blessed by God,” so he does not have to make a sacrifice of his own happiness for the wellbeing of another?

Who is his neighbor? Who must he help? And, conversely, who is he free to ignore? Who is he free to see as less than deserving of his time, his soul, his strength, his mind, his heart, his compassion? Who is he allowed to see as irredeemable, as inhuman, as not made in the image of God?

And you know the story Jesus tells him. Various people come across a man, beaten and penniless, lying on the side of the road, with no witnesses around to observe their actions. Someone finally stops to help – a godless, sinful man, but someone nonetheless – and only after two righteous men pass by on the other side, keeping their distance, out of a misplaced sense of piety, believing that God would rather they not even touch a bloodied man, so they might remain ritually pure, and make their way to the Temple in Jerusalem.

It was unwise of the man to travel by himself, they might even say. It was folly for him to be on the road without going in the strength of numbers. It was stupid to think that coyotes and smugglers wouldn’t take advantage of him. It was lunacy to try to cross that river with his daughter on his back.[ii]

When will we stop trying to justify ourselves? That’s really the question Jesus is asking the lawyer, who wanted to know, precisely, what he must do to inherit eternal life. For Jesus, it’s not a question of what we must do. It’s a gift of grace that comes from God, that frees us from worrying about ourselves anymore, that liberates us from self-interest and self-justification. And it frees us to become something better than what we were.

We are invited to ponder Jesus’ question of the lawyer: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” Which of us, instead of asking the question, who is my neighbor, will be willing to become neighbors to anyone who attracts our attention – the bloodied and beaten man on the side of the road, the man standing on the median asking for change, the child in the detention center,[iii] the immigrant who became a Congressional Representative?[iv] Who is it that bothers you, offends you, and worries you? Will you be a neighbor to them? 

Jesus inaugurates a missionary strategy to leave the familiar, to venture to the corners of the earth, and to invite others (not just Israelites, not just the Jewish Diaspora, but Gentiles) to become part of this new way of relating to God, a new religion.

That missionary movement, that zeal, that impetus to share good news with all who would hear it, comes as a response of faith in God and the good news that God’s love for us will not be thwarted by anything; nothing in all of Creation will separate us from God’s love – not hate, not violence, not death, not a tomb, not the most powerful empire in Jesus’ day, and not the most powerful country in our day either. God’s love is boundless.

And we need to hear about that love; we need to see it in our lives and in the common life of the Church. We need to be reminded of something deeper and truer than what presents itself to us at first glance. Because there are too many incidents of hate each week to mention Sunday to Sunday, too many news stories of violence to condemn, too many deaths to mourn.

And we struggle. We resist. We protect young children from the aggression of the evil doer. And when men lose their lives because of it, we call them heroes, because they gave of themselves for the wellbeing of another, giving of themselves even unto death.[v] 

Sometimes as a country we organize; we band together to resist evil and oppression in whatever form it takes. We go to war for a cause – to end slavery in the United States, or to stop the spread of fascism and racism abroad, to quell the evils of anti-Semitism and terrorism. And those who lose their lives to this cause, we call heroes, because they gave of themselves for the wellbeing of another.

It’s awful to see someone pass away, even if inevitable. It makes the time we spend together precious. But people can be changed by that grief. It can corrupt the very best parts of us, leading us to hate the Germans, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the Russians – everyone we were in strife with. It can lead us to become evil and oppressive in our own way, suppressing political perspectives because they too closely resemble those of our adversaries, or placing in internment camps those who look like they don’t belong,[vi] or regarding with suspicion those whose behaviors are uncommon, who wear a hijab or pray regularly throughout the day.[vii]

What do you do in a world like that? What do you do when the people you love are no longer with you? Do you become that which you are called to resist? Or do you rediscover hope, grace, and new life where you thought there was none?

I give thanks to God that the Church has a record of great and heroic deeds, not just of self-sacrifice, but also of the Apostles opening up their lives to the strangers they meet. We hear, Sunday to Sunday, stories of welcome and hospitality, of reaching out to the kinds of people the disciples previously would never have embraced.

Philip converted an African official, Peter baptized Cornelius the Centurion and his family, Paul preached to the Gentiles, and gradually the movement spread out of Jerusalem and into Judea, Samaria, and to the corners of the earth. Each step of the journey was an act of reconciliation between the god of Israel and the nations.

Each act of inclusion was an act of vulnerability. It meant eating with sinners, and discovering they were also made in the image of God. It meant crossing gradients of status and power, welcoming into the fold the very soldiers who were sent to occupy the country under imperial rule. It meant letting go of cherished and long-held practices, realizing that Christianity would not bind people together as a single ethnicity but would look different from one faith community to another – some predominantly Jewish in expression, others reflecting their own articulation of faith.

But all of this missionary expansion grew out of a loss. In the resurrection, Jesus no longer walked among the disciples. And the good news is that, in God, no loss remains just a loss for long. In God, new joys gradually fill your days and take up the space once occupied by grief. In God, you can learn to open your heart to newcomers, to new friends, to new family. In God, you can adopt new traditions, new practices, a new identity. In God, you can rediscover hope, grace, and new life where you thought there was none.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-ice-enforcement-20190714-mghmhs4rqrfzjclmw7oqy7y6ei-story.html

[ii] https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-father-daughter-drowning-mexican-border-20190626-story.html

[iii] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/the-family-circle-of-separation-what-are-the-laws-on-minors-and-human-trafficking-at-the-border    

[iv] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/tucker-carlson-ilhan-omar/593602/

[v] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/27/man-fatally-stabs-2-on-portland-ore-train-after-they-interrupted-his-anti-muslim-rants-police-say/?utm_term=.5bbd455cc8b8

[vi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/18/george-takei-they-interned-my-family-dont-let-them-do-it-to-muslims/?utm_term=.46d3a706be47

[vii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/01/donald-trump-is-bringing-anti-muslim-prejudice-into-the-mainstream/?utm_term=.356749bd4017