One-Year
Bible, 2/26/12 – “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not
mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your
native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am
the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:33.34).”
It should come as no
surprise that this commandment is the second one in Leviticus 19 that
admonishes, “You will love . . . as you love yourself.”
Jesus said of verse 19:18 that it was the second greatest commandment
on which hung “all of the Law and the Prophets.” If that is so, we can
infer that this is the third greatest commandment. Not only does God
expect us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but to love the alien,
those who are foreign, those who are DIFFERENT who live among us as
ourselves.
This is not an easy command, but nothing ventured,
nothing gained. There is nothing easy about absorbing and assimilating
the God-consciousness, the unconditional LOVE that leads to Life. It is
certainly a challenge to the renewal that is required of all of us. We
are comfortable with the familiar—that includes people who look like
us, love like us, speak like us, eat like us, drink like us, walk like
us, drive like us, work like us, play like us, etc. But the renewal of
our soul-life requires us to MOVE BEYOND our “US.”
No one is
immune from the bigotry associated with chauvinism, elitism,
heterosexism, nationalism, nativism, racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Those who are different too often become the scapegoats for our anger
and frustration as we seek to carve out a place of peace and prosperity
for ourselves in an ever-competitive, compassion-less, selfish society.
Ironically these bigoted behaviors and mindsets find strong
expression in the United States of America, a nation settled by persons
from many lands, cultures, languages, folkways and mores alien to each
other. In fact, the original native inhabitants have virtually
disappeared as a result of physical and social genocide by the end of
the 20th Century.
America is truly a nation of immigrants, or
aliens. If any nation is to celebrate differences, and to treat all
people equally while doing so, America should be the one place where
God’s dictum to Moses is held up as a primary value. Equality of
opportunity and equality of treatment, including treatment under the
law, must be the guiding principle we use as we learn the true meaning
of “land of the free.” May our borders and exclusionary fortress-like
thinking crumble as we grow into the perfection that God's undeserving
love offers us as a people.
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