We Are All Foreigners

Transcript

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[0:01] So one of our identified goals as a church was to allow for space to have critical conversations. Last year we investigated some various views on human sexuality, and today we're going to look at immigration. Our goal through these conversations is to identify some of the issues that have brought division within our culture at large, and also within the general Christian culture, to allow God to speak to us through scriptures.

[0:35] Our goal is not, I know this is shocking, it's not to come up with solutions and fix the entire country or the entire world. It is not to settle every difference of perspective and policy, not even within our church. But it is to establish common ground in the mind and heart of God. So this also speaks to our more recently established goal of being a more welcoming church. If we are asked by newcomers and visitors where we stand on certain topics as a church, we can be a little better prepared and better informed. So today we're going to dive into the topic of immigration. And I want to say right now, this is not about taking political sides. So what we discuss today will be scriptural, and it has nothing to do with where you stand on border policies. It is simply about the actual human immigrant, or the human migrant, and how we respond.

[1:45] We are going to move right now, because I'm going to preach first, and then we're going to have conversation. We are going to get into groups of maybe five or so, and at the end of speaking then you will have a chance to just have a conversation. And I want you to get into a group where there is at least one extrovert who doesn't mind public speaking.

[2:12] So we'll give you time to arrange groups of about five, try to get with people you don't talk to that much. I know in a church our size that's really hard. But mix things up a little and find an extrovert because that person will be the spokesperson at the end and will kind of summarize what your group discussed. So right now, go ahead and mingle and then we'll get started.

[2:44] If you're an extrovert, raise your hand or if you don't mind being the group spokesperson, raise your hand. It's okay if you don't have exactly five. You can get in a group of six because I think we have like 32 or 33 people today.

[3:50] Okay, are we all set? Have you identified your group extrovert? Okay. All right, good. So this has been a growing source of contention in our culture with increasingly polarized and political postures. I want you to actually, I want you to appreciate that I just said that. Say that three times fast. Polarized political postures regarding immigration and refugees. So on one side, we have the positions which seem so open in terms of our borders and our policy on our borders. But then that position seems to lead to chaos. And then on the other side are these positions that seek to close us off, close our borders, and they see the very nature of foreigners as dangerous. Meanwhile, they forget our own history as immigrants. So there are honestly some positives and some negatives on each side. The politics of immigration and refugee policy are valuable and valid. These scriptures refer to the governance to manage those boundaries. And I think that's a really important point. This is a challenging responsibility, and it is one that's worthy of debate about policies. But as this runs through our news outlets, what seems to get lost in all of these political divisions is the actual lives that were created in God's image.

[5:29] So as of April of this year, 122.1 million individuals, 122.1 million individuals, are globally, forcibly displaced from their homes because of persecution and violence. And 42.7 million of those have become refugees. Over half of refugees are children.

[5:57] And I don't know about you, but I don't think children really care about politics. They just care about being cared for. It's just a normal thing to do. But I think that's a really important point. We all have a number to us. But to the people who are living with this reality, it's more than a number. It's challenges.

[6:17] It's people with faces. It's people with names. It's people with souls. Each one has a life and a story and joys and concerns. Our job today as these groups and as one body, is to try and give them a voice, first by seeking God's voice on the matter, and then by listening to each other's voices. We don't get very far if the only voice we ever listen to is our own. And so whether you agree with your group members or disagree, we remember the rules of our previous conversations that we come to this with open minds, that we seek to listen and we seek to learn and not to challenge and not to argue. We seek to learn each other's hearts. Our scripture today is simple. It's just one verse, but of course we're gonna find that, as always with scripture, it's not so simple, especially to live out. So here's our scripture today. It comes from Exodus 22, 21.

[7:34] You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. Let's pray. God, we pray for clarity on your word. And not just clarity, but we pray for your conviction in our hearts. And the ability to do your will in all matters. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

[8:11] So again, this is not about policies because wherever you look at the political divide, you can take care of the refugee, no matter what your political stance is. You can still take care of the immigrant. Now we don't have time to truly dive into a fully fleshed out theology of migration, but theology of migration is kind of all over the Bible. All over the Bible. It would view migration through scripture beginning with the Imago Dei, reminding us that all people, including migrants, are made in the image of God. And then challenge our common negative views of migrants by connecting God's journey into the world.

