“Buenas noches,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. It took me a minute to recognize the polite and timid tone. It was Jose*, a young man whose family I have become close to at church. “Sorry to bother you this late,” he continued, “but I wanted to talk to you about something important – I’m considering going north.” My heart sank.

“You know what it’s like in my neighborhood,” he said. “Gracias a Dios I don’t have problems with anyone right now, but they know I don’t have work and it’s just a matter of time before They start asking me to “do favors”. That’s a business that I don’t want to get into.” Jose paused; “Once you’re in, there’s no way out.”

I did know what it was like in Jose’s neighborhood, a marginal community built on the side of a ravine at the San Salvador city limits, and he was right. They – the local clique or cell group of one of the major street gangs – control the area. Despite a large and well-staffed police post in the center of the neighborhood, it is known that drugs, weapons and cash move in and out of the community with relative ease. Surrounded by this pervasive culture of illicit activity, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Jose and his family have remained reasonably untouched as long as they have.

I wept silently and listened as he shared his fears and frustrations. He told me of the conversation with a coyote who could help him cross the border in a semi-truck for the fee of $6,000. Jose would have to pay half up front and the other half upon arrival, payment of which had been promised by a cousin living in Houston. I felt so helpless to respond. He had clearly given this a lot of thought; what could I possibly say that might discourage him from this decision? When your reality includes 16-year-old boys going missing, never to be seen or heard from again, and 13-year-old girls impregnated as a means to claim them as gang “property”, somehow the dangers, expense, and lack of guarantee associated with making the journey north seem like the better of bad options.

As heart-wrenching as it is, stories like Jose’s are not uncommon. And although we are becoming accustomed to a daily dose of dehumanizing rhetoric and heated political debate around policies and tactics meant to “combat the problem” of migration, the reality of the tens of thousands of children and families in desperate need of refuge is so much more than the terms “border emergency” or “humanitarian crisis” can express. These are our kin. While politicians on all sides are posturing, the ones whom Jesus calls the least of these his siblings – our siblings – continue to suffer without food and water in the desert, sick and without visitors in detention centers, and denied welcome as deportees.

Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, writes: “The measure of our compassion lies not in our service to those on the margins, but only in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.” As people of faith, we are called to respond compassionately to our siblings forced to choose between risking it all by leaving and risking it all by staying, and who have opted for the former. Jesus charges us to see immigrants and refugees as he does, as family, and to choose welcome. May it be so.

Paz y bien,

Kristi Van Nostran

It is with heartfelt gratitude and appreciation that I acknowledge the many individuals and congregations that are opening their hearts and their doors to offer hospitality and hope asylum seekers in our communities. And, if you are interested in learning more about the ways you and your congregation can get involved with the SoCal Presbyterian Immigrant Accompaniment Ministry, please reach out to me at PresbyWelcome@gmail.com. 

It seems to me that we Americans are more frequently running into what I’d call “parallel universe” experiences.  As social and traditional media prove and amplify the impact of particular actions and statements, we are becoming more aware of experiences of different groups in our communities—experiences that in the past were largely unknown.

One early example of this came out of the O.J. Simpson trial some years back, when the question of unfair police treatment of African-Americans came up.  That may have been the first time the general press discussed the disparity between how police were seen by dominant culture communities and communities of color, especially African-Americans.  This has been expanded in recent months by the plethora of reports of people calling the police against innocent people who are “living while black.”  In December 2018, a list was compiled of times in 2018 alone when police were called on African-Americans, including:

Unlocking the door to his own business
Golfing too slowly
Waiting for a friend at Starbucks
Barbecuing at a park
Working out at a gym
Campaigning for elected office door to door (she won!)
Moving into an apartment
Shopping for clothes for the prom
Taking a nap in a university common room (as a registered student)
Asking for directions
Not waving while leaving an Airbnb
Redeeming a coupon
Driving his white grandmother home from church
Babysitting two white children
Working as a home inspector
Working as a firefighter
Delivering newspapers
Swimming in a pool
Shopping while pregnant
And many more . . .

