Amidst Forces of Empire
Some of you know that I spent my junior year of college in Madrid. Over the course of that year, many of you asked my parents some version of “How’s Kathryn’s time in Spain?” To which they replied, honestly, “Kathryn’s having a good time, but it’s hard too.”
I don’t think a lot of people studying abroad use “hard” to describe their time, but living in another country for any significant length of time is hard.
I spoke Spanish the majority of my time abroad, and it was hard. And yet I purposefully chose a full immersion program. Many immigrants and refugees living in a new country don’t have that choice, and some come with less knowledge of the local language than I did.
I had to get a student visa before going abroad, which was a frustrating process. Even more difficult was applying for a foreigner identity card while in Spain. Even with the help of my program, in the best of circumstances, dealing with government bureaucracy in a foreign language is overwhelming. Going through a process like that without extensive support – like many immigrants and refugees do – would be exponentially harder.
During my time abroad I lived in an unfamiliar place, in a different culture. It was hard for me to live in a city, in a different climate, with cultural norms I didn’t always understand, and that was even with a comfortable home and a host family to help guide me. I also knew that I would move back to the United States at the end of the school year. Many immigrants and refugees may not have any of these privileges as they adjust to living in a new place.
Today’s gospel reading doesn’t tell us the specifics of Jesus’ family’s experience as refugees in Egypt, but I imagine it was hard. For one thing, they left Israel because of a threat to their child. But what’s interesting about this Bible passage is that in a book with almost no details about Jesus’ childhood, eleven verses are devoted to telling the story of how Jesus became a refugee. This is a story that resonates not only with Jewish history throughout the Hebrew Bible but also with many other people groups who have their own histories of immigration. It’s hard to see how Christianity could be used to justify acts of racism, xenophobia, or colonialism by those in power when Jesus himself lived as a refugee because of the threat of state sanctioned violence against him.
Jesus’ refugee experience ends well. It would have been an untimely end to the gospels, after all, if he had successfully been murdered by Herod in his childhood or if he had died from violence while in a foreign land. And yet, even as Jesus’ family successfully flees persecution, Herod kills every other child under 2 in Bethlehem. We don’t see the large-scale destruction that must have resulted. Instead, we get a deeply personal image of Rachel crying out in grief for her children.
This is a deeply troubling text. It certainly doesn’t feel to me like God is present. How could God have let this kind of destruction happen? In fact, it crossed my mind as I read the text that it feels a little like God fled to Egypt alongside his son.
I don’t have answers to the discomfort this text brings. I actually think finding a way to explain the discomfort away would be a mistake. The response to a story of this nature, whether a biblical story from long ago or a news story in our world today, should not be a detached “oh, that’s sad.” The passage itself gives us this image of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled. That’s a perfectly normal response to tragedy, one that doesn’t – and perhaps can’t – happen in a world with overexposure to horrific news stories on top of personal loss.
Setting aside the question of God’s presence, I think we can all agree that this destruction was Herod’s fault. God may be a force for justice in the world, but unjust rulers have always existed in spite of God. In Herod’s case, he appears to be so afraid of any threat to his power that he’s willing to kill not just Jesus but any and all other children as well. Just a few verses before our gospel reading this morning is the story of the magi, in which Herod learns that a child has been born King of the Jews, one who will be worshiped. He’s not happy about it. Perhaps he knows that Jesus will grow up to disrupt the status quo – in fact, he already has by being born to a teenage, unwed mother. Perhaps Herod’s afraid of any dissent to his rule. Perhaps he’s terrified of what Rome will do if they find out about this so-called King of the Jews. Whatever the reason, he targets a whole group of people for fear of any challenge to his power.
This is, unfortunately, a story that has been repeated throughout history.
Enslaved African Americans were punished for speaking their native languages and for learning to read because slave holders feared a rebellion.
Native American boarding schools were established to forcefully assimilate Native American children into white norms, including many abusive practices to stop Native children from practicing their culture or speaking their language.This attempt to undermine Native American sovereignty and wipe out diversity continued into recent history, with the last federally funded residential school for Native Americans in the United States closing in 1996.
In 1964, Black Rochestarians protesting discrimination were met with police dogs, police gunfire, and, eventually, close to a thousand National Guardsmen. Restoring peace through violence was more important to white leaders than meeting demands for justice, although some change did eventually result from the protest.
