 So a couple of opening statements. First of all, I'm Mike McKee. I'm the Bishop of the North Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. And I want to share a couple of things for I get started. Well, three things. So one of the conversations that happened a number of years ago happened at North Haven with Owen Ross and Eric Folk earth and Westwood Gruder, who has left for South Africa to teach in a theological school there. And just I said, help us get our heads around even the language, because I don't think that people understand the language about the difference between an asylum seeker and a refugee or any docker or any of those things. And I think that's everybody gets painted with this broad brush. And it's done in such a way to, I think, create confusion, but also a way, in my opinion, to demean a whole group of people. That's the first thing I want to say. The second thing, when Eric said a moment ago about him and Owen getting arrested at the White House, I did know about it because either Eric or Owen called to tell me they were going. And they said, we want you to know that we very likely may get arrested. And I said, that's fine. But the conference is not paying your bail money. I need to say, as I watched that whole event on Facebook and some of the things that happened, it was like two kids who were getting to go to Disney World for the first time. It was the most amazing thing. And I say that simply because it's the kind of passion heart that people really have about this particular happening in our own country. History has a way of repeating itself. And one of the things that I began to think about in terms of what to say to you today is I began to go through the requisite number of passages in the Bible that I thought may say something. And then not that it began to look trite, but it just wasn't where I wanted to come from. They're great supporting material. You could probably name all of them. And I also realized that at this particular time while I was preparing for this, there is another event at which I'm speaking at next week, which is the prayer breakfast that Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has every year. And given some of the things that have happened in our own country and some of the rhetoric, I need to tell you these things are running together for me. And so it made it difficult for me to speak specifically about immigration without acknowledging something that is very clear. It is about the color of people's skins. It's not about who's legal or illegal. It is really about the color of people's skin. So let me say this. Eric touched on this in terms of Texas. How many of you were born in Texas? Most of everybody in this room. Let me say this, that when I travel around the country, I get this question, so you are from Texas. And they say it in such a way that I'm realized, uh-oh, now it's coming. To which I always say to people who are my dear friends, I said, I may talk about my home state, but you may not. And I talk about my life in such a way that I have a lover's quarrel with a number of things that I dearly love and want as my own state. And I think we sometimes forget, Eric pointed this out a few moments ago, that really, Anglos didn't come to Texas till the 1830s in large numbers, that the grant was given by the Mexican government to Moses Austin, Stephen F. Austin's father who then came. And we've always lived somehow in this state that everybody who's here of, let's say, Mexican descent came after we arrived. Guess what? Bad history. But it's bad history because in some ways, the time in which we all grew up, some of us, that is, is that history wasn't written for all of us to know everything. It was only that which people felt like we should know. So as I've talked about it, there are various things I could read to you today. I could read the Good Samaritan, the Great Commandment, the passage from Micah, any other things, but have been drawn to a phrase for a number of days talking about a wandering Aramean. And so Deuteronomy, the 26th chapter, begins this way. When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as inheritance to possess, and you possess it and you settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall put it in a basket, you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, and you shall go to the priest who is in your office at that time and say to him, today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestor to give us. And when the priest takes the basket from you and from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord. A wandering Aramean was my ancestor. He went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien and few in number and there he became a great nation, mighty and populace. And when the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord and the God of our ancestors and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with a terrifying display of power and with signs and wonders and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me. You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God and then you together with the Levites, this is the most important verse, then you together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you shall celebrate all the bounty the Lord your God has given to you and to your house. Borders were not originally placed on the planet earth by God. Borders are constructs in a way we can sort of keep track of some things or maybe sometimes who is in and who is out. As we begin to think about what passage to preach, I need you to understand that I kept coming up against a wall which is an example of what we're against. But there was another wall that was circling my soul and it was to remember that this land does not belong to us. It belongs to God. We too are wandering Arameans passing through this life. Stewards of that which God has given us. And I began to think about this verse because it begins to, I think, set in motion or a whole narrative that runs through the biblical narrative despite some things that perhaps people claim that God did or desired. A whole string of our faith tradition. And that is we will always be hospitable to the strangers. We will love those who are different from us. We will love those who reside among us. If we think that we really are the most important people in the room, then we need to be reminded once again that there are many people not only in this room but in the city, in the state, and yes, even in our country. And I think what makes this so difficult for so many people is because the focused on self. And by that I mean this. That we're so keen on protecting who we are or who I am and what troubles me that I have no sense really thinking and in thinking that way I have no sense of others who are around me. We're all somewhat guilty of this. That's why we ask questions at ordination. Do you expect to be made perfect in this life? We like the answer yes. I know that when clergy, soon to be ordained clergy, have that high expectation, I know that neither I nor they will realize that in its entirety. The whole thing about what it means to be United Methodist Christian, for instance, has something more to do than just saving somebody from hell. The whole thing about Christian perfection, for example, it means that somehow what we realize is that when we move on to perfection or we declare justice and we began to think about immigration or race, we are saving them from a hell of our own making. And friends, there are too many people who say all we want is peace. And I have to tell you, in the deepest part of my soul of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and when I really act upon that, there is no peace given to me. And sitting in this room or being in this room with you today, I realize there are many people with those same kinds of thoughts. I have a little peace of mind, but say something troubling or do something to confront walls. And you'll realize there are