THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Prayer of the Day: Eternal and all-merciful God, with all the angels and all the saints we laud your majesty and might. By the resurrection of your Son, show yourself to us and inspire us to follow Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Note: For copyright reasons, the NRSV is not available to Oremus. They are working on obtaining the necessary updated licenses, but until then are offering only the Authorized King James Version. Nevertheless, the texts I cite in this article will be taken from the NRSV.
“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Revelation 5:12-13.
Last Friday the FBI arrested Milwaukee, Wisconsin circuit court Judge Hannah Dugan on allegations she helped an undocumented immigrant try to evade arrest. As I am not sure that a complete and reliable factual accounting of this incident has yet been made available, I will not comment on the legality of the act. But, legal or not, using our courts where people come for justice as a trap for arrest and deportation is immoral. Moreover, resisting immoral action, legal or not, is a moral obligation. We hear repeatedly, from both sides of the political spectrum, that “no one is above the law.” That is not quite true. One there is who is above all humanly constructed systems and institutions of authority, civil and religious. Jesus Christ alone is worthy “to receive all power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” To him alone “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” owe ultimate allegiance. Therefore, when it comes to an unavoidable choice between honoring Jesus’ command to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself and obeying the laws of the land, “we must obey God rather than human authority.” Acts 5:29
I do not mean to say by this that human authority can be disregarded. Generally speaking, government is one of God’s gifts to humanity. By means of it, human society is ordered. Politics, rightly understood, are the means by which we corporately love our neighbors. Obedience to civil law is therefore our default position. That holds true even for laws that seem unnecessary, burdensome or ill conceived. Where there are procedures for repealing or amending bad law, faithful discipleship requires utilizing them to correct injustice, inefficiency and unnecessary aggravation. But laws should not be casually and arbitrarily disregarded.
The 1908 law allegedly violated by Judge Dugan reads as follows:
Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) makes it an offense for any person “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”
The reach of this law is far from clear. Does a church operating a food pantry whose members know that many of its clients are undocumented and makes no effort to contact federal authorities “shielding them from detection?” Is a social services agency operating a homeless center knowing that many of its residents are undocumented guilty of “harboring” illegal aliens? If a pastor gives a person known or suspected to be undocumented a ride to the bus station, is she shielding an illegal alien from detection by “means of transportation?” “Does “harboring” include a church’s finding shelter for an undocumented family?
The law has not been so construed in the past, though it may be open to such a broad interpretation. Prosecutors have a wide range of discretion with respect interpreting laws and determining the scope of their reach. Law enforcement officers have discretion as to whether they will enforce the law in any given circumstance. The officer that pulls you over for speeding could well give you a ticket bearing a stiff fine and points on your license. But if you are sober, respectful and a first time offender, chances are you will get off with a warning, though there is no guarantee. Up until the present time, federal and state authorities have respected the work of churches, schools, courts and social agencies by refraining from prosecutorial and enforcement action against undocumented persons that would interfere with their operations. Such restraint was based mainly on pragmatism. It is well known that undocumented persons make up about 3.3% of the population. Prior to the tidal wave of hysteria stirred up over the last decade, these folks were not regarded as a threat and the government had no interest in mass deportations.
Things have changed, however, and that is putting it mildly. We now have a government that is committed to carrying out the “greatest deportation in history.” We have a vice president who takes pride in spreading outright lies about nonwhite immigrant communities for the purpose of turning public opinion against them. Global Refuge, a ministry of my Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which received commendations from both Republican and Democratic administrations for more than half a century, was recently labeled a criminal enterprise by the governments unofficial Department of Governmental Efficiency.
We should have seen this coming. In 2019, during Trump 101, one of our pastors in training was deported. Betty Rendón, who fled from her native Columbia in 2004 as a refugee after guerrillas threatened the school she directed there, was arrested by ICE, detained and deported. At the time of her arrest, she was studying at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and commuting from the city to Racine, Wisconsin, to work part time as a lay minister in one of our churches. Her application for asylum was denied for lack of documentation leaving her with two options. She could either return to Columbia with her husband and daughter where the danger from which she fled still existed, or she could remain in the United States and hope for the best. Technically, Betty Rendón lacked legal standing to remain in the United States and was subject to deportation. But as with all statutes, enforcement is largely discretionary. Prosecutors need not prosecute and the police need not enforce every law every time against everyone under all circumstances. Indeed, they ought not to waste limited public law enforcement resources when so doing serves no public purpose.
