Today's sermon was a response to the state of Alabama's House Bill 56, the nation's harshest immigration bill, and to an editorial another pastor in our city wrote for the Mobile Press-Register supporting this bill. (Johnson, Rusty. “Morality vs. Immigration: It is Not Un-Christian to Deport Illegal Trespassers” Mobile Press-Register (8 January 2012) 14A.). After worship today the members of Open Table and others gathered for "Contact Your Legislator, " an event to which the pubic was invited for the purpose of calling, emailing, and writing letters to our state legislators and governor urging them to repeal a law we consider unwise and unjust.
John 2: 13-22
If it weren’t for an editorial printed some months ago in the Press-Register, I’d have been hard pressed to connect today’s assigned Gospel reading to the purpose of our Contact your Legislator event after tonight’s service. If it weren’t for that writer’s unique—by which I mean illogical—explication of the Gospel story we just read, today’s lectionary text would not have spoken to me about how we as individuals and as Alabamians should treat our immigrant neighbors.
But thanks to the fellow minister who wrote that article, today’s Gospel reading seems the perfect text to introduce Contact Your Legislator night-- because he made this scripture applicable to the immigration issue. He chose this very story of Jesus driving out the money changers from the Temple as his key evidence that Alabama’s House Bill 56 should be the “whip of cords” to “drive” the “illegals” out of our state. Of all the New Testament scriptures he might have used in determining how Jesus would want us to treat strangers in a strange land, he used this, and only this scripture, to argue that Jesus would want us to create very strict laws to maintain borders. Jesus—whose parents “illegally” crossed into Egypt to save their baby boy in defiance of King Herod’s death order—this same Jesus would want us to send immigrants back to conditions that, for some, might result in death or great deprivation? I don’t think so.
I referenced part of this misguided column in a previous sermon, but I didn’t address the portion of that column pertinent to today’s lectionary reading. My purpose is not to ridicule a fellow pastor, but to use his really good example of really bad biblical interpretation to introduce a more compassionate reading of that text—and to illustrate why we’re gathering on Tuesday nights in Lent to learn more about how to read the Bible. Some folks are reading the Bible without a license, and that’s dangerous.
Before we measure HB 56 against John 2: 13-22, let me state the obvious: Jesus knew nothing about the United States of America or the great state of Alabama. He and his contemporaries never heard of modern nation states, passports, legal paths to citizenship, globalization, or free trade agreements. We can’t know what Jesus would have thought about the complex set of issues related to the way nations today maintain national borders, make their own laws, enter into trade agreements, and determine who is eligible for citizenship. Most of us probably agree our current immigration system needs rethinking but few claim to know exactly how to correct the problems and no one can know exactly what Jesus would recommend.
Let me also acknowledge that some of us here may support HB 56. If so, I hope you, too, will feel free to stay for tonight’s session, maybe learn a little more about that new law, and then urge your legislator to uphold your position. We at Open Table don’t have to agree on all points—theological, social, or political. But I’m taking the pastor’s prerogative here of naming what seems to me to be an unjust law and offering a prophetic word based on my own limited but soul-searched understandings of biblical justice and Jesus’s teachings of compassion. While it’s not appropriate for pastors in pulpits to endorse candidates or political parties, it is, in my opinion and in the practice of our denomination, incumbent on us to work for laws and processes that consider the needs of those on the margins. As our Congregationalist forebears protested slavery in the 19th century; as United Church of Christ clergy and laity marched for civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights in the 20th century; so our new congregation feels called to join others in our denomination already working for just laws in the 21st century.
Now back to the Special to the Press-Register column I’m critiquing, which is one the strangest examples of biblical exegesis I’ve ever seen. The odd title itself gets us off to a shaky start: “Morality vs Immigration: It’s Not UnChristian to Deport Illegal Trespassers.” Right away we sense that even the author isn’t fully convinced of his position. He can’t quite bring himself to say, “It IS Christian to deport people,” so somewhat defensively, weakly, apologetically he states: “Well, it’s not UNChristian” to do so.
After misinterpreting several Old Testament scriptures, he closes with the only New Testament scripture in the article. I’m quoting the sentence that opens that section: “[I]n the New Testament (John 2:13-16), we read that Jesus went to the temple and saw trespassers unlawfully buying and selling and exchanging money.”
The writer’s first rhetorical move here is to compare the moneychangers Jesus rebuked to modern undocumented immigrants, whom he calls trespassers in his title. But the moneychangers were hardly trespassers, not in a literal sense, and Jesus did not call them that. The moneychangers played an authorized role the Temple’s practice of animal sacrifice. They were the legitimate insiders in a religious practice that required worshipers to sacrifice unblemished animals, most of which were bought on site. And since secular money with Caesar’s image on it could not be used for these purchases in the Temple, the impure Roman coins had to be exchanged for Temple shekels. This story has nothing to do with immigration, of course, but if it did, the moneychangers would be the last people I’d compare to undocumented immigrants.
The editorial writer completely misunderstands who are the “outsiders” in this story and where Jesus’s concerns lie. Jesus throws out the insiders. The moneychangers were part of the Temple’s sanctioned system of offering sacrifices. The moneychangers were not doing anything unlawful. Jesus is angry with them not because they’ve broken the law but because they’ve profited from a religious law that disadvantages those on the margins. Scholars disagree about whether Jesus felt the moneychangers were abusing a sanctioned system for their profit, or whether he felt the entire sacrificial system was wrong.
But we can’t help but recall what, according to Isaiah, angers God. According to Isaiah, a book with which Jesus was familiar, God is angered when religious people pray and sacrifice “the blood of bulls and lambs and goats” in the Temple but fail to take care of the vulnerable in that society. Isaiah voices God’s anger over bad religion this way: “Take your evil deeds out of my sight . . . . Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1: 16-17). That’s what made God mad, Isaiah said. That’s what made Jesus mad, I think.
