Thursday night I spoke to a group of about 1,500 members of the East Valley Interfaith, an ecumenical group that works with political leaders to further such causes as public safely, education, health care, and immigration reform. It was apparent from that meeting that Arizona has a major church/state crisis on its hands as it reacts to the tactics used by the County Sheriff in his crusade to catch undocumented immigrants. Last Sunday, he interrupted a confirmation service in a Roman Catholic Church in Guadalupe. Last night the Mayor of Phoenix, the Police Chief, and representatives from the Governor's office were present to hear our concerns. I shared with that group the story of my Holy Week encounter with the Sheriff's Department, and I pass it on to you:

This past Good Friday I was driving home from church services in Tucson when I received a call from the priest at one of our Spanish-speaking churches in Phoenix. Her church is located just off Thomas Road, less than a block away from where our County Sheriff had decided to set up a so-called "command center" complete with trailers, radio towers, search lights, and scores of uniformed officers in SWAT gear. This was described to the press as his home-base for a campaign to catch illegal immigrants who had committed such horrible crimes as having a crack in their windshield or a burnt out headlight. The real purpose of course was to intimidate innocent people, and in that he succeeded. Many of the members of are undocumented, and of course they were now afraid to come to Good Friday services. I went to the scene and tried to speak with the officer in charge. I tried to explain to him that not only were his men frightening law-abiding citizens, but they were in fact violating if not the letter, then at least the spirit of the Constitution by preventing people from going to church-it's called freedom of religion. Suffice it to say, the deputy, although polite, was not interested. He had his orders.

Two-thousand years ago the "Sheriff of Jerusalem," Pontius Pilate, handed our Lord over to arrest, torture and death on Good Friday. I wonder if our own Sheriff could not see the irony of what he was doing. But he is not the only one to blame. Round-ups of human beings are what happen when our fears make us forget the principles of our Constitution. Basic rights are violated when we allow self-serving politicians to exploit the lives of men woman and children to boost their poll numbers. Racial profiling is not in keeping with the principles of our country, our moral conscience, and our religious belief. And it has got to stop. Now more than ever we need a humane national immigration policy. Now more than even, Arizona needs the witness of Christians who will encourage our leaders to set fair policy that respects the dignity of every human being. Now more than ever Congress needs to have the courage to make just law, for if they don't, then unjust men will take it into their own hands.

I hope that I never have to witness the again the scene that I saw in this city on Good Friday. And I pray that the crucifixion that so many of our people are now experiencing, can with your help, turn to resurrection. Remember, my brothers and sisters, Pilate tried to put a stop to the power of mercy, love, and compassion. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

So much for my speech. The struggle, I fear, is just getting started. Both our Mayor and Police Chief have challenged the Sheriff. Religious leaders, myself included, will soon be publishing an open letter in the paper, legal challenges will be mounted. No matter what your views on immigration or your ideas on how to solve this immensely complex problem, the Sheriff's heavy-handed intimidation is not the way. I hope that you will join with me and others in the religious community who are doing their best to balance the laws of our country with the basic human rights of all God's children.

+Kirk 

On the net: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office press releases: http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Special_Announce

 

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A Final Thought

Most of you know my fondness for Garrison Keillor (who happens to be an Episcopalian). Right after Easter he wrote this reflection for Salon.com which I suspect reflects the attitudes of many:

+Kirk 

 

Thinking weaselish thoughts at Eastertide

Holy Week is a good time to ask: Do we really believe or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music?

By Garrison Keillor

Mar. 19, 2008 | There was a small epiphany in church last week when we sang the recessional "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," a German chorale in which we basses must jump around more limberly than we may be used to. A tough part compared to "When the Roll Is Called up Yonder" and I stood in the rear and struggled with it and then as the choir recessed down the main aisle and came up and stood in the side aisles, three basses wound up standing near me, like border collies alongside the lost sheep, and I got myself in their draft and we sang our way to the barn. (Moral: Get with the group -- just make sure it's the right one.)

I came to church as a pagan this year, though wearing a Christian suit and white shirt, and sat in a rear pew with my sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter whom I would like to see grow up in the love of the Lord, and there I was, a skeptic in the henhouse, thinking weaselish thoughts.

This often happens around Easter. God, in His humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide, a mud flat strewn with newspapers and children's beach toys, and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are, snarfling and grumbling. Which happened to me this year. God knows all about it so I may as well tell you.

Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won't start on a cold morning, you've got friends.

A year or so ago, I sat down and read the four Gospels in one fell swoop and somehow the jaggedness of some of it shook my faith, which maybe was based more on visuals -- Jesus tending His flock, and little children gathered at His knee, sunbeams bursting through storm clouds, and so forth -- and then I read about how the early Church cobbled the Scriptures together, which has to raise doubts in anyone's mind. The Jews got stone tablets and the Mormons arranged for an angel to bring them their holy text, but ours was hammered out through a long contentious political process, sort of like the tax code, and that's something you don't care to know more about.

I don't doubt God's existence -- there He is -- but I doubt His interest in us right now and I haven't the faintest idea what He wants from me.

So I sat and felt miserable. And then we had to chant the Psalm, which went, "I am in trouble, my life is wasted with grief and my years with sighing." Oh boy. David really gets into the blues, he is the Howlin' Wolf of the Chosen, and when he sings, "I have become a reproach even to my neighbors, a dismay to those of my acquaintance, when they see me in the street they avoid me," I know that feeling. The leper. The unbeliever. And that's how I felt when my fellow basses came up alongside and we put our backs to it and sang.

There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus' cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, "Who? Me? No way."

He repented. I would too, but not quite yet.

Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous -- I've been one myself -- the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.

So I will sit in the doubter's chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

© 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.