Abraham and Sarah in America

It was a peaceful demonstration, beginning at the back of the sanctuary of
the Chicago Temple (First United Methodist Church) on March 27, 2014. About 50 United Methodists, both laity and clergy, had gathered from across the Northern Illinois Annual Conference. We began with a joyful recognition of each other’s support and prayer. Then we walked to Chicago’s Federal Plaza, where we heard from families who have been separated from loved ones due to deportations. There were prayers and statements by political and religious leaders. Several hundred people continued the march to the Homeland Security building, where a dozen of us from the Conference joined others in civil disobedience by blocking the doorway, resulting in arrest.
We believed it was incumbent upon those of us who have some degree of power and privilege to provide prophetic witness for those who are struggling as immigrants in our country.
The challenges faced by immigrants—with or without documents— lead them to make difficult decisions. One of those decisions is coming to this country, to protect children from violence in their homeland and to find economic solutions to the poverty they experience. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children—fleeing violence from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and other countries— entered the United States in the last two years.¹ Honduras has become one of the murder capitals of the world
and gang violence has increased tremendously in these countries. Many children have had “join or die” gang recruitment or gang threats against them or their families. Some families with support back in the United States are vulnerable as targets for kidnapping.
I don’t think those of us who’ve never been forced to flee our homes fully comprehend why people make some of the choices they make; that’s the definition of privilege.

SURVIVAL TACTICS
Difficult decisions have always been a part of immigrants’ lives. Every year, I read through the Bible and I encounter the stories in Genesis where Abraham and Sarah are traveling through a foreign land and Abraham passes Sarah off to the foreign king as his sister: “Abraham traveled from there toward the land of the arid southern plain, and he settled as an immigrant in Gerar….”²
This is an immigrant’s story. I am deeply indebted to the Common English Bible for opening my eyes to this story, because instead of using the word “sojourning,” the translation clearly refers to Abraham and Sarah as immigrants.
When immigrants find them-
selves in any kind
of trouble, they
have to make
hard choices, just
as Abraham did
before Abimelech,
 the king of Gerar.
 Abraham was try
ing to keep himself
alive; without him
alive, Sarah had no hope as a foreign woman.³ Yet in order to do that, he had to say that Sarah was his sister, a half-truth because they had different mothers. Sarah is incredibly vulnerable in this story—Abraham knows it, but he is powerless himself as an immigrant to do anything to protect her except to try to stay alive himself.
Abraham had to make hard choices in the hope of survival and keeping his family alive and together. Just like immigrants today facing deportation, abuse, and vulnerability. For instance, some of today’s Abrahams suffer physically when they’re forced to work in substandard conditions. If they complain, they could lose their job, at best, or be turned in to the authorities for deportation.
LIVING IN FEAR
What happens to the Abrahams of today if they are deported? In addition to being separated, often abruptly, from their families, many are used by the federal government to provide essential labor at the detention centers where they are being held. In 2013, at least 60,000 immigrants worked
in federal detention centers—more than worked for any other single employer in
the nation, according to data from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).⁴ The government pays these immigrants roughly 13 cents an hour, 
or one dollar a day, instead of the $7.25 federal minimum wage. These Abrahams are slaves in our country.
But the face of an immigrant is pre- dominantly a female face; there are slightly more female than male immigrants. Today’s Sarahs are often left to fend for themselves, not because their husbands, fathers, and brothers are the cads that the biblical commentaries make Abraham out to be, but because their male family members had to make a hard choice to work wherever they could in the United States, even in risky and unsafe situations.
Imagine dropping your child off at school every day, afraid that you’ll be detained by ICE. Imagine arranging for a neighbor to take care of your children in case you disappear. Imagine staying with a violent partner because calling
the cops could get you deported.
Forty-six percent
of domestic workers are immigrants.⁵
In New York
City, 33 percent of
immigrant domestic
workers have expe
rienced abuse of
some kind in their
workplaces, often
because of their
race or immigration
status.⁶ An
abuser can use the woman’s immigration status to keep her from leaving an abusive marriage or workplace or from reporting abuse. In the Bible, it says that Abimelech “took her [Sarah] into his household” (Genesis 20:2). Do we think she suddenly became the queen of the land? I don’t think so. Who knows what Sarah’s future would have held in Abimelech’s palace?
The next generation was seriously jeopardized in this story, too. If Abraham’s and Sarah’s immigration experience had gone badly, there would be no Isaac, no Jacob, no people of Israel.
If we were Abrahams and Sarahs, what would we do?
SPEAK UP, ACT OUT
Our Hebrew scriptures are filled with admonitions to provide mercy and care to immigrants, including: “Don’t mistreat or oppress an immigrant, because you were once immigrants in the land of Egypt.”⁷ Likewise, the prophets admonish people to live rightly, which includes seeking justice for the poor, orphans, widows, and immigrants.
The lives of immigrants in our country are at risk, especially in our present political climate. Every day, they make difficult choices. Many of them can’t raise their own voices because of their tenuous situation with the US government. And so the task comes to those of us who believe that justice and mercy require not just speaking up, but acting for those who are voiceless and vulnerable.
I could have written about the immigration issue forever with few people paying attention, but when clergy and laity were arrested for taking a stand, people took notice. Taking that step provided an opportunity for prophetic witness throughout the Church.
A portion of this essay was adapted from “A process and penalty for disobedience,” about Dyck’s anti-deportation protest, at bishopdyck.org.
 
Footnotes

 
 
1. Haeyoun Park, “Q. and A.: Children at the Border,” October 21, 2014, accessed October 19, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com /interactive/2014/07/15/us /questions-about-the-border-kids .html?_r=0.
2. Genesis 20:1 (Common English Bible), my emphasis.
3. Genesis 20:11 (Common English Bible).
4. Ian Urbina, “Using Jailed Migrants As a Pool of Cheap Labor,” NYTimes.com, May 24, 2014, accessed October 1, 2015, http://www.nytimes .com/2014/05/25/us/using- jailed-migrants-as-a-pool-of- cheap-labor.html?_r=0.
5. Linda Burnham and Nik Theodore, “Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work” (New York: National Domestic Workers Alliance, 2012), http:// www.domesticworkers.org/sites /default/files/HomeEconomics English.pdf.
6. “Home Is Where the Work Is: Inside New York’s Domestic Work Industry” (New York: Domestic Workers United and DataCenter, 2006), http://www .datacenter.org/reports/homeis wheretheworkis.pdf.
7. Exodus 22:21 (Common English Bible), my emphasis.

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