Stangers: Thoughts on Immigrants and Shalom

“You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers…”
Deuteronomy 10:19

About an hours’ drive from my Church in Clearwater Fl is a little town called, Wimauma. There is a community of migrant farmworkers there made up mostly of families who must pick and harvest to survive. They live below the poverty level, most are not legal aliens, have no health insurance and are over charged for rent by their land lords. They are hard working and seeking a better life for them and their families, one they believe cannot be had in their own countries. Beth-El is a mission there dedicated to serving the needs and families of the migrant farmworker. They provide food and clothing for the families, health, and legal advice, education for the children and an adult high school. In addition to all these services, Beth-El provides a message of hope through the Gospel of Jesus. There is a congregation that meets there for worship and fellowship; like Koinonia Farm before them, Beth-El is a real and living “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God”.

Beth-El has helped me to see a real need in our culture to obey the Law of God in regards to the stranger in our land, the alien or immigrant. Exodus and Deuteronomy record God’s vision for strangers. He loves them and desires to include them in his people and to show them that they are humans and therefore created in his image and have his special attention. He charges his people to love them as he does and to care for them as their own family, for indeed we are all one under God. Israel is also given another motivation for seeing the immigrant as one they love; Israel was once a people of immigrants and strangers in Egypt. Indeed, Israel’s beginnings under Abraham were as a nomadic tribe. Wherever they went they were strangers and passers through.

If there is anything we have in common as a nation with ancient Israel it is that we too are a nation of immigrants and aliens. My great, great grandmother was a member of the Blackfoot tribe and I have ancestors from Ireland and England, how can I look down at an immigrant from Mexico or Guatemala without looking down also at my ancestors? And not to mention how can I treat the immigrant with prejudice and injustice and say I love God and his law? I wonder can these same questions be posed by our nation as a whole? We all have ancestors that had to come through Ellis Island in order to give us citizenship in this great nation. Do we actually believe that we as Americans can afford to shun the stranger?

Another point I would like to draw from the example of Israel is that like her we are all born in exile. An angle with a flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden signifies our desolate state as a species. We were created to reflect God’s image of beauty and justice to the world and each other, to live forever with our great God as his children and stewards. We are however not permitted into the Garden ever again. We wander aimlessly through existence without purpose, without our humanity. Is it any wonder that when we are awakened by his grace that we experience such fullness in our lives never before present? It is the victory and provision of Jesus that opens up the Garden once again, in him we return home to our God and to our humanity. Our salvation is therefore dependent on God’s kindness to us as strangers. We cannot know him unless he discloses himself. We remain a stranger until he reaches down and adopts us into his kingdom. I believe then it is the duty of those given grace to inspire our nation of immigrants to a greater compassion for the strangers in their land. To love God is to love our neighbor, whether they are across our street or across our borders.

Urban Shalom: God's Vision for the Hip-Hop Culture

There has been a lot of debate as to whether Hip-Hop culture is a legitimate sub-culture and therefore a people group. I will not attempt here to retrace the arguments within these intense dialogues, this is after all just a blog and one of my dear friends and veteran bloggers reminds me of my blogging weakness…”you need to be better disciplined in the art of brevity”. So in the spirit of that wisdom I will simply say that I am a real person from the Hip-Hop culture. We are a real people group and in need of Shalom as much as any other people group. We have our history, forms of expression, politics, traditions, ect. I highly recommend a book by my good friend Tommy Kyllonen, pastor of Crossover Church in Tampa, FL entitled, ‘Unorthodox: Church, hip-hop, culture’ for a great intro to the origins of hip-hop as a movement and as a culture. One more suggestion would be William Branch’s (a.k.a. Ambassador) articles on the Church’s mission to the Hip-Hop culture especially his responses to Craig G. Lewis.

Shalom is God’s vision for humanity and the world he has created as reveled in the Hebrew Torah, Wisdom Literature and Prophets. It is his plan to bring this world “back to rights” from the perverted thing it has become since evil’s appearance into it. Shalom is the world as it was created to be, should be now and indeed will be; a world of justice, right relationships and delight (see Nicholas Wolterstorff’s essay, ‘Teaching for Shalom’ in Educating for Shalom). Indeed the ushering in of this beautiful world is the primary vocation of everyone who would call themselves a follower of God in Jesus.

The Urban culture is no exception to the desperate need for Shalom, nor has God exempted us. Rather he has called many of us to himself and has charged us to live out his vision on the streets of our city. The Hip-Hop culture like the first created culture began as a beautiful thing. It sprang out of the need to deal with poverty and the rampant gang problem in the Bronx. Peaceful rallies gave birth to a new sound from a DJ’s turn tables. Peace, love, unity and respect were the cries of this new vision for the community. And it results were evident. Young people desired college and continuing education for the purpose of peace. They were studying music to be better DJs and MCs and professors and business owners and doctors, ect; A very different looking generation than the one full of gang bangers just a few years older.

