Key points:
- More than 2,000 people gathered Feb. 25 in Washington to march for immigrant justice. After that mountaintop experience, what more shall we do?
- Next steps can include getting to know our immigrant neighbors, offering them support, and attending faithful resistance rallies and prayer vigils, writes John W. Coleman.
- In addition, we can write, call and visit our lawmakers, and partner with advocacy agencies and organizations.
Photo by Corbin Payne.
Commentaries
After seeing Jesus’ miraculous illumination and hearing God’s voice in a cloud atop the Mount of Transfiguration, three disciples — Peter, John and James — descend with their Lord to a valley of vexation below.
There they encounter a crowd witnessing a family’s crisis, until Jesus manifests another miracle: healing the family’s demon-possessed son of his violent, agonizing seizures.
When I preached a sermon on March 1 titled, “From the Cloud to the Crowd,” based on that instructive story in Matthew 17:14-20, I was reminded of what I felt after the Feb. 25 gathering aptly named “Faithful Resistance: A Public Witness for Immigrant Justice,” in Washington.
Over 2,000 clergy and lay religious leaders came from near and far to offer visible and vocal support for our immigrant neighbors being persecuted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who have besieged selected cities and towns since last year. And more than 800 people viewed the livestreamed event, while language interpretation was offered in Spanish and Korean.
“We are on a movement together into God’s own future for justice for our immigrant siblings,” said retired Bishop Minerva Carcaño in her welcome. She helped organize the event as chair of the United Methodist Immigration Task Force. “We want to stand together. We want to protect one another. But this is not a day for civil disobedience. This is a day for clear moral sharing.”
However, after witnessing waves of moral sharing in impassioned, eloquent oratory, uplifting music, and protest signs bearing messages of justice and mercy, I found myself asking, “What comes next?” How shall we descend from this mountain of government edifices at the peak of our nation’s political power? When we return home at day’s end to face the crowds and crises in our own valleys, what shall we do? Or, for some, what more shall we do? How can we be transfigured with newly inspired faith and fortitude for this ongoing struggle?
The many speeches and songs, the proclamations and prayers of confession and lament, the reading of over two dozen names of immigrants from a dozen countries who died during ICE operations and detention — all of this was profoundly moving and is worth viewing in the four-hour YouTube livestream recording. We heard imperatives to demonstrate our faithful resistance and public witness for immigrant justice and mercy when we returned home. That’s what thousands of committed, religious and nonreligious protesters are already doing in and beyond ICE-besieged communities.
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And indeed, we are learning from each other how to build this crucial movement with “open hearts, open minds, open doors,” to borrow our longtime United Methodist motto. We’re learning how to put our church membership vows into motion by taking our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness out into the public square with inspired imagination. That may mean echoing some of the compelling statements we heard and the spirited songs we sang to remind ourselves, in the words of two musical refrains, that “Hope will not fail” and that “We belong to them, and they belong to us.”
We were encouraged to go in teams to visit and talk with congressional leaders and staff from our various states after the rally, which I did. We shared heartfelt stories of callous immigration injustice in our areas, advocated for just and merciful legislation, and followed up our visit with a group letter. Now we need to learn and share more poignant immigrant and refugee stories in personal and group encounters, in all forms of media, and in our sermons and liturgy.
One small church I serve in Southern New Jersey has for years operated a weekly food pantry that welcomes thousands of neighbors monthly to choose from a wide selection of donated, nutritious foods. We provided 38 tons of food last year, plus diapers, to nearly 16,000 people. More than two-thirds of our guests are farmworkers, mostly immigrants and some likely undocumented.
Now we see ICE agents descending upon nearby communities armed with masks, weapons and removal orders, chasing children home from a school bus stop, and threatening to enter church facilities to carry out their searches and demand proof of citizenship. We, like many churches, are taking recommended precautions, knowing agents may come to our doors soon and degrade our cherished system of constitutional justice to just-ICE.
What more shall we do? For me and others perhaps, converse more with our immigrant neighbors and offer them more assistance. Learn about their lives, families, joys and struggles. Collect and share their stories if permitted. Attend and contribute to more faithful resistance rallies and prayer vigils — stopping short of civil disobedience perhaps.
Write, call and visit our legislators’ local and D.C. offices. Partner with viable immigrant support and advocacy agencies and organizations. And hold fast to the guiding scripture shared during our worship service, from 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
“Thanks be to God we have gathered to embody a faithful resistance,” proclaimed Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling, leader of United Methodists in the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Area. Her sermonic manifesto, based on Psalm 24, moved listeners repeatedly to rise from rapt attention to standing ovations.
“Thanks be to God that we are declaring with our bodies that we will no longer stand in complicity with injustice,” she continued. “Thanks be to God, we are declaring with our voices that we will no longer be silent amid the harm. Beloved, this is a call to repentance and re-imagination. This is a theological summons. This is United Methodism at its core.”
Coleman is a longtime communicator and part-time local pastor.
News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, newdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
