Isaiah 25:1-9
During a recent visit to Dublin, Donald Trump expressed support for a unified Ireland, which is to say, for the Protestant-majority British region of Northern Ireland to be absorbed into the Roman Catholic-majority Republic of Ireland. There is no way of knowing whether this was meant to troll the British Prime Minister or was simply the constant babbling of a lunatic. In any case, Northern Ireland’s “Unionists,” who actually oppose reunification, were outraged.
The Troubles, as the late 20th century conflict in Northern Ireland is known there, began in the 1960’s as a civil rights movement, the Catholic minority calling for an end to systemic discrimination. It escalated into a campaign of sectarian violence, primarily in Northern Ireland but spreading to the Republic as well as the British home island.
The Republic of Ireland itself had only achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1922. The world continues to pay for Britain’s colonialist follies, nowhere more so than in the former Palestinian mandate.
Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and while the terms of the agreement have sometimes been dysfunctional in practice, violence has been limited. Hopefully, people on both sides will be wise enough to ignore Mr. Trump.
It was in the Republic during the Troubles when four lads, Paul, David, Adam, and Larry, formed a band in 1976. All had been raised in Dublin, though David was born in England to Welsh parents, and Adam’s family came to Ireland when his father left Britain’s Royal Air Force and took as job as a pilot for Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. David would adopt a stage name, calling himself The Edge, while Paul would adopt the moniker Bono. And the rest is Rock and Roll history.
U2 did well from the start, but they were not immediate superstars. It was really their third album, War, that made them a worldwide sensation. They chose to put a child’s face on the cover. The image of Peter Rowen, younger brother of a friend, remains among the most iconic album covers of all time.
To say the album was a success might be the ultimate understatement. It opens with “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” a reference to a 1972 incident when British troops shot and killed 14 unarmed civil rights protesters. The other great single from the album, “New Years Day,” was inspired by Poland’s Solidarity movement. The album ended with the band’s rendition of the 40th Psalm.
Vinyl is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, partially fueled by Taylor Swift’s release of albums in limited-edition colors, and while that is some super toxic consumerism right there, it means I don’t have to provide too much context for younger worshippers when I say the “B-side” of the album opened with a song called “The Refugee.” The refugee is a young woman in a nation at war with America as a one-day promise of safety.
I’d been old enough to understand our defeat in Vietnam, the helicopters taking off from the embassy roof and the welcome we extended to Vietnamese nationals fleeing the Communist takeover. Then, in 1980, the Mariel boatlift saw an estimated 125,000 Cubans flee that island for Florida. We were a country that welcomed refugees, but as a young soldier trained for when the Cold War suddenly went hot, everything was seen through that lens of the Red Menace. It would be years before I connected enough of the dots to see a pattern of migration and displacement.
At least I got there before we faced the mass migrations caused by climate change as well as our misadventures in the Middle East.
Which brings me to the 25th chapter of Isaiah. Most folks immediately focus on the verses that say God will swallow up death forever, the reason this sometimes shows up as a funeral text. But this portion of the book, referred to as the Isaiah Apocalypse, is much later material inserted into authentic Isaiah. And while scholars have theories about what city has been destroyed, about the “you” to whom the prophet speaks, there is nothing definitive in the text.
Without that context, without knowing why one city is destroyed, we are left to focus on the city that is rewarded, apparently with immortality, certainly with the good wine.
“You have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress.” The prophets are radically inclusive, announcing God’s promise to bring home the Diaspora, the Jews scattered throughout the region by war and ethnic cleansing.
The original Isaiah saw the first major displacement when Neo-Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century B.C.E., leading to the legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The likely source for this apocalyptic text is the next major displacement, when Babylon conquered the Southern Kingdom and took the artisans and elite captive. Though they would be liberated by the Persians, many would never return. Of course, long after this text was written, the final displacement would come after what is sometimes called the Third Jewish War, more accurately called the Bar Kokhba rebellion, that started a century after the execution of Jesus and 62 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The prophets are radically inclusive. Their promise is universal. All people will be brought into covenant relationship with God. All people will be brought into God’s just and caring realm.
