TREATMENT OF ALIENS

News reports on the day after Thanksgiving told the story of how Jesus Manuel Cordova had rescued a nine-year-old boy in the desert of southern Arizona. The unidentified boy had been riding with his mother in a van when it plunged over a cliff and rolled 300 feet down the slope.

His mother was pinned in the car and later died, but the boy was unhurt and managed to climb back up to the road. Not long thereafter, Mr. Cordova found the boy, comforted him, gave him a jacket, built a fire, and stayed with him until another vehicle passed by the next morning and called for help.

The first authorities to arrive were from the Border Patrol. Since Mr. Cordova had walked across the border without documents, he was taken into custody and deported to Mexico. When interviewed back at his home in the Mexican state of Sonora, Mr. Cordova was asked why he stayed with the child. His answer: “I am a father of four children. For that, I stayed. I never could have left him. Never.”

The Bible includes many stories of how people moved from one country to another as economic migrants in search of better lives. Abram (later Abraham) left the land of Ur and went first to Haran, then later to Canaan. The sons of Israel traveled to Egypt to buy grain because there was a famine back home. When Joseph forgave his brothers for selling him into slavery and invited them to live in Egypt, the whole clan moved to that unfamiliar land and lived there for roughly 400 years.

Then, to escape from hardships that the pharaoh was inflicting on them, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into a 40-year sojourn in the Sinai Peninsula. During that time, Moses wrote down the many rules that God provided to help the Israelites live in harmony with each other and with neighboring peoples. The verse for today is succinct and arises directly from the Israelites’ own experience: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”

The story of Mr. Cordova’s courage and kindness – staying with the young boy despite knowing it would mean being sent back to Mexico – gives us an opportunity to think once again about our responsibilities to treat people from other countries in a way that is pleasing to God. Moses didn’t have to worry about protocols of the modern world such as passports, visas, work permits, eligibility for schooling, or other social benefits. He just provided general guidance to treat foreigners fairly and not oppress them.

How should our country follow this guidance in the 21st century? What does it mean for us to not mistreat aliens or oppress them?

— Dan Pearson

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist