Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 292 Isaac Villegas - Migrant God
We live in a world often defined by borders, fear, and division, but what if we could reimagine migration not as a threat, but as a sacred journey? Today, we're diving into a conversation that challenges what we think we know about immigrants, hospitality, and what it truly means to love our neighbor. I'm sitting down with Isaac Villegas, a Mennonite pastor and author of "Migrant God," who will take us on a transformative exploration of how faith calls us to see strangers not as enemies, but as gifts from God. We'll unpack powerful stories of hope, discuss the biblical foundations of migration, and discover how resurrection life can defeat our culture of fear. From sanctuary churches protecting undocumented families to profound moments of unexpected hospitality, this conversation will challenge you to see the world - and your neighbors - through a lens of radical love. So join us as we navigate how we love our neighbors no matter who they are.
Isaac is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church USA. His pastoral vocation has involved him in community organizing for immigrant justice.
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The politics of this world is one that is about mitigating death and who is allowed to die and who shouldn't die, and we just have to extricate ourselves from that way of thinking about the world and our neighbors to instead. You know, neighbors are not enemies. Instead, they're gifts from God. You music.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, we live in a world often defined by borders, fear and division, but what if we could reimagine migration not as a threat, but as a sacred journey? Today, we're diving into a conversation that challenges what we think we know about immigrants, hospitality and what it truly means to love our neighbor. I'm sitting down with Isaac Villegas, a Mennonite pastor and author of migrant God, who will take us on a transformative exploration of how faith calls us to see strangers, not as enemies, but as gifts from God, from sanctuary churches protecting undocumented families, to profound moments of unexpected hospitality. This conversation will challenge you to see the world and your neighbors through a lens of radical love. So join us as we navigate how we love our neighbors, no matter who they are. Here is my conversation with Isaac Villegas. Isaac, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on thank you so much for coming joining me today. It's gonna be a good conversation. Well,
Unknown:thank you so much for having me. I'm Yeah, very much looking forward to this. Yeah, to our conversation. I think
Joshua Johnson:about your book migrant God, and what you're talking about stories of people actually caring for migrants and being the church and showing the love of Jesus to people, which provides some really hopeful discourse of what it looks like to be neighborly and to actually show hospitality. I'd love to know some of your your values, what has shaped you growing up, what made you the man you are today.
Unknown:Well, just Joshua to pick up on what you're saying that I'm so glad that you think of what I'm offering here as hopeful. I mean, that was one of the, maybe primary energies at the heart of this book is like, I mean, this world's hard, and I despair most of the time when it comes to immigration, but I've seen some things, and I know some people, and these stories have, like inspired me to hope for new possibilities, and they got stuck in my head, and I had to write them out. So the struggle for hope, I think, is kind of what I'm trying to do here. Grew up, child of immigrants parents, my dad from Columbia, my mom from Costa Rica. Grew up I was born in LA kind of Latino community there with family. The church has always been central to my life. We grew up Catholic, then got involved in the charismatic, Pentecostal movements, vineyard adjacent, folks, evangelical. I mean, I'm basically an ecclesial mutt. I'm now a Mennonite. Your Mennonite pastor was drawn to the Mennonite Church for their peace witness. I thought, you know, in this world that faces so much violence, so much war, I needed a church tradition that would hold us accountable to the witness of Jesus, Jesus's way of peace. And so I found Mennonites to be part of that historic Peace Church. And that's where I am now. So I yeah, that those are kind of some of the threads, like growing up an immigrant kid growing up in the church. Maybe both those things coming together. And now I want this book
Joshua Johnson:Nice. Well, okay, so let's just pull on that, that Mennonite thread a little bit. So if there people are involved in the the peace movement, looking at Jesus in the way of Jesus as some as non violent as peaceful, bringing about a place of shalom and peace for all people. Why did you really say that's a that's a really primary value for me? So this is the thing I'm really attracted to, what what made it primary and not just an ancillary value in the church for you?
