The Bible and Migrants

Ruth and Naomi Chana Helen Rosenberg

The LORD watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

                                                   Psalm 146:9

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

                                                  Statue of Liberty

Yesterday the Globe and Mail newspaper offered a double-page spread showing the immense resources the United States deploys to keep migrants from breaching its southern border with Mexico. This is in response to President Trump's hysterical fear-mongering about the caravans of destitute Central American migrants fleeing from poverty and violence. In his rallies Trump vows to send 5,000 troops -- no, 15,000!-- to defend a border which already deploys special agents and the National Guard to keep "illegals" out. Many of these people  have little or no idea of what awaits them as they approach the US but desperation drives them.



I took a look at the lectionary readings for this Sunday, November 4th, which may be the first time I've done so since retiring, and who knows what prompted me. I saw that the Hebrew scripture passage is from the tiny book of Ruth, which is about economic migrants. Naomi and her husband and sons leave Israel for Moab because of famine and settle there. When the men die Naomi decides to head to her homeland, encouraging the women the sons had married, Ruth and Orpah, to return to their families. Ruth insists on leaving with Naomi, risking all to become a migrant herself.

Then in the psalm for the day we discover that God watches over the vulnerable, the stranger, and punished the wicked. Hmm. If only the dusty old bible could be relevant for our day.

So many conservative Christians in the United States gravitate to the "smitey" bits of the bible, or ignore it altogether in favour of quasi-religious nationalism. Few of their churches bother with the lectionary. If they did, they might actually undergo the true conversion which some of them obsess over. Jesus had a lot to say about "loving your neighbour as yourself" after all. Wait, that's the passage from the gospel of Mark. This lectionary thing must be a left-wing conspiracy!

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"

Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'

The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' --this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

                                                                                    Mark 12:28-34