And that is what we see here. The unnamed but praised city, the presumed faithful and praised people lauded for being a refuge to people in need, people in distress. This is what gets them the good wine. Oh, and yeah, that immortality thing.
Despite the crimes against humanity committed by the State of Israel as vengeance for the war crimes committed by Hamas, despite the crimes against humanity being committed by Mr. Trump and his administration, the Jewish Scriptures are clear. The Torah is clear. Welcome the immigrant. Treat them with respect. Remember, your people were once displaced too.
In fact, the Torah mandates the establishment of sanctuary cities. We didn’t make up that idea in our time. And though they were originally meant as safeguards against the unchecked escalation of violent vengeance, they are just as suitable for those fleeing violence who are then subjected to further violence by our government.
We welcomed those anti-Communist friends from Southeast Asia, from Cuba, but this nation of immigrants did not welcome the 937 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany on board the MS St. Louis in 1939. Also denied entry by Cuba and Canada, they returned to Europe, where a quarter of them would end up as victims of the Holocaust.
Don’t get me wrong. Humans migrate. We always have. And given our present circumstances, climate disaster, persistent drought, a housing crisis, there has to be some sort of order, based on compassion, capacity, and need. But that is not what is going on with the current ethnic cleansing being conducted by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. My opinion of ICE is such that had I given this sermon the title it deserves, I would have scandalized the public and packed these pews.
We are not being a refuge. We are not being a refuge to the needy. We are not being a refuge to those in distress. The people being rounded up by ICE are rarely criminals. And we are sending them to foreign gulags, unsafe home countries, and third countries that are willing to act as concentration camps in exchange for Trump’s blood money.
It is not Christian. The Trump Administration’s ethnic cleansing campaign is terrorism. The intent is not to remove criminal undocumented residents. The purpose is to terrorize any non-white person who might consider migrating to the United States.
This is not the pastor being political. This is the pastor being biblical.
As a queer Christian, I don’t throw around the word “sin” lightly. It has been used as a weapon against me and my queer siblings far too often. I will use it in this case. Never mind the murders, of immigrants, of protesters.
This is sin done in our name with our money. Well, that’s not actually true. It is done with our great-great-grandchildren’s money if our nation or species manages to hold out that long, given the monstrous levels our national deficit has reached in this regime of corruption, but that is a sin for another day.
What will we do about it? What can we do about it? There isn’t an ICE facility in our community to obstruct, at least not that we know of. We don’t seem to have enough documented immigrants to be on ICE’s radar.
We might start by doing more of what we already do, claiming the title Christian for a movement of justice, a movement that it a refuge, not only our nation for foreign nationals, but this church for those who have been abused and abandoned by others who claim the name Christian without accepting the responsibility of the cross. For this is not a hobby. It is a way of life.
We can vote. But more than voting, we can have the courage to speak to our neighbors, to strangers, to consider social justice more important than social niceties.
We can defund ICE, if we, and biblical Christians across the country, are willing to still the song of the ruthless, and send them packing.
May the disgrace that has fallen on the name Christian be taken from the earth. May we once again be a refuge.
Now, about that well-aged wine…
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer
Let us pray.
God of All Creation,
we are mindful of First Peoples,
those labeled primitive and less
by the ancestors of so many of us,
enslaved, murdered,
driven from their land.
What the Nazis did in Eastern Europe
we’d already done here,
driving the other into ghettos
of parched and worthless land.
And it goes on,
even in this time of so-called advanced civilization,
displacement and sectarian violence,
the absurdity of claiming what is yours,
lives and land.
We pray for those on reservations and in refugee camps,
rendered stateless by India, Israel,
and these barely United States.
May our space of refuge be
built on mutuality and respect,
and may we see what is whole and worthy
in what society sees as broken,
working to call out wholness,
as Jesus did,
as we pray as he did, saying:
Our Father