Stephen
Terry, Director
The Stranger in Your Gates
Commentary
for the October 30, 2021, Sabbath School Lesson
"Cursed
is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner..." Deuteronomy 27:19, NIV
Our lesson this week comes at a
time when hatred of foreigners seems to be at a fever pitch in the United
States. Tragically much of that heat comes from the right-wing Evangelical
community. Some might decry the political implications
of my statement, but the Bible is clear about our treatment of foreigners,
regardless of what is preached from Evangelical pulpits. This is placed in
stark relief by season 1, episode six of the television adaptation of Neil
Gaiman's "American Gods."[i]
In that episode, Hispanic
refugees are crossing the Rio Grande into Texas. Jesus, who is also Hispanic, helps
them, even walking on water in confirmation of his identity. While the refugees
are giving thanks for his help, several large trucks arrive with armed Americans
who floodlight the area and open fire on the refugees with weapons engraved
with scripture passages and biblical imagery including the Crown of Thorns and
a cross dangling from a trigger guard. Jesus tries to stop the violence and is shot
to death, with the wounds and his posture in death resembling the stigmata and
the cross.
The entire scene is deeply disturbing
but ironic for the portrayal of "Christians" murdering foreigners for no other
reason than their being foreigners. Inadvertently, it also highlights the idea
of the supremacy of a white Jesus over a Hispanic one, a sentiment not too far
removed from the ideals of the Inquisition and its persecutions of minority
religions, even minority Christian confessions. The idea is not new to America.
Even before we were a country, Puritans happily tortured and executed Quakers
when they could get away with it.[ii]
Some of that streak persists to the present in the rudeness of some, even
preachers and other religious leaders, toward those who dissent from a
denomination's dogma, sometimes even over trivial matters. This is not limited
to Evangelicals. It is a national embarrassment to see some of the same
sentiments we decry in non-Christian extremists echoed by conservative elements
in many denominations. Every feeling of hatred in our hearts toward anyone, even
foreigners, is a hollow-point bullet fired straight into the body of Jesus. He
died for each one, and our hatred put him on that cross as surely as any sin.
Every hateful thought is a powerful blow from the hammer that nailed his
innocent flesh to the rude cross of Golgotha. Our hatred would nail him to that
cross for all eternity, never allowing him to be set free and rise to glory.
When we hate, we want none of grace. We only endorse the inescapable condemnation
of the Law. Unlike the Israelites who only wandered Sinai for 40 years, we
continue to circle the mount where Moses received the Decalogue, choosing never
to enter the Promised Land. Grace could set us free, but we do not want
freedom. We want to cherish our prejudices, and so we continue to wander.
Why do we harbor such hostility
to foreigners? It is because of things. We have more things than they have, and
like a petulant child, we do not want to share. We choose to forget that keeping
them in poverty under authoritarian governments is what makes it possible for
us to have so many of those things. Working away in sweat shops and even
prisons, millions toil away to enable us to have cheap holiday decorations,
fashionable clothing, and affordable electronics, things that those workers could
never afford for themselves. We also forget that conditions were once similar in
the United States until the union movement fought for safer, sanitary work
conditions and the outlawing of child labor that amounted to little more than
cradle to grave slavery. Dying in mines, or from exposure to toxic chemicals in
factories or from unsafe working conditions as in the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire of 1911, where 146 workers perished in the flames became things of
the past, but American manufacturers often simply exported those working
conditions overseas, beyond the reach of American laws. Even so, always with
the idea of returning those "good old days" of exploitation to the United
States, wealthy corporate leaders and their bought politicians have looked to
overturn the progress made by workers. Through Right-to-Work laws that are
simply attempts to enlist the workers in a campaign to demolish the unions, and
outright government union busting like government intervention in the Air
Traffic Controllers' Strike, most workers have nowhere to turn when wages remain
almost stagnant and corporate profits and officer's salaries soar into the
stratosphere.
Nonetheless, as working
conditions degrade in the United States, they are still much better than in several
third-world countries. Life is cheap there as it once was here. If someone is
injured or dies on the job, they are quickly replaced with few questions asked.
Sustentation wages are considered a good income in those
places where starvation and homelessness are the only other options, so there
are always others willing to step into the vacancy in the assembly line. Even
at those low wages, there are not enough jobs to keep all the people housed,
fed, and clothed, so they look to the country where everyone appears to have at
least these minimum needs met. They do not see the homeless thronging our
streets or the long lines at the food banks. But they do see the American
tourists visiting their country with things they could never hope to own. Even Christian
missionaries come to build churches with their smartphones, designer label
clothing and the funding to build churches the locals will not be able to
afford to support. So, they come to the country that has all these things,
drawn by a dream that they, too, will one day have everything the tourists and missionaries
have, only to be met at the border and told they cannot have the things
Americans have. And instead of the rich, young man going away sorrowful, it is
the impoverished foreigner who sacrificed all to appeal to the compassion of
America, the wealthy, Christian country, who turns sadly away.
One might be tempted to think
that if America secures its borders against the rest of the world, there will
be no problem. But a country that hordes the wealth of the world becomes a tempting
target much like a man who wears a Rolex watch in a high crime neighborhood.
That man, obsessed with his rights, may feel he has the right to walk anywhere
he chooses without incident, but the thief, driven by the despair of poverty or
lust for the watch, is not concerned with his victim's rights. To him, the man
seems a fool that would take such chances and deserves to be parted with his
watch, and the crime is soon committed. However, if the man had a bodyguard or
a police escort, he might go where he wished without trouble. This is a
microcosm of what we have on a global scale and explains why such a huge
portion of America's GNP goes into military expenditures. It is the same
pattern followed by the Roman Empire. Republic and empire together lasted a
thousand years, but others outside the empire continually threatened the gates
of Rome and Constantinople. In the end, the empire collapsed under those
pressures when it became so weak from internal corruption, they could no longer
stand.
Evangelical Christians and
their ilk are often not concerned about that. Instead, they think we are
entering the apocalypse that heralds the Parousia. Rather than showing compassion
and empathy for those in need, both foreign and domestic, they are hunkering
down with their things to ride out the storm, to hell with everyone else. They
are stockpiling guns and ammo to kill anyone who threatens their stash, preferring
to kill others than feed and shelter them. We should have seen this coming in a
country where churches are often temples to excess as opposed to humble shelters
for common worship. We delude ourselves into thinking they are monuments to God,
but instead they are monuments to our own prosperity, often extorted from those
who have few options. Beautiful as they may be, the words of Jesus echo from
the past. "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "Truly I tell you, not one
stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." (Matthew
24:2) Jesus was not speaking of the apocalypse, or of his coming. He was referring
to only a few decades hence when Rome would destroy Jerusalem and the temple,
plundering the city for its wealth.
As our opening verse says, how
we treat others can be a blessing or a curse to us. The wealthy rulers of
Christ's day looked down upon the common people as lazy and unworthy of better things.
They pointed to their immoral lifestyles as proof that God will not bless them,
and they pointed to their own wealth and power, like pseudo ancient Joel Osteens, as proof that God is blessing them and thereby
endorsing what they were doing. Little did they know that they were bringing on
themselves a curse that would last for two millennia before they could claim Jerusalem
for the Jews once again. In view of such lessons, we cannot allow ourselves to
value things more than people and abuse those in need whether living next door
to us or foreigners seeking refuge among us. If we cannot have empathy for
others "trespassing" on our soil, we may find our failure following us into
judgment before God.[iii]