THE BIBLE AND IMMIGRATION

Sermon Summary, Feb 28, 2016, “The Bible and Immigration”

I thought with my South Dakota upbringing, I never knew any immigrants, but the polka music on the radio belied that.  When I met Rosemary’s Dad, I found he was a refugee who escaped Bessarabia ahead of the Bolshevik Revolution.  My Granddad and family came illegally through Canada to Wisconsin when he was three.  When you see Rosemary and Rick you see a family from the stock of a refugee from Bessarabia and an illegal immigrant from Norway.  We are the American experience.

We are a nation of immigrants from Europe in the 1700s, Ireland who built our sewers and canals and Chinese who built our railroads in the 1800s.  We feared the Roman Catholic faith of the Irish and the “Yellow Peril” of the Chinese even resulting in our first significant immigrant legislation, “The Chinese Exclusion Act” of 1882.  Refugees following WWI resulted in the next law of 1924 limiting quotas to the balance we had in 1890.  Finally, in 1965 we excluded race from our laws, and we’ve been operating primarily under that law ever since.

Each wave of immigrants have caused fears, but equally, the flight to America was driven by fear.  What mother would put her child on top of a train in Guatemala never to see him again?  Fear.

The speaks much to immigration because the biblical narrative is one of immigration.  We didn’t stay long in Eden.  The Abraham saga was one of immigration that consumed the whole of the Old Testament, so much so that God gave special instructions for the alien among them: ³⁴ The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.  (Lev 19:34) and Jesus in the judgment of the nations says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Mt 25:35b)

We have a new definition of neighbor, the alien among us.  “Welcomed” is a verb as love is a verb.  Like the Golden Rule, Jesus called this the sum of the all the law.  How are we doing? This week an Indiana man attacked a Chinese High School exchange student with an axe!  An act of “ethnic cleansing”!

We need to find the Sweet Spot, the balance of reasonable security and compassion so we can love our neighbor.  This I know: We will never completely seal the borders, we will never forcefully deport 12 million people, we will never have total amnesty, we will never pass a law that satisfies everyone or maybe even anyone.  We need a President and lawmakers who will work together to find a compassionate compromise.

We have aliens in our midst, many brought here as infants, who want to be part of and contribute to our society.  We need to search for a compassionate way to allow them to do so.

(This is another sermon for which a summary does little justice.  In the end, I told a story of a young Mexican man who had worked for me (my best and most positive employee) and who is currently in Minnesota.  Alberto had a dream to go back to Mexico, marry and bring his family to America.  I found pictures on facebook of him and his 11 year old son, a saxophone player and athlete.  We need to find ways for families like this.  Amazingly, after not talking to him for 12 years, he called on Sunday night and I had a video conversation with both he and his son!  God was definitely at work last Sunday!  PS. I had always thought him legal as did my employment agency, but what he had was great forgeries.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to be part of his life.)