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| The Immigrant Church In a Homiletics blog last April I referred to getting my taxes done, and said the following: “Like millions of others today — with the possible exception of 11 million illegal guests — I’ll be dropping my taxes in the mail -box just in time to beat the deadline.” About three weeks later, I heard from Claudio Lopes in Massachusetts who took exception to the parenthetical aside. “Hi, Timothy,” he wrote. “Please, do not buy the lie that the people you call illegal guest do not pay taxes. Surely, they are not your guest. They were not invited by you or other Pharisees. They came here pushed by poverty, famine, all kind of needs and by the God’s Providence like the Pilgrims and your ancestors. They are decent and hard-working human beings. They are coming to Christ at a rate you cannot imagine it. And they pay taxes.” Then he added: “I read your column ‘Got Out of My Box.’ Sorry to say, my brother, you didn’t. Big hug. Your brother in Christ.” I laughed out loud. That was funny. My brother in Christ. He’s a nice guy. Really. In a subsequent e-mail, he refers to the tax question again: “Undocumented immigrants use a document issued by IRS called ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number). They cannot use it to work, only to pay taxes. But they are not able to get the benefits. It is the old discriminatory concept ‘not justice, but, just-us.’” I checked out the ITIN. Such a form exists. I have no information as to how many people in the country illegally actu-ally use it. Truth is, most Americans are here because someone in their family history immigrated. That’s why Americans under-stand the plight of the immigrant. Our church is host to a Spanish-speaking congregation called Neuva Vision. I asked the pastor, Robert Lopez, about his views. In my conversations with him and others close to this issue, some points deserve to be noted: Immigrants come here to work. Both documented and undocumented workers have no reason to be in this country other than work. If there was no work, and if the economy in Mexico was not so bad, they wouldn’t be here. Immigrants are also here at an enormous cost to themselves. If they arrived here illegally, chances are the effort cost them a ton of pesos. They’re separated from family, wife and children whom they may not see for years. If there is a death in the family, they cannot go back. There is a lot of pain and suffering. Some immigrants fall prey to the culture. Many stay much longer than they had anticipated. Some stay five or six years and return to Mexico. This is their dream. But others stay five, eight, nine or 15 years even though this was not the original plan. Unfortunately, they’ve bought into the American lifestyle and the American lifestyle is a debt-driven lifestyle, a way of life unknown to them in Mexico. Now, saddled with debt, they can’t leave and return to Mexico as they’d prefer. Immigrants are aliens in a foreign culture. If you’ve never had the experience of being a “stranger,” you can’t understand how alienated aliens feel. They’re in a country where the language is foreign, the currency is different, customs are different, values are different — everything is different, and what’s more, they’re often treated with disdain and prejudice. While here, they generally pay their own way. The pastor of Neuva Vision told me that the impulse to not pay taxes is not just a Mexican attitude; it’s an equally American attitude. Who doesn’t try to pay as little in taxes as possible? And while most of us do this legally, how many American’s fudge on their tax return, or withhold a report of all their income? Business owners do their best to avoid paying taxes and do so in highly creative ways. As the discussion rages in the political arena, we shouldn’t neglect our pastoral role. But on another level, we know that we are sojourners and strangers in this world, a “peculiar people” as the New Testament puts it, also the title of Rodney Clapp’s 1997 book A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society. Like Abraham in search of a city we know not of. As Christians in an alien culture we can identify with the immigrants: • Immigrants come here to work. That’s also the task of the immigrant church. • Immigrants come here in search of a better life and to return to the country of their citizenship with that life intact. The immigrant church enjoys the “abundant” life in Christ, but longs to return to the “country” of its true citizenship. • Immigrants are aliens in a foreign culture. So is the church. • Some immigrants fall victim to the culture. So does the church. • The journey is often fraught with pain, separation and despair. The radical Christianity of the immigrant church is not often seen, since to attract the non-believers we smooth off the rough edges of the cross — if indeed one ever sees a cross. Too often we opt for “palatable” Christianity, rather than the “hard-to-digest” faith to which Jesus calls us. We could toss in Niebuhr, Hauerwas and Willimon, et al., at this point. But really, the immigrants, legal or otherwise, have no interest in “transforming” the culture. And they have no interest in embracing our culture. They have a culture, thank you very much. Why is that a problem? The immigrant church could take a bite out of their taco. As the church, it’s not about transforming or embracing the culture. It’s about nurturing the culture of the church so that it can be faithful to its mission. In the U.S. we have a democratically-elected government. This government makes policy and enforces it on our behalf. It has to make hard choices and sometimes those choices don’t resonate with all of us. But the church does not have the responsibility of government. Instead, it’s free to embrace the immigrant, to understand where he’s been, where’s he’s at, and where he wants to go. The church, seeing itself as an immigrant community, can do a lot more to be shelter in the storm, to provide assistance and encouragement for the journey.
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