Serving Immigrants
Inspired by God’s invitation in Jeremiah 29:7 to seek the flourishing of our city, Arlington Bridge Builders is committed to five areas of Community Service that serve and connect the vulnerable parts of Arlington. In a recent post, we looked at Poverty Alleviation, and in this post, we’ll consider a second focus: Serving Immigrants.
Arlington is one of the most ethnically rich areas in the country, with over 100 languages spoken in the nation’s smallest county. And so it’s quite common to connect with neighbors with vastly different experiences and perspectives. How should we respond to the increasing ethnic diversity surrounding us? Who will we listen to?
Some voices in our culture tell us immigrants should be treated with suspicion, disparagement, or contempt. While we reject such conclusions, those voices resonate because something in us feels uncomfortable or threatened by what is unfamiliar. Our personal assumptions and preferences are challenged when confronted by what is different. The “other” person or ethnicity appears as a threat to things you hold dear—and so you push them away and push them down.
Fortunately, we have a better voice. In the formative commands to the new nation of Israel, God said, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.” (Lev. 19:33) The command is needed because God knows the human heart, and left unchecked, the Israelites will mistreat sojourners just like other nations did. That’s what you do when you hold title to the land, when you’re the one with power and position. It’s us versus them.
And so God brings a correction. He calls his people to be different. It’s not a suggestion. It is to be part of the fabric of life in God’s kingdom: “you shall” treat immigrants a different way than the world around you.
How? First, “you shall do him no wrong.” At the very least, we are not to mistreat or oppress the sojourner (cf. Ex 21:22). Given their unfamiliarity with the local language and systems, as well as social and professional ties, immigrants are vulnerable to injustice and exploitation. Modern examples of mistreatment include landlords not honoring lease agreements, or employers not paying a contractor what was promised. God forbids us to do wrong to immigrants.
But God goes further, adding a requirement: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you.” It’s a remarkable passage, virtually without precedent in the ancient world. The sojourner shall be afforded the same rights and privileges as a citizen. For us today, that would include basic rights of due process, speech, worship, and assembly.
God goes still further: “And you shall love him as yourself.” Instead of rejecting the “Other,” we are to embrace them, in love. There are no rules or limitations here, like the one the religious expert hoped for when he asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with the familiar story of the Good Samaritan who serves a wounded traveler whose status and ethnic identity is unknowable—and utterly irrelevant. In so doing, the Samaritan—the “Other”—demonstrates biblical hospitality.
In the Bible, hospitality is not what we think of today, a social gathering for friends and neighbors. In the New Testament, the word hospitality literally means “love of strangers.”
Our partnership offers several ways to demonstrate hospitality. Many of our immigrant neighbors desire to learn English, so they can better connect with the community. Our annual Family Festival celebrates the heritage of our Latino neighbors and provides opportunities to make new friends. The 10-week Citizenship Class helps prepare immigrants for a proficiency exam that most citizens would find daunting. Elementary students who struggle with English and face a lifetime of alienation are learning English and making friends in our Bridge Kids After School program. Our Care Coordinator provides vital support to immigrants who aren’t sure where to turn for help or resources. Arlington Bridge Builders also helps churches become a more welcoming place for immigrants.
At our food pantry, we have recently been setting up a “hospitality tent” with coffee, snacks and someone to talk with while our neighbors—most of whom are immigrants—wait in line for food. Volunteers wrote personal notes to give to our pantry clients, like the one in the picture accompanying this post: “Thank you for visiting! We are so glad you are part of our community. You are always welcome here. Please let us know if we can help or pray for you!” These are small gestures, but they help turn a transaction (getting food) into a relationship (loving our neighbor).
God could have simply told us to love our immigrant neighbor, and it would have been enough. But he adds an important reason: “For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Of all people, God’s people should know what it’s like to live as strangers in a strange land. To not feel welcome or seen. To be mistreated or oppressed. To feel alienated and alone, with no one to help.
None of us, of course, were literal slaves in Egypt delivered out of physical bondage. But our spiritual ancestors were, and so we can identify with their heartache. And more importantly, we know what it is like to be held captive in sin and shame, alienated from God’s kingdom and without hope—and then miraculously delivered by God himself. We have a new and primary identity—not as citizens of an earthly kingdom but a heavenly one. As the Apostle Peter said, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9–10)
Just as we have received mercy, so are we to extend it to others, by serving our immigrant neighbors and inviting them into our lives. And when we do, we start to change, for the better. Our appreciation of the scope of God’s mercy and kingdom grows. Our appreciation of God himself grows: God is so vast, he necessarily creates, redeems and restores a vastly diverse humanity to even begin to bear image to himself. A diverse yet united body of witnesses representing the King and his kingdom. God’s people are to be a Preview of Coming Attractions of our eternal and inevitable future, of diversity in community.
Revelation 7:9 describes a scene in heaven where people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” are standing together as one, awed and united in worship of the One who lived, died and rose again for each and every one of them. Imagine the impact on Arlington, if our service and relationships provided a glimpse of what we look forward to, such that our neighbors would say, “I want that, too.”