This upcoming Lent, we are beginning a new project, the Migration With Dignity Lectionary. The MWD Lectionary will follow the Revised Common Lectionary texts for every Sunday in the church year. Each week, Another Way will offer a meditation on one of the texts for the upcoming Sunday, with particular discussion of how the text relates to immigration, justice, and the Migration With Dignity principles.
The meditations, which will be written by members and friends of the Episcopal Migration Caucus, are appropriate for many uses: as a devotional aid in praying and learning about Migration With Dignity; as a preaching resource for those who wish to bring commentary on immigration into their preaching; as a source for individual or group theological study.
The value of a project like the MWD Lectionary is seeing how closely tied immigration justice is across the whole of scripture and the church’s life. We are following the model of the Abolition Lectionary from Christians for Abolition.
Welcome to a journey of justice and welcome through the church year!
Ash Wednesday 2026:
2 Corinthians 5:20–6:10
This poignant passage from 2 Corinthians shows Paul begging for reconciliation, relying on the witness of his sufferings and fidelity as a plea for repentance and conversion of life.
I could not read this passage, in this moment in history, without thinking of the Martyrs of Minneapolis: people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti who died by violence while protecting their immigrant neighbors, as well as the thousands of others we have seen on the news from Minnesota who have been faithfully protecting the immigrants within their communities, or who have suffered because of their ethnicity or national origin.
Surely we can say about thousands of Minnesotans facing ICE in the cold that they have faced “great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities” (6:4).
Surely we can say about the tormented immigrant population of Minneapolis that they have faced “beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (6:5)—especially as we hear stories about the horrific conditions of confinement at the Whipple Federal Building as well as in detention centers like the Dilley Family Detention Center in Texas, where children who are locked up face inedible food.
Is it appropriate to apply these words, which Paul wrote about the sufferings of the apostles for the sake of the gospel, to the political witnesses and victims of our current moment?
Yes: because Christ is crucified in the “crucified peoples of the world,” as theologian of liberation Ignacio Ellacuría wrote, so those persecuted children and neighbors are Christ himself.
Yes: because the neighbors standing up to protect their communities are standing up for the love of neighbor, which Christ himself names as equally important as the love of God.
Yes: because what these neighbors are calling us to is conversion of heart and commitment to love. Their sufferings are a result of their faithful care for one another.
What this passage offers in this context, then, is a call to heed the testimony of love and care offered by these martyrs (which is the Greek word that means witnesses). “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!” (6:2). It is always the right moment to do the right thing.
And the hope that Paul offers for those who are committed to the cause of Jesus, and therefore to love of their neighbors even in times of trial, is this:
“We are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look--we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.” (6:9-10)
Our fidelity to love will give us everything. Our fidelity to one another will bring about life. Our devotion to the truth of our common dignity as children of God will show forth.
This Ash Wednesday, as we turn to repentance, we repent for the sins done “on our behalf” and in our name. We recognize that we are all responsible for the treatment of immigrants within our nation. We are all called to testify with our words and actions and lives to the love of God for all people, and to show our love for our neighbor. This Lent, let us recommit to faithful, costly, continuous care for one another, grounded in the love that God has for us all, as those “having nothing and yet possessing everything.”
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026).