I Was Thirsty and You Did Not Give Me Drink

I’m haunted by these words from the Christian tradition every day as I plunge back into the tumultuous waters of the Alabama immigration conflict. I’m haunted because we have been here before, and thought never to pass this way again.  Surely not in Alabama, not again.  Have we not learned?  Have we not been healed of our need to wound and divide?  We have long lived with the pain and shame borne of the refusal to honor the humanity of our neighbors.   We all carry barely-covered scars borne of hostilities to people whose only real crime is living beneath skin of a different hue, who simply want to live among us with dignity, hope for their children, 

and the necessities of life.

How can this be happening again? I ask when I hear that families are terrified to leave their homes, to travel the roads, to send their children to school.  How can this be happening again? I ask when I hear that families are losing their livelihoods, or being torn apart to eke out even the meanest of incomes. How can this be happening again? I ask, when my friends ask me, ‘why do they hate us so much?

I had nurtured a spark of hope for my state, that we were at least walking in the approximate direction of the Promised Land where, as my church says, all people are celebrated as precious children of God.  But we have been thrown back into hell.   With all the powers vested in it by its citizens, the State of Alabama has poisoned the places where people without papers pray, play, work, study, travel, and conduct business of any kind.  They have been stripped of all protection.  Terror is once again official state policy and practice.   We, all people of faith, all people of compassion, are called to protect the ones society attempts to drive out in a Trail of Tears. 

 

In our time and place, it is the undocumented.   Countless times I have heard people say, ‘I was too young to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement. I wonder what I would have done if I had been there?’ We don¹t have to wonder anymore.  Now is our time.  Once again the entire world is watching Alabama deny its people all the things that give life ­even a drink of water.  Will we be on the wrong side of humanity again? The wrong side of history? The wrong side of the One in whose image we are all made? We have a chance to be a new and different people. We can be a people with arms open wide. We can be the people we say we are, people who help one another, people who help those in need, people who don’t know a stranger, people who would give you the shirt off their back, people who always have an extra place at the table, people who would walk the extra mile, people who always have extra room at the inn.  We have the choice. We can do it right this time. We have the power to change this hateful, irrational law.  We can withhold our consent from the ones who govern. We can make things right, before too much more damage is done, damage to our brothers and sisters, damage to our state, damage to our souls. (October, 2011)

No Turning Back

We lost a bitter legislative battle this year, as Alabama Legislators voted to make the nation's most toxic anti-immigrant law even more poisonous than anyone could have imagined.  Added to the notorious HB 56 is a requirement that counties plaster the names and faces of undocumented persons in prominent public places -- chillingly like the old "Wanted - Dead or Alive!" posters from the Wild Wild West. The new law stops just short of putting targets on the backs of undocumented persons.  Teachers are still required to interrogate schoolchildren about their immigration status. People of faith, Good Samaritans and family members are now felons if they knowingly drive 5 undocumented children to the store, the doctor or Vacation Bible School,.

The Republican legislators (and they were all Republicans) must have laughed all the way to the golf games waiting for them back in their districts. They think they won.

Just because they were sitting at the front of the bus, they think they were driving.

Little do they know that they have created their own worst nightmare.  Their efforts to rid Alabama of ethnic diversity has backfired on them, bringing forth a multicultural, bilingual movement that would not have emerged in Alabama for another 50 years were it not for HB 56 and its new evil twin, HB 658. Legislators' wrongs have dared people to claim their rights as human beings.  Republican efforts to divide have united a new People -- brown, black, and white -- who lock arms and sing, "We Are One Family, One Alabama." Lawmakers' fear of change is no match for this new People's determination not to go back to Alabama's old days of hatred and shame.

Alabama's new hate laws were written expressly to terrorize people so irreversibly that they would flee the state. Some did. Others hid inside their homes like Jesus' disciples locked inside the upper room, huddled in fear of what the authorities might do to them. But instead of being driven out by vicious legislation, Latino leaders have emerged in 22 communities across the state to stand up for the human and civil rights of their people.

How were they affected by a year of battling against hate?  In their own words: They learned to overcome fear.  What perfect poetic justice: when lawmakers used fear as a weapon, it backfired. They taught their own victims to stand strong against fear and intimidation, how to work together, how to win allies, how to move legislators.

When the Legislature opened in February, many Latinos, regardless of citizenship status, were barred from visiting Statehouse galleries and offices of their legislators. By the time it closed in May, a new reality existed. Crowds chanted, “The State House is Our House,” and in doing so, they took on the responsibilities of citizenship by standing against unjust, immoral laws at no small risk.

There are relics in the Legislature who may choose to stand in the State House or the school house door, staving off change as long as they can, and they'll end up right where George Wallace did — with the door of history slammed in their faces.

They Will Not Be Moved

This morning six people knelt in prayer singing Amazing Grace in front of the doors leading to the Alabama Senate chambers. They would not be moved, just as Legislators have not been moved by the pleas of thousands of Alabamians to repeal the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant law.

They were compelled by conscience and faith to stand against an unjust law — a faith leader, a student, a retiree, and citizens who were once undocumented immigrants. A mother with her baby also joined the prayers and singing to protest the way the law “rips mamas from babies” and causes children to live in fear of losing their parents.

This law causes good people to face unjust arrest every day. They risk arrest when they go to work to support their families, when they drive to church or the grocery store, and when they take their children to school. Today love moved us to risk arrest for them.

Responding to the mocking of churches by some Legislative leaders, Rev. Fred Hammond said, “When moral and religious teachings are dismissed as exaggerations, then it is necessary for people of faith and of conscience to step up and do everything in their power to prevent such laws. To remain silent is to be complicit with such evil.”

They were singing for the soul of our state (and the state of our soul): they would not be moved.

Holy Ground

Walking from Selma to Montgomery, thousands of people from all over the country. Old folks on canes and in wheelchairs, children in strollers, college students with boundless energy. Whites, Blacks, Latinos. They crossed the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where once-peaceful marchers were beaten and clubbed by men whose duty was to enforce the law, where the same marchers came back singing, ‘ain’t nobody gonna turn us around’ and marched all the way to Montgomery.

This year thousands came, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and made that same five day pilgrimage to Montgomery.

They came because they had been there.
They came because they wished they had been there.
They came because they don’t want to go back there again.

They came because of HB56.

They came because they felt called to do something about a mean spirit set loose in our country. A mean spirit that wants to turn back the times, to go back to “the good old days” that weren’t so good for people without privilege. A mean spirit that once denied access to voting booths and lunch counters and water fountains, that still denies full access to justice and dignity to people with certain pigment, and that now seeks to deny access to people without papers.

And so they marched. They whispered, “We are standing on holy ground, walking in holy footsteps.” Walking in the footsteps of people who 47 years ago marched this same road to overturn the tables of injustice, like Jesus did when he overturned the tables in the Temple.

Standing on holy ground: When Moses stood on holy ground, God told him to take off his shoes. As soon as he did, God gave him his marching orders: go to Egypt, and set my people free!

Walking in holy footsteps: as soon as the disciples dropped their nets to follow Jesus, he gave them their marching orders: If you want to be my disciple, pick up the cross and follow me.

Walking in holy footsteps, standing on holy ground. Marching orders seem to follow.

You are standing on holy ground, not just when you enter the sanctuary of the church but every time your foot touches the earth, because every speck of dirt that God ever created is holy.

So what about walking in holy footsteps? Remember when you were a child at the beach, running behind someone much larger than you, trying to stay in their footsteps, leaping from footstep to footstep quickly before the next wave washed the footstep away, running without looking up because their legs were so much longer than yours? Trying not to make your own footprints, trying not to miss a step, not caring where they were going, just not wanting them to end?

It’s time to look up, time to pay attention. Whose footsteps are you walking in? Consciously or not, we are all walking in someone’s. Are they the ones you really want to follow? And where are those footsteps taking you?  Is it really where you want to go?

Standing on holy ground, check. Walking in holy footsteps, check. It must be time to take off your shoes, drop your nets, and get ready for your marching orders. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.”