To be clear, the government is responsible for ensuring public safety. To that end, arrest and imprisonment/deportation of persons, documented or not, posing a threat to the public is justified. But such authority must be exercised with care, pursuant to law and consistent with due process. The present administration’s fixation on deporting eleven-million people who are, to a greater degree than the general population, law abiding, tax paying and productive members of society is destined to conflict with the church’s ancient ministry of hospitality to strangers and sanctuary for refugees. It seems to me that we have reached a point at which we must decide whether we will be true to our baptismal covenant of discipleship with Jesus, or set that covenant aside and, by our silence and inaction, become complicit in our nation’s crimes against the most vulnerable among us. If, as my own church declares, walking with immigrants and refugees is a matter of faith, the church must be prepared for acts of defiance, civil disobedience-and the consequences that will surely follow.
Perhaps the greatest temptation facing us comes in the form of despair. What difference can an institutional church in decline hope make in a nation driven by big money and dirty politics? What can a small church struggling to meet its budget and take care of its own aging population do for its neighbors living in fear of violent arrest and deportation? What can one person do against systemic evil infecting all of society? These very sentiments are expressed by in the Hebrew Scriptures to the psalmist:
“Flee like a bird to the
mountains,
for look, the wicked have fitted their arrow to
the sting,
to shoot in the dark at the
upright in heart.
If the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:1-3.
The psalmist replies that “the Lord is in his holy temple,” that “His eyes behold, his gaze examines humankind,” that “his soul hates the lover of violence,” that “he loves righteous deeds” and that the “upright shall behold his face.” For this reason, despite the seeming victory of the wicked, the psalmist nevertheless declares, “In the Lord I take refuge.” Psalm 11:1.
I believe the visions recorded by John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation have never been more relevant than they are for this day. I believe they offer a wealth of spiritual resources for a struggling church living in a hostile environment. Sadly, Revelation has been highjacked by pre-millennial sects fixated on figuring out when and how the world will end. That, however, is not John’s purpose. If you want to understand Revelation, you need to begin where it does, namely, with John’s letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor. There we are introduced to seven faith communities living in legal jeopardy on the margins of society, divided by false teachings and self-proclaimed prophets, discouraged and on the verge of disintegration. John of Patmos reminds them of their importance and assures them that their struggle to follow Jesus is of cosmic significance. His visions rip away the vail of futility shrouding his church’s spiritual vision. In graphic and lurid imagery, John shows his churches that history is not being driven by the brutal imperial regime of Caesar or Rome’s ruthless economy of greed and exploitation, all of which are symbolized by the grotesque predatory beasts described in his visions. To the contrary, the future belongs to Jesus, “the lamb who was slaughtered.” The churches’ struggle to remain faithful in their witness to Jesus through public testimony, mutual love for one another and service to their neighbors puts them on the side of the God whose determination to redeem a wounded and broken world will not be thwarted. That is as true in the twenty-first century today as it was in the first.
Faithful witness might appear to be futile. As poet Adrianne Rich points out, our resistance to evil, our efforts to protect and preserve what matters seems ineffective, weak and bound to fade with time. Still the faithful hold vigils and protests that seem to accomplish nothing, stand with refugees in danger of deportation when the law and public opinion are against them, work food pantries that cannot begin to satisfy the needs of the growing number of food insecure families. We do this because we know that the lamb who was slaughtered for doing the same has been raised and that to him belong all “blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
A Mark of Resistance
Stone by stone I pile
this cairn of my intention
with the noon’s weight on my back,
exposed and vulnerable
across the slanting fields
which I love but cannot save
from floods that are to come;
can only fasten down
with this work of my hands,
these painfully assembled
stones, in the shape of nothing
that has ever existed before.
A pile of stones: an assertion
that this piece of country matters
for large and simple reasons.
A mark of resistance, a sign.
Source: Poetry, August 1957. Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1951. She was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize that same year. Throughout the 1960s, Rich wrote several collections of poetry in which she explored such themes as women’s roles in society, racism and the Vietnam War. In 1974 Rich won the National Book Award which she accepted on behalf of all women. She went on to publish numerous other poetry collections. In addition to her poetry, Rich wrote several books of nonfiction prose, including Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (W. W. Norton, 2001) and What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (W. W. Norton, 1993). You can read more about Adrianne Rich and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 