Let mercy and truth (justice) hang as ornaments around your neck and you will find favor with God and with men.
A pastor weeps for his people. A mother cries for the children. A legislator claims his faith should not affect his decisions. A businessman prospers with illegal workers. A child stays home from school in fear the government will steal his parents if he leaves to be educated.
This is Oklahoma City. This is the United States. This is not the turmoil of the Middle East. It is the turmoil of my neighbors. This is not last decade. This is today.
Citizens are those that live in a city. Aliens denotes others. In fact, the word alien means other. We are only aliens until we settle and become known as citizens. Citizenship comes from spending time together in a community. It comes from legal wrangling and permission and agreements.
Most nations, the United States included, form from people deciding to move from one spot to another and settle. Wars breakout. Feuds ensue. Tempers settle. Wiser minds prevail. A new citizenry develops out of the groups of others.
Our nation has struggled with allowing certain citizen rights to non-landowners, women, former slaves, and the next wave of others many times. It will never end. It is the way of things.
Struggle is good. It opens our minds to think new thoughts and discover next truths. Every one of us wants to defend what was placed in us as children as absolute. Giving that up is tough. Determining the difference between absolute truth and circumstantial truth is a painful process. Through that process we must travel.
The guiding tome of Christians is the 66 collected writings from Moses through the first century disciples of Christ. These are called "the Bible" or scripture. Bible simply mean a collection of writings. Scripture means writings. Every brand of Christianity then has an interpretive stance toward this collection of history, poetry, laws, and letters. A systematic theology fifty to a thousand times bigger than the original interprets what the writers really meant.
Two other powerhouse religions of Middle Eastern descent as Christianity use selected portions of that work along with additions. Judaism looks to the writings before Christ along with the interpretive torah and again branded views. Islam uses portions of the pre-Christ writings along with the four historical accounts of Christ and the Koran and other interpretive views.
The view of those writers who wrote on aliens and citizenship is something I would like to explore.
For Moses and the prophets before Christ, citizenship was a covenant. It involved even a physical event for the men. It was a commitment to live together under a common understanding of laws as dispensed by interpreters of God. If you commit to those laws and the God of those laws, you become a citizen. Birth was an important introduction to the citizenry, but choice was allowed. An other can become a citizen.
There was tribe and nation. Tribe was birth line only. Tribes certainly were mixed. Christ had a huge mix and was considered of the tribe of Judah of the line of the kings. Yet, his birth line included many non-tribal influences that entered by choice through marriage. Marriage is covenant enough to bring citizenship.
Those that followed Christ are the most inclusive. Writers point to choice as the prime act of citizenry into the kingdom of Christ. The Greco-Roman influence of reason points to choice and choice alone. Once conquered by Christ and submitted to Him and His ways, you are in forever. It is an irrevocable citizenship opened by sacrifice and kept open by choice. Everyone is an other, so everyone can join. Later, Christians formed cities or denominations that have specific rules and laws. So you have to go through classes and commit to that set of laws to be a citizen of that group, but you are a citizen of the larger nation by choice first.
Our laws in the US are similar to all of these structures. Birth counts. Marriage counts. Classes count. Choice counts. We have eliminated gender and racial origin. Those were dark days. At one point, we disallowed the very natives of the land from citizenship. We have grown as a people in our short duration as a nation.
Now we struggle again.
For decades, we make it easy to come and visit and add to the economy for our neighbors to the south. Our construction and farming and service industries prosper with other workers. We offer medical benefits, education, and citizenship for children. Our open heart continues to cry out for the wanderers looking for a place to call home. It is a mutually beneficial relationship.
One law says you have to have papers. Many laws and most practices of the community say you just need a strong back, a serving smile, presence, and persistence. Our struggle today is between status quo law and book law. They conflict. Many practices reward the efforts that the book prevents.
So I call for choice. I am not a politician, so I do not propose the laws. I am a prayer and I do propose that path of eternal wisdom for all.
Repentance of the citizens for offering a beneficial situation of healthcare, education, employment, livelihood, and community that was conflicting with the book law. As citizens we covenant with the law. We have been unfaithful and should receive the justice of fines and jail, but we plead for mercy.
Repentance of the others who freely took advantage of the situation knowing it was illegal. They have been unfaithful to the standards and community they so much want to enjoy and join. They have been unfaithful and should receive the justice of fines and deportation, but we plead for mercy.
Mercy for all.
God give us mercy. None of us are without guilt under the law. All of us have benefited from our disobedience.
Show us a way of mercy that will bring us back to justice. Restore each of us to a place of acceptable citizenship according to mercy. Justice would surely condemn us all.
Help us to establish just laws that are enforceable and consistent with the heart of the people. Surely the laws we have are unjust in our own hearts. Let us not create more unjust laws for which we have no heart. Our blood guiltiness should not cause us to dig deeper holes from which we cannot retreat. Our lack of repentance should certainly not cause evil to prevail.
Purge us of our sin and set us on a straight course. Surely, we are weak and human and will sin again. Today we are before You pleading for mercy and truth to come forward and give us wisdom.
Father, grant peace to the hearts that are full of fear. You hear the cry of the widow, the single mom, the child, and the alien. Blood is on our hands. We are guilty and thy cry out for Your justice and mercy. As always, You hear them. Let us find a cup of cold water and give it. Touch their hearts. Sooth their minds. Grant us peace.
