Dwelling Place
Psalm 146
George Tatro

 1 Praise the LORD.
       Praise the LORD, O my soul.

 2 I will praise the LORD all my life;
       I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

 3 Do not put your trust in princes,
       in mortal men, who cannot save.

 4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
       on that very day their plans come to nothing.

 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
       whose hope is in the LORD his God,

 6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
       the sea, and everything in them—
       the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

 7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
       and gives food to the hungry.
       The LORD sets prisoners free,

 8 the LORD gives sight to the blind,
       the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down,
       the LORD loves the righteous.

 9 The LORD watches over the alien
       and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
       but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

 10 The LORD reigns forever,
       your God, O Zion, for all generations.
       Praise the LORD.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

 7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
       and gives food to the hungry.
       The LORD sets prisoners free,

 8 the LORD gives sight to the blind,
       the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down,
       the LORD loves the righteous.

 9 The LORD watches over the alien

Diane Lewis came up to me after Sunday’s service a few weeks back and told me that a prayer I had written and posted on the Presbyterian’s for Just Immigration discussion board had made its way to the PCUSA website as a liturgical resource for ecumenical worship. I was both honored and humbled by this discovery. As many of you already know, much of my extra-curricular activities at seminary have been focused on immigration issues in the Hispanic community. This has lead to an invitation to the Hispanic Summer Program at Duke University where for the next three weeks I will be taking a course entitled:

Ecumenism: Building Bridges across Denominations: Finding New Ways of Working Together in the Inner City. My work with the Hispanic community was not out of design. I did not set out to be an advocate for the Hispanic community. But God put Ginger Kaney in my life. She was the former director of Faith in the City who passed away from brain cancer last year. Ginger was a role model and mentor for me. Ginger wanted the students of Columbia to have an immigrant experience and I was able to help make that happen as the apartments we own are in Chamblee. Hanging out with Ginger was as real as it gets.

Two weeks after finishing up chemotherapy she lead 8 Columbia students on an alternative context to Mexico where we studied issues at the border. We learned a lot about the issues at the border and I became convinced that the border is not between Arizona and Mexico or Texas and Mexico.

In fact the border isn’t a geographical line at all.

In Mexico they refer to the border as “la frontera”. The frontier. And I think that frontier is a way in which we can begin to understand much of what is going on in our state right now. The frontier is where issues collide. The frontier is a foreign and strange yet it beckons us to come and explore. And I would argue that recent legislation in Georgia on the state and city level reveals that we are a frontier community.

Back on November 17^th I received a call from Jerry Gonzalez, the executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino elected officials. The Cherokee County Commission had scheduled a hearing that made all the newspapers. The proposed law would allow the county marshal's office to check the immigration status of people renting or leasing residences in unincorporated Cherokee. If a violation had occurred, the property owner would be cited and their business license could be suspended. The owners would not be able to collect rent while in violation. Jerry’s concern was that there would not be a strong enough presence of clergy engaging in the discussion on this proposed measure. He asked for my help in rounding up some clerical types, “If they have collars on great!” he said. So I put out the word.

I had just attended the ecumenical Hospitalidad and Ministries with Hispanic/Latino Communities at Maple Avenue United Methodist Church in Marietta, GA It was a great conference with John Fife, founder of the Sanctuary Movement and former moderator of the PCUSA, as the keynote speaker. Time was short, but I still had the email list and so I sent everybody that was on that list the call to action. I also sent a campus wide email at Columbia Theological Seminary. Unfortunately Thanksgiving was just 3 short days away and with such short notice, I wasn’t too hopeful about the students. In the end only three students – Karen, Claudia and Rob- were able to join me in the cause and so we left the arch, a central meeting point on campus, at 4pm for the 6pm meeting. At 4:20 I got a call from two students who had attended the ecumenical conference. Mike was from McAfee and Louis from Emory, they were on the way and needed directions. Of the 93 people who attended the conference on ecumenical ministry, only 3 made it to Cherokee. It took us 2 hours to travel the 45 miles to Canton in Cherokee County and we arrived at 5:58 for the meeting only to have the doors shut in our faces because capacity of 120 had been reached and the fire marshal said that nobody else would be allowed in.

I had my prepared a statement that Jerry had requested and was posted on the GALEO website. He had hoped that I would read it for the council as a testimony to the Biblical witness of hospitality, it read:

With Thanksgiving just two days away and Christmas quickly approaching I find the subject of today’s Cherokee County Commission meeting quite appropriate.

I am a native Georgian, seminarian at Columbia Theological Seminary, and recently attended the ecumenical Hospitality and Ministries with Hispanic/Latino Communities at Maple Avenue United Methodist Church in Marietta, GA. This brief statement seeks to be a starting point for reflection on the theme of 'hospitality' as you consider the proposal before you today.

On Thanksgiving we celebrate the hospitality shown by Native Americans to the Puritan Pilgrims. We commemorate this by recreating the Thanksgiving Day dinner that the Native Americans shared with the Pilgrims. Although the Indians had never even heard of the Old Testament, they understood and embodied the teachings found in Leviticus 19:33-34, which reads: ³³ When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. ³⁴ The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

The Christmas story also relates to today’s proposal. The Gospel according to Matthew 2:11-14 reads: On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. ¹³ Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." ¹⁴ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.

