Building Bridges is coming up this week, and there are a number of events leading up to the weekend conference, which is on immigration this year. One of the events was a homily by Rebekah Schulz, co-chair of the conference. Rebekah, a friend of mine, sent me the text of the homily (see below). It was a wonderful homily, and I wanted to share it. I encourage everyone to attend the conference this Saturday, March 13. Also, I encourage everyone to check out The Weekly’s coverage of the conference in our issue this week.

Thursday, March 11 homily

by: Rebekah Schulz

After several college courses on immigration, I can’t help but picture what would happen if, instead of several millennia ago, the Israelites wandered through a desert for 40 years today.

Scene: An innumerable horde of women, men, and children is scattered across the sandy hills in a scraggly line headed nowhere in particular.  There are a few donkeys laden with cargo and one or two exhausted riders, but for the most part people trudge along on foot.  Suddenly a child shouts, “Look!”  Her sharp eyes have spotted a big river growing larger on the horizon.  People begin to walk more quickly – finally, a cool drink after a long day in the sun!  Perhaps this is the long-awaited Promised Land!

[Enter: The Border Patrol]

White SUVs with forest green stripes seem to appear out of thin air; uniformed men with guns leap out and begin to shout unintelligibly.  A wave of confusion blows through the crowd – who are these men, what are they saying, and most of all, what on earth are those big shiny contraptions??

A couple of children, unable to wait any longer, dash towards the river for a drink.  They are quickly corralled by the officers, who move in to form a perimeter around the bedraggled migrants.  It begins to dawn on the Israelites that these spotless men with their shiny contraptions may not be so friendly.  But why?, they may wonder, Why all the hubbub?  It’s only a river, after all.

My imaginary scene usually blurs into snapshots at this point – a Border Patrol agent asking Joshua for his passport, the whole nation of Israel being detained in a holding facility, the chosen ones being deported back to wherever they came from because they failed to produce the appropriate paperwork.  The logistics don’t really work out – but in this example we can see the basis for many of the ethical questions that plague modern thinkers when they ponder migration today:

What is the nature and purpose of borders?  Why have they become so impermeable when centuries ago they used to be so fluid, when all they are, really, is a line someone drew on a map?  How do countries determine their immigration policy?  Who decides who gets in and who doesn’t?  What qualifies you as a refugee and your neighbor as not one?  Can you have too many immigrants?  Can they bring their culture with them, or had they better adopt yours?  Why are they coming here, anyway?  Or even, I’m not an immigrant – what does immigration have to do with me?

Answering even this small sampling of immigration-related conundrums would take weeks – and I don’t pretend to know the “right answers” to any of these questions, although I might know an event here on campus that you could attend to start working on that!

I would, however, like to address this last question – what does immigration have to do with me?  I would argue that immigration affects us all – whether because we or our great-grandparents are immigrants, or because our classmates or teachers or coworkers are immigrants.  The point is that we’re all here – however we got here – in this country, and that makes us neighbors.  And so, in a return to a much-recited maxim, today I would like to talk to you about loving your neighbor, a topic that I’m sure gets a lot of airtime in this building, but one that is definitely worth revisiting.

When I took Thia Cooper’s class called “God & Globalization” this past fall, we actually spent an entire two-hour class period trying to figure out what a just immigration system would look like.  Somehow, with the use of brain-jolting 2-minute-time-limits, she managed to scare out of us what we thought the most important characteristics of a just immigration system would be.  We created a pretty long list of different things, anywhere from “puts people above economics” to “would not exist because it’s not possible”.  In the end, we narrowed our class disagreements down to the following question: Who is responsible for the immigrants’ well-being?  Some felt that our responsibility as citizens of the United States was to maintain the current status of this country as one that people would be willing to fight to get into, that if we let too many people in our government would become overloaded and fail, and we would descend into chaos and become unable to care for the people already here.  Others felt that we as citizens of a wealthy, privileged nation were duty-bound as citizens of the world to care for all people, whether they have the same passport as us or not, and who are we to decide who does and doesn’t get a piece of the pie?

Again, I do not pretend to have the solution to any country’s migration woes.  However, this debate reminds me of another person who once wondered about the parameters of his responsibility for others.  Jesus had just finished saying his famous line about the greatest two commandments, Love the Lord Your God and Love Your Neighbor as Your Self, when his listener immediately asked him, “And who is my neighbor?”

Obviously this guy wanted to figure out exactly what his homework was so he could fulfill it to the T and not exert one extra ounce of effort.  But Jesus responded with another famous passage – the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which “my neighbor” is anyone in need, and the man who loves his neighbor best is, “the one who showed him mercy.”

Let’s break this down a little.  Jesus says that our neighbor is anyone in need, presumably anyone we encounter.  Since the advent of modern technology, we can reach literally anyone on the planet via airplane, car, telephone, text message, or Skype.  So our neighbor, really, is the whole world.

Now on to how to treat our 6.8 billion neighbors.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the one who stops to care for the injured man is the one who successfully loves his neighbor – or, in Jesus’ words, “the one who shows mercy.”  From this statement, we can surmise that service is a big part of our job to love our neighbor.  But I believe that there is another piece to this story.

One of the core values of Building Bridges as an organization is to work towards awareness and dialogue in hopes of bringing about a more socially just world.  In other words, not only do I need to serve the whole world, but I also need to stand next to my neighbor and ask, “Why is the situation the way it is right now?”

The Good Samaritan doesn’t just pull the guy out and say,  “well, see ya!”, he finds out what happened to the guy and works to make it better.  Likewise, we should not only love our 6.8 billion neighbors through service, but also by asking ourselves what factors have contributed to their distress.  For we may find, through our questioning, that we are not only the Good Samaritan but also the passerby or even the robber.

I would like to end today with a quote from Margaret Mead that sums up what we at Building Bridges strive to infuse into every minute of our conference from the opening keynote address to the final action piece: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  Each person has a choice to work towards either loving their neighbors or continuing on their busy way.  Today, I challenge you to examine your commitments and think about the kind of impact you are making in the world.

What neighbors are you passing on the road?  What factors have contributed to their distress?  And what are you going to do about it?