Leviticus 19: 33-34
33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 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.
Romans 13: 1-3
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval.
CITIZENSHIP
I am an American citizen because I happened to be born in Spokane, Washington. I did nothing to earn it, deserve it, merit it—it is an accident of birth that I am an American. I have friends that have come to America and have become citizens. These friends went to classes, studied, and had to learn American history (and probably know a few things that I don’t know). And before they were confirmed as citizens they had to take an oath: the oath of citizenship. They see their citizenship as something that had to be earned.
In the ancient world, if you wanted to be a citizen of the city of Athens you appeared before the elders and they would ask, What are you going to do to make Athens a better city? You had to demonstrate that you would do something to improve Athens and by that they either would or would not confer citizenship.
This country has an oath—a citizenship oath of allegiance and I want to read it to you:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom of which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
That is pretty powerful stuff and I’ve never had to say it. I know plenty of people born in this country—citizens—who might even disagree with much of what’s in there. I do not. I think it’s a fairly beautiful statement. And it gives me a kind of respect for the people that have renounced their citizenship in another country to become Americans. You have to love this country to be able to submit yourself to the words of an oath like that.
Our issue today is immigration and I should start it off by connecting it with last week, because the media perception of this issue has made it difficult for us to talk about. The way the media has mis-represented or spun statistics (depending on which station or website you prefer) makes it hard for us to get real information.
I’ve been swamped in reading about immigration over the past few weeks, and I want to present at least a few of the basic statistics from the last century.
In the first decade of the1900s—over 8 million people immigrated to the USA. The numbers were up to the 20s were mild—8 million, 6 million, 4 million. In the 1930s, restrictions were placed on immigration, but that’s not the main reason why the numbers were so down. They didn’t grow because of the Great depression—there were too few available jobs. Generally the immigration has historically followed the availability of labor and paying jobs. Up until the 50s the overwhelming majority of immigrants were from European countries—Germany, Italy, and Ireland with the largest numbers. Before that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, most immigrants came from Europe as well. The slave trade brought people by force, which is not the same thing as immigration, but we’ll discuss that later in this series.
NATION OF IMMIGRANTS
I had four grandparents, but I only met one of them and he died when I was four. I often feel robbed for not knowing my grandparents. Of the four of them, none was born in the United States. Two were born in Sweden and two were born in Germany. They came here and they took those oaths somewhere alone the line. My grandfather immigrated through Canada. He learned how to do architecture and building construction at the YMCA in Ottawa and made his way down to Spokane, worked on the railroad and became a builder and an architect.
John F. Kennedy wrote a book and the title of it says it all: A Nation of Immigrants. There is no one here who is truly native. If you go back several thousand years the Native Americans came over the Bering Straits from Russia, through Alaska, and down into North and South Americas, so you can say even they were all a kind of immigrant. And there is absolutely no use, no good, no value, no virtue whatsoever an anti-immigration mindset. To say we—“America”—wants no immigrants is not something anyone anywhere on the spectrum can credibly say. No one is absolutely against immigration other than a complete idiot.
We are a nation of immigrants and we do believe in immigration, but there’s a lot of differences worth considering. Part of the problem in our discussions is that we have over-reactions which are fed by the media. The media presents partial facts and partial information and gets people inflamed. This is what drives me nuts about America right now. Politically we are so divided. We are so divided Washington can’t get much of anything done because every thing a Senator or Congressman says or does is plastered on Twitter and subject to the criticism of trolls in the comments. It is hard to get anything done. It’s hard to believe there’s any common ground because the perception is that we are a country of all far-right or far-left.
THE MEDIA CIRCUS
The media perception seems to stoke aggression. It depends upon it because aggression leads to ratings. The down side of this is that our entire political discourse is being reduced to something like the Springer Show—people yelling at each other in short sound bites on TV; people protesting or on one side or the other and totally caricaturing the opposition. It is becoming hard even to discuss what we hold in common.
