A Sermon delivered by Reverend Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister
At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Thousands of feet below you
there is a small boy…
These are the first lines of a poem by Alice Walker. She says she wrote the poem as a kind of “healing
balm” after she learned that at the time we waged war with Afghanistan, it
was a country with 700,000 disabled orphans.
And when we began bombing Iraq, half the population was under
the age of 15. Stunned that we were
dropping bombs on countries with so many disabled orphans and teenagers, Walker was compelled to
write.
Walker describes growing up in the south, in deep Georgia, in a small town with
incredible hospitality. As a kid she
never imagined there was any place were someone could go and not get fed and be
welcomed with friendliness and generosity and a glass of lemonade. And it made her think of all the African
American young men and woman from the south, from places like rural Georgia and
Tennessee and Alabama and Oklahoma who are now caught fighting with people who,
in other circumstances, they’d greet with hospitality. She wanted to create a poem that would be
like a healing balm for the men, the bombardiers who have murdered people they
would have otherwise fed. So that when
they come home, they’ll be able to remember and rediscover where they come
from, who they are, and who we are. The poem is titled: "Thousands of Feet
Below You"
Thousands of feet
Below you
There is a small
Boy
Running from
Your bombs.
If he were
To show up
To your mother's
House
On a green
Sea island
Off the coast
Of Georgia
He'd be invited in
For dinner.
Now, driven,
You have shattered
His bones.
He lies steaming
In the desert
In fifty or sixty
Or maybe one hundred
Oily, slimy bits.
If you survive &
return
To your island
Home,
& your mother's
Gracious Table
Where the cup
Of lovingkindness
Overflows
The brim
(& From which
No one
In memory
Was ever
Turned)
Gather yourself.
Set a place
For him.
It is not only war that can make us forget who we are
and where we came from. In the wake of
recent rhetoric about immigration in this country, I realize that many
Americans have forgotten who they are and where they came from. I find it especially ironic that many
politicians and citizens in Oklahoma
are attempting to make this state’s anti-immigration laws the toughest in the
nation. Do we not refer to ourselves as “the
Sooner state?” We glorify our Boomer and
Sooner pasts. And, of course, who are
the Boomers and Sooners but people who illegally
crossed the border into Oklahoma
Territory when it was
unauthorized and unlawful to do so. So
now, the state that venerates its own history of illegal entry, with great
pride, is trying to become the state that is least hospitable to unauthorized
immigrants.
It’s easy to forget who we are and where we come
from. Oklahoma also prides itself on being a Bible
belt state. And our politicians regularly
flout their Christian credentials. Yet,
when we look at the Bible we find dozens upon dozens of examples of God
commanding believers to treat aliens and foreigners who live among them well. These aren’t esoteric or particularly complicated
passages, either.
For example, in the book of Deuteronomy, 10:17-19
it says: For the LORD your God is God of
gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no
partiality and accepts no bribes. He
defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving
him food and clothing. And you are to
love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.
And in Leviticus 19:33-34, we
read: When an alien lives with you in
your land, do not mistreat him. The
alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
And in the Gospel of Matthew,
verse 35 in the Christian scriptures, when Jesus said that when he was a
stranger, we invited Him in – the word stranger
there is the Greek word "xenos.” It
literally means a foreigner – an alien – an immigrant. And when the
people ask, “When was it that we did that?” he replies: I tell you the truth. Whatever
you did for the least of these brothers or sisters, you did for me.
Not only does the Bible instruct people explicitly and
in plain language to be hospitable to strangers and aliens, but besides that, the
Bible’s prophets and heroes such as Abraham and Sarah were immigrants themselves,
who journeyed to foreign lands and became resident aliens.
Joseph,
the son of Jacob, in the Bible was a detained alien in Egypt who eventually
gained legal status, and through working there he was ultimately able to feed
his family back home, and in due course he brought his family to become
residence of Egypt with him.
Moses was also a resident alien from the time of his
birth. Then Moses spent his adult life leading
his people on an immigrant’s journey across the desert to a new land of promise
and hope. And, when we look at Jesus’ genealogy
we find Ruth the Moabite, Bathsheba the Hittite, and Tamar and Rahab the
Cannanites – all aliens who are part of Jesus’ family tree. Not only that, but as soon as Jesus was born,
he quickly became a political refugee along with Mary and Joseph. They were forced to flee their homeland and
seek asylum to avoid persecution by Herod.
