You know, I think, I think this pandemic is an excellent pattern interrupter. I see a lot of people on social media sort of longing for when is this going to be over? When can we go back to the way it used to be? But we don't want to go back to the way it used to be. The way, I mean the pandemic has highlighted the inequality, the injustices, the people who are left out, the way that undocumented immigrants pay taxes but aren't able to receive a stimulus check. The way that essential workers aren't paid a living wage. Why would we want to go back to the way that things used to be? (K. Gonzalez)For some of us--in my church--the interruption has a particular name and a gentle voice. His name is Ernie. He's a refugee from Cameroon. And he's introduced us to a kind of courage, a kind of faith that may well change us forever. For 21 months, he's endured ICE's version of detention, our American version of internment. He arrived at our border seeking asylum; ICE treated him as a threat to "our way of life." When a federal judge released him from detention this month, citing health concerns in a crowded jail, Ernie asked us to walk with him. He asked us to partner with him on a long journey to freedom, hope and community. After 21 months of jails, confinement, isolation and hell, Ernie invites his ACLU lawyer and his new church friends to join his migration: from one world to the possibility of another.
Talk about an interruption. So often we think of immigration as a process of change, a transformation for the migrant. But maybe, for 21st century Americans, for 21st century Christians, the question is more pointed and personal: will we accept the changes Ernie invites in us, in our own hearts, in our politics, in our priorities and ministries?
When Jesus goes to John at the Jordan and is baptized there, he's embracing the interruption of the Holy Spirit, the interruption of God in his life. Like his Hebrew ancestors fleeing Egypt, he's walking into the wild waters of liberation, identifying his life with oppressed migrants everywhere, and giving his life to the liberation project. There's really no doubt: his Jordan River baptism is disruptive and radical. It's his awakening to memory of Pharaoh's storehouses, and Egypt's pyramid economy, and the economic slavery there. It's his celebration of his people's spiritual roots, their religious tradition; and that tradition is all about migration, justice, imagination and solidarity in the journey to freedom. That Hebrew covenant is all about creating a community around neighbor-love and economic-justice and God-first ethics. Let's leave where we're at, cross every border we have to, and make a new home there!
So maybe Christians should take stock in the roots, the symbolism, the disruptive grace of baptism: our baptism into the wild waters of liberation, our baptism into solidarity with migrants everywhere, our baptism into the commonwealth project that welcomes God's vision for peace, freedom, sisterhood and brotherhood.
Quite an interruption, eh?
