by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
Transcribed from the sermon preached on FEBRUARY 2, 2025
You have probably heard that shortly after taking office the new president gave permission to ICE to raid schools and churches in pursuit of immigrants and refugees for deportation. This week I opened a questionnaire that came with a letter of engagement for a lawsuit against the revocation of the Sensitive Spaces order.
After basic information questions about name, address etc., they posed the following question:
What are your Church’s religious beliefs about serving and ministering to immigrants? Does the answer depend on whether the immigrants have legal status or are undocumented? How central are these beliefs to your Church’s mandate and mission? Feel free to share particular bible verses, denominational tents, or other sources of guidance that are important to your answer.
I’m not going to go straight after this question today. I’m going to wonder around a bit and hopefully by the end you will have some notion of my thinking.
One of the things I said last week was that if you are a Republican, you are welcome here at St. John’s. To paraphrase President Lincoln, both read the same bible and pray to the same God. Now it may seem strange how someone who calls themselves a follower of Christ would vote for perpetually cheating, lying, narcissist who would rather destroy democracy than admit defeat. “Love is not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way and keeps no records of wrongs.” Let us judge not that we be not judged. Most important to note is that God’s grace is not owned or controlled by the Democratic party, or any party at all. A general rule is, we speak to issues and leave party and specific names out of it. In you, O Lord, I take refuge.
The second remark I want to return to is something I said at prayer time. My wife doesn’t often critique her spouse’s work. So, if she does make a comment, she is probably right. So, on the way home from church and the hospital last Sunday, she said, “You shouldn’t have compared the loss in Palestine to the loss in the LA fires.”
It is not that what I said was not true, it is just that it didn’t come out loving. It is not helpful to say your disaster was not as bad as someone else’s and prayer time is not an extension of the sermon.
The Palestinians have been oppressed and slaughtered, and too many refuse to see or acknowledge, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t tremendous heart wrenching loss, both individually and collectively in LA. I’m from LA and I have family and know what fire does there. We know the devastation and grief fire can bring. So, I think my wife was right. Love is not boastful, arrogant or rude. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Our hearts can and do go out to all those anxious from fire and war.
I’m guessing that many of you are feeling like me, a little bit afraid, unsure, anxious and angry. Sometimes a moving show or display or a performance of compassion or intelligence can be a response, an attempt to hide feeling afraid, unsure, powerless, anxious or angry. Paul says, we can display prophetic speaking, loads of intelligence and knowledge and faith, but without love, it is nothing. This is a reference to gnostic knowledge, but the point is the same for any knowledge or information.
I suspect it is super common that when people feel afraid, unsure, anxious or angry, this is when we are most likely to scapegoat others. Certainly, arrogant power-hungry charismatic leaders might just be greedy and evil, but they can manipulate us when we are unsure, frustrated and afraid. And so often, it is not the big scary bullying creator of chaos, exploitation and division we take our frustration out on, but some smaller person or minority with little power. On the school yard or youth group, the child anxious and unsure at home, or the group of medium popular kids bully the kid who is smaller, uncoordinated or different. The frustrated working man comes home and takes it out on his wife. The Germans going through a loss and an economic depression blame Jews. I knew when we saw the video of clearly brutalized women being hauled off as hostages by Hamas that it would evoke deep historical trauma that had more to do with European Christian history than the Palestinian, and that the Israelis were about to unleash Hell. Israelis have a fear of being a weak, scapegoated, victim, minority so they slaughter the weak Palestinians and push them off their land. We experienced a tripling of the population on the planet in our lifetime and consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few, climate change fueled storms and fires, the breakdown of community, tradition and definitions of truth, an evermore individualistic and isolated society, manufacturing jobs going overseas for cheaper labor, technology putting a camera and megaphone in every hand, algorithms promoting extremes and division, and an unprecedented pandemic that shuts down the global economy and causes inflation on the rebound. So, it is not surprising that frustration and fear is manipulated by charismatic demigods become righteous anger focused on the marginal, the non-majority races, the unclean, the outsiders, the undocumented. Knowledge and faith become tools to go after the designated culprit, to justify our self-righteousness. Knowledge and righteous faith must be combined with love.
So back about fifteen years or so ago, Pastor Pablo sent out an email to a few pastors saying they had so many refugees showing up at their door that they didn’t have the resources to handle them.
Now Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. And when asked “who is my neighbor,” he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember in the story, a Jacobean was robbed and lay battered and dying on the side of the road. Three Jacobeans passed by and didn’t help. A Samaritan, the outsider and enemy came by, but he helped. Now today’s passage from Luke, follows immediately after last week’s passage where Jesus says The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, set prisoners free and liberate the oppressed. The people are blown away, feeling Jesus must be an amazing prophet of God. But some say, isn’t he just Joseph, the son of the carpenter?
So, Jesus responds, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. Remember Elijah during the famine when many were hungry, he helped the foreigner. Remember Elisha when there were many with skin disease, he healed the foreigner. That didn’t go over very well, and the angry mob sought to toss Jesus off a cliff.
So, St. John’s adopted a refugee family from Guatemala. They had a horrific experience so traumatic it made me weep. They fled into hiding within their own country until a year later by chance they ran into the evil perpetrators again. Then they fled to the US. We did not ask if the refugees had documents before we helped them. We helped with legal fees, with housing and clothes and furniture and schools, and many other things. We have become friends and shared meals and worship together. I think we are in relationship with five different refugee families. We have won multiple asylum cases with several outstanding, and they have established themselves with work, business, paying taxes and at church. “In you, O Lord, I take refuge.”
Then a few years ago, one of our members who had been a part of St. John’s long before I got here, woke up in the middle of the night and her house was on fire. The neighbors, a couple of them members of First Presbyterian Church set up a ladder and helped her escape out a window. She lost her house, her bank information, her driver’s license, her social security card, her health insurance information, her baptismal records. She was in bad health from smoke inhalation, homeless, an undocumented refugee who fled for her life from a dangerous situation.
Now Fred, whom you might call a bounty hunter for goodness (watch out, he’s coming for you), and Claudia put together an amazing team of helpers. And our Guatemalan friend refugees who were now established and doing well, they came to help. And help they did, in many ways. They didn’t ask for documentation. In you, o Lord, I take refuge.
In I Peter, the author is speaking to resident aliens: many Judean refugees after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome, or gentile people who had established themselves in Asia Minor but were not Roman citizens. He said, once you were no people, now you are God’s people. As Paul says in Galatians: [27] For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. [28] There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The border of God’s love and grace is the end of the universe, and no government can tell the Church otherwise. In you, o Lord, I take refuge.
Now the government is the government, and the Church is the Church. And it is possible to have the same goal and disagree on how to get there. Many in this church may agree with Deborah from IMP4H that the best immigration policy is to have an open border so people can come and go. If people could come and go freely, they wouldn’t stay as long and wouldn’t feel like they had to bring the whole family. While others may think that 16,000 people crossing into the US a day is unsustainable, and that we need acknowledge a limit.
We have to get back to being able to disagree without disagreement meaning you are enemy side. In the Book of Order: There are things over which people of God will differ. God alone is Lord of the conscience. But, if love is not our primary guiding principle, it is hard for me to understand how we can call Jesus our God and savior.
8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
12For now, we see in a mirror dimly, and only later do we meet the God of all wisdom and insight face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.