Early in the morning on Thursday, January 20th, where I live in Ellensburg, Washington, children and families in a small trailer park lay asleep in their beds. In a few hours, in a normal day, the kids would be eating breakfast with Mom and Dad, getting ready for school after breakfast as their parents went off to work. But this was not a normal day. This day would be unlike any they had ever experienced.
The helicopters came at 5:30 am, backing up a coordinated raid that would leave 14 people, 13 women and a church pastor, under arrest, and several more taken into custody for likley deportation. The children would awake to chaos of flashlights and watch as federal ICE officers broke into their homes, yelled orders at gunpoint, and took their parents (mostly mothers) away in handcuffs. Many of them scarcely remembered living anywhere else, as their families, mostly undocumented workers who form the backbone of the agricultural workforce in our community, had been living and working here for several years. Today, these children, and the families that make up their community, are torn from their mothers, their schools, their homes, and their way of life, seeking sanctuary somewhere safe. Their numbers, just in our community, may very well be in the hundreds, and all of them are currently displaced, cut off from work and school, and hiding in terror.
Jesus, in His time, spent quite a lot of time praising the Samaritans. This really torqued off his Jewish compatriots - even some of the disciples. Like the Mexicans in our country, the Samaritans were unwelcome and disliked by many of their Jewish contemporaries. They looked different, talked different, took the low-paying jobs, had too many kids, and were sinful trouble makers, at least as far as the non-Samaritans were concerned. But Jesus humanized them, ministered to them, opened the doors of compassion to them, because He didn't believe that anyone should be excluded from the gifts of Spirit simply because of their ethnic heritage. For many Jews of the time, the issue of the Samaritans was a political issue. For Jesus, it was a humanitarian issue - they were God's people, deserving of the same Good News as everyone else... equal to the rest of us. It was acts like these that ultimately led to Jesus dying by crucifixion.. dying for our sins.
My own church in Ellensburg will be facing it's own challenges as we step forward as a community of faith to provide sanctuary and support for the people affected by the raids. Getting involved with people that are judged and criminalized by society does not help you win popularity contests, but living out the ideals of Chirstianity was never supposed to serve that goal.
My prayer for my community, and for my country, is that we remember Jesus' message to us regarding the Samaritans - that love and mercy might prevail over hate and judgement. This isn't a political issue about immigration and citizen status - it's not even an ethical issue about whether these people are "good" or "bad" or have sinned according to our Law. It's a humanitarian issue. As Christians, we are not called to judge - we are called to witness the message of Christ's love through action and service to all poeple. Our job is very simple - doing God's will through love and compassion for all, not just some, of God's poeple.
And, despite the efforts of some to make us believe otherwise, these are people.
Hidden in Jesus' teachings about the Samaritans was a deeper message. His lessons of compassion were not simply to love the less fortunate, but to transform those who learned that kind of compassion. When the man lay beside the road, beaten and scared and left for dead, Jesus reminds as that those who passed him and did not help travel their own paths to death. Compassion transforms us, and connects us to the healing spirit of Life.
Please pray for the inviduals who have been affected by this, as well as for those who face the decisions between judgement and mercy that will effect so many lives.
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