Some say that Hip-Hop has evolved into a very different thing since its humble beginnings in late 70s Bronx NY. I would argue that what they see in the mainstream, the millions of dollars a year globally influential industry, is something different entirely. Yes it has its connections to Hip-Hop, like I have connections to my Father, but my Father and I are distinct people and responsible for our own persons. So this modern day Rap industry founded on completely different philosophies and principles as Hip-Hop is a distinct movement. Also I believe it is important to point out that the people of the Urban culture are not being helped by the success of the rap industry, but rather this industry profits from that which enslaves urbanites. Hip-Hop has its foundations in a desire to see the urban culture overcome what binds them.

So what does this have to do with Shalom? The Church has a missional vocation. The people of God have the same ministry Christ left them when he ascended. We have his Spirit and word to empower and equip us for that task left to us, to go into all the world and build Shalom. The Hip-Hop culture is still dealing with the same problems of the 70s and 80s and 90s and more. There is profit in the positive and non-violent messages of Hip-Hop. Education, very much promoted by the early movement is a very important tool in the battle against racial prejudice, poverty and violence. History has taught however that these good things are not enough. And though she still communicates these cries for her people, Hip-Hop’s voice has been made a whisper in our day. Hip-Hop, like all other cultures, needs and has always needed the good and benevolent rule of Jesus over her. It is the Gospel and all it entails that can deliver the Hip-Hop culture from all her oppressions. This should be evident on a mass cultural level with the Gospel’s influence of the civil rights movement, a movement very close to the Hip-Hop culture.

So what is God’s vision for the Urban culture? His vision is the same for us as it is for all of humanity, that our cities be full of love and respect, of justice and beauty. When the Hip-Hop culture comes into Shalom, and I believe it will, all will see the original vision of the Hip-Hop movement fulfilled and much more:

• 
  Behold, I will create
  new heavens and a new earth.
  The former things will not be remembered,
  nor will they come to mind.
  But be glad and rejoice forever
  in what I will create,
  for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
  and its people a joy.
  I will rejoice over Jerusalem
  and take delight in my people;
  the sound of weeping and of crying
  will be heard in it no more.
  Never again will there be in it
  an infant who lives but a few days,
  or an old man who does not live out his
  years; he who dies at a hundred
  will be thought a mere youth;
  he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered
  accursed.
  They will build houses and dwell in them;
  they will plant vineyards and eat their
  fruit.
  No longer will they build houses and others
  live in them, or plant and others eat.
  For as the days of a tree,
  so will be the days of my people;
  my chosen ones will long enjoy
  the works of their hands.
  They will not toil in vain
  or bear children doomed to misfortune;
  for they will be a people blessed by the
  LORD, they and their descendants with them.
  Before they call I will answer;
  while they are still speaking I will hear.
  The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
  and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
  but dust will be the serpent's food.
  They will neither harm nor destroy
  on all my holy mountain,"
  says the LORD.
  

The Significance of Mercy

For your name’s sake, O Lord, Pardon my guilt, for it is great. – Psalm25:11

Have mercy on me, a sinner! – Luke 18:13

It is our natural instinct to search for meaning and significance. The reality TV craze, obsession with Hollywood gossip, a billion dollar a year porn industry, a media encouraging us to live beyond our economic means even in our present recession, all these and more are attempts to manufacture purposes for us to live and work. Fancy cars, fake breasts, and black cards seem to be status symbols many in our land strive to achieve. Many of us think maybe these things will grant us the significance we hunger for, the status and acceptance we believe we need.

It is time that we as a culture are honest with ourselves and each other, these things will not and indeed cannot satisfy the true human hunger for meaning and significance. These things will not answer your calls for happiness because we are not what we are portrayed to be by our media. We are humans, and as such we are created in the image of God. We cannot help but feel that something more is in store, we seem to hear “echoes” of what should be. We are to do more than merely hear the faint whispers of justice and beauty; we are the ones through whom these are to come about. We were created for this purpose, to reflect the holy and brilliant character and personality of God. This, my friends is the Christian definition of the human.

Our need for significance is a natural one because we are significant, we are important to God’s world, but we have lost our way. Instead of carrying justice we trample it; instead of beauty we compose the most heinous of scenes. The only way we can again regain our true humanness and role as protector of this world and no longer its destroyer is to find or rather to be granted mercy. We need to seek the forgiveness of the one who we have offended; we need to be right with our Just and Beautiful God, Who has given us this great gift of life and a world to enjoy. It is mercy, not our cultural treasures that will give us purpose and joy. It is mercy we are hungry for.

Mercy comes to us sinners through the victory of Jesus. He has set a light in the darkness so that we may find our way. It is not a ticket to heaven that he offers, but a new life here and now; citizenship in his Kingdom of Shalom.