There is lots of common ground but it can be hard to see. The media so forces different positions into their extremes so we don’t recognize moderates anymore. You don’t get air time for being a moderate. You don’t get airtime for seeing the virtue on both sides. You get airtime for being radicalized on one side or the other. And it also polarizes the different sides because soon enough one side is critical of people in their own camp because, “She’s liberal but she’s not liberal enough.” And “He’s conservative but he’s not a real conservative—he’s not conservative enough.” And so this is the act—this is the language and the grammar of division. It’s a strict judgmentalism by the people sitting on the couch looking at the screen. And it gets translated online and in polls. And the media love it because…well, come on, who wants to watch the McNeil-Lehrer report? Who wants to watch the Firing line? Nobody wants to see the quiet, dispassionate, intelligent development of a full argument. They want to see headline language slung back and forth by angry people losing their cool. And that’s what we get and that’s what’s out there. That is the main stream out of the fire hose of the media.
We’ve turned politics into the Springer Show or a football game—a bowl game or a soap opera or somehow all of those things combined. We are expected to invest an inordinate amount of emotional energy into a side and to have an identity based on that side. It dumbs us down as well.
FINDING INFO
Immigration has been an issue from the very beginning of this country because this country had lots of English people come over and others from Europe. Thomas Jefferson addressed it at one point very early:
The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves, the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society could be detrimental to that society. Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.
Who was he talking about? The French! Because after the French revolution they started to immigrate here in large numbers and Jefferson was afraid of their crazy, French…craziness [anarchy] from the French Revolution. He didn’t want guillotines in Washington DC.
I have some statistics from 2018—as recent as I could find—but I’ve been reading all week and there’s no way to compile it all. The funny thing is that even among all the experts there are differences in basic data. This is certainly a source of division: you and I could both study it for a month and sit down and be absolutely at odds, because I could say, “Where did you get your information?” “But I got my information here; is my information better than yours?” So this is a hard thing: it’s hard to get good information because it has all become so politicized.
So what I present is roughly accurate: Right now, living in America we have 42 million foreign-born people. And of that 42 million, 20 million are American citizens. They have taken that vow and made that proclamation or been otherwise naturalized. Of the remaining 22 million there are roughly 11 million residing legally. These are people from other countries that live here, work here, who have visas, and they go back home or may find a way to stay. But 11 million are here legally.
Residing illegally there are 11 million at present. 11 million living in the country not according to American law. And I have to say this in terms of common sense thinking. We believe in immigration. We believe that people should come to this country. We believe that America should be a place where people under oppression can find asylum. We believe that this should be a place where those who are running from a country under a severe push can be pulled and drawn to America. All the statistics have shown that immigration has been very good for America—good for our economy and good for our American character and soul.
Throughout the 20th century there were several times when curbs were put on immigration because of large numbers that were immigrating all at one time. If too many come at one time, it can overstress normal operations. Remember the Mariel Boatlift of 1980? 125,000 Cubans all at once came into Florida. One result was that the wages of Florida’s middle class dropped by 30 percent. It was temporary, but it was a real blow to the people. So some of the anti-immigration sentiment came from the people who were making two-thirds of what they’d made before. There are definitely good reasons to monitor and regulate immigration. But we welcome people in as we can. We believe in that.
And is it not just common sense to say that if we’re going to be a country we should be able to count who’s coming in and going out? Shouldn’t we have some idea of who is here legally and not? We also have policies to provide ways for those who are here illegally to be made legal. We can and do make that happen. Even so, the lines are awfully, terribly long.
CLOGGED COURTS
Right now if you apply for asylum—say you live in Pakistan and you’re being persecuted for your Christian faith and you apply for religious asylum—the process takes roughly 1000 days. It’s closer to 3½ years. A thousand days! That’s a long time to wait while you’re being persecuted. And right now—in 2018 alone—the asylum waiting list is 300,000 deep. That’s people just waiting to get the next round of paperwork. It’s really, really clogged up.
