The Birmingham Faith and Money Group spent time with Boarderlinks discovering what motivates the immigrant worker. Please read a sermon written by Drew Henry:
My God, my God - Psalm 22
I just learned this week that her full title is Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. Some of you may remember that at her base stand the words of the famous sonnet The New Colossus penned by Emma Lazarus in the late 1800’s.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
A few weeks ago, one of the members of our clergy group reminded us of these words of this poem as we sat surrounded by the thorns of the Sonoran desert. We had traveled together, ordained ministers - two Methodist, two Episcopal and two Presbyterians, to the US-Mexico border that divides Sonora to the south and Arizona to the north. We were there as preachers and pastors, as followers of Jesus Christ, to examine the Borderlands and the complex phenomena of migration through the lens of faith and money. Our delegation leaders were Tony, a Young Adult Volunteer in Mission for the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Polita, one of the Mexican staff of Borderlinks, who has her own difficult story of migration.
Over a period of days as we listened to real people’s stories, this often-politicized issue of immigration took on human face and form, outstretched hand and warm embrace. As we sat in Mexico looking north, we couldn’t help but ask ourselves about the incarnation of our own families’ stories, and how our people came to call this land home. Then I heard this week these two sides of one common story in the contrasting voices of the 22nd Psalm. On the one hand, “You are holy (O God)… In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.” (Psalm 22:3-5) And on the other hand, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest… I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others and despised by the people.” (Psalm 22:1-2, 6)
Polita was eight months pregnant the first time they tried to climb the wall. Her husband, their eldest daughter, and mother with child began the difficult journey, both physically and emotionall y, of seeking a better future on this side of the border. With all the work they could find at home and stretching their pesos as far as they would go, the food only lasted from payday on Friday through Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday their table was bare, and their young daughter’s stomach pains only got worse.
With a belly of 36 weeks, Polita was not swift at climbing the wall. The immigration service caught and detained them before returning them to Nogales. They tried again to make ends meet back home, but with failed attempts at survival, crossing again seemed to be the only viable option. This time they would make it, at least for a while, but hunger would find them again after the family’s father was found and newly deported.
A young mother of three daughters told her stories to a father of two sons - stories of watching her children fall in bed limp at night because they hadn’t had enough to eat; stories of waking on the dirt floor of a U.S. church’s tool shed, the only room in the inn a congregation of believers could find for this young family, only to wake and discover her young child covered in ants and the swollen bites they left all over her body; stories of how they returned home to Mexico determined to never have to leave again.
Is what they tried to do illegal? Yes. If I each week had to watch my children fall faintly into the night, would I risk my life, break the law, and climb the wall? You better believe it. “It was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.” (Psalm 22:9-11)
I walked around the central plaza in the town of Altar with Polita. Altar, the Spanish word for altar, has become the staging ground for much of the migration through the perils of the Arizona desert. The church sits at the center of the plaza, surrounded by coyotes, “guides” dedicated to the business of human trafficking, lingering and waiting for their next prey. The perimeter of the square is filled with vendors offering in differing shades of black backpacks, shoes, pants and jackets to the migrants who hope they might slip silently through the night.
Polita told me amidst the variety of things that are stuffed in those backpacks as they prepare for the journey, every migrant carries desires, hopes, and dreams that are all too often left scattered on the desert floor. As we walked around the church, Polita told me stories that should never have to be told - the Day of the Dead come alive on our border each and every day at the hand of bandits, hot days, cold nights, wild animals, countless rapes, ruthless murders, dehydration, disorientation — death.
“Herds of bulls come at me, the raging bulls stampede…I’m a bucket kicked over and spilled, every joint in my body has been pulled apart. My heart is a blob of melted wax in my gut. I’m dry as a bone, my tongue black and swollen. They have laid me out for burial in the dirt. Now packs of wild dogs come at me; thugs gang up on me. They pin me down hand and foot…They take my wallet and the shirt off my back, and then throw dice for my clothes.” (from Psalm 22:12-18 - The Message) Literally!
Literally amidst the thorns of our desert, and literally for the One who wore the crown of thorns. Spoken from the cross, the words “My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) hold the many voices of the 22nd Psalm - the voices of lament and the cries for help, and the voices of remembrance and the cries of joy. Zana read to us earlier, “…praise him! …glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For (the Lord) did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted (he did not turn aside from the affliction of the afflicted); he did not hide his face…but heard when I cried…” (from Psalm 22:23-24)
That night in Altar we slept on the floors of CCAMYN, a shelter run by the Catholic Church for migrants. They give these travelers a safe place to stay the night, orientation about the dangers they might face in the desert, and a meal prepared by volunteers from the church. We along with another 30 or 40 migrants were welcomed to the table that night. We broke our daily bread of tortillas and were encouraged to see the face of Christ in these our neighbors, our brothers and sisters to the south.
As we all were leaving early the next morning, I was asked to lead a prayer following our breakfast. We joined hands, and I prayed for their safety, for their families and friends they had left behind. I asked God to shine light - to lift a lamp, to hold high a torch - in any darkness they were about to face. It was a hard prayer to pray. We parted ways. We, the few, began to pack our van as they, the many, journeyed off on foot carrying their backpacks into the dangers of the desert.
I stood outside the gate of CCAMYN that day in the morning sun facing a massive sheet of iron into which a litany of words were cut, words that were scored by Orthón Perez in the winter of 2004. The sculptor had laid a permanent arrangement of iron calla lilies, nine in all, at the base of this poem titled “For the Right to Live in Peace”
To Those Who Have Fallen in the Desert to Death
In memory of those who in search of a better life, only found death.
In memory of those who risked and lost everything.
They went with hope in their eyes and defiance in their souls.
The sun scorched them, the desert devoured them,
And the dust erased their names and their faces.
In memory of those who never returned,
We offer these flowers and say with deepest respect:
Your thirst is our thirst,
Your hunger is our hunger,
Your pain is our pain,
Your anguish, bitterness, and agony
Are also ours.
We are a cry for justice
That no one would ever have to leave their land
Their beliefs, their dead, their children, their parents, their family,
Their roots, their culture, their identity…
We are silence that speaks…
So that no one will have to go in search of a destiny in other lands,
So that no one would ever have to go to the desert
And be consumed by loneliness.
We are a voice in the desert that cries out:
Education for all!
Opportunity for all!
Work for all!
Bread for all!
Liberty for all!
Justice for all!
(…with liberty and justice for all!)
We are a voice that the desert can’t drown…
That insists that the nation give equally to all of its children
The opportunity to a dignified and fruitful life.
Without exception, given a real choice, the people I met wanted to stay home. If they could afford to, they would. This is a complex issue, and the political lenses through which we view migration are many. Yet however you see it, there’s clearly a human tragedy in the making each and every day on our border. I hear the stories of the people I met in the words of the 22nd Psalm. I also hear there a voice saying, “Do not hide your face, do not turn aside from the affliction of the afflicted.”
My God, my God…
…since my mother bore me you have been my God.
…help, come quickly…deliver…save!
(And) I will tell of your name…
For (you) did not despise…the affliction of the afflicted;
(you) did not hide your face from me, but heard when I cried…
The poor shall eat and be satisfied…
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn…
Posterity will serve him;
Future generations will be told… (from Psalm 22 - NRSV)
Babies not yet conceived
will hear the good news -
that God does what he says. (from Psalm 22 - The Message)
Amen!
Really nice and helpful post. I always appreciate topics like these being discussed to aware people. thanks for sharing.