Unknown:Yeah, no, I like the way you're taught. You're framing that. I'll answer this two ways. One I'm thinking about this. One is autobiographically, I had a bit of a crisis of faith when 911 happened. So I was in I was in college, and I just remember kind of the calls in my Christian community, for revenge, for vengeance, Bush came out and called it a crusade. He used his religious language, and a bunch of Christians got on board with that. And I thought to myself, like this just doesn't quite add up with what I've learned at church about Jesus. I. Who you know when the when things get tough, you don't give up on peace. I mean, he was crucified, after all, did not respond with violence and kind. He came back, resurrected for peace, as the Prince of Peace, we call him in Scripture. So, so, yeah, so that's the Christ of faith. Because I'm like, I trusted you to tell me about this Jesus. Now you're saying what he said doesn't matter, because the world's more complicated and there's violence, therefore x, y and z, that makes sense, and that's what kind of set me on this trajectory of really understanding that the heart of Jesus's life, what we see in him, is God's love for the world, and that love is peaceable, which means you don't kill enemies. Instead, you love them. And then maybe the other part is just digging into Scripture and church tradition to realize that who Jesus is the peace witness part of his life is not ancillary. It's not secondary. It's actually the heart of of who he is on earth. I mean, it's just this, this covenant of peace that God has offered creation. God offering up that rainbow as a sign for no no more vengeance. God is not a God of revenge. God sending His Son to offer us this way of life that is true, life, that is abundant life. Maybe those are two ways that I would think about that, autobiographically, in terms of 911 and then scripturally, digging more into those scriptures, witness to Jesus as God's peace among us. So
Joshua Johnson:if we are followers of Jesus. What should our posture in the world be when it comes to nation states that we live in around the world? What is our primary posture of the way that we enter and show up to the world with community and with the rest of the body of Christ? Yeah,
Unknown:I would say the thing that I think about with this is, I mean, yeah, so nation state like for sure, also realizing that here in the United States, government means all kinds of different layers of it. You know, federal government, it can be very different from state. Can be very different from County, from city. One of the things I highlight in my book is the way that here in our area, we had counties and our municipalities, our cities, the local elected government were like, Hey, wait a minute, these ICE raids. What's going on with the federal government during the first Trump administration was really messing with our way of life, what we valued as communities, just like how we live day to day, week to week. And so it was interesting to see local representatives who were pushing back against the overreach of the federal government in terms of immigration enforcement. So yeah, so I guess I'm just always like, we have to be specific about what we're talking about. So sometimes the government or the state can really do some bad things, that we should say, No, sometimes the state can do some really good things, and we say, like, hey, that's awesome. Let's encourage that. So I like the way that one theologian has talked about the church and Christianity. We're always making tactical alliances with the state and with government. So we're not fully on board being like, Oh yeah, anything you do, you know we're there with you. It's like, no, actually, we've discerned that we also care about the unhoused community. Let's, let's work with government agencies to handle that. Oh, we've discovered that we also care about Meals on Wheels. Let's figure out a way to support that in ways. Maybe the federal government is not right now. So it's always tactical. It's always in the midst of discernment, having a community around you to remind you that you know our primary witness is to Jesus Christ, and that means something for our politics right now as we transition
Joshua Johnson:in and move into migrants and immigrants specifically, and how we could love them. Well, how did you start? Or maybe your community, your church community, start to say, Hey, this is something that we want to to show as love of neighbor through our immigrant community. How did you start to get involved in loving immigrants? On
Unknown:the one hand, like for me, personally, it's my family story. So it's like, you know, it's never, it was never quite a decision. It's just kind of like what we grew up with, who we are, and growing up in the southwest too, where, you know, it's just not unusual for friends growing up with, you know, have family on either side of the border go back and forth with or without documentation. I mean, it just wasn't as big of a deal back then, to be honest. So I'd say, became more and more the focus of my church work here in North Carolina because of the anti immigrant trends we saw in our country. It's just gotten worse and worse. One story I tell in the book that pops in my mind as a kind of maybe the moment where our church said, You know what? We got to say, that the gospel tells us to do something something else here, in terms of loving our neighbors who are undocumented. And that was during the Obama administration we discovered he was the Department of Homeland Security had started setting up these regional ice offices that were unmarked. So they had, you know, they're, they're big ice prisons. Is ICE's immigration and custom enforcement prisons, but then there's all these like areas in North Carolina where there's not a big facility, but when ice does arrest people and want to deport them, they need a way station for them. So we found one through some investigative reporting that a journalist did, and found this unmarked ice facility in the middle of a suburban strip mall. And we were like, this is a problem. Like, they don't want to be known. This is part of what they're after. They operate in secret. So we decided to bring attention to their presence in the community. And it was during Holy Week. During Holy Week on Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday. Um, this is case in a variety of church traditions, but it's a especially important day for Mennonites because it's the day we practice foot washing. So Jesus commands the disciples on that last night with them, or he doesn't just come out, he does. He washes the disciples feet, and then he says, Do this to others, you know, to show them this love that I have for you. It's a commissioning. So we remember that every year on Holy Thursday. So we decided to take our Holy Thursday service to the ICE detention center and say, hey, look, you know, this is where the church is. The church, this is where we wash our brothers and sisters feet. You're holding some of our brothers and sisters there in captivity. We want to wash their feed. Will you let us? They did not come to let us. Instead, they called the police. We set up our foot washing station there in their intake parking lot, kind of to block, block their activities. And we had a traditional foot washing service, a whole liturgy of foot washing. And we washed all the people there who had gathered feet, their feet again, asked to wash the detainees feet. They just kind of the ice officials locked the doors, and we slipped a letter under to have a formal request, so that, I think that was the we and then we did that year after year, the same kind of witness, just both to let people know this was there, we let the press know they came, and then also to be like, you know, when there's not when we can't figure out anything to do, at the very least, what we can do is be Christian and be Christian in public and say, This is where our witness is leading us.
