Getting Past the Gatekeepers, Accessing Justice

The Aftermath of Christmas

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The Gospel lesson that is often read on the Sunday after Christmas is Matthew 2:13–18 in which we are faced with an anti-climactic scene — Herod’s murderous rampage, killing all the male toddlers following the birth of the Holy Child. In documenting this violent tragedy,  verse 18 says, “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

The death of any child under violent circumstances is one of the most painful tragedies that a parent can face, for it is unnatural, atypical, and unpleasant. Such a tragedy occurred during Jesus’ time, and it happens every day in our time. How might we, as followers of Christ, have compassion on the Rachels and the members of their families today?

Perhaps, just perhaps, by journeying with them; by advocating and advancing justice on their behalf, by fostering a covenant among parents everywhere that they would not raise their children to kill someone else’s children.

 Surviving children of the Rachels of the world

Not too long ago, as a nation we witnessed in horror the forced migration of millions of helpless families leaving their homeland searching for safety and freedom. During that process, thousands perished in raging waters and merciless weather. As a church, we swore our missional commitment to the victims when we saw the haunting images of dead children’s bodies being swept ashore and boats full of escapees drowning in rampant waters. Indeed, as a denomination, we are good on our promise not to forget them by establishing task forces and funding several programs. But, apparently, we turn our backs on those who survived and moved to our towns and neighborhoods.

During the last few years of my ministry with Christian refugees to the U.S., I have witnessed firsthand that most of our love has been only for the dead not for the survivors. Sometimes, it is the gate-keepers of the church who ostensibly play the role as Herod’s agents.

Accepting the unacceptable and welcoming the strangers are the greatest of missional challenges as they present a frontier over which the journey of understanding is both outward and inward, both exploratory and reflexive. Knowing and loving the other validly requires mature self-knowledge, yet such maturity is not accessible to the isolated self or to the isolated church. It is an everyday reality and demand.

During the last few years of my ministry with Christian refugees to the U.S., I have witnessed firsthand that most of our love has been only for the dead not for the survivors. Sometimes, it is the gate-keepers of the church who ostensibly play the role as Herod’s agents.

Louis L’Armour, a famous novelist of last century, wrote that we must think about the present as if it were the distant past and meet the challenges head-on with the lessons learned.  He wrote, “It is our destiny to move out, to accept the challenge, to dare the unknown…. If we are content to live in the past, we have no future. And today is the past.” We should remind ourselves that these refugee Christians of today are the leaders of tomorrow’s Christian faith. How we minister with them, as they cope with the traumatic journey will enrich our mission and ministry both today and tomorrow.

In The Shoes of the Fisherman, a novel by Morris West, after his coronation the new Pope, himself a Russian emigre', walks through the streets of Rome and visits an apartment in which there is a dying man. The family has waited too long to seek help and there is no hope for the man. The Pope tries to comfort the members of the family in the face of death. But a young woman who has been nursing the dying man says, "They can cope with death. It's LIVING that defeats them!"

And living that defeats many of these refugees who happened to be Christians from other parts of the world. If we are serious about ministering to the people in diaspora, we must successfully cross the expanse of culture or language or anything else that separates us. The church that embodies the mission of Christ cannot remain indifferent to issues related.

Living faith

In an era when immigration has become a political tinderbox, a few of us from the Asian American United Methodist Federation started working with refugees and asylum seekers for the last few years in various parts of the United States. As a result, we witnessed first-hand the emergence and birth of new churches in various Asian languages for the first time. Some of them include Arabic, Nepali, and Karenni (Burmese) language congregations. During that process, we also came to realize that some of these communities have gotten stuck in the bottom layer of ecclesial bureaucracy and gotten entangled in the web of callous gate-keepers. In certain situations, their predicament got worse because they lacked sponsors at the top to advocate for them.

Just about three years ago, we started three new congregations among three different language groups in one of our Annual Conferences. After they were denied worship places by a number of churches, the leaders of the Asian language groups heard about the new owner of a decommissioned United Methodist Church and its parsonage, which were sold by the Annual Conference to a nearby United Methodist Congregation for a dollar. When the leaders of the three new Asian language congregations approached the Trustees of the new owner for a worship place on Sunday morning, they were coerced to sign a contract that they would pay $250 rent per month while other groups such as A.A., Zumba classes, historical society etc., were allowed to use the facilities for free. Soon, the new owner sold the parsonage and kept the money.

The rent was paid faithfully out of the meager refugee stipend which was collected through weekly offering. While the three groups worshiped in the sanctuary at three different times on Sundays, often the heat was never turned on during winter, and access to the entire facilities was highly restricted throughout the year. The irony of it all was the rental agreement was signed by the refugee United Methodist Christians who knew little English!

Having noticed the rapid growth of the three immigrant congregations which averaged more than 200 people each Sunday, a sympathetic well-wisher started paying their monthly rent until he was alerted by an informed outsider. This blatant disciplinary violation is not fully resolved as of this writing.

Accessing justice at the gate

The relationship between “native-born” United Methodists and “foreign-born” Christians who happened to be refugees and asylum seekers has not been pleasant in some conferences. There is a huge difference and wide chasm between awareness and action.

As a denomination, we can offer only service and pass legislation, not care — for care can be given spontaneously only from the heart of one to another. Local congregations and conference clergy are often oriented around neighborhood hospitality, rather than United Methodist connectional identity or today’s borderless world. And they are indeed the gate-keepers of our time.

By the end of these and other stories, weeping with Rachel is too easy. Her spouse and older siblings of the murdered toddlers are wailing and lamenting too. What is needed in such contexts is not tears, but righteous outrage. We cannot substitute rhetoric for actual narrative; we can never uphold placation over remonstration. Until then, all our holy conferencing and invitation to move forward is nothing but a hollow imperative. It’s only a palliative prescription for a severe ecclesial malaise, the “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” of compassion – an aimless prayer pill, maybe.

Jacob Dharmaraj, Ph.D, serves as president of the National Federation of Asian American United Methodists.