The King vs. the President
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
--Leviticus 19:34
My family came from somewhere else to be here. One branch fled warfare, finally exhausted from seeing one army or another marching across their farmland. One branch came here because they could not stay where they were without being jailed. One branch fled poverty.
They came here.
They found an open door. Granted, one group had their name changed at Ellis Island because the clerk couldn't spell their surname in its true form. But they passed through the gates and entered a new land, following their hopes and dreams for peace, freedom, and welcome. No one stopped them, asked them their religious preference, or threatened to deport them.
Lady Liberty now speaks an untruth as she guards New York Harbor.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
President Trump added an asterisk--
*unless you are Muslim
My own family was akin to those fleeing Syria or trying to get here from Myanmar--worn out by war and violence. Now I imagine them arriving at JFK or San Francisco International and suddenly being steered into a detention center. "Wrong religion..."
Lady Liberty now speaks an untruth to those who might never see her in their journey as they flee across a Mexican desert, seeking a chink in the armor to slip through into what they hope will be a peaceful place of prosperity--prosperity defined as finally earning enough for a decent apartment, steady food, and place where gangs fueled by the drug trade don't slaughter communities in their private war for power. President Trump didn't even bother with an asterisk--just plans a wall to shut out any and all
My own family was akin to them, coming across an ocean to flee persecution, to flee someone ransacking your home just because. Now I imagine them arriving and finding a wall before them, a mighty fortress shutting them out, keeping them from safety, forcing them back into the wasteland they fled.
But I know where God is.
God is sitting in the detention room at JFK and SFO. God is sitting in somewhere in the Mexican desert where desperation keeps pushing north. I know this because of what God wove into the very fabric of his covenant people--it's right there in the Torah, the law Jesus said he came to fulfill in the Sermon on the Mount.
You shall care for the stranger in your midst....because you were strangers...
In God's eyes, we are all refugees, lost outside the Kingdom, for we are alienated from compassion, grace, and mercy through our own willfulness, disregard, and fear. So, God draws near, not with walls or bans, but with welcome--radical welcome--seen as he took an entire people from slavery into a Promised Land, setting up the dynamic by which they were to live in and of themselves.
Nothing has changed. Not one iota or dot.
God calls us to welcome one another, to open wide the gates to the refugee, lost, and forgotten.
God watches and waits.
--Leviticus 19:34
My family came from somewhere else to be here. One branch fled warfare, finally exhausted from seeing one army or another marching across their farmland. One branch came here because they could not stay where they were without being jailed. One branch fled poverty.
They came here.
They found an open door. Granted, one group had their name changed at Ellis Island because the clerk couldn't spell their surname in its true form. But they passed through the gates and entered a new land, following their hopes and dreams for peace, freedom, and welcome. No one stopped them, asked them their religious preference, or threatened to deport them.
Lady Liberty now speaks an untruth as she guards New York Harbor.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
President Trump added an asterisk--
*unless you are Muslim
My own family was akin to those fleeing Syria or trying to get here from Myanmar--worn out by war and violence. Now I imagine them arriving at JFK or San Francisco International and suddenly being steered into a detention center. "Wrong religion..."
Lady Liberty now speaks an untruth to those who might never see her in their journey as they flee across a Mexican desert, seeking a chink in the armor to slip through into what they hope will be a peaceful place of prosperity--prosperity defined as finally earning enough for a decent apartment, steady food, and place where gangs fueled by the drug trade don't slaughter communities in their private war for power. President Trump didn't even bother with an asterisk--just plans a wall to shut out any and all
My own family was akin to them, coming across an ocean to flee persecution, to flee someone ransacking your home just because. Now I imagine them arriving and finding a wall before them, a mighty fortress shutting them out, keeping them from safety, forcing them back into the wasteland they fled.
But I know where God is.
God is sitting in the detention room at JFK and SFO. God is sitting in somewhere in the Mexican desert where desperation keeps pushing north. I know this because of what God wove into the very fabric of his covenant people--it's right there in the Torah, the law Jesus said he came to fulfill in the Sermon on the Mount.
You shall care for the stranger in your midst....because you were strangers...
In God's eyes, we are all refugees, lost outside the Kingdom, for we are alienated from compassion, grace, and mercy through our own willfulness, disregard, and fear. So, God draws near, not with walls or bans, but with welcome--radical welcome--seen as he took an entire people from slavery into a Promised Land, setting up the dynamic by which they were to live in and of themselves.
Nothing has changed. Not one iota or dot.
God calls us to welcome one another, to open wide the gates to the refugee, lost, and forgotten.
God watches and waits.
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