A Time To Leave, A Time To Lead

Eighty people stand in a circle outside a church in Northport. Arms crossed, hands clasped. Latino, black, white. Invited to share their vision for a beautiful Alabama, voices ring out. Dignity, dignidad. Life without fear, vivir sin miedo. Peace, paz. Strength to stay in the struggle, fuerza para permanecer en la lucha. Faith, fé. Repeal of HB 56, derogación de la HB 56. No more tearing families apart, no más familias destrozadas. A multicultural, multilingual Alabama, un Alabama multicultural y multilingüe. The ability to lead our people, el conocimiento para liderar a nuestro pueblo. Courage, valor.

People who are daily labeled illegal are now labeled Leaders.

People who’ve been told it’s time to leave now know it’s time to lead.

People who’ve been told to move now know it’s time for a movement.

Men in work shirts, university professors, mothers and grandmothers, college students, civil rights icons, teenagers and children, all calling out their vision for a beautiful Alabama. In a moment of quiet, a latina child calls out, Roll Tide! Everyone laughs, but I think we all feel the painful irony. That’s just how deeply rooted in Alabama our immigrant neighbors are, and yet the intent of Alabama’s new immigration law is to force them to leave or to live here in fear.

Roll Tide? Oh yes, the tide is turning in Alabama, and it will not be turned back. We are One family, One Alabama. Brown, black and white, in Alabama, of all places. HB56 is bringing us together. It’s a miracle. Thanks be to God. Gracias a Dios.

Jesus "Our Buen Coyote"

I’m going to start reading the Bible back to front. Or maybe hanging off of a limb upside down, like a bat. Then maybe I’ll see the things I need to see, the first time around. In the words of Robert McAfee Brown, I need new lenses to read the Bible “with Third World Eyes.”

Bob Ekblad writes of speaking to don Feliciano, a Mixtec farmworker who pastors a Mixtec congregation in the Pacific Northwest.   Don Feliciano said, “This is the biggest problem we have – maybe you too were coming to tell me that this is wrong that we are illegal.” *
Reading this, I brace myself. How many times this man must have been lashed with that label: Illegal.

Ekblad responded as I would: “In the kingdom of God there are no borders, and God views us all as beloved children.” Simple. He went on: “If salvation were about obeying the law, then all of us are damned.” Surely. A stark expression of traditional Christian theology: we are saved by grace alone.
Then he knocked me off my feet. “I’ve been seeing Jesus more and more as our Buen Coyote,” he says to don Feliciano.

Buen Coyote. It’s nearly impossible for anyone to come to the U.S. legally from south of the border. You need strong family connections, advanced education, highly technical skills, thousands of dollars, and years to wait. Many who lack that winning combination depend on human smugglers called “coyotes” to get them across the border. It’s a harrowing, life-threatening journey that no one would take if what they were leaving behind wasn’t even worse.

So I find this image irresistible: Jesus as the Buen Coyote, the Good Coyote, the human smuggler who spirits immigrant families — like Joseph, Mary and Jesus –  across the border, away from danger, into a land of promise and security. The Border Patrols and Immigration Authorities are like the Pharisees and Scribes, the ones for whom the love of the law trumps the law of love.

Traditional Christian theology teaches that Jesus forgives our sins in order to bring us into the kingdom of God. In the Lord’s prayer, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, Christians across the centuries and the nations pray together: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” To Jesus the Buen Coyote, our trespasses are no more or less than those of people who “trespass” the borders drawn on a map. And the forgiveness of our trespasses depends on our ability to forgive the trespasses of others.

As Martin Luther King wrote with such eloquence from the Birmingham Jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Likewise the apostle Paul wrote, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God.” (Ephesians 2:19)

This is good news to the poor and the oppressed. It is good news for people without papers. It is good news for all of us.  Why are we are so unwilling to let love trump an unjust law?

We are faced with the moral challenge of our times. A new people are in our midst, and they are ensnared by a new net of unjust laws. This demands much of us who have, prematurely, staked out, laid claim and put borders around our 40 acres of the kingdom.