Yet, Jesus never forgot where he came from. He spent his life and ministry preaching a
message of radical hospitality to the outcasts, the poor and those who were
despised and rejected by his culture. Yet,
somehow, the politicians and so many of the citizens of this state who claim to
be followers of Jesus and who declare devotion to the Bible have lost touch
with who they are and where in spirit they come from.
Those who immigrate to the US today, even those coming
illegally, are human beings. They are
fathers and mothers and children. But
you wouldn’t know that listening to the AM talk-radio stations, and the people
who like to wave the “family values” flag!
Much like the heroes and heroines of the Bible and much like many of our
ancestors, those who come to this country are often people seeking political
asylum or a way out of a desperate situation.
But their humanness is lost when we label them “illegals” and “aliens.” Suddenly they are no longer mothers and
fathers and children – they become “those illegals!” It’s important that we remember the humanity
of those we are talking about, those we are locking up, blocking out or even those
we are bombing.
Here’s a story, from a couple of years ago, about
real people. Fifteen-year-old Jesus
Dominguez was upset when his mom decided to go to the US. Like many teenagers, Jesus did not want to
leave his friends. But being the “man of
the house,” he couldn't let his mother and seven-year-old sister Nora walk
alone, so he went. As reporter Claudine
LoMonaco wrote in the Tucson Citizen
newspaper last July:
"I wanted to stay home," Jesus
said, home being the village
of San Martin Sombrerete
in Zacatecas. But Jesus' father worked
in Texas, and
it was hoped the family could reunite. When
Lucrecia Dominguez became ill on the third day of the journey, the group of
village friends they were traveling with continued on with Nora. Jesus stayed behind to be with his mother.
"She kept begging me to go on
without her, but I couldn't leave her," Jesus said. When his mother lost
consciousness, Jesus set off alone to find emergency help. Three days later, Border
Patrol agents found him, lost and disoriented, in the desert.
Vivian Pettyjohn wrote about Jesus’s story for ePluribus Media:
“Although Jesus was dehydrated, in shock, suffering
from heat exhaustion and terrified about his mother's status, the agents just gave
him a little water and then left him at the federal line in Nogales, a practice known as "expedited
removal. Once there, Jesus placed a
frantic call to his grandfather for help.”
Pettyjohn contrasts this story with that of 23-year-olds
Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sells who, during the same month, she writes:
“Woke up in their camp on the dark desert
floor in another part of the Sonoran desert, and prepared to face the dawn of a
blistering July day. They conferred with another team in their open desert
campsite and double-checked the communication equipment that linked them to a
network of volunteer medical professionals. These teams work for No More Deaths, one of
several humanitarian organizations committed to ending the suffering in the
Sonoran desert.
“Strauss and Sells spent the entire day
hiking in 115-degree heat through dry washes and trails in search of people who
were sick, injured, lost, or dying of starvation, thirst or heat exposure – people
like Jesus and his mom. When the teams
find them, they call the emergency medical provider for instructions on how to
proceed for treatment. This particular Saturday,
Strauss and Sellz found a group of 3 migrants who were suffering from drinking
stagnant cow tank water. Migrants who
are literally dying of thirst often drink from cow ponds as they get desperate,
and ingesting water contaminated with bacteria and cow dung causes severe
vomiting and diarrhea that can be fatal. The on-call doctor instructed Strauss and Sells
to take the vomiting migrant to St. Mary's emergency room.
“They were arrested en route by the
Border Patrol, charged with transport of illegal aliens, and now face a 15-year
sentence in federal prison. Local Arizona medical
professionals and international humanitarian aid organizations expressed
outrage that humanitarian aid workers were criminally charged for providing
life saving help. ‘Most kids their age
spent the summer poolside or at the mall.
Daniel and Shanti spent their summer saving lives. Daniel and Shanti are not criminals, they're
heroes,’ said Lea Hutchens, a local ER nurse.”
