November 17, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
My family were environmental and economic refugees forced to leave Ireland because of a famine supported by British colonial rule who didn’t care if the poor farmers had only moldy potatoes to eat as long as they could keep supporting the elite with their fresh vegetables. I feel a kinship with Naomi who was forced to leave Judah with her husband Elimelech to Moab because of crop failure and famine. Environmental food insecurity and landlessness is an ancient story found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.
We remember that Abraham and Sara were sent to wander and then because of their hospitality to strangers who happened to also be angels, Sara, who was in her 90s, was blessed with a child. Later, the Israelites were to remember to welcome the stranger for they were once strangers in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19: 33-34). In the New Testament, we are reminded that the Holy Family themselves had to flee Bethlehem and go to Egypt to save their baby from Herod’s jealous wrath. Welcoming the stranger is part of our sacred DNA.
When Ruth and Naomi got to Bethlehem, she was sent to glean the leftovers in the fields from a distant relative of Naomi, Boaz. Dave Bookless says so eloquently, “In today’s urbanized world Ruth might have become a dumpster diver or ‘skipper’, sifting through society’s leftovers. Boaz follows another biblical injunction found in Leviticus 23:22--- to leave the gleanings for the poor. The earth is the Lord’s. Ruth and Naomi survive because their kinsman, Boaz, knows field margins are more important than profit margins.
I will not go into what happened on the threshing floor and the mistranslation of uncover the feet and why Boaz had to marry Ruth but let’s just say, Naomi knew how to play her hand in the Patriarchy’s game. By getting Ruth married off, she, the widow with no rights, could now reclaim her husband’s productive land. The marriage brought security to both widows and the blessing of a child which makes Naomi Jesus’ grandmother. Jesus comes not only from the tree of Jesse but smart women who know how to work the system.
In preparing for this sermon, while recovering from a strong reaction to the Covid vaccine, I was thinking about my Faith and Climate Cohort with many folks from Africa who are experiencing right now desertification, droughts, and soil erosion brought on by the overuse of the land or from companies that are using it for extractions of precious minerals. Often, they share the men can no longer farm so they leave and head to the cities leaving their women and children at risk for hunger and starvation. Another version of this old Biblical story.
Dear Ones, tens of millions of people are leaving their ancestral lands and washing up in boats on the Mediterranean or shanty towns in Lima, Cairo or, Mumbai as we speak. Others are fleeing to the United States border. And now add to this economic system of exploitation of the poor, climate disasters that are affecting what we can and cannot grow, and catastrophe’s destroying people’s homes and you have economic and climate refugees seeking asylum everywhere. Oh, and I forgot wars that are displacing those left or forcing them to starve like what is happening in the Sudan and Gaza. Should all these people be sent back? Do they not have rights? Are they not part of God’s Beloved Community?
As we approach Thanksgiving Day, I would like to remind you that our story says the Wampanoag invited the illegal immigrants to their table and fed them and later showed them how to plant their crops so they wouldn’t starve. They fed the undocumented immigrants from their meager bounty.
After Thanksgiving, we head immediately into Advent and Christmas where we will celebrate a Middle Eastern couple who were desperate for shelter and were welcomed.
Dear Ones, I invite you to hold and reflect on these stories together. How does your family fit into this immigration narrative? How does this affect your Christian faith? In Palestine, at a Christmas party one year with my bosses aging mother, she called me over to sit next to her. She picked up the olive wood statue and held it to her heart and said, “Thank you for reminding me that I am not only refugee in my own country but that I come from holy refugees.” Adding the Holy Family statue to our advocacy tools was for getting foreigners to understand the mandate to welcome the stranger. I had not expected it would be so reassuring to the Christian Palestinians themselves.
Our United Church of Christ has boldly stated along with the Catholic bishops in America that they would defend the rights of the immigrants in our country by standing against deportations. This is counter to the next government’s agenda coming into power in January. I invite you to reflect on where you see Holmdel called to serve in times like these. Gathering coats for the Haitians in Neptune is one way; there might be other ways to work locally in the I Rise Project and speak out.
I will end with this quote from Anna Blaedel from Enfleshed Liturgies because it is indeed about an inclusive world that we are called to protect, defend, and create with God’s power and love:
What if freedom, instead of an impossible demand or a futurist fantasy, is what effloresces as we turn toward one another, bearing witness and practicing withness, enfleshing the sacred through fierce and tender care, and practicing spirit as the wild love that makes possible what we are told is impossible - survival with joy, collective liberation?