Final Paper Example

Border Issues Seminar

Final Project- Sermon

January 29, 2009

For this project I wanted to incorporate what I feel to be the most important aspect of immigration, and that aspect is the Theology of immigration.  I have my personals reasons for why I believe that this is the most important part of immigration, but that is not what my sermon will be about.  In trying to decide on what audience I wanted to write this for, I realized that I wanted to write it towards an audience that I feel could actually be an audience that I speak to one day.  I recently finished training to be a Young Life leader.  Young Life is a high school ministry organization that focuses on teaching/ introducing high school students to who Jesus is while also helping the students grow in the relationships with Christ.  As a leader, two of my responsibilities are to lead a small Bible study group as well as give talks at what we call “Club,” which is basically a relaxed and fun time of fellowship.  Therefore, I am going to write my sermon as if I am speaking to these high school students, taking into account that some might know very little, if anything, about Jesus and that others might have strong faith lives and are very aware of what the Bible offers.  I chose to do this because this exact sermon could one day be a talk of mine or a good discussion starter for the Bible study.  I want the kids to learn about being able to apply what they read and learn from the Bible into their specific lives, so through this sermon I will be sharing one way that I am applying what I know to my life.

I want to tell you a story about a few people that I have recently met that have drastically altered the way that I approach and view life.  I will begin with a bit of background.  During the first week of January, the time when most people are frantically searching for new ways to turn their lives around whether it be through weight loss, change of attitude, etc., I found myself instead immersed in a culture that I never truly understood in the attempt to gain more knowledge rather than change my life around.  Once I became familiar with the idea of a border between the United States and Mexico in my earlier years, I was able to form my opinions based of news stories, word of mouth from who I thought to be credible sources, and my own imagination of what life was like in a border area.  As I progressed through my first year and a half of college, I found myself learning more truths about this area, and my perception of the border was further altered and I felt as though I was beginning to form a clearer understanding of border culture.  Therefore, going into the week in El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, I was not anticipating anything that I would soon find out would be thrown my way.  

Upon arriving in El Paso, I was taken to a place called Casa Vides, where I met a family that was staying there through the Annunciation House program.  The family living there contained four children: Carina, Jesus, Carla, and Marta.  The three youngest, Jesus, Carla and Marta, instantly attached themselves to us students that came on a trip to learn about the issues facing their lives as children of immigrants.  The initial reaction that I had to actually living in this situation among Spanish-speaking people in an area of El Paso that consisted of mostly Spanish-speaking individuals was one of culture shock.  I was nearly blown away at the fact that as an American, the majority of people in this area of my country could not speak my language.  I felt like a loner, and “outcast,” and just different from everyone else.  I wanted so badly to be able to communicate perfectly with these people, but I couldn’t.  It was frustrating to me, but there were three individuals that seemed to make it all okay by providing for me the feeling of acceptance and that I was welcomed there.  Those three were Jesus, Carla, and Marta.  The three of them spent a lot of time with our group and really enjoyed our presence.  The fact that only a couple of us could understand them pretty well did not phase them.  They wanted to learn about us and have fun with us.  That genuine love and interest that they took to us, me especially, was the only way that I was able to no longer feel like a stranger or outcast.  

That genuine emotion that they showed towards me is exactly God is calling us to do for others.  This is exemplified in what has recently become one of the most powerful verses of the Bible in my life.  That verse is Hebrews chapter 13, verse 12, and it goes “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”  The first thing that pops into my head when I see this passage is that, as simple as it is, it conveys a key ingredient to happiness and cooperation on earth.  God is telling us that each person is important and that each one of us is no more or less important than the person sitting next to us.  In thinking about this verse when it comes to allowing people into our country and using our facilities and institutions without being a true part of the United States of America, my heart tells me that God is saying that this isn’t my country or these aren’t my institutions.  Rather, this land and everything that a part of it belongs to a greater power than me, than you, than anyone else on the earth.  From this passage I choose to look at the statistics about the amount of immigrants entering our country undocumented each year as just a statistic for the sake of statistics.  The immigrants that are coming here to work for $0.65 per 60-pound barrel of chili peppers are no lower than me just because I was born in this country.  Don’t get me wrong; I am a big supporter of a strong economy and having laws to keep order within the nation, but laws that keep “order” at the expense of the natural rights of a human are not laws that “entertain strangers.”  Through this verse there is a factor that should give incentive to live this way.  At the end of the verse, by saying that you might have “unknowingly entertained angels,” there is a feeling that a reward will come of this.  For Jesus, Carla and Marta there was no immediate reward for wanting to spend a lot of time with and us and making us feel at home in their home, but their innocence led them to instinctively treat us in the way that they did.  As we grow older, especially once we begin to develop into adults and understand the power of our own minds, we tend to lose this instinct and instead let our brains control our actions rather than what we naturally feel is right.  We need to be able to recognize this and consciously work to have this become our instinct once again.