[9:09] Through creating us in his image and then walking with us in this world, God migrated to this world. We can think of God as a migrant. And also, it shows that all of humanity are also migrants. Starting with the forced migration from the Garden of Eden. And then it follows the migration of God's called people. So the forced migration of the Garden of Eden is not a positive. We fell and that is why there was a migration. But we remember that God migrated first to be from heaven to be with humanity in this world. And then migration. And then he migrated with us out of the Garden of Eden. And then called his people who are part of his story to be migrants. A huge part of Abraham's story is that he was a migrant. A huge part of the story of a lot of the called people of God is that they were called to pick up and leave where they were. They were migrants. And of course we see that Jesus came to this earth. And he didn't come from heaven and then have a home on earth. He came from heaven and then had no place to lay his head. The son of man has no place to lay his head. He was a migrant on our behalf, on purpose. So we don't have time to visit all of these instances of scriptural migration. But we can see that there's a strong theology of migration in the Bible.

[10:56] It's something we're called to care about. So we are going to cover a few of these. More important, we're going to look at what our response to migration ought to be as Christians. We start from the beginning in the Genesis narrative. God makes a covenant with a lowly and unknown pagan man named Abraham. Now we think of Abraham as great. We think of him as Father Abraham. We think of him as this incredible person who did incredible things. But he was a nobody. From kind of nowhere because he was called to be from everywhere. He was called to go here and there and follow to where he didn't even know. He was a lowly migrant. And he wasn't always well liked.

[11:49] But we're going to look at the story of migration. But God promised him land and offspring and very powerful blessings. With these promises, God sent Abraham and his descendants on a migration to the promised land. And along the way, the descendants became slaves in Egypt for over 400 years. So to put it lightly, they were treated as very unliked immigrants.

[12:19] And God had foretold that this would be part of their future long before it happened. It was a part of their identity. They would be immigrants or refugees who had come in need of food and a better outlook for life. That's why they came to Egypt. They were starving in Canaan. And so they thought across the border is a promise of a better life. And that's what they sought out. So they became migrants in need of food and a better outlook. But they would eventually find themselves not living the better life, but living the life of oppression and slavery.

[13:02] After being delivered by God from Egypt, the Israelites resumed their migration. As they were sojourning, God gave his people the law. Within this law, God displayed his love and concern for the people. For the immigrant. The Israelites were required to treat foreigners with love and kindness. Exact opposite of the way they themselves had been treated in Egypt.

[13:36] This is where God begins to speak of the unique position of the foreigner. He reminded them that it's a position that they themselves have experienced firsthand as they lived in Egypt for generations. Now our scripture speaks of the foreigner. It's a term that speaks to the nature of an outsider. It's living somewhere which you are not deemed to be truly equal in terms of respect or rights. Different translations have used different words to translate this position. And they can all help us hear what this position represents. Foreigner is what we call a foreigner. It's what we heard today in the NLT. And it's certainly the most natural word used in the most current translations.

[14:28] But other English words identify it as sojourner. That's one who knows that where they are is not their destination. Another term is alien. Or others use resident alien. That's one who is both truly residing in one place, but never at home. Never truly settled or secure even though they're officially residing somewhere. And then there's also the use of the word stranger. The one who is in need of being welcomed.

[15:07] God's law extended to strangers the same social protections as the native Israelites. Leviticus 19.33-34 says, When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself. For you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

[15:40] Now, of course, the history of Israel underscores that Israel did not heed the law, not even here, because they wronged and abused and mistreated the immigrant. The prophets raged against Israel's treatment of the foreigner. For those of us who are doing the Bible recap right now, we are in Ezekiel. And so I want us to look out for this passage in the next, I don't know, maybe day or two.

[16:11] The passage Ezekiel 22. Verse 7 says, They have treated father and mother with contempt. And you they have oppressed the foreigner and mistreated the fatherless and the widow. And then Malachi 3.5 says, So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and fatherless, and deprive foreigners among you of justice. But do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty. So Israel's blatant abuse of the immigrant was one of the major reasons why they were eventually sent into exile. This injustice against God's people. George asked us to pray for the most vulnerable. That's God's heart. God's heart is for us. God's heart is for us to pray for and serve the most vulnerable. And Israel wasn't doing that. And so they were sent into exile. And of course, among the most vulnerable are the immigrants and migrants. And Israel would not last long in the promised land that they were sent to. They would become exiles, immigrants. They would long for home.

