BISHOP KATHARINE ON THE BORDER

From Episcopal News Service:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori recently spent three days on the U.S.-Mexico border between Arizona and Sonora engaged in educational and faith-based activities organized by the Diocese of Arizona and aimed at giving positive attention to the borderlands, upholding unity between the two countries, remembering the victims of the immigration crisis in the United States and Mexico, and raising consciousness and action toward immigration reform and economic development. Jefferts Schori offered the following words before a border crossing in Naco on April 14.  

Bishop Katharine speaks of humans as wanderers from the beginning.  The history of our faith life begins with the wanderings of Adam and Eve.  On throughout the Hebrew Testament the story of the Israelites is that of travelers from place to place.  Jesus was not born in the home town of Mary and Joseph, because they were traveling on account of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus, and then his parents were abruptly ordered to Egypt by an angel to escape the predations of King Herod.  Jesus himself was an itinerant, wandering from one town to another to preach the Good News.

God is not much interested in borders except as our flimsy excuses – to be crossed, bridged, and transcended. What is the greatest word in our story? The central word, according to Jesus, is “love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is what gets past the fence. Love is what gets us past the fence.

The overwhelming witness of the scripture is about loving God and neighbor, particularly the neighbors who have no family member or tribal structure to look after them. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the god of aliens and migrants. We hear over and over that “the Lord your God is the one who executes justice for the orphan and widow, and who loves the stranger, providing them food and clothing.”  When the Israelites take up their harvest, they are charged to leave some “for the alien, the orphan and widow, so that the Lord shall bless your undertakings…. Remember that you were a slave [and an alien] in Egypt.” (6) It gets even more explicit, “‘Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.’ Let all the people say, ‘Amen!’”

The prophets continue the litany, ‘care for the widow and orphan, and the stranger or alien in your midst, for you were strangers in Egypt.’ Those who seek God’s blessing will not find it unless they remember the alien and the sojourner, the migrant who needs justice.

Right and true words, indeed.  Borders are artificial constructs by which the powers attempt to order the lives of people, often for the named purposes of safety and security.

H/T to Andrew Gerns at The Lead.