Alien and Unwelcome

One of my favorite Old Testament stories is the romantic tale of Ruth, the Moabite widow who followed her mother-in-law to her ancestral home in Bethlehem, married Boaz, and became King David's great grandmother. Like a lot of scripture there is more to it than meets the eye, not least in foreshadowing the universal salvation St. Paul preached in taking the gospel to the Gentiles.

I'll leave it to Jews to sort out what David's ancestry means or doesn't mean in the never ending debate about who is a Jew. I'm more interested in the implications for modern American Christians in addressing that most contentious issue, what to do about all these millions of undocumented aliens in the United States today.

Many scripture scholars think Ruth was written specifically to counter what some would argue was a misguided exclusivism developing among Jews returning from Babylonian exile, an exclusivism voiced vehemently by Ezra and Nehemiah  who denounced marriages to foreign women, including Moabites, and insisted that the offending men divorce their wives and send them away along with their children.

Which brings me to the Samaritans. After Solomon died the Israelite kingdom broke into two parts. The northern kingdom, Israel, had it's capital in Samaria. Jerusalem remained the capital of Judah, the southern kingdom. When Israel fell to Assyria in about 722 B.C.

the northern tribes were deported and dispersed, never to be heard from again. In an act of social engineering worthy of Josep Stalin the Assyrian king repopulated the territory with settlers brought in from all over Asia Minor. He even had them adopt the local religion, sending back a single priest for the purpose.

The southern tribes never accepted them as genuine Jews. I often hear it said it was because they had intermarried with foreigners. I don't really understand that. It's pretty clear from II Kings and from Ezra they were foreigners, interlopers occupying land promised to the Israelites by God. When Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem the returning exiles said no, this job is for Jews only.

Fast forward about five centuries to the time of Christ and if anything the animosity was worse. Samaritans were completely ostracized. Segregation was more strictly observed than anything seen in the pre-civil rights American South. This from a people whose most revered king was of foreign descent, and whose prophets railed again and again about the evil in injustice to the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

Not that we are any better. Like the ancient Jews we are a nation of immigrants, many of us deeply resentful of other immigrants whose chief crime is they came more recently.  The most vocal would respond that their beef is they are here illegally. I don't know about that. We have a long history of harassing immigrants; Irish, Italians, Chinese, ..., it's a long list and we've never been short of reasons. One of my own ancestors was a Hessian conscript, abandoned in Virginia by King George's army. Fortunately he was able to emigrate to Alabama with a group of royalist families, providential for him, existential for me.

Whatever the reasons, this inhospitable attitude isn't very Christian. It wasn't only Old Testament prophets who preached on the subject. Jesus made it clear in His conversation with the woman at the well and in His parable on Who is Neighbor that he didn't share the disdain for Samaritans that was the norm in first century Judea. What in heaven's name makes us think those attitudes are acceptable in twenty first century America?

Ezra and Nehemiah are sometimes credited with preserving a unique Jewish identity among a people threatened with oblivion through assimilation. Ruth's story suggests there might be better ways than wholesale abandonment of families.  I would suggest there are better ways than mass deportations being called for today.