Posted on August 19, 2025

Not long ago I found myself in the 6th chapter of Luke where it’s the Sabbath and Jesus and his disciples are plucking (which, technically, is harvesting) and eating the heads of grain and Jesus heals the man with a withered hand. The scribes and Pharisees, watching Jesus closely for any excuse to prosecute him, think they’ve found it. Harvesting and healing are forbidden on the Sabbath. Jesus is breaking the Law.

Jesus told his followers he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. As high as his respect was for the Law, however, his respect for human need was higher. When the Law conflicted with human need it had to be interpreted and administered compassionately. The Law never stopped being the Law but neither did those subject to the Law ever stop being the beloved children of God.

Which brings me to what we see happening to our immigrant sisters and brothers. Jesus, of course, sees it too, and I wonder what he’d have to say about it.

He might say that all people are his beloved children and he created and loves and died and rose for each and every immigrant as surely as he did for me and you.

He might say that unless we are indigenous to the land we occupy, the United States is our home only because we ourselves or someone in our families was an immigrant, many of whom entered the country in ways which, at the time, were “illegal.”

He might say that among our immigrant sisters and brothers—and we are all sisters and brothers in God’s family—there are those with evil intent, not living as he calls his children to live. But if we talked with them rather than about them we’d discover most of them are just like we are, with the same dreams and wanting the same things from life: the chance to provide for themselves and their families, to feel safe and secure, to know peace and compassion, to love and to be loved.

He might say that it is, indeed, important that any country control its borders, with lawful, accountable able ways to enter and exit, and reasonable, proportional, humane consequences for those who choose not to follow the law. But he might also speak from his own experience in saying that in the face of human need, there is always more to the story of not following the law than not following the law.

And he might ask us, “Do you know, as many of them do, what it’s like to live every moment of your life afraid you and your family will be murdered? What it’s like to not have a home or a job, knowing that thanks to forces you cannot control you never will? What lengths would you go to if yourchildren were starving, your children were being threatened with murder? How desperate might you be in decisions you make about the law?”

Finally, he might say something like this: “It is true that many of my desperate children have chosen to do things the law tells them they cannot do, but to separate children from their parents, to lock people in cages, to send people back not to the countries they came from but to countries in which they’ve never set foot—is this what I’ve taught you? Is that what it means to follow me, to call me Lord?”

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying enforcing the law is wrong. I’m saying that much of the way we’re going about enforcing the law is wrong. Too many seem to have forgotten that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are created in the image of God. Too many seem to have forgotten that we are all God’s children. Too many seem to have forgotten the call to compassion.

I’m saying we should remember that we are called to love one another as God loves us.