As I was editing this list (to shorten it), I noticed that even when blacks were with whites, this added to the problem—for instance, it was assumed that the young man driving with his white grandmother was robbing her.  (A sad footnote is that the person who alerted the police in this instance was also black—studies have shown that all of us have absorbed racial stereotypes, even against ourselves.)

These situations seem so outrageous that past reports were not believed.  It’s only because people can now use their phones to record videos of the incidents (and post them on social media) that this phenomenon is being exposed.  I remember being in seminary over 20 years ago, when a black student heard a “thud” in his neighbor’s apartment in student housing—he went to her door to make sure she was okay, and she called the police on him.

Another “parallel universe” experience came with the rise of the “Me Too” movement, when reports of various kinds of sexual harassment and violence were made known.  I was surprised to hear men express their shock and surprise that these incidents occurred, because I would guess that just about every woman has experienced some form of sexual harassment—men exposing themselves, making sexually suggestive and sometimes coercive remarks, touching or kissing inappropriately and without permission, and far worse.

And now, people are reacting to the words “go back where you came from.”  As people discussed this phrase, I noticed how it touched an old and deep wound within me.  I noticed how commentators thought the phrase has been attributed only to recent immigrants, or conversely how it can be used more locally, like when New Yorkers move south, or Californians move north.  I realized that dominant culture folks didn’t know how pervasively that phrase (or its variations, such as “go back to Africa” or “where are you really from?”) has been used to tell people of color and non-Christians that we do not belong, that we will never be seen as fully American, no matter how long our people have been here.  The New York Times asked on its website to share times they were told this, and almost instantaneously, they got over 16,000 responses—from African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, and others.

In the years after Jesus came to be one of us, some of his followers lived out their faith in amazing ways.  In a highly segregated, classist society, the early Christian church received Gentiles and Jews, women and men, slaves and slave owners, poor and wealthy, illiterate and educated, and people with varied levels of citizenship status.  I think we need to emulate the apostle Paul, who by his own account was Jewish, well-educated, a Roman citizen, self-employed, and a sinful persecutor of Christians, and used his own background to reach out to those whose inclusion in the early church was resisted.  In his letter to Philemon, Paul very delicately appeals to a slave owner to receive back his escaped slave not as a slave, but as a beloved brother.  What a bold appeal!  Philemon could have affirmed that the slave Onesimus broke the law, and even if freed legally, the class difference is undeniable—yet Paul urges that the past be erased, and that Philemon now see Onesimus as a peer, a family member, forever.

Too often we Presbyterians find ourselves disrespecting fellow members as not Presbyterian enough, or as new Christians, and unconsciously we make these judgments based on race, immigrant status, or education level.  May we follow our Biblical tradition and see the new creation that Jesus brings out in each of us, and love one another as family—whether or not they look like us, agree with us, or have known us for decades.  And as we receive each other as family, may we listen to each others’ stories, and care for each others’ hurts, that together we may be the loving, vulnerable, and persevering body of Christ we are called to be.

Over the next two weeks, you will not see much of me, as I am trying to take some time off, and then will be going to the Big Tent in Baltimore.  I should be back starting August 7.  And over the next few months, I have invited our Presbytery staff to write their own reflections on their ministries among us, to give you better perspective on the work they do on our behalf.  I look forward to our growing understanding of the ways we can serve Christ and Christ’s people as individuals, churches, and the Presbytery of San Gabriel.

In Christ,

Wendy

There are many reasons that we humans fall into discord and disagreement.  Sometimes this happens simply because the same word means different things in our minds, but we assume we all think the same thing.  Personally, I believe this is a big problem with the word “church.”  When I used to do a lot of church transformation consulting, I would talk about the act of “discovering” the church’s vision.  An important part of this discovering is the realization that everyone has a vision of what church is supposed to be and do, but they often don’t articulate it and aren’t even aware that their visions differ—so people regularly run up against each other’s unspoken visions.  So an important part of the visioning process is to “un”-cover, or “dis”-cover, our particular visions of church, and come to a shared understanding so we can all move in a more coordinated direction.

