Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was driving down from Tempe to Flagstaff, and fell into the hands of a militia, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a pastor was driving in his Cadillac down that road; and when he saw him, he switched lanes and passed by. So likewise a businessman, when he drove through the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But an undocumented Mexican while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having cleaned them with soap and water. Then he helped him up, brought him to a hotel, and took care of him. The next day he took out what little money he had and gave it to to the hotel manager, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the militia?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

[See also: "Arizona and the Least of These"]

Matthew 25 contains some of Jesus’ most famous stories. Jesus speaks in the parable both to the righteous and the wicked, and to the latter he says, “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. … Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” This passage has long stood as a perennial call to Christians to stand with the oppressed, with the “least of these,” with those at the bottom of society, those most marginalized by “the system.” I believe that it is this passage which must frame Christian discussion of Arizona’s immigration law.

I submit that Christians must regard undocumented immigrants as “the least of these” in the context of the American immigration debate. Every year, millions of people around the world struggle to make enough money to live, to feed their children, to be able to go through their day-to-day lives with some semblance of security. Many of these people find that they are unable to find work in their own country, and so they seek to emigrate and establish a new life somewhere else to provide for themselves and their families. Pushed out by broken systems and broken circumstances, marginalized by greedy economic structures and ineffective governments, many look towards the United States and its relatively strong economy as offering hope for the future of themselves and their children.

Unfortunately for most of these people, it is incredibly difficult to immigrate legally to the United States. The process is time-consuming, costly, and uncertain, and can thus leave a potential immigrant who is denied a visa worse off at the end of the attempt than at its beginning. Daunted by the difficulty of this long-term process, with fears compounded in many cases by immediate economic uncertainties, many people are put into a situation where they see no other option to provide for their themselves and their families than to enter the country illegally. With no realistic alternatives, they live at the margins of American society.

These undocumented immigrants, truly the “least of these,” are the targets of Arizona’s new law. SB 1070 is manifestly designed to further marginalize these people and those who help them, to make it easier to arrest and prosecute them, to interrupt their day-to-day lives as they work (often in below-minimum-wage-jobs) to set food on the table every night. Rather than try to fix the broken systems that put these people in the situations they are in, Arizona has decided to punish them and ostracize them. Arizona has cracked down on the victims of America’s broken immigration system rather than try to address the underlying problems with the system itself.

I believe that a straightforward application of the message of Jesus Christ condemns Arizona’s immigration law. The Kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of grace not legalism, of inclusion not exclusion, of welcome not hostility. The Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth is a proclamation of justice in the face of oppression, of liberation from bondage, of love for the marginalized. With this in mind, I ask Christians across America to remember that as they do to the least of these, so do they do to Jesus himself.

[This post was originally published at YourPerspective.org]

However, the delay in posting has not been mentally barren; rather it has provided me with much to ponder and write about. Thus, I present some scattered thoughts on my first week at Yale.

1. My first Sunday (August 30), I attended a morning service at the University Church at Battell Chapel, which is only a few hundred feet away from my dorm room. I loved it. The service was ecumenically Christian, drawing on multiple Christian traditions from around the world, with a rich liturgy and diversity of music and prayer. I felt  connected to the worldwide Body of Christ, while still being keenly aware of the particularity of being part of a Christian community in the context of the university. The University Church exists and thrives in the middle of this tension: it is both expansively global and self-consciously contextual, uniting the immediate and the distant, the past and present, with an eye towards the future and a vision for the whole world.

2. Yale is a wonderful place to discuss ideas. I am already profiting from being around people who are eager to examine and debate, people who value my (sometimes unorthodox) perspectives even when their own opinions differ. I feel accepted here in a remarkable way: no one is going to reject me because I don’t tow the line, no one is going to say that I don’t belong just because I don’t agree. (This has been my experience in the community as a whole, but I sense it to be true also in the University Church — a wonderful change from my last year in Augusta.) I feel free to be open about the way that my politics are drawn from my faith, and this gives me a unique voice in the ongoing political discourse that thrives here.

3. Returning to the subject of church: I finally received communion again, at the University Church both today and last week. This was the first time I’d received the sacrament since last summer, at the Youth Theological Initiative at Candler. This was somehow appropriate: for the past year, between YTI and Yale, I was adrift, lacking any real faith community to serve as a spiritual base. That was not fun. But partaking of the Eucharist at Yale seemed to me to signify a new beginning: that I am finally at least in the process of finding a community in which to live for Christ.

4. Today, I finally filled out the necessary form in order to register to vote. I decided to register in Connecticut, rather than Georgia, because for the next four years I’ll be much more interested in the local politics of New Haven than in those of Augusta. In addition, I rather hesitantly made the decision to register as a Democrat. I despise the two-party system (which has destroyed much of American democracy); but because Connecticut is dependably blue, the only way to have a meaningful say in who goes to Washington is to vote in the Democratic primaries. Because primary elections in this state are closed, it is necessary to register with a party in order to vote in them. (It’s quite possible that in the general elections I’ll be voting for third-party candidates — but I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.)

