God's Immigration Plan
What makes a person
pull up stakes and leave their home country? When a man is standing on
the beach looking into the watery horizon, what makes him think that if
he reaches land-out-of-sight that life might be better? Maybe these are
just wild and weird dreams. Maybe people get crazy ideas out of
desperation or maybe out of hope. Sometimes dreams and visions can be
from the Lord. And sometimes wild dreams come from too much pizza right
before bed.
Their
names were Alfred Diehl Koch and Conrad Schuessler—German men of strong
constitution. They were men who got caught by some strange dream or
vision of a better life. They were my great, great grandfathers. And
they, along with their wives and children, immigrated to the United
States as the century was turning from the late 1800’s to the 1900’s.
Alfred
Koch and Conrad Schuessler were part of massive influx of immigrants.
“[B]etween 1900 and 1910 . . . almost 1 million immigrants per year
entered the country.[i] Records
show that “from 1892 to 1924, more than 22 million immigrants,
passengers, and crew members came through Ellis Island and the Port of
New York.”[ii] My
great, great grandfathers stood in line on Ellis Island. They knew very
little or no English. They were, I’m sure, terrified and struck with
awe as they were churned through the great immigration machine. My
great, great grandparents came into the U.S. at the height of the
immigration. I long for a full re-telling of the account of their
passage. I sit in awe and wonder at what they did and how they survived.
They
launched out from New York and worked their way West. They both landed
in Texas with their families living no more than fifty miles from each
other. I doubt if they ever met. Homesteading in the wild country was
very difficult. But they survived, never knowing that their great
grandchildren, my mother and father, would one day be married and
telling their story with amazement.
We must stop to acknowledge that every Native American Indian lives with the reality that their land was consumed by those whose dreams were ill-informed or insensitive to the basic human rights of native born peoples. Our country, as glorious and wonderful as it is, also has a deeply scarred history of ethnic hatred. Their land and dignity were stripped in the name of prosperity, progress and greed. May God forgive our ancestors for what they did to these significant and wonderful peoples! And may our leaders today do the good work of justice with them.
American
is now a nation of immigrants. We are the “melting pot of the world.”
Every nationality came here by choice—except for the African Americans.
Every family struggled to gain land and crops for themselves—except for
the African Americans. I hope we realize that the descendents of every
African American person came here under great oppression and violence.
And thank God that from time forward there have been
God-loving, conscientious people who have worked and still work very
hard to make sure that that wrong is righted. Many other people-groups
have come from all over the world to find success and a better way of
life here.
Each
one of us, except for the Native Americans, must look honestly at our
heritage and acknowledge that we are immigrants—foreigners in a foreign
land. But acknowledging that is a difficult task—especially when we are
trying to live out the American dream we have been born under.
As
we look back in history we see that there was a dramatic dip in
immigration after its peak in the early 1900’s. Historians remind us that “[t]he older immigrants
from Protestant Western Europe felt threatened by the rising tide of
immigrants from the more Catholic southern and eastern European
countries, and the immigrants from Asia. Organizations were formed
urging laws to restrict immigration. . . A literacy test for immigrants
was passed and . . . in 1921 imposed a quota system, limiting the number
of immigrants from Europe.”34[iii] Further
legislative moves continually limited immigration from particular parts
of the world and discriminated against new immigrants. Some of theses laws
was not repealed until 1965! “Since the great depression of the 1930’s
and World War II, immigration has steadily risen again in the U.S.
Notwithstanding the numerous and on-going crises and debates over
illegal immigration and other related issues. In all of its splendor,
the U.S. is not without its dark side.”[iv]
Did
you know that this is nothing new? It’s not just in America that we
have had these struggles. As noted from the historical data, much of the
strife erupted over religious issues between Protestant and Catholic.
And in the New Testament the very same issue is brought to a head when
the Church of Jesus Christ was beginning to spread. It took another
dream, another vision to bring things round to right. Read Acts 10. We’ll be looking at this chapter carefully. And I
challenge you to read chapters 11 and 15 this week.
Peter
was a good Jewish man. He was, as we have come to know, bold and full of
enthusiasm. He was given to fits of wildness like cutting off a guard’s
ear when Jesus was being arrested. He was given to outlandish
statements and deeply wounding behavior, as when he denied our Lord
three times before the crucifixion. After the
resurrection something wonderful had happened
to Peter. Jesus restored him to his place of ministry. And upon being filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he was launched into an incredibly powerful preaching ministry.
But there was something still amiss with Peter. And the Holy Spirit needed to teach him and stretch him and confront him. Being
a good Jewish man he had kept the Jewish laws faithfully all of his
life. The Law, by this time, had become second nature to him—it seemed
as if the whole world should be playing by those rules. But God is a God
of continual revelation and dynamic relationship. There will always be
something that we need to learn, something that we need incorporate in
our lives as we grow to be more and more like Him. God does not change,
nor does his truth change. Rather we are changed when we let him form
his likeness in us. And this is what God needed to do with Peter.
We come to an enormously pivotal point in the early Church in Act 10.
Read Acts 10:1-48
In
Leviticus 11 God had given very specific directions for the Jewish
people regarding what to eat. These laws seem odd to us, but some
scholars think that they were to help the Israelites avoid diseases or
to simply demonstrate their obedience to the One, true, living God.
The Holy Spirit had some new work to do in Peter's life. Can you imagine what it must have been like to have this kind of encounter?
13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
It
is here that the more complete revelation of God takes over the
Christian world. Just a short while earlier Jesus had taught that no
food was unclean. (Mark 7:18-19) And Jesus being God, said, “Don’t
you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him
unclean’? 19 For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and
then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods
“clean.”). This was God pulling one of his beloved disciples into deeper and broader truth than he had yet experienced.
Read v. 16-23 again.
16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
17
While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent
by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate.
18 They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying
there.
19
While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to
him, “Simon, three men are looking for you. 20 So get up and go
downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.”
21 Peter went down and said to the men, “I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?”
22
The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a
righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish
people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he
could hear what you have to say.” 23 Then Peter invited the men into the
house to be his guests.
This
is a phenomenal breaking of Jewish custom--a breaking only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit! I don’t think we can quite
grasp the radical nature of this except by thinking about how striking it was before the civil rights
movement for a white man
to invite a black man into his Southern home.
Re-read Acts 10:24-48
Peter
was launched out into a ministry that embraced every human being. Ladies and gentlemen of all nations, this is the exquisite re-telling of God’s Immigration Policy—that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men [and women, boys and girls] from every nation who fear him and do what is right. It
has been God’s policy from the beginning to incorporate anyone from any
nation into his great family and house! God’s immigration policy is to
let anyone into his great Kingdom without regard to their nation of
origin, color of skin, accent or language. And
today we fall at God’s feet in thankfulness for including us—the
Gentiles of the world—in His great plan.
I am a great, great granddaughter of German-American immigrants who has
been granted a status beyond all that they could have provided—the status of a child of the
King! And you are God’s children, every one of you.
My deep prayer is that all our
churches will be communities that accept people from all nations.Will you join me in this prayer and let the Holy Spirit transform us?
M.R. Hyde