Joshua Johnson:Let's be Christian in public. Let's actually follow Christ and DO what He says. That is something that we're I don't know why that's a difficult thing for Christians to do, is to be Christ, like in the midst of of the world. But one of the things so if we're talking about like a political system that you're in, you're looking at policies and procedures and what is good for the country, and then practically, what does it look like to love our neighbors, and Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, our love our enemies, love one another. That's a pretty big call, and those policies are put aside when you have somebody right in front of you, right so you show a hospitality. How do you think Christians navigate policies and just loving the people in front of us.
Unknown:Yeah, well, I like the way you're talking about, you know, what does it mean to, you know, this primary thing that organizes our life, this command from from Jesus, is love your neighbor. I mean, I mean, it's not just for Jesus. They're in the Old Testament too. God's command to love your neighbor and to care for your neighbor. And I mean, I like to say these days, especially as you know, when Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, he doesn't add and check their documentation status, so there's no footnotes, or there's no caveats, there's no parentheses, it's just love your neighbor, period. So I think that's important to remember, is that, like, that's our primary witness in the world, all the stuff that the government tells us, that the nation state, their policies, their I mean, sure, like all of that is there. It's important for establishing common life, how we live together as complex communities. But none of us should get in the way of this primary call in our lives, what it means to be a Christian, the follower of Jesus is love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything is contained in those two commandments. Jesus says, so yeah, like you're saying, we have to navigate the policies. Yes. Have to navigate the politics. Yes. At the end of the day, we serve. We serve God and not we are answerable to God and not to government authorities. What Peter says in the Book of, I think, acts five, when he's called before the courts and they're telling him to stop preach the gospel, to stop living out this good news, and he's like him and the disciples like whoa, wait a minute. You're just so you understand our call is to obey God and not man.
Joshua Johnson:Yes, that is true. Our call is to obey God. What does that look like then practically, when there may be an undocumented person around us, and our call is to love God and not man, not the government, what does it look like practically? I'll give you so. I. Uh, one of the short films that was nominated for an Academy Award this year was called a lean and it was about an undocumented immigrant that gets called in for a just a random like interview and question for documentation, like this is something that he needed. For documentation, he goes in with his wife and his child, like he's married. He's been here for five years, and so this is just the next step, and then during that interview process, he gets picked up by ice and deported, when that, you know wasn't supposed to happen at that moment, like it was a very powerful little short film. Recommend a lot of people go watch it. It's free on fame. Oh, if you research it, if we're in a situation like that and calling like, Hey, here's somebody our friend. What's a practical way for us to actually step in and show love during that time?
Unknown:Yeah, so during the first Trump administration, Oh, thanks for the recommendation for that documentary. I'm jotting it down right here. I'm interested.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah. L, i e n, okay,
Unknown:yeah, during the first Trump Administration, also, it's just so wild to me that I have to say the first when I was right, when I was finishing, I'd finished the book in 2022 the manuscript, and then, but I had my last edits last year, 2024 like, I don't know, spring going into summer. And I just in that moment, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm talking about Trump in the past tense. And it could very well well be the case that he's present again, and here we are anyhow. So during the first first Trump administration, our church in partnership with another. So our Mennonite Church rented space, rent space from a Presbyterian Church, and we decided to partner together to provide what's called protective ecclesial sanctuary, so to invite somebody to live on church property who's undocumented, undocumented neighbor, and to say, we're going to protect you from ice. Ice is not does not want to trespass onto church property to conduct their business. This was in the first Trump administration. It's different now, and so we believe we can keep you safe, and we will do trainings to figure out how to, you know, block doors, civil disobedience, whatever it might be. Rosa is her name, approached us through her attorney, and said, You know what? She's in a legal process. She's, she has a case before the court. They're, they're sorting this out. This is a long process. In previous presidential administrations, they the federal government never wants to, the executive branch never wants to infringe upon the courts, the judicial branch. They want to, you know, they want to allow space for the judiciary to do their business. And so I Department of Homeland Security and ICE would never interrupt that. So if somebody had a case pending, they wouldn't deport them, because, you know, it'd be you getting in the way of the courts. Anyhow, that changed when the first when Trump was elected president the first time, and he's told the Department of Homeland Security to no longer honor those agreements, those protocols, and so they started flagging people for deportation who actually had cases before courts. Rosa was one of