On God’s Holy Mountain – Week 4
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Immigrants! Where are you on God’s Holy Mountain? Do we let you in? Why are we afraid of you? Are you taking our jobs, crowding out our schools, taxing our health services? You stoke our deepest fears. You don’t look like us, you don’t always dress like us, you may not practice our religion. Please go home. But wait, you can’t go home. Your home if it were Syria, has been destroyed. If it were El Salvador or Honduras, it has been overrun by gangs, if it were Mexico, you have little economic opportunity, if Eritrea, you suffer from a cruel and autocratic government. You came here looking for hope and opportunity. How have we responded?
Our new president would build a wall to keep you out. Others would make sure those among you that are Muslim would never get in. We give lip service to the notion that we are all immigrants, but we rush to exclude many desperate people from sharing in our prosperity.
Isaiah would have none of this on God’s Holy Mountain. He notes that “the cow and bear shall graze and together their children shall lie down.” We as a parish have proclaimed that we welcome immigrants and refugees as the new banner hanging in our church attests. We are supporting at least one immigrant family. We will continue to look for opportunities to “graze together” and where our children together “shall lie down.” Importantly too, we will continue to pray for undocumented immigrants, for refugees, for those seeking asylum. And we will pray for those among us that continue to block immigrants from entering our country that they will experience a change of heart and mind.
-Prepared by parishioner Roger Sullivan