jesus, the illegal alien among us

Last summer I preached a sermon on globalization that questioned our nation's increasing antagonism toward immigrants, largely through reflection on the Old Testament injunction to make a place for the foreigner and alien in our midst through acts of hospitality and provision of food. Here is a link to a sermon by Edgardo Colon-Emeric, who teaches at Duke Divinity School and assists in the pastoral ministry at Reconciliation UMC in Durham, North Carolina. A member of our church worships there (while in graduate school) and she had forwarded this sermon to her mother, who forwarded it to me. It is a profound example of deep biblical reflection on an issue, and calls into question the attitudes that prevail in the popular media and, as a consquence, in our common life. I have met Edgardo--we were participants in the Oxford Institute For Methodist Theological Studies last summer--and in that setting found him to be a thoughtful and serious Christian.

Read it all.