more people who desire more confrontation and conflict than they really do peace. If you really engage in this work, I think you will find it troubling. I know that you will, I know that some of you have, but there's this intersection of everything that's going on not only in our country and about our world that really is about fear of the other, fear of the other. You know, history has a way of repeating itself. I don't know that I learned in American history until I went to the University of Texas at Austin that there were Japanese internment camps during the Second World War. Speaking to my colleagues, you're Japanese Americans on the Council of Bishops, I sort of had been somewhat timid about asking about that. They aren't that old to remember it, but their parents were. It still created this deep-seated resentment of the country of their birth, that they were claimed as the other. And we should never forget, and it is still a piece of the conversation and remembering history becomes so important because we turned Jewish people away from the shores of the United States prior to Second World War, and we too are party to the Holocaust, like it or not. Our history's riddled with that, and that is a shame. And what I need to say is actions have consequences. This is the way I begin to think about it. If I were thinking about it psychologically or mentally or emotionally in terms of all kinds of things that every action has a consequence, and what is it like for a child to be in a cage for two years and to think, what is he or she going to think of you and me? What is he or she going to think of probably the greatest democracy in the history of the world, and we will not be able to really claim that. She or he will not be able to claim that is true. Do I believe in immigration laws? Yes, but this is what I believe in even more. The compassion, the love of our Christ to care for the other. There's so many ways that throughout history, the followers of Christ have sometimes been complicit in what happens. I had written a piece of this and shared it with one of my colleagues and he cautioned me, don't do that. So I shall save that for a later time, annual conference when there's a bigger crowd. It'll be a great way to go out, that's all I'm gonna say. But this is what I think is appropriate also for us to think about. And frankly, that is our own confession for all that has happened. It's confession because while I may not have been a perpetrator about those, that boat of Jewish people who were turned away or the Japanese internment camps or any number of things, I often say that the sin of omission is more deadly than the sin of commission. When you had the opportunity to speak and you chose not to. And so I confess daily for my role in any of that related to racism or even what we're getting. I think it's time to go ahead and say and confront people, but do it in such a way that people realize you speak from your understanding and your faithfulness to what it means to follow Christ. This is not a political speech. This is really a witness to our faith. Today or yesterday we learned of 135 people from El Salvador who had been returned, who had been murdered. I didn't do anything to make that happen, but the country that I'm living in did. Remember that sanctification is more than just about being pious. There's sometimes I think many people think of pious. Being pious is nothing but piousity to fall back on. It really means to finally walk the way Jesus would walk. And you and I will always fail and that's why confession is important. Cardinal Suhard who was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Paris during the Second World War said to the Christians, primarily Catholic community in Paris, that being a witness for Christ means living one's life in such a way that one's life only makes sense if God didn't exist. Something about the work that we're asking all of us to do doesn't make sense. There are ways to make sense of it. But what it is more than anything else, I think is it makes sense for our soul and our faith. I've been reading a lot about Washington lately. I need to admit that primarily I've read more about Jefferson than any of our presidents and Lincoln. But I've been reading about Washington for a number of reasons and it may have been because of the musical Hamilton somewhat. I don't know. But I learned something about Washington that during the Revolutionary War, that primary act of resistance against the crown, that the troops, the American troops who were captured by the British were brutalized, tortured, and frankly they were not well taken care of. They escaped from their captors and they got back to Washington and he gave the orders after the Battle of Trenton, which was a great victory in the Revolutionary War. He said, treat the British. He first said it to the Hessians who were captured. Treat them like human beings. He then said the same thing of the British. Treat them like human beings. And if you really, you've been to read Washington and you realize that there's this core value about this man but he was not perfect. This core value that may have begun to set in place whom God may really think we can be. What I'll say this is, I think this and race and any number of issues may be a way that we lose our soul, not even as a nation but as a church. And we should not be shy or reticent in claiming that we follow Jesus because frankly that's who we're called to follow. Andy Lewis who told me that I could be brief today after I was getting up to come here which I've chosen not to do because I'd worked hard on this and I wanted to share it all. Tell me earlier last week, he said I think you should tell the story about your family and so quickly tell it. I've told it before, I've written about it but this is the story. In my first job in the church, I was at a church in Northeast Tarrant County named Richland Hills and also the home church in which I was in learned that the church in which I was working had adopted or sponsored a refugee family from Vietnam. By the way, the third most spoken language in the state of Texas is Vietnamese. But anyway, so this church is sponsored a family, I can still remember this family, they were devoutly Catholic and my parents who thought their church ought to be doing something, encouraged their church, the church in which I grew up in to sponsor a family from Vietnam. This family was Buddhist, he was a tailor, he's still alive, his wife's still alive, everybody in the family's still alive and my parents, my mother and stepdad became the primary sponsors for this family. Never in my imagination would I have thought that would happen but I didn't think it wouldn't happen either but they became the go-to sponsors which created a lot of time but I would tell you that it created one of the most significant relationships I've ever seen in my life. So they started their own businesses, they moved to Virginia eventually after the kids were grown, two of the children were born in the United States, the first born and only son was named after my stepfather, his last name Harvey. It's hard to hear Harvey Fahm and see how that goes together. But it was a tribute to him and to my mother in so many ways and any time there's a wedding or any other big event and that Vietnamese family, my mother goes. She goes because they encourage her, they invite her and they tell her they will buy her ticket and pay for the hotel room and there'll be no expense. She hates doing that but it is their way to say thank you. What I want to say is one time I was visiting with Harvey Fahm who's an adult now and I said, tell me what you do? He said, I can't tell you. I said, is it legal? And he said, Mike, I protect our country in ways I can only imagine. Our country is always richer with the gifts of others. No matter where they come from. They're people who are willing to bring gifts and they are called human beings. In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.