Porte Ouvert

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, 

shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah 

on the day of judgment than for that town.

-Matthew 10: 14-15

In Paris, people are welcoming strangers into their homes.  In the midst of the fear and violence they are opening doors to people who are stuck and away from their safety and security.  In Paris, where the police are mobilizing with frightening military efficiency and where the dead from last week are not yet buried, ordinary people are deciding not to be terrorized.

In the United States, a nation built by immigrants, which has as one of her enduring symbols a gift from France standing in New York Harbor, Lady Liberty, with her torch raised and her inscription: "Send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."  Governors quibble about receiving refugees, people indulge dark, fearful, isolationist thoughts.

I cannot recall a time when I have been more ashamed of our nation.  I may have disagreed with policies, I may not really like the vast and unquestionable military industrial complex, but always I have felt that when the rubber hit the road America would do the right thing.  There have been moments where it took us a minute: Hurricane Katrina, and there are areas where we undoubtedly have lots of work left to do: civil rights, but I would like to believe that we as a nation have the courage of our convictions.

There is no country on earth that owes as much to the diversity and richness of immigrants.  There is no other country in the history of humanity that can offer such a hope that, somehow, someway, we can transcend our differences and live together in peace.  Right now, we are failing to be our best, and we are failing for the worst reasons: fear, greed and selfishness.

Even if you are a secular humanist with no interest in biblical standards, you should notice that these rampant expressions of fear and hatred are contrary to the better angels of our nature.  You should be aware that the terrorists are winning, because we are afraid.  In our fear we are becoming violent and hateful, and that is precisely what they believed we were all along.

If you are a person who cares about the Bible, Jew, Christian, Muslim or even one of those Spiritual But Not Religious types, you should note that Cain wandered the earth and was a refugee, and God forbid anyone from harming him (even though he had murdered his brother).  Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, not because they were sexually depraved, but because they failed to offer proper hospitality to strangers. Abram (Abraham) left his home country and wandered to the place The LORD showed him.  His son Ishmael was disinherited and God cared for him.  His grandson Jacob had to flee from his brother Esau and take refuge in the house of his uncle Laban.  The twelve tribes of Israel went to Egypt as refugees and were rescued from a famine.  The refugees, being different and homeless eventually became oppressed and were rescued by another fugitive, a murderer named Moses.  They wandered as refugees for forty years, and remember that wandering even now on Passover and Sukkoth.  Jesus was a refugee before he was even old enough to talk, and he remained a man who had no place to lay his head, even as he began to preach about the Kingdom of Heaven, and he emphasized to his disciples the necessity of giving and receiving hospitality.

I'm not even going to bother assembling a collection of texts that prove this point, because proof texting is obnoxious, but also because it's utterly unnecessary in this particular case, this is such a powerful theme in the whole narrative that if you miss it you're just being as dense as a neutron star.

Don't tell me about your faith and then say we can't or we shouldn't welcome these people fleeing from hell itself.  Don't make excuses about how they might be dangerous, because I'll admit, they might be, most of them aren't, but a few of them will be.

The Church I Pastor is called Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church, the story of the Good Samaritan challenges us to re-define our definition of neighbor.  Jesus uses a Samaritan for a purposeful effect, to summon the idea of someone who is different from the man in the ditch, someone who most of the audience would find objectionable.  The Samaritan is the one who risks his life for the wounded man, who invests his time and treasure in the man whom he does not know.

Let's face it America, we're not on the front lines of this one, there is an ocean between us and the refugees fleeing Syria.  Only a small fraction of them will ever get here, but if Paris can open their doors, given what has just happened there, it is a dirty, rotten shame if we can't at least do the same.

I want to have faith, that if this decision was put in the hands of the American people instead of in the hands of politicians we would be better, we would be more loving and welcoming, we would live up to our own values and get serious about our unique place in history as a demonstration that we can be more together than we are apart, you know E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one.  Seriously people, this idea is all over the place, open the ever loving door.