Day 5 – O’Keefe
Mr. Parrott argues that Maryland voters should restrict our welcome to immigrants. This is contrary to the forceful mandate in Jesus’ words: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me …” My point today is that these words of Jesus burst out of a long strong tradition of hospitality to immigrants, an urgent ethical demand that stretches from the Torah right through to the last prophet, then into the Gospels.
The Torah is loaded with careful distinctions of all kinds. But on the matter of treating strangers, the teaching gives details and then promptly and repeatedly points to an underlying principle that is more expansive than the specific detail. When you harvest your olives, don’t shake the branches a second time, but leave some for widows and orphans and immigrants: this is a clear and specific command. But then there’s an explanation: Remember that you too once were a stranger in a strange land (Deut 24:20-22). The idea behind the law is explicit, and is much more expansive than the olive rule. Moses reaches for memory, imagination, and sympathy.
What Moses says is simple at heart. There’s US, and there’s THEM: how do we think about THEM, how do we treat THEM? Remember our experience as strangers, and do not do to THEM what was done to US. Remember, remember, remember – and sympathize because you remember.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus does the same thing. A scholar asks him a legal question, and they discuss it, then the discussion moves to a definition of “neighbor.” Jesus responds with a story about a man who was attacked and beaten by thieves, and left on the roadside. A priest and then a Levite pass by and decline to help. A third man, a Samaritan, comes upon the victim, has compassion, and helps. The scholar asked, who is my neighbor? Jesus carefully shifts the perspective and asks, who was neighbor to this victim?
The word “neighbor” is the opposite of “stranger.” So Moses’ discussion of the extent of our obligations to a stranger and Jesus’ discussion of obligations to a neighbor – that’s the same discussion. Jesus, like Moses, doesn’t parse the difference between US and THEM, between neighbor and stranger. His approach to the question is not to define the line and list the rules. Like Moses, he urges sympathy. In the story, the priest and Levite apparently have a defined and somewhat exclusive concept of neighbor. The Samaritan has a broader concept of definition of US: he hears and feels the appeal from the victim in the road.
In this simple story, Jesus does the same thing that Moses did: he asks his followers to see the question of US versus THEM through the eyes of the person on the other side of our border.
The teaching that Mr. Parrott urges Maryland voters to reject is not a single verse that we might misunderstand. It’s a central teaching running through all of Scripture.
Mr. Parrott?