And in our courts in 2018 there are pending deportation cases—for people who are here illegally and awaiting a judgment—690,000 deep. That’s 690,000 cases just still sitting in the courts trying to make their way through or looking at appeal. It is enormous. That is almost as many people as immigrated through the 1930s—the whole decade. There are hundreds of thousands of people just waiting to hear something, and it’s not fair. Wouldn’t you—if you were one of those people who applied for asylum and were waiting and had a court case pending—wouldn’t you want some kind of security while you wait? Even something like an in-transit sticker for your car? Just something to say “in process”?
In the meantime, with the country in such division, there remains the mixed clash of frustrations. Some of that frustration is a feeling that we have a state or a state government that can’t do its job. We’re happy to have people coming here but can the government just do what it’s supposed to do? Count them? Get their name down or maybe have them take the oath and make them citizens—can they do their job?
On the other extreme (and I mean extreme) there are those who say we shouldn’t have borders at all. Let’s just all be one people. I would prescribe for those people to watch some 9-11 videos to remember why we do have to watch. Everyone in our government has a responsibility to defend the people of this country and defend our borders. They as well take vows to that effect.
COMMON GROUND
But aside from the extremes, most of us are somewhere in the middle. And depending on what we’ve read or what we’ve seen on cable news today our opinion may move—our sentiments may shift, if only slightly. The hard thing about all this is how tough it is to get the full picture when all the discussions have been politically spun or otherwise dumbed-down. It makes it hard to locate the center—any center—that common ground position which we require to get things done.
So we have 11 million illegal? We have laws—what do the laws mean? Can we regulate 11 million people? We’re in sad shape. The public discussions become dumbed-down and over simplified; the responses merely political responses. Part of the frustration of this whole discussion is that no one seems willing to talk about things at a deeper level. I think of the song we sang earlier: You call me deeper still, deeper still, into love.
What we have instead is a national discourse that brings a complex problem only down to the level of politics and fights about it there. But isn’t there a deeper level? Aren’t there other levels to talk about this? I sure hope so, because I suspect we seek a Christian perspective, a Christlike and God-honoring position. But part of the problem is that people on the political level are trying to shoe-horn Jesus into their position.
SHOEHORNING JESUS
I saw this billboard and it really caught my eye—I was a stranger and you welcomed me. They’ve crossed out the word stranger and written in the word immigrant. Perfect example of what’s called eisogesis—writing between the words. They didn’t like the word “stranger” so they crossed it out and wrote in “immigrant.” That’s abusing scripture. You can say no, it is a creative interpretation—fair enough. Yes, Jesus would want us to welcome the stranger. Does that include immigrants in violation of the law? Perhaps, but don’t shoe-horn your opinion into an interpretation of Scripture. Let the text speak for itself. On the other side we have another meme—“But what would Jesus do about immigration?” And Jesus saying, “Remember even Heaven has a wall, a gate, and there’s an extreme vetting to get in.”
Another website I found contained an argument over whether or not Jesus was also an immigrant. Accompanying an illustration of Joseph with Mary and the infant Jesus on a donkey, they argued that Jesus was an immigrant as they all were forced to leave Bethlehem and emigrate to Egypt in fleeing persecution. One of the responses reminded them, yes, after obeying Roman law by going to Bethlehem for the census and then to Egypt which was also a Roman province. Asylum doesn’t demand breaking the law, in such a case.
LAW AND GOSPEL
So should we obey the law or simply deal with this as a people issue? Well that’s an either/or we shouldn’t make. I think there’s a both/and that’s a better way forward. What is the Christian view of immigration (if I daresay there is a Christian view)? Is there a Christian view?