[17:37] And it captures a larger reality. That there is no place in this current nature of the world that is ultimately our home. Not our true home. They were never to find their identity in a king or in a land. But ultimately they were supposed to find their identity in God alone. In the kingdom of heaven.

[18:02] Just as the prophets foretold, God sent one who truly represented him. Through the line of Abraham. He was the one called out to create a new people. And that was the Messiah. And he bore a declaration and demonstration that a new kingdom had come. And as he explained, my kingdom is not of this world. So he had no true home in this world like we have no true home in this world. And this transformed everything. The kingdom that Jesus had been teaching about and demonstrating is just bigger than this world. Far bigger than this world. They could be part of something bigger than this world. One of Jesus' disciples, the Apostle Peter, understood that the true identity of those who join this kingdom is that of being and living as immigrants in this present world. 1 Peter 1.1 said, This letter is from Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God's chosen people who are living as foreigners. And then he later says in 2.11, Dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. So as foreigners ourselves, as residents of the kingdom of heaven, we have a God-given duty to act as citizens of heaven. And in this case, it means we have certain commitments to God and to his people.

[19:50] So what are our commitments to the foreigner? First, we are to identify with the foreigner. And that shouldn't be hard to do as we've already delved into. Every difference that tries to divide, to define and divide, is secondary. We must not feed upon the identity politics that create an us versus them mindset. Because we share the same human nature as children created by and saved by the grace of God. And that cannot be divided by gender or race or economic status or nationality. We ourselves are foreigners. Realizing that we are foreigners is not a matter of seeing one's own nation as less honorable, but of seeing what lies beyond it as more ultimate. Our ultimate citizenship in God's kingdom transcends all national identity and distinction. We will never live freely and fully in relationship with God until we can identify with being immigrants.

[21:06] That may sound strange to us, but it is actually a part of how God formed the lives of those he called out to lead. If you read the lives of our leaders of faith, they are formed as people who were at some point sojourners.

[21:25] So no one captures this better than Jesus himself, who is the ultimate immigrant. As an infant, he was forced to flee as a refugee into Egypt for the safety from danger from King Herod. And he never deemed this world to be his home. So we also have a commitment to create space for the foreigner. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the way of the wicked. That's from Psalm 146, 9. God's heart cares. And over and over he speaks of caring for the foreigner as he cares for the widow and the orphans. What do they all share in common? They're all alone and vulnerable. And God cares for those who are most vulnerable to oppression of other humans.

[22:24] Those who are most easily marginalized and exploited. So we need to create a safe space for those who are marginalized. And yes, I'm speaking about the immigrant today, but there are others who are marginalized, the widow, the poor, different races, different... Whatever divisions we have created as human, we've created a set of more vulnerable people. And we need to, as Christians, create a safe space. And that begins with how we think and speak of God. And that begins with how we think about God. As for the foreigner, do we see someone only as a threat to our comfort and our privilege or our position? Or do we see them as an equally sacred life that we should welcome?

[23:14] Creating a safe space is at the root of what true hospitality represents. The word hospitality literally means showing kindness to or entertaining strangers. Jesus laid out the reality of what that involved when he responded to the question, who is my neighbor? And we saw that in the story of the Good Samaritan. The one who loves their neighbor is the one who crosses the road of indifference and ethnic and cultural animosity and binds up the wounds and carries them to help and even pays for it. We also need to help provide for those who are marginalized. We need to help provide for the needs of the foreigner.

[23:59] Deuteronomy 24 says, when you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, don't go back for it. Leave it for the foreigners, the orphans, the widows. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all you do. When you beat the olives from your olive trees, don't go over the boughs twice. Leave the remaining olives for the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows. When you gather grapes in your vineyard, don't glean the vines after they are picked. Leave the remaining grapes for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. We are to give from what we are able to give. We don't have, I mean, no one in here owns a vineyard, but we give from what we are able to give. What we have, we share with those who are vulnerable. And finally, we are to support governing policies that embrace God-given principles, including the dignity of all and maintaining the unity of families and the rule of law and justice for all. It's important to understand that there is a valid role for human governance. We are participants in this nation and the governance of the boundaries and borders and process of inclusion.