Besides, can you recall a single time Jesus ever railed against anybody for breaking any religious or civil law? In fact, he himself was called a lawbreaker. No, Jesus is verbally and physically “turning the tables” on those who had official permission to be in that space. He is driving the insiders outside the Temple borders. Jesus’s point is that they have crossed an ethical boundary line God had marked between religious practices that lift up the lowly and religious practices that aggrandize the privileged. The money changers are the privileged. America's immigrants are not the privileged.
The Gospel writers consistently show Jesus inviting people living on the margins to come inside, as when he permits the little children to come to him and when he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well--radical actions in his day. The Bible likewise shows Jesus himself stepping outside the inner circle to be with the outsiders—as when he dines alongside sinners like Zacchaeus. The people in this story who are most like modern immigrants in Alabama are the Jewish peasants who journey to Jerusalem from many nations and who, like Jesus, were not Roman citizens.
As I said, this is not a story about immigration, but it is a central Gospel story, as embarrassing as it may be for us to see gentle Jesus herding human beings out of the temple along with cattle and sheep. All four Gospels include this story, and all four understand it to be highly significant. The synoptic Gospels say the event happened just prior to Jesus’s arrest, suggesting this was the action that finally got him arrested. John, however, moves the story to the start of Jesus’s ministry, maybe to color our entire experience of that Gospel with our awareness of both Jesus’s defense of the powerless and his dramatic ways of confronting the powers that be. From the beginning of John we already hear Jesus predicting his death and resurrection, saying he, like the Temple, will be destroyed, but he will rise up again in the 3 days. However, the fact that Jesus is courting arrest, is stepping over the legal border, is lost on the writer of the article I'm critiquing.
That article continues: “[The moneychangers] were not there to worship or offer sacrifice; they were there to merchandise the temple. Jesus made a whip of small chords and violently turned over the tables and ran the trespassers out of the temple. He would have allowed them to come the right way and for the right purpose of worshipping, but he would not allow them to unlawfully compromise the sanctity of the temple. Likewise, it is not un-Christian to deport illegal trespassers in America who are here only to merchandise our nation and are unwilling to honor our laws and way of life.”
Fear permeates his essay and similar arguments we hear in support of HB 56. What are the supporters of HB 56 defending? Not the weak and the vulnerable. They admit they are defending their economic self-interest. And in harsh economic times, people sometimes seek a scapegoat. The author claims immigrants are, like the moneychangers in the Temple, “merchandizing” our state, which apparently means that immigrants are exploiting Alabama’s citizens for their own financial gain. But how exactly are hard-working, underpaid migrant farm laborers exploiting anyone? Besides, overwhelming evidence now proves that this bill--not undocumented immigration--has had an extremely negative economic impact on our state.
So I suspect there is an irrational fear at work. The article’s author fears “our way of life” is being threatened, which is code for fear of foreigners or anyone different. I hear this pretty explicitly when the writer later demands that immigrants learn our traditions and language. He doesn’t realize his own prejudice, of course. No doubt he sincerely believes that he is defending something sacred. But beneath this bill there is deep prejudice born of hate which is born of fear. If we follow Jesus’s example, we are going to get angry at times—about what is happening to other people. That is righteous anger, my friends. But this minister-writer chose to cite this rare instance of Jesus’s anger to tap into the fear of his readers and, I believe, to incite and sanctify anger in them.
Rather than drawing lines between insiders and outsiders, Jesus invites us to be alongsiders, to come alongside those who are vulnerable. You have been doing this so well in the last two weeks as you have visited Rosemarie in the hospital simply to companion her in the recovery process. She is outside the “temple” today, but we can let her know that she is never outside our embrace.
You have also come alongside others in our community in times of need through personal relationship and political activism. You have not been trying to keep some people inside and some people outside your sphere of concern. Christian love demands that we care not just about our own self-interests.
Christian discipleship also demands we trust in an authority higher than the lawmakers in Montgomery or in D.C.
Which leads me to what is the most troubling part of this pastor’s diatribe. He closes with this dramatic appeal to his readers: “If America perishes, so do the hopes of all the world. That’s why keeping our borders secure, and upholding law and order for all people within our boundaries, are an act of compassion.”
What troubles me most and what helps me understand this man’s fear is that he has placed his trust in the US of A. As a person of faith, I simply do not believe that “if America perishes, so do the hopes of all the world.”
While I pray our nation remains strong, my great trust and my highest hopes are in God, not in America. I don’t believe all the hopes of the world rest on the survival of any particular nation or that all of life’s goodness in sandwiched between Mexico and Canada. That minister’s confession of ultimate faith in his country reveals much about his theology. I believe if America perishes, God lives on. But like the Temple authorities long ago who tried to restrict sacred experiences to a particular space that could be enclosed within walls, this no doubt well-intentioned minister has perhaps forgotten the reaches of God’s love. Jesus said he would become the new Temple that, though destroyed, would live on, and that kind of enduring love makes our hearts the dwelling place for God. The holy is within each one of us.
God has broken out of the Temple. God will not be remain inside our carefully guarded borders. God is unlocking gates and tunneling under walls and wading across rivers and smuggling in the outsiders and preaching to the insiders and urging us all to be the alongsiders. God bless America, land that I love. Y Dios bendice Mexico, y Guatamala, y Nicaragua, y Cuba, y Chile, y Peru. God bless Germany and Nigeria and Australia and China and Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and North Korea. God bless those whose hearts are full of Christ’s compassion and who use their righteous indignation on behalf of others.
PRAYER
God of the Loving Heart, dwell in our hearts and make our lives sacred as we see the sacredness of all your children. Amen
