Author Archive for: Admin

As a final case study from our small church, I would like to present a sermon I gave on June 17th, 2018. Our fellowship observes communion about once a month, and this was given right before communion. The greater context was the news of that week: President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had hardened their immigration policy on the US-Mexico border, and begun detaining immigrants, even those guilty of the misdemeanor of entering U.S. soil for the first time, separating the children of these immigrants, and taking the children into custodial care, and removing them far from the parents, in some cases. Attorney General Sessions attempted to justify this action to his fellow church members as an application of Romans 13.

In 2012 the Office of Social Justice (OSJ) coordinated hundreds of letters to encourage Christian Indonesian immigrants who were living in Highland Park Reformed Church to avoid deportation. We also coordinated hundreds of letters to Congress, urging legislation that would allow these Christians, who came to the U.S. fleeing persecution, to gain legal permanent residence in the United States.

Highland Park Reformed Church started sharing their building with an Indonesian congregation in the late 1990s—not for immigration sanctuary but as a shared space where both congregations could worship. Members of the Indonesian congregation had recently left their predominantly Muslim country at that time and arrived in the U.S. on tourist visas which were offered as means of quick escape from the danger they were in as members of a minority religion in their home country. Once in the U.S. they had a year to apply for permanent asylum but many say they were unaware the necessity of that crucial step. Because they never adjusted their status, when their first year ended they were living here illegally and the window for a chance at permanent legal status was officially closed.

Recently I was asked by a frustrated Christian how I might respond to the imprecation, “keep your damned politics out of my church.”  I asked her to allow me think on this – as it is something that I have wrestled with in my personal ministry but have rarely spoken about in a pastoral context.  Comforted by the promises of Jesus Christ in Matthew 10:20 and Luke 12:12 I offered the following encouragement.

I riffed on the famous quip by German novelist Thomas Mann.  I said, “Everything is politics. And nobody goes to church on Sunday to feel bad.”  On balance, these two counterweights have informed nearly every sermon I’ve ever preached and my efforts at encouraging fellow pilgrims to repair this broken world and build upon it the Kingdom of God.