Scattering Seeds

Hoping in an age of pessimism...

Immigrants in my city, and all cities, are terrified. They are being traumatized by a purposefully dramatic and draconian approach to a very real issue. The issue is migration and it is undivorceable from other issues, like climate change, this nation’s foreign policy, and so-called “free trade” economic policies that have tried to eliminate borders for money, but not for the people who are the only reason the money has any meaning.

But migration is not a new issue. It is as old as my religious tradition, even older still. And, in a nation whose current leadership relishes the opportunity to declare us a “Christian nation,” it should be good news that the biblical directive couldn’t be any clearer.

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:19

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.
Leviticus 19:34

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink,

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Matthew 25:35

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Romans 12:13

There are scant few issues that the Bible is so clear about, but how we are to treat the stranger is one of them. So, what’s the problem? Why aren’t we treating the strangers among us with the kind of care the Bible clearly instructs us to use?

I hear lots of reasons. First, fear. And I understand why people are afraid. They are programmed by a 24-hour “news” channel that is little more than a propaganda machine for an administration that now employs their former staff. They are victims of a political manipulation that tells them to be afraid, that promotes single stories as universal, and which intentionally and skillfully orchestrates the message to generate fear. The only thing that can quell that fear is experiences with people who are immigrants. And we don’t make much room for that.

Besides, that fear wins elections, and the parties know it. So, there’s not much motivation to actually fix the issues or to quell the fear. Oh sure, we could run elections off of ideas and political positions that are well articulated and supported by evidence, but it is WAY easier to just scare people.

Another thing I hear from people who identify as Christian and find ways to push back against the clear biblical mandate is that people are violating “the law.” Again, I understand why people say, “they should just get in line,” or, “I have no problem with legal immigration,” because the immigration system is so convoluted that immigration attorneys don’t understand it, and certainly the people caught up in it don’t, either. All it takes is a small step into the quagmire that is the immigration system to understand how torturous it is for people who are trying to do it legally. There is no “line” to get in, nor is there a process that is accessible for anyone who doesn’t have time, lots of money and/or a political justification that the current administration seeks to exploit. This is why we’re rejecting people literally seeking asylum from warzones, while welcoming white farmers into asylum from South Africa, where the oppression is fabricated.

I understand why people think that immigrants are “freeloading,” coming here to just get on public benefits because the people I know who say those kinds of things also don’t have any meaningful life experience with immigrants. They haven’t seen how hard they work, how self-sufficient they are, or how much they pay in taxes that aren’t on income. They just don’t know. And ignorance breeds contempt.

And, finally, I understand why race is such an unspoken yet obvious part of this approach to migration. We are tribal people, that’s also clear from biblical stories. And, here in the United States, that clannish ideology has been amplified by the original sin at the heart of this nation’s founding – slavery, fueled by racism. It makes us mistrustful of people we don’t know or things we don’t understand. It makes us forget that we can choose to be curious, even if that means we don’t condone or even comprehend. But, again, fear is easier than curiosity. Fear never asks us to change.

This is, in the end, what I think all of this is about. The fear of change. Electoral change, demographic change, social change. It is the fear that if I change my mind about this one thing, what else could I find suspicious? Each one of those moments is a little chip away at what we think constitutes our identity, until we get to something really big.

That’s why there is such a multi-headed attack right now. Get rid of so-called “DEI,” devastate science and education, change all the leadership so that it reflects a particular demographic and then go after the immigrants…only not all the immigrants. It is the maintenance of a bubble – a white supremacist, Christian nationalist bubble. Because that is a house of cards. If you push on it just a little bit, it begins to collapse. And since there are some in power now who cannot imagine a world in which they are not the power brokers and the deciders, they must enforce that at all costs. They must dedicate all of their time, energy and attention to that idea, abandoning whatever parts of humanity they need to along the way. As the saying goes, “When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

But there’s also biblical instruction for our approach to fear. It is, in fact, the most commonly upheld assertion in all of scripture — some version of “be not afraid.” This is one of the defining borders of our faith, how we contend with fear. The word faith itself, pistis in the Greek, is better translated as trust. When we trust, we don’t fear. We could trust that God’s presence is in the stranger, this is what the Bible passages are all about. We could trust that diversity is God’s gift to us, not to be derided, but celebrated. We could trust that when we are curious about other human beings, we can learn all kinds of things about ourselves, even if we don’t end up with a full understanding or even an endorsement of our neighbor.

On Tuesday night of this week, there was a vigil held on behalf of the immigrants in my own community. The seed for it was planted in a meeting with a local activist, herself an immigrant, who wanted me and my clergy colleague at the meeting to know that the terrorized local immigrant community needed to hear from people who weren’t immigrants and wanted to support them. We got to work, pulled together speakers and musicians and held a meaningful service, with so many prayers and statements, even personal stories, around the powerful impact that immigrants have in Tulsa. We had Quakers and United Methodists, Catholics and Muslims, Presbyterians, Jews, Baptists, Mennonites, the UCC and UUs, the faith-based, the humanists, the “nones” and everything in-between. And it was a good thing.

We raised some money for legal fees through a local organization called El Centro (you can give here, if you’d like) and I think that we all left knowing that this couldn’t be our last event like this, nor our last action.

We did this not because we all agree on every detail of immigration, but because we affirm the dignity and worth of every human being. That is our starting point, not fear or misunderstanding or propaganda. It was an act of defiance, for sure, but also a strategic act of hope. I doubt that any of us on that stage are optimistic about change in the near future, but we are hopeful about what all of this tension has a chance to produce.

I know that I cannot change the hearts and minds of people wrapped in fear. I hope, often beyond the evidence, that I can scatter enough seeds in enough places that the creative force that I call God can do the work I cannot. I’m trusting in that.