I sometimes find myself confused by the popular political rhetoric, which seems to suffer from a lack of self-awareness. We’re probably all familiar with the claims we Americans like to make about ourselves and our nation, among them the popular declaration that we’re a centrally Judeo-Christian nation. Unfortunately, this designation is pointed to with the most fervor not when we’re promoting issues of justice, but when we’re striving to make our image more exclusive.
We’re made to live in fear of prayer being taken out of school, told that it’s foundational despite its relatively new introduction into public education realms. We’re asked to consider what life would look like if we took God’s name off of our currency, removed a line from the pledge, or extracted Decalogue effigies from our courthouses. When people protest such exclusive iconography, daring to suggest that it flies in the face of truly democratic ideals, they’re subject to scorn, or even denounced as harbingers of the apocalypse.
People truly want to believe we’re a Christian country. But why does it seem that people only want to make this claim in order to draw lines in the sand: to limit marriage, to prevent mosques from being built, to force the recitation of a name that all people do not know? Do we truly believe such behavior pleases God, or is a benefit to heaven? And why is it that the desire to see the stars and stripes as a Christian banner seems to fade when the issue at hand is not a stamp on a bill, but the well-being of our neighbors?
We cannot claim to be Judeo-Christian if we’re willing to eschew the values which really are in scripture. One which appears in both of testaments today is that of care for our neighbors, clearly seen among foreigners. Across both traditions, the holy books demand that we care for the foreigners in our midst: Leviticus 19 counts among God’s mitzvoth the imperative to feed our guests, declaring “you shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien” in the name of God (Leviticus 19:10).
The word “alien” is a very specific one within Hebrew; there can be no doubt that this evokes concern for those foreign to Israel, visitors from abroad. The chapter goes on to demand that God’s people not profit from the blood of their neighbors, and, critically, that they love them as equal to themselves (Leviticus 19:16, 18).
The Israelites knew what it was like to live as foreigners in a strange nation. Perhaps in these moral precepts we can hear echoes of the pains they suffered under unwelcoming communities: inability to properly celebrate their religious traditions; relegation to the most obscured factions of society; the mark of “other”, somehow emblazoned upon them abroad, so that they’re never really integrated, never really given a seat at their neighbor’s tables. It’s easy to understand why, after the Exodus, they’d find these Levitican laws particularly poignant: having suffered as immigrants, how could they ever justify causing an immigrant to suffer?
Our gospel reading shares this awareness. The word of Jesus, as given in Matthew, also is compelled by the notion that selfless love is supreme. We give it without demanding equal measure; we love others to acknowledge their equal dignity. And so if someone asks of us our coat, we are to give them coat and cloak; if someone begs from us, we are not to refuse (Matthew 5:40, 5:42). We’re to give as is requested of us, and then go beyond.
These verses address only what is asked of us; they do not address the unasked of, or basic justices. But they certainly expect us to anticipate those needs and address them with the same fervor. Love is to become second nature.
This extends to expanding our notion of “neighbor,” stretching our notions of the word to include not only those with whom we’re familiar, but all, and everywhere: “And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:47) A Christian family does not exclude; all belong to it, including those who we don’t initially think to welcome. In fact, we’re perhaps to be particularly attentive to their inclusion; leaving some at the margins because of limited imaginations is not acceptable.
These are, as is said, truly “Judeo-Christian” principles. We are to feed the foreigner; letting a foreigner go hungry defies God’s law. We’re to love them. We’re to make sure our societies are not constructed in a way which leads to profiting from their misfortune. We’re to see that their basic needs are met. We are, in the end, to see "aliens" as neighbors, refusing to give the term “alien” power; we are to make them family.
And so I wonder how sincere the pundits are when they insist that we remain true to our Judeo-Christian principles, while in the same breath insisting we further alienate already marginalized people. If “Judeo-Christian” defines our value system: we could not continue with the immigration policies which are becoming pervasive, and steadily worse.
I beg attention to the scriptures, read in a world that purports to take them seriously. This week in Arizona, a public official proposed modifying the legal system to make immigration status checks requisite at hospitals. The implications of this are obvious. A mother should not be made to choose between rushing her ill child to the emergency room and facing deportation, or gambling with her child’s health; a person should not be made, moreover, to make that choice even if “only” they are at stake. A law like this would necessarily have blood on its hands, but seems to be moving forward because the blood at stake is “only” that of the Other, the foreigner, the “criminal.” From a truly Judeo-Christian perspective, this is unintelligible.
So are all other modifications of law which seek to alienate: compulsory identification checks which arbitrarily only affect those who “look” foreign; promotion of linguistic exclusion backed by the state; erasure of figures who promote immigrant rights from our histories; erasure of faces that look Other from our personal perspective.
We profit from the blood of our neighbors when we stifle attempts to make immigrant worker rights more just, or amnesty more difficult to attain. We refuse to love when we preference, above compassion, the argument that “they should just come here legally,” ignoring how difficult a demand that is, and how infrequently a timely option.
If we want to value legality over love of our neighbors, we have that option. But we simultaneously have to realize that choosing to do so is at odds with the scriptures. It is not a Judeo-Christian choice. If we want to claim to be a nation that loves God: we need to evaluate the choices we make in the name of “preserving” our nation more critically.
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