A Pastoral Message from Pastor Hans

Beloved in the Lord!

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy 10:17-19

You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 24:22

We don’t often dwell on the Old Testament’s books of the Law. Despite their dryness, these ancient law codes are the foundation for both our sense of Christian morality as well as the secular law that governs our nation and others in the Western legal tradition. For these reasons, they deserve serious study and consideration.

In the two passages I quote above, along with many others, we hear from God directly about how fervently God loves the strangers in our midst. The Hebrew word גֵּר (ger) used in both these passages (translated as both stranger and alien) has a precise meaning–the great, five-volume Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament defines this word thusly:

"Ger is a man who (alone or with his family) leaves village and tribe because of war, famine, epidemic, blood guilt etc. and seeks shelter and residence at another place, where his right of landed property, marriage and taking part in jurisdiction, cult and war has been curtailed."

Note that last portion–even in ancient times, there were regular attempts to curtail the rights and privileges of the stranger. From a human perspective, this is natural–after all, they were outside of the nation–and in Israel’s case, outside of the covenant, apart from God’s chosen people. Yet God is insistent that we not see strangers in this way.

Why might that be? Well, the Law is also insistent on God’s universality–that, although Israel is God’s chosen people, God is the only creator and the only Eternal being, meaning that He has a relationship with all people. As Christians, this message of God’s universality reaches its apex in Jesus Christ, through whom we receive adoption both into Israel and into God’s family.

As a result of our sinful human nature, we find ourselves forgetting these messages–about God’s universality and about God’s particular love for the stranger, across time. In our time, we see our own government callously and violently treating the strangers entrusted to their care, sometimes even leading to death.

Today, I stood alongside clergy from many faith traditions at the Berks County Courthouse to ask the Prison Board to stop its collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, except where required by law. This collaboration has led to 117 people being discharged from the Berks County Jail to ICE’s custody after they have served their sentence and would be otherwise eligible to return to their families.

I know that, when I sign such a document, I use Trinity’s name and status in our community; consequently, I wade into these issues with the utmost care. I am not looking to reward scofflaws, to reject the government’s ability to rightly punish wrongdoers, or to make a partisan statement. Instead, I am hoping to stand up for Christian morality, which insists that we see as God sees, and that there should not be one standard for citizens and another for resident aliens. Once justice, as our laws define it, has been done through a served sentence, I believe handing a non-citizen over to the brutality of the current federal administration to be cruel injustice rather than love.

If our federal government were suffused with Christian morality, there would be no need to object to this change of custody, but lamentably that is not the case at the present time. I have greater trust in our local law-enforcement agencies here in Berks County, and believe that they will continue to execute justice for citizen and alien alike, in accordance with the expectations of our God.

In Christ,

The Rev. Hans E. Becklin

Senior Pastor