[25:26] So as those who participate in this nation, we should support the responsibility of our government to join the world in meeting the needs at hand. We may have different ideas about how to do that. We may have different ideas about immigration policies. But we can be united in God's heart to make a place for those in need. So as we support our nation to create a space between closure and chaos, let us lead the way of filling that space with compassion, a compassion that always sees what Christ sees.

[26:05] And now, I invite you to... There are some questions that are going to go up on the screen. I invite you in your groups to take a moment to reflect. I'm going to have you pray in your group just for a few seconds. Start with a quick word of prayer in your group that God would bless your conversation. And we're going to take about 10 minutes in your group to discuss these things in whatever order you choose. Or if you don't get to all the questions, that's fine. They're just here to give you guidance and a general direction.

[26:47] But I invite you to discuss in your group your thoughts. And then at the end, after 10 minutes, I would invite one person from your group to give a quick summary. We'll have Eric send the microphone around at that time to give a quick summary of what you discussed in your groups. So I'm going to set a timer, but you can start your prayer time now.

[27:36] . Thank you. Okay, that's our time. Do we need, raise your hands if you need like two more minutes to finish up thoughts. Okay, we'll do two more minutes. Oh, two hours? Maybe not. But we'll do two more minutes because I want to get us time to discuss as a group too.

[37:52] Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Thank you. Okay. That is our time. Eric, can you bring a microphone? I'm going to just have one person from each group go ahead and give a summary of some of the most important thoughts. And, yeah, try to be fairly quick, but also thorough. So we'll start over by George's group. And then we'll work our way like this.

[41:29] All right. So we talked a lot about immigration. And I think the common theme is we think that immigration or migration in general is very natural. So even animals migrate all over. So, I mean, migration is natural to, you know, to humanity. And people move for very different reasons.

[41:58] And as such, of course, as Christians, we do want to treat foreigners as our own, you know. George mentioned that, you know, one of the Ten Commandments, love thy neighbor as thy own. It's not just your neighbor, but it's virtually everyone. So we should love the foreigners or the other migrants as we love ourselves.

[42:26] So, of course, basically, as Christians or as just normal human beings, we should be compassionate to immigrants, whether they are legal or not legal in this country. And we should try to leave them our graves from our own home. And we should try to leave them our veneries or whatever, in whatever ways we can support. And then kind of stepping back, I also want to mention that basically, you know, there are like two ways you can also think about migration, right? So you can think about it from this personal standpoint as a Christian. And definitely there is no second thought as to how you should treat migrants and, you know, how we should help them. But then if you step away and kind of think about migration. And then if you step away and kind of think about migration as a policy for the whole country in the U.S. or in other countries, you know, there, of course, it becomes much more complicated. And it becomes, like, not as clear cut as your, like, personal feelings towards the migrant. Because there are, of course, like many, many more things come into play. Like, for example, you know, how many people... How many people can you take into the country, right, without breaking the country? You know, how much money you can give to them without, again, exhausting, you know, the country's treasury.

[44:00] You know, like, what level of skills as a policy do you want those migrants to have? And do you want to have the poorest borders? Do you want to take everybody? Or do you want to have, you know, some kind of separation at the border of people? The people that you want to take and the people that you don't want to take. And this is, of course, you know, there is no clear answer. It is much more complicated. I work in finance. So, to me, it's more like almost like optimization game, you know, where, like, somebody has to run and kind of make these, like, numbers deciding on all these different factors. So, again, two kind of... Two approaches, right? On a personal level, as a Christian, clearly, you want to support. There's a... Overall country as a policy, much more complicated. Okay, thank you.

[44:58] We didn't get a chance to actually go through the questions. But we just talked about different stories. And we talked about the... We're reflecting on the dreamers, the kids who are often trapped in really difficult circumstances. And having left with their families and parents. And are stuck in really precarious situations. And we talked about how it's changed dramatically over the years in terms of regulations, in terms of when people traveled across borders and so forth. And I'm not sure we talked about enough to try to understand why or how that has changed. But it's been... We're talking about how it has dramatically changed in terms of enforcement of rules and regulations of crossing borders and so forth. So... I think we're talking mostly about stories.