Organizations such as Amnesty International issued
statements supporting the couple's work on the border and calling for the
dismissal of all criminal charges. This
past October after 15 months of fighting the charges, a judge in Arizona
District court acquitted them.
These stories beg the question of what drives people
to take such drastic actions. What
propels people to risk their lives in search of a better future? And what compels others to devote themselves
to humanitarian efforts to rescue strangers in need? We must keep in mind that many of the people
who flee South America across the desert are
led to believe it is a much less dangerous trek. There are people, known as coyotes, who actually
profit from leading South American immigrants across the desert. Many of them are unscrupulous, and take
advantage of these poor folks. They make
promises about the length of the trip (often saying it can be done in 1 day) and
tell of water stations and supplies that never materialize.
Hundreds of people have been dying each year caught
in the desert unprepared. But more than
that, most of these people are not putting themselves and their children at
risk just in hopes of making a little extra money. Usually the motivation to leave everything and
risk everything comes out of desperation.
A Sunday sermon is obviously not the forum to go into
all the economic and social factors that cause people to immigrate illegally
into the US, but let me just say that there is a lot more that our country can
do to alleviate the need for illegal immigration, besides building fences and
arming border patrols and arresting humanitarians.
The need for a more sensible and humane immigration
policy in this country should come from an understanding that: “no one should receive
the benefits of the global economy without also taking responsibility for the
global community.” No one deserves to go
hungry or to endure inhumane living conditions just because they were born
on the wrong side of the boundaries that make up, what is by all accounts, an
unjust world order. And since this
country has an insatiable desire for inexpensive labor, it is not right to
force people to live in the shadows of our culture so that we can maintain this
system.
The fact is, many immigrant families in America and Oklahoma live in constant jeopardy and fear. Many immigrant workers are being exploited. And our economy needs them, but we still
don’t have an adequate way of managing immigration. A need for inexpensive labor combined with no
system to procure it legally, keeps people living in the shadows of our society
and
it’s a recipe for oppression and injustice.
Of course, it’s easier to point our fingers at these
mostly hard working people and their children, than it is to address the larger
issues of globalization, multi-national corporatization and outsourcing of jobs. Huge issues like globalization and
outsourcing are quite abstract for most Americans, so undocumented workers have
become the scapegoats that fuel outrage among many Americans who are feeling
financially vulnerable. And pointing at
undocumented workers gives politicians easy cover for their lack of adequate
economic and social policies. There is
no way that we’re going to ever send back the 12 million undocumented workers
who live in the US today, so we need to find ways to allow them to come out of
the shadows. And creating laws that
intimidate these people, and those who would help them, is certainly not the
answer.
As a church, we are called to advocate for those who
live in the margins of society. We are
called to treat every human being with respect and dignity. Without a doubt, creating humane immigration
policies for the US
is not simple. It will require
politicians with real courage and integrity.
And it will require an American public who can remember who they are.
America is a justice centered and humane nation. Although Langston Hughes reminds us in his
poem, that: “America never
was America
to [him.]” European ancestors on this
land came seeking a better life for themselves, escaping persecution or
following a dream. America has
come to be that for many, but not for the Native Indians who were already here,
and not for the African slaves nor the immigrants and workers who were
exploited. Hughes’ poem goes on:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to
me,
And yet I swear this oath-- America will
be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our
gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth,
and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the
rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great
green states—
And make America again!
Our job is to remember who we are and what America
is and has been. And then to make America, America again. Let ours be a church that remembers who we
are. That makes hospitality central. Too often religious institutions have been
inhospitable. They were to Galileo, to Wagner
and even to Jesus. Remember, Jesus’
religious community rejected him too! Today
religious institutions are still too often inhospitable especially to gay and
lesbian people.
Our job is to proclaim that all are children of God. All deserve to be treated with dignity.
May
we welcome the stranger. May we be a
place that offers courage to those who are crossing frontiers in their own
lives, and a place where we can come to remember who we are.
As we think of the undocumented persons living in the
shadows, the people feeling alone
in
their religious doubts, those who feel rejected by the church and their
families, those who are returning from war… As we gather ourselves, let us remember – let
us always remember – to set a place
for them!
Amen.
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