Every once in a while I am reminded that we run into similar pitfalls with the word “justice.”  I believe that one way people differ theologically is based on how we understand God’s justice. 

When I think of “justice,” I think of three different forms (this is not an academic paper, so please forgive this amateur’s thoughts on the subject):

1. Retributive justice, which requires punishment and restitution to neutralize the guilt of the offender.  When Christians talk about the crucifixion of Jesus as “buying” our freedom, it means that God’s retributive justice against the sinfulness of humankind had to be satisfied with punishment that Jesus took upon himself, for our sake.
2. Distributive justice, which seeks to allocate resources more evenly across all people.  This was described multiple times in the account of the Acts church, where “they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:45)  Note that the distribution is not measured by who deserves more or less; it is just based on need.  (In fact, the judgment was directed against those who attempted to withhold personal wealth from the community.)  When you think of the early church members giving their all to a community that came to include ex-slaves and slave masters, Jews and Gentiles, women and men, the radical nature of this vision of distributive justice is pretty amazing—our efforts at multiculturalism has nothing on our early church ancestors!
3. Restorative justice, as I mentioned in my column on May 28^th, attempts to provide healing for both victim and perpetrator by bringing them together for a facilitated conversation that enables them to speak their truth and come to see each other as people who can forgive, accept forgiveness, and reconcile.  I am most inspired and challenged by this work, which is so often carried out by Christians who are seeking to forgive, as Jesus forgives us, and as Jesus commands us—and in this forgiving, other children of God are given healing mercy that is the manifestation of the grace of Jesus Christ.

This probably reflects my personal bias, but I believe that the mistake we make is our focus on retributive justice.  Worse, we may think it is our job to mete out retributive justice.  However, my reading of the Bible says that it is only God who should choose to enact retributive justice—and that sometimes God chooses NOT to, often to the dismay of God’s vengeance-seeking children.  The words in Acts 9:16 come from Jesus, who directed the believer Ananias to receive and heal the stricken Saul, whom Ananias knew to be a persecutor of Christians.  Ananias initially resisted the order to open his home to this murderer, but retribution is the sole responsibility of the Lord, not of Ananias.

Frankly, it would be easy and even satisfying (in a broken human way) for us to practice our form of retributive justice—which may be why God wants to keep that to the judgment of Jesus Christ, “who has already offered himself to the judgment of God in my place and removed the whole curse from me.”  (Heidelberg Catechism, Question 52).

Instead, we are told repeatedly that our job is to practice distributive and restorative justice, as God has shown to us.  The prophets through the millenia, Jesus in feeding the five thousand and reaching out to the outcast, the calls for mercy to the widow, the orphan, and the least of these point to our call to offer mercy and tangible help to all, especially those in need.  And perhaps the most effective witness of Jesus’ claim on our hearts is the ability to forgive, which is the foundation of restorative justice.  We know restorative justice is possible because of the world-changing willingness of Nelson Mandela to reconcile with members of the Apartheid government in South Africa that imprisoned him for 27 years, and more locally we remember the Amish families of schoolgirls killed at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and survivors of the saints killed in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  The forgiveness offered by those who have faced evil unleashed on the innocent—but also countless other, more personal, acts of forgiveness and reconciliation—help to make visible God’s kingdom of heaven.

Even as we continue to call out injustice in our world, and seek to prevent the abuse of the most vulnerable in our midst, let us seek to practice distributive and restorative justice, as we live as bearers of Christ’s mercy for this broken world.  What an awesome responsibility, and a most amazing opportunity to reflect God’s glory.

In Christ,

Wendy

We all have little bytes of data that make up our particular identity in this world.  I remember when I was in seminary, and we held an exercise in diversity during orientation.  We were to step forward if we identified with various experiences.  One experience that stuck with me was “I or someone in my family have been incarcerated.” 