I think we would try to get to that by saying something like “What would Jesus do?” And do we know what would Jesus do? I think we do. Jesus doesn’t care about state policies at all. I declare in His name and by the Word of Scripture: He doesn’t really care about what policy a state has. He doesn’t care if the country is pro immigration or against immigration (as are many countries in the world), but he cares about the people and he’s told us Christians — in whatever kind of culture, country of society we’re part of—what our role is. Our role is to feed the hungry, get water for the thirsty, heal wounds, show kindness, and love your neighbors. That is the law that is above every American law.
Does this mean: Well then, you absolutely must, if you’re a Christian, advocate for a policy that welcomes illegal immigrants unconditionally… No, it doesn’t mean that at all. That’s a false conclusion. It means that we look at this from a human point of view and from a Christ-like point of view. It says if we see somebody who’s hungry, we feed them. If we see somebody who’s thirsty, we give them water to drink. If we see somebody who’s hurting or suffering, we try to find a way to help. This is where both political sides in faith come together.
Disagreements remain over how to we solve this larger problem, and we won’t solve that in this congregation. But as long as there are people before us, as long as you in your circle and sphere of influence—and we together collectively in ours—encounter people who are hungry, we have a job. If people need help, we have a role. And we don’t answer to the United States government for that role. We do answer to the Lord God. Can we have a better perspective than the popular perspective? Isn’t there a deeper view than the merely political? Yes, there is, as long as we’re careful.
FANATIC & NOBLE
Finally, fanaticism. Fanaticism is that extreme, passionate, angry, aggression that characterizes much of politics. Fanaticism is only maintainable through reductionism. All fanaticism depends upon an over-simplification of reality. The fact is—and I’ll hold that Scripture proclaims this as well—is that the world is actually complex. We live in a society and in a world that is deeply, deeply complicated. Anyone trying to sell you a bill of goods or anyone that wants you to develop a great amount of passion for their cause is going to do so by putting a lens over reality and telling you it is all quite simple. It may be as simple as elevating one virtue and expecting that virtue to manage the whole complexity, but that is what a fanatic does. Fanatics simplify reality and sell you a dumbed-down version of reality.
This is not the noble life; not what we are called to. The noble life, a better way to live, requires that we live with some unresolved tensions. And this is hard for a lot of people. We prefer every problem solved. Isn’t it okay that there are some unresolved tensions? Can we manage to live with some unresolved tensions and yet be at peace? The theological world is full of this. We are Methodist Armenians and Reformed Presbyterians living together in this congregation. Does God choose us, or do we choose God? The answer is yes. We live with that tension. This is a little bit more what the noble life looks like. You and I don’t have to have the right answer. We have to do the right thing when it’s presented to us, but living in the complexity of the world is not a matter of holding a right position and saber-rattling. As with everything, you have people in your family whom you love dearly who, you feel, are absolutely wrong on issues X, Y and Z. Right?
CITIZENS ALL
This is also the People of God. We are a kinship. Our citizenship is not entirely of this world. In fact our primary citizenship is not of this world at all.
There is no alternative but to care for our neighbor and love our neighbor and put their needs up high. There is no Christian justification for saying I’m taking care of me and mine and forget everybody else—sorry. We are called to generosity. We are called to sacrificial love. What that looks like to each of us God shall put on our hearts.
I felt moved to do this and I don’t know how many of you are citizens of this country, how many of you are citizens of other countries, or how many of you might be here on extended visas and so on—and it doesn’t matter—but I just want to say to those that were born in this country, who never made the oath of allegiance: I would ask you to stand and say this with me, this oath of allegiance. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. If you want to just stand and not say it, that’s fine too, but for all who were born in this country who have never said this, I’d like us to say this together:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Now I would have everybody stand. We have a higher citizenship, a more important one, the higher law, the more necessary loyalty. So join me in our Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the father almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.
That creed is our citizenship and in Christ there is no American and non-American. In Christ we are one body in many, many countries and nationalities, many statuses. That is our prior allegiance—it must be our number one. May God help us all solve these problems without getting bent out of shape doing so. And may we love across the aisle with those we disagree with, practicing kindness and humility in solving American problems and any problems God puts our way.