Texts: Isaiah 56: 1-8; Matthew 15: 21-28

The middle aged lady sat in front of the Congressional Committee considering the Wagner-Rogers bill to permit 20,000 Jewish children entry into the United States above the strict quota system that had prevented many Jews from finding refuge in America. Representing the Daughters of the American Revolution, that august body so brilliantly satirized by the political cartoonist Herblock, she warned, “Yes, but these little children will grow up to be Jews!” Soundly defeated in committee by the summer of 1939, the State Department's visa section led by nativist Breckenridge Long, continued to tighten the noose even more on the desperate Jews seeking refuge from Germany including forcing the ship St. Louis to return to Germany condemning its passengers to certain death. The ugly face of nativism and Roosevelt's concern for re-election combined to leave blood on our American hands as well as those of Germans whom we blamed for the Holocaust when the war was over.

Even as late as 1943 when a group of 400 rabbis pleaded with Congress to lift restrictions in the face of clear and convincing evidence of the existence of death damps, only Senators Warren Barbour of New Jersey and Richard Wagner of New York even met with them on the steps of the capitol. Their bills to save Jews failed to pass even as we were fighting Germany. Antisemitism continued to raise its ugly head after the war although without Jewish refugee scientists like Lisa Meitner, Otto Frisch, Neils Bohr, and, of course, Albert Einstein, the U.S. never would have developed the singular weapon that ended the war – the atomic bomb.

Antisemitism, racism,and nativism are all attitudes that find our origin in a fear of the Other, that group we set apart from ourselves, that group we do not really know. We have attitudes about various groups, of course. Muslims are just one of the latest groups to be set apart as an “other.” Last month one of my former students was sworn in as a Superior Court Judge but not until he had gone through a bruising committee hearing, internet diatribes against him because the know-nothings of today testified that he would introduce shari'a law into New Jersey courts, and a vicious assault on his loyalty to America.

What is it within our psyches that make us fear and hate --yes, that is not too strong a word – those who are “different” from us? It's more than economics because after immigration raids on meat packing and poultry plants or in produce fields, the employers afffected literally cannot find workers who will do the jobs that were done by the immigrant workers they had used before. The peach growers of Georgia are the ones calling for a change in that state's anti immigration legislation because their crops are rotting on the trees. Even at $12.50 an hour and a state unemployment rate of 9.9 percent, peach growers could not find people to come and pick peaches. There we have it: racism now moved from black to Hispanics is costing that state a lot, a whole lot.

Alabama, that state where my mother was born and thankfully left, passed even more draconian legislation that would put a person in jail for five years for taking someone to church. Now, there's a real Christian attitude from those – I can't even find the words to describe how I feel about Alabama. Immigrant labor has rebuilt most of what was destroyed along the Alabama coast from Katrina. Why? Because contractors could not find the labor they needed from their native sons.

It is the fear of a radical change in the culture we thought we knew and that we thought belonged to us and to us alone. Americans aren't the only ones who have inordinate fears of the other. It is part of the national debates now going on throughout the European countries. What does make us different from any other country – and, I daresay, including Canada – is that our national identity has always been based on a pledge: a pledge to an ideal of democracy, justice, and freedom although the meaning of those words have changed over the centuries. This is our heritage and this is who we are or, at least, are supposed to be.

The reading from Isaiah this morning reflects a new understanding of nationhood, one that is to include the foreigner as long as the “foreigner” does the ancient equivalent of pledging allegiance, that is, as long as the foreigner puts aside the worship of idols and worships the Lord. This is actually quite extraordinary and represents a new approach towards the people we would call immigrants. This goes beyond the command to leave the gleanings in the field for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. It means more than just handing out what we might call charity. Isaiah says the the foreigner who comes to worship the Lord with all that the command entails, is to be treated as one of our own. Military service is an example of premier loyalty; almost 8 percent of our active duty armed forces are immigrants, many of them not even citizens – and 111 have been granted posthumous citizenship.

The Syrophoenician woman presents a different type of challenge to consider. First, as Matthew's Gospel tells us, Jesus withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon, both ancient Canaanite cities that bordered Galilee, a bit like the southwestern states of the United States bordering Mexico. Not quite ready to possibly die, he was on the lamb, so to speak, after Herod had John executed. Jesus himself was the foreigner who then tells the Canaanite woman that he has come to save only Israel. There are actually two extraordinary things that happen in this story. First, Jesus cuts across the gender roles of his day and speaks with the woman; secondly, the woman expands Jesus' understanding of his own mission. The disciples act as men of their time did: Send her away. Scholars believe that the events depicted here are probably based on the story in Mark 7, which predated Matthew's Gospel by at least ten to fifteen years. It is this encounter that moves Jesus into universalizing his mission. No longer does he understand his mission in narrow nationalistic terms but in broader, more universal ones. There is no longer an “other,” the unknown we are to fear and hate.

Without a doubt, erasing the boundaries we create for ourselves in relation to others is difficult. It means putting aside our preconceptions of who others are, what they represent, and their differences from “us,” whoever “us” is. We talk a great deal about embracing diversity, but that term refers to much more than sexual orientation; diversity refers to language, ethnic group, religion. The real message from this story is that we need to open ourselves up to everyone, and, perhaps, those who seem the most foreign to us.

Let us pray: God of all differences, help us to embrace all who inhabit this earth, for we know that no one is a foreigner in your sight. Amen.