Perhaps it is because Jesus began his life as a stranger in a strange land – an undocumented alien in the land of Egypt - that so many of his teachings stressed the importance of showing kindness to strangers. It is with this in mind that I close with another reading from the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew 25:34-35:

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

I pray that you will consider these words in your deliberations as you seek to govern with wisdom and compassion and I thank you for your time.

It had to be short and I thought I did a decent job on such short notice. But there we were, Claudia, Rob, Karen, Michael from McAfee, Louis from Candler, stuck in the lobby of the Cherokee Public Administration building with nobody to hear my well crafted speech and not able to hear what was going on inside.

I thought of Isaiah and his naked witness but decided that Canton Georgia and the Atlanta Presbytery would not particularly care for this type of witness. Rob suggested a little street preaching from the second floor balcony overlooking the lobby; again, considering the assembled crowd and the powers of the Cherokee County Commission I decided that that wasn’t what we were called there to do. But what were we called to do? What was our purpose?

I had my Columbia Theological long sleeved T-shirt on, I had my speech, I was ready to proclaim the truth, as I understood it. But that was not what we were there to do.

I listened. I heard the conversations around me.

I heard angry men complaining about Buford Highway and what it had become. I heard angry men saying they would rather pay $5 dollars more a chicken than have Mexicans living in their midst. I heard angry complaints about immigrants and I found myself getting angry too. Angry at the ignorance, angry at the inhumanity, angry at the hatred and angry at myself for allowing them to infect me with anger. Anger is a great motivator. It gets you feeling empowered, it gets you fired up; it gives you a visceral feeling that is very seductive because of its power. But I knew that I wasn’t there to get angry… so like Mary after finding Jesus in the temple, I pondered these things in my heart.

Next to me was a Mexican man who had been in the states since 1988. He was a naturalized citizen who had come out to see what was going on. I struck up a conversation with him as he had been standing against the wall speaking to nobody. I asked “Who are you here with?” He told me “Nobody”

No, you are not alone, you are with us, and I introduced him to the group. He told us that he was a naturalized citizen who had been in Cherokee County for 14 years. He said that he came out because it was his responsibility as a citizen to be involved with the government. He shared his concerns about what was going on. He told me that the kids at school called his kids “beaners” and “wetbacks” and I recalled reading once that we are all wetbacks in our baptism. How differently might these people think about our immigration policy, what other approaches to the problem might they seek, if they could think about undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens in terms of Galatians 3: 26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Is it a stretch to say that if Paul was with us here today he would add that there is neither wetback nor beaner to his list in verse 28?

The sheriff at the door asked if D.A. King was in the room. He said that D.A. King was to give expert testimony to the council as the spokesman for the proposal.

Now I know Donald Arthur King by those whom he counts as his enemies: The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Archdiocese of Atlanta, GALEO, the NAACP.

D.A. King, as he likes to be called, pays homeless men to carry anti-immigrant signs at rallies.

D.A. King whose website Vdare is blocked as a hate site from many internet providers.

D.A. King who uses his 6’2” 220 pound frame to intimidate those who speak out for civil rights by getting in their faces and demanding to see their papers.

This was the expert that the Cherokee County Commission was relying on to help them in making their decision?

Three men quickly crowded next to me saying that they had just gotten off the phone and that DA would be there shortly. They stayed right next to me, crowding closer and closer. Their conversation was filled with talk of “them” and “those people” and I knew what they meant. But it was their crowding in on me that I realized why we had been called up to Canton. We were called not to bear witness by our words in the meeting hall, but we were called to bear witness by our presence in the lobby. We were called to dwell. Dwell in a seemingly hostile environment, called to breath the same air as the people who were as strongly convicted in their beliefs as we are in ours. Called to take up space. And we made friends, and we had conversations with people who shared our vision of how the world can be, we shared our witness and by our presence made known that there was an alternative vision to the way things can and should be. And we began to build community in a strange place, a place where there were strangers whose ways I did not understand. I place where I would never have guessed that it would have been possible. Although it was not what we had intended or hoped for it was what we were called to do.

I don’t presume that all of you are as informed or interested in the immigrant issue as I am, or that being so informed you will arrive at the same conclusions as to the actions that should be taken to rectify a failed immigration policy. But it is important to have our voices heard and to be a part of the conversation, to listen and hold ourselves and others accountable for our actions. Remember today’s reading says the Lord watches over the alien. Remember Leviticus: When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

In the movie the Big Lobowski Sam Eliot has a great line about a character named “the Dude.” “The dude abides.” And that is what we are called to do. Abide. Abide in places filled with angry, anxious, hostile, scared, afraid, impassioned people, from all walks of life on both sides of the issue. Abide in our own anxiety, fear, and passions. Abide as the future of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, is debated by the powers and principalities of our cities, counties, state and federal government. And in our abiding we can build community and seek alternative solutions to the problems we face. Solutions that not only respect the sovereignty of our nation, and state and federal government, but also respect the sovereignty of God’s will.

The Lord watches over the alien.