“We Are All Immigrants”

Psalm 8

Luke 24: 36b-43

A Communion Meditation by

The  Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

Epworth United Methodist Church

Salvador Garcia, was 24 years old at the time, a shy young man, on his way home from a night class at a technical school in a California city not far from here. He had a perfect attendance record.

Salvador is an immigrant, a permanent resident of the U.S. with a green card.  He is from Mexico.  That night the police stopped him … and arrested him, accusing him of being a fugitive from Alabama.  The man they were seeking had a different first name … but the same last name … Garcia.  They said he “fit the description.”  Salvador knew he was innocent. He didn’t even have a traffic violation on his record. He knew who he was. He knew his ID indicated who he was, and so, even though he was frightened, he went with the police quietly.  They took his fingerprints.  He was sure that they would run the prints, discover their mistake and release him.  They did not.  They kept him in jail.  His family tried to advocate for him, but to no avail. The police never ran his fingerprints.  They extradited him to Alabama.  He was shackled and abused on a long bus trip across the country.  He was put in prison in Alabama. His family was told that he had a public defender handling his case.  He did not. It took a long time for Salvador’s family to be able to find and then hire an attorney across the country.  Once he had representation, the attorney quickly proved the error and Salvador was released the very next day … in Alabama. No apology.  No bus fare let alone airfare back to California.  When his family raised airfare, no ride to the airport.  Why?  Because they didn’t have to.  Salvador is an immigrant. What could he do?  There is no one is more vulnerable in our country.

A friend and teacher told me about Salvador.  She is Salvador’s sister.

Now, two years after the events I described, Salvador has turned to alcohol to numb the pain.  He has not returned to school. He has withdrawn from friends. He was not treated as a human being of sacred worth, worthy of basic respect and human rights.  His sister worries that he has given up.

I invite you to look up, to google, information on the treatment of immigrants in the State of California as described in recent Amnesty International Reports on Human Rights violations in the United States.

Even closer to where we worship today, immigrant workers are victimized. Since they are what we call “illegal,” many workers are paid cash “under the table” by legal local businesses.  Friday is payday, and so, Friday nights outside Berkeley restaurants and construction sites, “urban predators” attack.  Workers are routinely robbed, beaten, and dumped on the streets of Oakland.  There is no one to protect them. No reporting. Cities run on their hard labor … yet there is no one more vulnerable in our communities.

On January 14 of this year, another young man, also named Salvador, was killed in East Oakland by gunfire from a passing car. Salvador was a fifteen year old student at Berkeley High, and a close friend to a member of this church. News reports indicated that police were “uncertain as to whether the killing was gang-related,” but they did not report the harsh realities for immigrant youth where gangs often offer the only protection.

At Salvador’s funeral mass Father George Crespin told the many youth gathered, “You walk the streets and you know what happens.  You have to watch your back.  You know how it feels to be put down.  We in the community, in many ways, have failed you.”  Salvador’s mother said that she “wanted people to honor her son’s name and his memory by trying to ensure that no other mother finds herself in her situation.” 

Salvador.  Salvador.  Translated, this name means savior. Our relationship with unnamed invisible, most vulnerable brothers and sisters is our relationship with God.  Remember the name.

The plight of immigrant people is not only a matter of bills before Congress, secure borders, pathways to legal immigration status, economic asset, and family reunification. It is a crisis in our very souls, in the soul of our community and our nation.  Active solidarity is at the heart of the gospel.  It is the Good News of Jesus Christ.  In Matthew, chapter 25 Jesus makes it plain for us, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

We gathered this morning with the breaking and sharing of bread.  We gathered with the sky as our window to creation.  We read Psalm 8 responsively, woven into the Native American hymn, “Many and great, O God, are thy things, Maker of earth and sky.” Gratitude -- for God’s extravagant generosity, diverse creativity, and scandalous hospitality is the first word of worship that transforms our lives.  “Many and great, O God, are thy things, Maker of earth and sky.” Gratitude.

It isn’t always easy.  And it hasn’t been easy this week.  Tuesday’s news brought word of the United Methodist Judicial Council’s decision (which you’ve read and heard described earlier and will be the focus of an action forum following worship).  In light of that unconscionable decision, I couldn’t help but go to the Gospel reading for Native American Ministries Sunday.  It is from the 24th chapter of Luke:

(Jesus) said to them, “Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see…”

“Touch and see.” Jesus reminds us that we know the risen Christ not by celebrating triumph, but by touching woundedness.  We know God by going where the pain is.

This week Bishop Sally Dyck of the Minnestora area responded to the pain of Native peoples in Minnesota … including several school children who were killed in gunfire at the Red Lake Indian Reservation School last year.  She writes, “The ache in my own heart over this tragedy has made me do what pain is meant to do: pay attention to what is hurting.  Unless our hearts break, God doesn’t seem to be able to do much with us.”

The risen Lord, the resurrected Christ, comes to us and invites us to recognize him in the breaking of bread, in the breaking of hearts, by touching his wounds. He invites us to tend the wounds of his brothers and sisters, our brothers and sisters, the most vulnerable in our midst.  Pain does help us to do what pain is meant to do: pay attention to what is hurting.

Now those of us whose ancestors arrived somewhere between the native dwellers of this land and the newly arrived seem to feel either entitlement or superiority in relation to those who were here first or who got here last.  But we all are immigrants.  We all have arrived in a nation, let alone a world, which we did not create … which was prepared for us….which we called to share…. and to preapre for the next seven generations.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright emigrated from Czechoslovakia when she was 11 and became a U.S. citizen when she was 20.  Albright says that in 1948, when her family first arrived in England, people said:   A terrible thing has happened to you in your country. Welcome.  What can we do to help?  When will you be able to go home?

But -- when her family later arrived in the U.S.A. people said: :   A terrible thing has happened to you in your country. Welcome.  What can we do to help?  When will you become a citizen?

Let us hope and work for the day when that spirit of invitation and just incorporation can be real– in our nation – in our church.  Not exclusion, but welcome.  Not Who is out? But When will we belong?

One of the bookmarks from Mary Gaddis’ Memorial Celebration a couple of weeks ago contained these words of Mahatma Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” By God’s grace, may it be so.