I am very aware that many people do not take what the Bible says literally, and I also agree that there are obvious parts that should be left up to interpretation.  When it comes to strictly advice, as given in the previous passage, it is okay to trust the advice and actually do what it says.  For those of you that might lean more towards personal interpretation of the Bible, however, one area that is discussed a lot in this context is the life of Jesus.  Whether or not he really performed all the miracles that the Bible says or not, what can be taken from the New Testament is Jesus’s willingness to reach out to the lowliest of people, the social outcasts.  Let’s take the story of Zacchaeus from Luke, chapter 19.  In this story Zacchaeus is a tax collector, one of the most hated men Jericho at the time.  When it was known that Jesus was going to be in Jericho, people flooded to the streets in hopes of seeing him.  Zacchaeus is too scared to be with the general public because everyone hates him, so instead he hides in a tree just hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus.  As Jesus progresses through Jericho, he stops at the tree and calls to Zacchaeus and befriends him in from of the public.  Everyone wondered why Jesus wanted to be with a sinner, but Jesus was there to show the others that even the people that seem to have no hope can still become a part of the kingdom of God.  This story, however simple it may be, is a strong representation of what type of person God is calling us to be.  Yes, immigrants come to this country undocumented, which in the eyes of the government is considered “illegal,” but God is calling us to be with the people that do not follow the cultural norms.  Those that are seen as “bad” people are the ones that we should be welcoming with open arms rather than pushing away indefinitely.  

In the article, “Five Myths About Immigration,” five of the common misconceptions of immigrants are taken into consideration.  While each of these statements can be supported either way, they are all important issues because they affect human beings.  If Americans feels as though their rights are not being given to them as a result of undocumented immigration, then the issue needs to be tended to.  This is where the situation starts to get a little sticky because it is hard to tell if being completely supportive of immigration is also being supportive of Americans losing their natural rights.  That debate, however, is for a different day.  When putting the common feelings of many Americans up against Luke 19:1-10, this “Christian” nation does not seem like such, but that is part of the idea that humans are sinful beings.  When someone from the United States makes a statement regarding how immigrants are nothing more than parasites on our public services, it makes me cringe because the term public is meant as American.  I like the idea of a true public service because it is to benefit all people in the area, no matter what.  Ideas such as these that are presented in the article demonstrate the importance of striving to be like Jesus because mentalities such as those presented through the myths breed sin.  Jesus’s life and his teachings are means through which we can learn more about how to live in accordance with God’s will and become what a Christian should strive to be.  The more we can truly and consciously live out what God wants of us, the more we can spread this good news to others.   

While I could sit here and tell you about Jesus’s life and how he basically lived in a constant migration, I try to focus mostly of other aspect of scripture because of the controversy concerning the Gospels and the fact that many people have probably heard about the many travels of Jesus.  This takes me back to Hebrews, in chapter 11 verses 13 through 16.  These verses read:

“All these died in faith.  They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.  If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had the opportunity to return.  But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.  Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

This particular reading speaks of the people of the past in the sense that they all died performing God’s will.  This will, for them, was finding a new place to live and spread God’s word.  By the end of the passage it is shown that in the end what all people truly desire is that “heavenly” place in which they can live forever.  That heavenly place is in Christ, and in striving be find this homeland we have to be more willing to understand where these migrants come from and why they are coming here.  We also must take the time to think about how much we are truly affected, both negatively and positively, by immigration and see if those results are enough to believe that what the Bible is saying and leading us to is different from being accepting of the immigrants.  I understand that although Jesus, Carla, and Marta might not know what the Bible is or anything about what it says, but the sincere love that they showed for us was incomparable.  In the end, we must be loving of others and be as compassionate as we can be.  I think that once can allow ourselves to learn and change according to what we hear in scripture and apply those things to life, we will learn to love more than we thought we could and we will be more open to new people and new ideas regardless of from where they come.