[45:57] Alright, so we talked about a variety of different things. So for ours, we talked about being reminded that we are citizens of a greater kingdom. So, I guess, political borders aside, there's a greater calling that we all have as Christians. And I think something that Ellen brought up was that... A lot of times in the, I guess, American narrative, we kind of paint ourselves as the chosen ones. There's the idea of manifest destiny. And I think another part of it is we culturally also want to write ourselves in as the heroes of our own story. And so that kind of separates us from having empathy for other people that are not like us.

[46:39] And Zach also brought up some good points about how there's a place for us to come in the middle. I think it speaks to the part about how can we reconcile either being super compassionate on one side, but then on the other side being super rigid and not wanting to be hospitable to immigrants. That at some point you need some level of both structure and compassion for things to work out.

[47:05] We don't have the answers to that, but I think that's kind of where we landed, that there's some element of that. And Andres had a really interesting... I felt like... I think it's a great analogy for a practical way to think about immigration, which is, you know, I think we might talk about it on this grand scale of people coming to the country. But then if you can kind of think of it on a local level, think about the neighbors around you, especially ones you're not familiar with, how comfortable would you be if they just walked into your house or they just started using your stuff and they were unfamiliar with it and try to do it their own way. Is there some element of you that feels like that? Right.

[47:57] Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. reconcile all those things, those are things that we're wrestling with. We also did not rigorously go through the questions, but we, I think I had a whole group of extroverts and I'm the closet introvert that got nominated as the extrovert. Anyway, we talked a lot about kind of personal stories of people we knew in our lives and connections we had with them. And I think one of the themes that came out of that was, when you think about it on a kind of national scale, it's a difficult problem to solve. When you think about it on a one-to-one, you know, person-to-person scale, it's not so hard to solve. We are called to love them and care for them and get to know them. And that's a challenge when you think about it on a one-to-one, you know, person-to-person scale, it's not so hard to solve. for us as it can be, but it's something that was an observation. We talked a little bit about human nature and kind of the, for some reason, we have a strange desire to want to have a us and a them. We want to be the us and everybody else, the them. And this is definitely part of this whole dynamic that we have. We're, you know, we're Americans and then other people coming or whatever, whatever nationality applies. And just noting that, you know, I think this is

[49:36] a very man-made, human-made idea, not a God's idea. He, you know, in him, there's no, you know, Greek nor Jew, no slave nor free, nor male nor female. I mean, he accepts all who come to him. And so I think as we're called to be Christ-like, that's part of what we're called to do in this, in this too. And how exactly we do that is the challenge, of course. But yeah, Barbara, shared a story about growing up on an orange orchard that they didn't farm, but there were always workers around picking oranges and how her mom would bring coffee out to the workers, the migrant workers that had come to work the orchard. A hot day, have a hot cup of coffee, right?

[50:28] Oh, okay. On a hot day, they got cold water. Not hot day, they got coffee. So yeah, that really touched Barbara, I think. Thank you. So some of the values we talked about were, of course, hospitality, welcome, sharing this, sharing love the same way Jesus did, and also compassionate action. You know, being alert for times when you can actually show compassion through a specific action that you can take when interacting with an individual or a family. We're all immigrants to America. We're all immigrants to America. We're all immigrants to America. We're all immigrants to Africa. Right that church family, so interesting.

[51:31] How do we balance the need to welcome the refugee against the legitimate needs to prevent illicit substances from crossing our borders was a concern that we had. I think we've kind of heard that echoed here.

[51:45] And in terms of rooting our actions in faith rather than politics, maybe to seek the unity we have in the body of Christ, major in the majors, not some of the secondary stuff. And figuring out what that is, that's a challenge, but it nevertheless needs to happen.

[52:06] And then treat the foreigner the same way you treat the native born. There should be no difference, no Jew, nor Greek, slave or free, as Victoria said. All right, well, I think that's all the groups. Unless Hans-Erik and Krista, okay, you were part of different groups, right? Okay, yeah, let's go ahead and just say a word of prayer. And then it is 12 o'clock, do we wanna have, we'll take a vote of raise of hands. Do we want a closing song? Okay, we do, all right. So we'll say a quick prayer and then we'll have a closing song.

[52:50] Our God, thank you for your guidance and your wisdom. God, we pray that we would move and act and think and be aligned with your wisdom as you guide us in all things. God, whatever policies this nation takes, help us to live with your justice and mercy and compassion. These things we pray in Jesus' name.