“More Love, More Justice” (Sign at “Families Belong Together” March in Chicago protesting an immigration policy that separates children from families and detains families.)
“Love has no borders” (Protest March in Chicago)
“Love never ends.” (St. Paul)
“Welcome one another with the welcome of Christ.” (St. Paul)
“Humanity Before Law” (Protest March in Chicago)
“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” (Jesus)
Jesus came proclaiming God’s reign, God’s governance. He proclaimed that it was not far away, but near. Jesus called people, therefore, to turn (repent) and enter into God’s reign and become witnesses to God’s governance. Those who follow Jesus would, like him, be a sign that contradicts the world’s ways of operating. They would witness to a form of governance that is radically (at its roots) a critique of the governments of the world.
The witness to God’s reign, as we experience it in the letting go of our lives to God and as its reality increasingly becomes ours, exposes false allegiances and false dependencies and the distance from reality that the world and its various national governments manifest. We who are witnesses to God’s way of governing cannot get caught up in any notions concerning the exceptionalism of our nation. I believe it was Soren Kierkegaard who made the observation that democracy exchanges the tyranny of kings for the tyranny of the people. The tyranny of what Christians confess as the “bondage to sin,” remains. Democracy is a step forward because it puts the responsibility on “we the people,” but the problem of sin and selfishness does not go away simply because “we the people” are deciding how to govern ourselves.
The human condition, in its alienation from God, from the source of its life and reality, establishes ways of governing that move far from the reign of God, which is a reign of love. We establish within our “democracies” all manner of injustice and oppression. We find ways to suppress the votes of those we want to exclude; we construct a racist criminal justice system; we ban people whose religion we fear, but do not understand; we snatch children from their parents at our borders to cause fear to others who may want to cross over; we go to war and kill soldiers and civilians alike in order to maintain our power over others (for our “security”); we sell arms and support wars that destroy whole societies, causing starvation and untold suffering. And then “we the people” sing, “God bless America,” remaining in denial about God’s judgment.
It is into this environment, this world as it exists, that the followers of Jesus are sent to be witnesses, not to our nation’s pride of place or our nation’s security or prosperity or its constitution, but to God’s reign. Jesus says we are to be salt, light, and yeast in the world by witnessing to God’s governance.
So we witness: Under God’s governance there are no borders. “Love has no borders.” There is one human family. All are welcome into God’s reign. Yes, we understand that because of the condition of sin, nations will have borders, but we are not sent to witness to our bondage but to God’s liberation. With God, “love never ends.” As it is with salt, light, and yeast, so our witness is to effect change in our world.
We do not have an ideology that can, if adopted, make everything right and just and borders no longer felt to be necessary. Our call is not to an imagined ideal society mapped out in rational terms. Rather our call, as followers of Jesus, is to witness to the Source of our lives and our liberation and transformation. We are to witness to what is on the heart of our Liberator God as we are coming to know it and live it. There may be some who undergo a conversion at the center of their lives because of our witness. Others may, at the least, be moved to see the plight of others and to ease their disregard for other people’s humanity.
I write these words with the church in mind. The church is losing its way. And “the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.” (1 Peter) We are called to repent from all idolatry of race and nation and “our religion.” We are called to turn back to the center, to the One in whom we live and have our being, having no other gods before the one true and living God.