Asylum and Sanctuary

Praying the News

Do not forget them, Lioness, Protector, Mother of Mercies!  Why have the calls, the screams of your children gone unheeded?  When does this end?  Rise up!  Wake up from your slumber and come to defend!  Scatter the proud and make all their endeavors fruitless. 

Do not forget your children!  Remember them!  Do not let the coddling of others hold sway.  Break through our romantic dreams of who we are as a nation!  Wake us up from our slumber so that we come to defend!  Walk with us as we scatter to defend and make all our efforts bear fruit!

These are your children, Mother of Mercies!  Do not let them be hidden, tossed to the side, lost and forgotten.  Now is the time.  The hour has been since passed.  Rouse.  Push us out of bed to be a people of risk and courage!  Now.  Please!  Please, Mother of Mercies!  Please!  Amen. 

Soundtrack for Asylum and Sanctuary

Sanctuary and asylum are holy words that convey not only the nature of God but God’s intent for creation’s flourishing.  And, of course, they are the words primarily under attack in our cities.  They are words that convey the systems and structures as presently structured and configured do not allow for total justice. 

Even within the laws of creation themselves, we see God active in grace and mercy to not follow hard and fast laws and boundaries.  Climate change may be on the march but how long did humankind pollute and destroy before this tipping point was reached?  Blue oceans of love can absorb much pain and destruction before they are turned.  Blue skies of compassion can absorb much war and poison before they are turned. 

Eventually, however, what we practice becomes the air we breathe, what we practice becomes the water we drink.  We reap what we sow. 

So it is now as we continue to do violence to immigrants and refugees.  Practices without grace and mercy eventually become a nation without grace and mercy—for everyone.  Right now Chad and Karen white America have a buffer that allow them to think, “Not so bad.  Why did you wake me?  Don’t I deserve one more hour of sleep?” 

Sanctuary and asylum are at the heart of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian tradition.  Read through Psalm 23.  If we are able to read Scripture as one end of a phone conversation, we can hear the voice of a person who is pursued by violence and war.  At the very least, Psalm 23 is a person who rarely knows what it means to lie in green grass, who does not experience their life as one with still waters, who does not know the abundance of a cup overflowing.   Enemies are afoot. 

So I say this.  Until sanctuary and asylum become part of our nation’s regular practice, don’t fill God’s ears with the song, “Sanctuary.”  Don’t read Psalm 23.  Yes, long for them.  Pray for them to return.  But don’t pretend like these are values.  They are not.  

This is a short video clip  from the Texas Civil Rights Project which shows an immigration attorney who is trying to provide representation for children who have been illegally detained and locked up in hotels in McAllen, Texas, with plans to deport them with no due process.  And, of course, we know the reality of children already separated from parents.   The Texas Civil Rights Project was responding to pleas seen from Hampton Inn windows from these children.  

Know this.  For whatever reason, if we choose not to make sanctuary and asylum a centerpiece of our faith and our public policy and discourse, eventually the ocean even for us will evaporate or overwhelm till the pleas of even those with a buffer go unheeded.  Choose this day.  God will not forever be silent.