Melting the ICE

Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ (John 12:31-32)

Two visions collided in my heart this week. One was the image of ICE agents herding supposed criminals onto planes, ferrying them away to brutal foreign prisons without the benefit of hearings or trials or anything but the unsubstantiated claims of self-interested politicians.

The other vision melted my heart, feeding a soul-deep hope that will not die.

It happened on Sunday morning. My pre-service prayer complete, I opened my eyes and immediately knew prayer was not done with me. Look and see, said the voice of the Spirit within me.

The crucifix hanging high above the altar first captured my attention as the congregation gathered. Two Filipino mothers crowded in beside me with five children, black and brown. An elderly Chinese woman kneeled ahead of me.

An African American family sat three rows further up. Across the room, a batik-clad woman and her children looked like they’d just arrived from some west African country. And dozens of Hispanics from several southern nations scattered among folk who are as white as me.

I didn’t see a suit and tie in the place, except for the cantor and organist. More obvious were jeans, tennis shoes, the weathered faces of people who work outdoors, and others, with softer hands, who labor in classrooms and offices and over keyboards like the one beneath my fingers.

Looking at the crucifix above our gathering, it all felt right. Jesus’ words rang truer than ever. ‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.’

For there we were, drawn together by the transcendent love of the One who makes the many … into one. That’s what love does, but it is better to say that is what Love does. The God who is Love, whose all-embracing compassion bears the face of Jesus in his suffering, seeks ever more to draw the human family and all creation into one loving union.

This vision held me through the service. I couldn’t stop looking around. What I saw was profoundly hopeful, promising a gracious world of welcome infused with the love of Jesus, whose heart is known in every welcome and act of hospitality whether his name is spoken or not.

But as hopeful as it was to kneel at Divine Savior Church and see what the Savior is doing among us, I was equally engulfed by a profound sadness over the daily reports of ICE raids. However necessary and important their function in society, too often human souls are being indiscriminately swept up and treated like trash—the documented and undocumented, the guilty and the innocent, the citizen, the green card holder and people who look like my brown-skinned grandsons and son-in-law, for whom I worry.

The vision of a world-made-one is a true and deeply Christian vision of God’s desire for the nations, including our own. The vision of ‘one out of many’ is also deeply encoded in the history and DNA of our nation. But it is daily attacked and shattered by the present administration as it stokes anger and fear of those who look like they ‘don’t belong here.’

Tragically, many Christians also have lost sight and faith in the vision of their Lord, who draws the many into one, ironically unaware that such hatred and rejection stands judged by the cross of Christ and the entire Judeo-Christian tradition.

But the vision of a world made new, born of God’s Spirit, does not die. It lives in human hearts and appears in flesh and blood gatherings, like Sunday morning, as we gathered beneath the cross of Christ where the hope of the world was clear to see.

All we needed to do was look around … and see what Love does.