There is a profoundly odd story in the Bible about Abraham and Sarah. There is a famine where they are living and they are forced to flee to a different country to survive. They end up in Egypt. As they are entering this foreign land, Abraham is filled with fear for his safety. He knows they have no rights, and he has no expectation that they will be treated well. He tells his wife Sarah – and I’m just going to quote the story directly so you know I’m not making this up or fudging it – he says, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.”
Yes, Abraham tells his wife to pretend she’s his sister, because he assumes the locals will kill him and take her for their own. And Sarah goes along with it. And this is a good time to acknowledge that this is a messed up story on a lot of levels but we’re going to stay with it for a little bit anyway. Sarah indeed pretends Abraham is her brother instead of her spouse, and within moments of their arrival in Egypt, the Pharaoh catches wind of Sarah’s beauty and, as the writer puts it, “takes her into his house” – which means she either becomes one of his wives or just part of his harem.
This odd story, by the way, is told three different times in Genesis – twice about Abraham and Sarah, and once with their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca as the protagonists. Biblical literalists believe this means it actually happened three times. I was taught that it is likely the same story just told three times in three different ways. I remember my teacher saying when in our Scriptures they tell you the same story over and over again in different ways the biblical editors are shaking your shoulders and telling you to pay attention. I suppose even if you are a biblical literalist, the idea that this thing keeps happening again and again should make you pay attention differently.
There is so much to pay attention to in this story.
A whole book could be written about the gender dynamics here, but for today I just want to focus on how the story speaks to the vulnerability of immigration. To leave the place you know, to step into a world of uncertainty, to live somewhere whose primary language is not your own, to place yourself at the mercy of the whims of those around you, to forfeit claim to so many things – including rights and privileges – this is utter vulnerability. Abraham and Sarah are brave and scared at the same time. And, to be fair, in light of what happens to Sarah, it appears their fears were not unreasonable.
Our biblical tradition wants us to pay attention here to the vulnerability of the immigrant experience. Not only to pay attention to it, but to digest it, to get it, to relate to it, to see ourselves in it.
It should not be difficult for us to connect to vulnerability. The reality is that many of us in our time and place feel vulnerable even in our own home here and now. We feel insecure about our future, we are experiencing an unsustainable economic reality, as well as an increasingly volatile environment. The political climate is vicious, violent, and untenable.
If anything, we should be able to understand the vulnerability of the immigrant. We should be able to read their stories, witness their lives, and connect on a human level to their experience, even when it differs from ours in the particulars.
Instead we are being convinced to fear the immigrants themselves – as if they are marauding hordes of outsiders hellbent on overwhelming our culture and taking endless advantage of our systems. This is a lie we tell ourselves – and a convenient one at that.
Jesus doesn’t buy it. Jesus tells us that loving our neighbor is the way to love God, and that all other rules and morals hang on the command to love our neighbor. And he makes it very clear that our neighbor includes people of different nationalities, cultures, religions, races than us. Jesus commands us to seek the humanity in one another. I really don’t know how to say it more simply than that: Seek the humanity in one another, because when you do that, you will remember that every human is made in the image of God, every person is meant to be honored.
Jesus didn’t just speak this commandment; he embodied it. According to Christian belief, Jesus is God in human flesh – who came and lived in this world as a human. He was born into poverty in a marginalized and oppressed community and became a refugee as an infant. His earthly ministry was marked by itinerancy, and ended with his arrest, torture, and execution – one in which he was stripped naked and hung in public for all passersby to witness. Jesus is the embodied vulnerability of God. The salvation of the whole world is found in the vulnerability of God. The salvific command to seek and honor the humanity in every person is issued from a place of divine vulnerability.
We cannot honor the image of God in every human being if we turn a blind eye to their vulnerability or – worse – exploit that vulnerability for our own gain.
The odd story of Abraham and Sarah doesn’t get more normal as it concludes. God plagues the Pharoah for taking Sarah as his wife, and when Pharoah finds this out, he sets her free, and he blames Abraham. The Pharoah turns the whole situation into a farce in some way – he realizes the immigrants have God on their side, and he says, “Oh why didn’t you just tell me the truth? I would’ve treated you well all along!” It has the capacity to make Abraham and Sarah seem reactionary or overly dramatic. But they aren’t. They are realistic about the dangerous circumstances into which they enter as immigrants.
It is ridiculous to assume the immigrants Abraham and Sarah should just tell everyone they’re on a mission from God and they’ll be accepted.
This is often how the dominant culture works: We put the onus on the people on the margins to convince us they are worthy, they are harmless, they are sent here for good reason. Of course, when they don’t convince us in whatever way makes the most sense to us in the moment, we slap ankle monitors on them, we detain them, we incarcerate them without representation in unsanitary conditions, we shoot them down in the street, we deport them to countries they never even came from. And we say, “well they should have known better.” We say, “If they just followed the rules they’d have nothing to worry about,” We say, “This wouldn’t have happened if they’d stayed where they belonged.”
No. No. We should know better. I get that we feel vulnerable ourselves. I do. And we are. But immigrants are not the ones making those of us in the dominant culture here vulnerable. Add to that the reality that our vulnerability is not to the same magnitude as our immigrant siblings.
And they are our siblings – whether we admit that or not. They are our flesh and blood. Every immigrant is your family and mine. Every one of them.
People take pilgrimages in order to connect more deeply and practically to their story and to be transformed spiritually. This is why our trip to the border this Fall is a pilgrimage: Because the vulnerability and courage of the immigrant is as much a part of our story as the vulnerability and courage of Abraham and Sarah – as much a part of our salvation as the vulnerability and courage of Christ himself. They are a part of us, and we need to remember it, to connect ourselves to that truth on a deeper and more practical level, and to be transformed.