Of course I let it go by.  I come from a family of ministers and schoolteachers; hardly the jailbird types!  But then it occurred to me that my mother and many family members were incarcerated in World War II internment camps; in fact one cousin was born in the camp.  I was paralyzed by the dilemma—I can’t step forward as if my family were imprisoned, as if one of my relatives had run aground of the law.  They hadn’t done anything wrong!  But that’s what has happened to so many people of color; they are accused of wrongdoing and imprisoned, often without any proof but for the color of their skin.

Like most people, I refer to the camps that imprisoned 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of whom were citizens (like my mother, who had never even stepped foot out of the US), as “internment camps.”  But some people call them concentration camps, a term defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard”—though they point out that the term has often been used to refer to Nazi death camps, which has caused much sensitivity about the use of the term.  You probably have heard that this term has been used most recently to describe the detention centers holding asylum seekers from Central America.

As it turns out, there are some similarities.  Last Thursday night, I attended an event in Little Tokyo, protesting the use of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as a detention center for migrant children from Central America.  Fort Sill is still an active Army post, first staked out in 1869.  But it has also been used for detention.  In 1894, Geronimo and 341 other Apache were kept at Fort Sill as prisoners of war; in fact, Geronimo died there in 1909.  During World War II, 700 Japanese-American immigrants (we call them issei, or first generation) were held there.  Three of the issei died at Fort Sill, including Kanesaburo Oshima.  He was taken to Fort Sill from Hawai`i.  His wife and eleven children were left at home, and he suffered a mental breakdown.  Unarmed, he attempted to climb the barbed wire fence, and was shot dead by a guard.

And now, there is a plan to detain as many as 5,000 children at Fort Sill.

Japanese-Americans have always sworn “never again” to this kind of mass incarceration—not only for Japanese-Americans, but any people detained without trial.  (Of course, even if there was a trial, we ordinarily do not hold children accountable for the actions of adults caring for them.)  So we feel called to speak up whenever we see others being persecuted for being a member of an ethnic or religious group deemed undesirable. 

I have been impressed with the strong positive response to Kristi Van Nostran’s ministry as Immigrant Accompaniment Organizer.  My guess is that many of us have been wondering how to help with this crisis.  Kristi has many different ways you or your church can help, so I encourage you to contact her.  You can scroll down for a flyer on her work.  And Presbyterian News Service wrote an article on our ministry, which is on-line here.

There is also a global movement to show our concern about immigrants being detained.  It is called Lights for Liberty, and the event will be held on Friday, July 12, at 7:30 pm in many locations.  Click here for a current list (note that CA for California comes after Canada).  Originally the vigils were planned for detention centers, so a major site will be at the detention center in downtown Los Angeles, at 535 Alameda.  But now there will be vigils wherever a group chooses to organize one.

Many of us have experienced personally, or in our families, trauma that in God’s grace leads to compassion for others who suffer.  If nothing else, if we want to show love for Jesus, he tells us how to show that love in Matthew 25.  As we hear renewed threats of deportation raids, as we hear horror stories of children dying in custody of the US government, as we learn that in desperation, ICE has at times released detainees by simply dumping them without anything in a strange city, there is much need for us to pray—with our hearts, with our faith, and with our hands and feet. 

So I ask for your prayers, and your compassion that leads to action, that includes visiting and welcoming the stranger, in prison or in our community.  I also ask your prayers for Al Lorenz and the people of Grace Presbyterian Church in Highland Park, who held their final worship service yesterday.  Even in these times of uncertainty, may our siblings in San Gabriel Presbytery—as well as God’s children fleeing violence and suffering—be filled and comforted by the Holy Spirit.  May all people feel the loving presence of Jesus Christ, that their souls be free, even if they are imprisoned by immigration, criminal action, or any other way that we are too often bound by the brokenness of ourselves, or of this world.

In prayer,
Wendy