Luke 24:13–35
Where do you meet God? In church? During prayer? Outside in nature? In Holy Communion, through “the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35)? This scripture passage suggests that you meet God in wandering, undocumented strangers.
In the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion, we meet two of his disciples walking away from Jerusalem. This story drips with dramatic irony because we know that Jesus has risen, but the forlorn disciples do not. As they walk, they run into a pilgrim stranger. They tell him about the miracle worker and prophet who Rome unceremoniously beat, tortured, stripped, and crucified.
The cross was the worst tool of capital punishment in the Roman arsenal. Arguably the most painful and certainly the most shameful way to die, crucifixion was beneath the dignity of Roman citizens. Instead, it was reserved only for non-citizens, both free and enslaved. This is how we know that Jesus and most of his early followers were not Roman citizens. They were part of a persecuted under-caste, comprising the majority of residents in the Roman Empire. People like Jesus were denied legal rights through no fault of his own, because of how and where and to whom he was born. (By contrast, the Apostle Paul was born a citizen [Acts 22:28], and, according to ancient Christians like Tertullian and Eusebius, he was executed by beheading.) In addition to his undocumented status, Jesus was a traveling preacher, migrating from town to town with “no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).
Jesus’s social standing was not that different from undocumented immigrants in the United States today. They are also denied basic rights. They are also barred from legal work and other forms of social advancement. They may also be detained, tortured, or even killed without a fair or serious trial. They are also demonized and blamed by the empire for problems that it creates. That’s why it would have been so easy for people to forget Jesus. Like millions of deportees and tens of thousands of detainees, he was just another degenerate who got what he deserved for disturbing Caesar’s peace.
But we haven’t forgotten about Jesus. We remember him because “truly this man was God’s Son” (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39). We remember him because God raised him from the dead. God appeared as a lowly man who the empire overlooked and then tried to but failed to destroy. God was in the unlikeliest of places as a traveling preacher from Galilee, and as a stranger on the road to Emmaus. Here, Jesus shows us that God is always in our midst. We can meet God in the migrant stranger, and perhaps we should expect to. Like these disciples, we might only discover the presence of God by welcoming strangers into our homes and breaking bread with them. God becomes known to us when we practice hospitality rooted in love for humanity, not fear of the other. So, where do we meet God? Where else but through our immigrant neighbors?
The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda is Program Manager for New Church Starts, ELCA & Missioner for Racial Justice, Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.