In the early 20th century, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were deported regardless of citizenship status in the southwestern U.S. after being blamed for the Great Depression.
This sounds remarkably similar to the arrests, detentions, and deportations regardless of citizenship status that has been happening in the United States recently as ICE and Border Patrol target people of color out of fear and prejudice.
Transgender Americans are currently being targeted because some in power fear that any challenge to the gender binary might cause the whole patriarchy to collapse. The United States ranks third in the world for transgender people who have been violently killed, and LGBTQ+ young people are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, with even higher rates for transgender and nonbinary youth, due to the discrimination they face.
When I thought about this gospel story and the similar persecution that has taken place across history by unjust rulers, I began to wonder about the lectionary pairing. I don't know about you, but this gospel text doesn't feel like a praise God kind of theme like we see in today’s text from Isaiah. However, when I read the verses around the lectionary excerpt, I was left with even more questions about why the lectionary is excerpted the way it is. Because as it turns out, these verses of praise come in the context of praising God for wiping out the Israelites' adversaries. That image of a God who enacts justice through vengeance doesn’t sit better with me than a God who leads his son to safety while Herod kills every child in Bethlehem.
But this lectionary pairing should make us pause. It’s such a stark pairing of praise and destruction that it makes me think it could only be purposeful. When we consider that both texts are in the context of destruction, it seems logical to conclude that perhaps the lectionary pairing is a warning about praising God for destruction. After all, those only concerned with Jesus’ safety might see this gospel story as a happily ever after and praise God for his role in saving Jesus from Herod’s destruction. But although the circumstances are different than in Isaiah, should we really be praising God if it means we’re complicit in or even glorifying violence?
Rachel’s response to destruction in our gospel text is very different. Out in Scripture, a collection of LGBTQ+ inclusive lectionary commentary by scholars and pastors compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, highlights the importance of her weeping, noting how it can resist oppression and call the community to action. Certainly, I think we should be grieving, calling attention to injustice, refusing to be easily consoled. But especially for those of us who aren’t directly affected by discrimination, unjust policy, and targeted attacks, I think we need to take it a step further with action.
I have often felt, especially this year, like I don't know what to do. I've been grappling with history, grappling with the present, and wondering how to act for justice. I imagine that many of you are also wondering what you can do.
For those of you who don't know, I'm getting my masters to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages, meaning I'm learning how to work with immigrants and refugees. I'm also an LGBTQ+ young person. I want to use what I'm learning in my classes and my personal experience as a starting point to offer a few suggestions.
Protesting, calling representatives, advocating for more just policy, and voting are all important action steps. For some of us, it might be easier to learn a language or brush up on one we learned when we were younger. This can help disrupt racist English-only views that devalue other languages and their speakers. For those of you who are not language people, you might take the time to learn about local and national histories of racism and resistance, histories that many of us never learned in school. As a starting place, Shane Weigand, a SUNY Geneseo professor, has a one hour YouTube video on Racist Policy and Resistance in Rochester, New York. Or maybe you could show the LGBTQ+ people in your life that they are loved by practicing inclusive language, using their pronouns correctly, sharing your own pronouns, and challenging anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.
If all of these action steps seem like overwhelming places to start, remember that there are already organizations taking action for justice that you can support by donating or volunteering. One way to support immigrants and refugees here in Fairport is through Learning Links, an organization that offers free tutoring for K-12 students, including many students who are low-income and some who are learning English. They also offer English and citizenship classes for adults. I can speak from experience when I say that tutoring with them is fun and rewarding, but if that’s not your thing, there’s other ways to support Learning Links, including school supply drives.
The Asbury First Community Outreach Center in the city of Rochester is another local ministry that offers hot meals, medical care, showers, laundry, computer access, a storehouse of clothes and home goods, and more to those who need them. I volunteered with the breakfast ministry at Asbury First UMC before their community outreach center opened and it was clear that those who came really appreciated getting a hot meal. They are largely volunteer run, and they also have a list of needs on their website, making it easy to donate to support their work.
No one needs to – or should – do everything. But any action towards justice, no matter how small, is better than nothing. Maybe you can’t stop Herod’s raging, but saving a child is still one more child saved. And if every person in this congregation took one action, imagine the change we could make together.
Whatever we do, we must not ignore the injustice around us while praising God. We must stop and see the destruction, grieve for those harmed, and declare that there is still work to be done in the name of justice.
May we engage in that work, in God’s name. Amen.