5. A final note on the University Church: Last month I described various criteria I would be using in searching for a new church. Remarkably, to at least some degree, the University Church fulfills all of them. This is more than I could have hoped for; clearly God is at work in my life at Yale.

6. Sometime this coming week, I plan to obtain my official New Haven resident’s card. These cards, suitable as a form of identification in almost all official capacities, are provided by the city to any resident, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. In common with several of my new friends here, my primary purpose in getting the card is to express solidarity with residents who are at risk because of the way the American immigration system operates. I believe that these cards have theological and ethical import for Christians, because of our call to solidarity with the oppressed and our own position as a “resident alien” in all the kingdoms of the world.

These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation: that is, that we look out for one another; that is, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. And in the wealthiest nation in the world right now we are neglecting to live up to that call.

Obama has often spoken in the past of the importance of the biblical idea of caring for “the least of these”. The paragraph above echoes this sentiment; but unfortunately, Obama also advocates one aspect of the plan that goes startlingly against this ethos. Seeking to reassure dissenters about the acceptability of the proposal, the president has also stressed that the plan will not provide health care to undocumented Americans.

Despite the fact that most so-called “illegal aliens” do in fact pay taxes, the mainstream political discourse in this country (including Obama, unfortunately) seems united, regardless of party, around the importance of excluding this group from health reform. Tragically, undocumented workers are among the most vulnerable in the present system, because of their fragile political status and the legal complexity of navigating American medical insurance. In the fullest sense, “illegal” immigrants are the least of these, those whom we as Christians are called to serve and to be in solidarity with. What we do to them, we do to Christ himself (Matthew 25.40).

Thus, Obama’s public exclusion of the least among us from his health care reform is a manifest failure, a compromise that is unnecessary and saddening. His attitude in this regard goes against an aspect of his faith that he has himself emphasized. Let us hope that he will awake to the puzzling inconsistencey of his words. And let us hope that as the much-needed reform bill continues to advance through Congress, there will be some at least who seek to broaden its scope to truly provide health care for all.

Enough said.

Today, there was an especially irritating rant:

The Pope’s politically correct Spanish-speaking at a Mass is a grave insult to citizens of the U.S. and our laws. Is he not, thereby, encouraging breaking our laws by illegal immigrants?

Beyond the obvious grammatical inadequacies in the comment, the complaint has numerous problems:

1. “…politically correct Spanish-speaking…” – So now it’s “politically correct” to speak in a language other than English? Whoops..must have missed that. Je suis désolé.The complaintiff is essentially saying that it’s wrong for the Pope to help people worship in the language they’re most comfortable with. It’s not like we want people to feel that God is universal or anything…
2. “…is a grave insult to citizens of the U.S.” – Apparently this person missed the fact that many citizens of our great nation speak Spanish. Many also speak French, and German, and Russian, and Hebrew, and hundreds of other languages. Would he or she be offended if the Pope went to Mexico and spoke in English at Mass? Somehow I doubt it.
3. “…and our laws.” – How the heck is Spanish insulting to our laws?
4. “…encouraging breaking our laws by illegal immigrants?” – This is the crux of the matter. This is the part that really ticks me off. The writer is saying that by speaking in a language that is the first language of some ‘illegal’ immigrants, the Pope is encouraging aliens to break American law.This. Is. Ludicrous.Here’s why. Imagine that the majority of people who received fines for speeding, and who additionally had exceeded the limit while knowingly being the only car on the road, spoke a particular language, Speedese. Imagine further that the Pope, while visiting America, held a Mass in Speedese, so that the universality and transcendence of God could be manifest to all. Apparently, by this writer’s reasoning, the Pope would be ‘encouraging’ people to ‘break the law’ as described above.

   The worst part is that the people in question wouldn’t really have done anything wrong in a higher moral sense. They didn’t endanger anyone else; they just sped up while on a lonely stretch of highway. That’s malum prohibitum – ‘wrong’ just because it’s forbidden, not because it’s immoral.

   ‘Illegal’ immigration is the same way. It’s malum prohibitum. It’s not immoral in any higher sense; it’s just wrong because the government decided it ‘should’ be. I feel it shouldn’t be; that’s a discussion for another day and another post.

   Suffice to say that the writer above felt justified in attacking one of the greatest leaders in the world merely because he held a religious service in a language used by some technical ‘criminals’.

   The ingrained arrogance (national arrogance, not personal arrogance) in that opinion reflects a much bigger problem for America’s future than do the hopes and dreams of hardworking ‘illegals’.