Dear Folks
The narrative of civilization is the story of people on the move: seeking food, fleeing war, chasing liberty, longing for home. Abram left Ur, the once proud city led by the Chaldeans, after it was burned by a rival army. Jacob sends his sons to Egypt because there is no food in Israel. Another famine has Naomi travel to Moab, where her husband dies and her foreign born daughter-in-law offers this sublime assertion of solidarity: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth has his family flee by night to escape Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. The Holy Family were refugees.
Safe harbor, then, is the dream of every sailor. Peace is the vision of every migrant and soldier. We believe there’s a place for us, and if it’s not ours to have or discover where we are, then we’ll risk almost everything to find it.
America is a country of immigrants, and all of us, in one way or another, are on a journey to a promised land. No wonder images of home resonate so deeply with us; on some level we are always trying to find our way there. Dig a little, and you realize that most of us left a narrow, painful place to come to this land of wide open promise, and if we didn’t, then our ancestors did. Some were forced here, and the tragedy of slavery propelled a new birth of freedom, calling us to create a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. Even native peoples didn’t begin here, probably walking over a land bridge that once existed or traversing a narrow channel of water between Russia and Alaska, no doubt looking for their own ancient version of a better life.
The American story, then, is a spiritual story of hope.
So we stand with those fleeing violence. We stand with those who are tired or hungry or homeless. We stand with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, because that is our country’s narrative of welcome. As Christians we stand with all those seeking safe harbor, especially now. The executive order issued last Friday afternoon traffics in a rhetoric of fear, but generous spirited Christians realize that evil is not out there in some enemy or foreign nation; rather we fight the good fight within ourselves. It is too easy to blame the other, yet history proves that strands of diversity weave our country’s vibrant fabric.
So we have to reclaim the vision: the success of representative democracy requires mutual respect, honoring differences, knowing that the happiness of any one is dependent on the plight of the many, and believing that this fragile beacon can’t be taken for granted. It has to be sparked in each individual, rekindled in every generation. Our faith and our citizenship require sacrifice. If we are to stand on the Biblical legacy of being “a shining city on a hill,” it will be because we have put the other fellow, not ourselves, first. With the Constitution and the Bible in our hands, we are called to be both self-disciplined and other-centered. If we are to be an exemplary people, let us be known by our love.
Love,
David
Join me Saturday morning with Bishop Sutton in a march for refugees. Details are in today’s e-Redeemer.