Trying to sort out the contradictory voices that label themselves "Christian" can lead those outside the faith bewildered, ready to shake their heads and surrender. In this particular moment, when nominally "Christian" folks are supporting the desecration of the holy book of another faith, denouncing the President as a member of an alien religion, and supporting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants from communities across the country, I think it's time one still, small voice spoke up and said, "Uh, no."
Yesterday in church, there was the announcement of a gleaning field trip, open to all, under the auspices of The Society of St. Andrew. Seeking to help alleviate hunger, SoSA receives permission to pick up the leavings after harvest from fields, orchards, and farms, providing food at low cost to the hungry. There is Biblical precedent for this; in Deuteronomy, planters are told to leave the part of their crop they can't or won't use for the poor to glean for their food. Specifically mentioned, along with the ubiquitous widow and orphan, is "the stranger", i.e., the alien, a foreign national in the land.
Taking a step back, reading Deuteronomy as a whole, the "stranger" is seen as a particular target of national hospitality. Each time "the stranger" is mentioned, Moses (the ostensible speaker of the text), offers as his rationale the fact that "you were once strangers in Egypt." Weighted as that phrase is with history and meaning for the people poised on the brink of entering the land promised by the LORD, there is much significance here. As an alien people in Egypt, the Hebrews were not treated with special consideration and care; they were enslaved. By offering up "the stranger" as a group for whom special care and attention should be reserved, the author of Deuteronomy is reminding the people about to become the Israelites that, precisely because they were once a mistreated foreign people in a foreign land, they should take extra care to offer deference and hospitality to the alien in their midst.
In our time and place, "alien" is not univocal. Not just referring, in a semi-legal sense to a foreign national, in a broader sense the word refers to any difference, anything strange and outside what is considered the norm. In that sense, the anti-Muslim sentiment currently amok in some quarters of our land is as unChristian as the hostility toward undocumented workers.
If it were only certain passages in Deuteronomy to which I could point as the source of a Biblical injunction toward particular care and openness to those among us who are different, I think the accusation of cherry-picking and proof-texting as a criticism would be warranted. The entire Biblical witness, summed up by Jesus as the twin and related love of God and love of neighbor includes these particular injunctions within them. In other words, it isn't just Moses in Deuteronomy. It is the entire text of the Bible that witnesses to God's ordinances and commandments for hospitality and openness toward those outside our community.
I don't think it's too much to say that any other claim is erroneous.
Virtual Tin Cup