those people. Her attorney contacted us. We said yes, and we invited her to live on church property. I mean, she's a she's a mom. She has three children who are citizens of the United States. She didn't want to be sent away. She, you know, would do for decades. And that meant we had to remodel a church office into a into a bedroom, you know, like this is this really changes church life and to have somebody live there. So we had to remodel A office space to be your bedroom. We had, you know, we had bathrooms. Of course, you know, churches have bathrooms, but we didn't have a bathroom, like with a shower. So we had to remodel a kind of a utility closet that had the proper water hookups into a shower. General Contractor at church dedicated to time and made that happen. And yes, you lived there, we had to organize volunteer groups to bring her groceries, because the fear is as soon as you step off of church property, ice might be monitoring you, and they will, you know, they will pick you up, take you away. So she just stayed there, and we it was one of those times where I realized that my seminary education did not prepare me for the importance of Excel spreadsheets actually just some mundane things of like, All right, who's doing groceries this week. Who's gonna run these errands? It's also one of these things where my friend Julie peoples, who is a pastor in Greensboro, her church also had somebody in Sanctuary, and so we were talking a lot, and she was just like, you know what it feels like, we're trying to build this plane while we're flying it, because figuring out. But because I remember, I got a text from Rosa that first week she was with us, and she's like, you know, thank you very much, Pastor, everything's and she's like, but I'm just wondering, how do I do my laundry? And I was just like, oh my gosh, laundry. Obviously this is I did not think about that. So had to figure out another volunteer rotation of people to do laundry. I mean, it was wild. It was important work, holy, mundane work, and we succeeded and keep keeping her safe. So that's one example of, you know what, what some communities do to keep our neighbors safe when the government wants to get rid of
Joshua Johnson:them. So then give me, give me another example of people that are are trying to immigrate, migrants that maybe are held in a detention center in in Mexico, Tijuana across the border. What are some things that that people, the body of Christ, doing for people in detention centers and showing the love of Christ? Yeah, to them,
Unknown:yeah. So there's the detention centers in Mexico, they try to keep people, push them further south than Tijuana and on the border. So it's, it's and, yeah, I don't know. It's hard. It's a it's a wild world in those detention centers. I do know about shelters that have emerged in Mexico, migrant shelters that you know when people are released. Let's say they're deported, released into Mexico, or released from detention centers in Mexico. They need somewhere to go, you know, they they might not even be from Mexico, you know, like they don't know any what. What are they supposed to do? So I spent some time at a at a migrant shelter, Casa del Migrante in in Tijuana. It's operated by the scalabrini Roman Catholic order of priests. The order was founded in the mid to late 19th century, and their constitutions like what their reason for existence is, to minister to people who are on the move is how they so migrants on the move. So these are people who you know around the globe, they have these shelters and ministries for people on the move. People on the move because they're fleeing violence, threats of violence. People on the move because of economic instability or governmental instability, civil wars. People on the move for the climate crisis. You know, there's just not ways to harvest vegetables like they used to. The economy's bad, all of that. So there's shelter in Tijuana. That one was founded in 1984 or 1987 I can't remember. I know they, you know, they house like, something like 50 people. Have beds for about 50 people or so. And there's all sorts of folks living in there, and they have volunteers from all over the Americas. You know, I was there from the United States. I met somebody there from Costa Rica, people there from Mexico, and they just organized their lives around care for people who need a place to stay, either because they were just deported from the United States, or because they're fleeing from whatever violence. I met someone from Syria, for example, someone who's, you know, fled from the Syrian somehow made it all the way to Tijuana because he's just trying to find, like, some way to survive. Probably the most touching story from my time there was, I met this woman, you know, she was very pregnant. She was from Guatemala, she was Mayan, and she was very pregnant, and trying to get across, you know, fled some horrible scenarios, and just wanted to, like, you know, raise a kid to have a life, you know, like, that's it. That's, you know, that is the motivation is to, like, raise a kid, to have a life where they won't be threatened with violence, with death, with displacement. And this community, like there at the migrant shelter threw her a baby shower, they just were like, look, there's this woman here with this child being born in the shadow of this empire that doesn't want her and we care for her and her life. And so, you know, it was like the grandest baby shower ever at that migrant shelter, cupcakes, lemonade, hot chocolate. It was just like this beautiful moment of, you know, like we're taking care of ourselves in the midst of this world we've got us, well,
Joshua Johnson:this world is full of now forced migration, right? We have displaced people more than ever. We have, like, I don't know the last time I checked, it was like 130 million or so displaced people around the world, and that was like three years ago, four years ago I checked, and so I don't know what it is now i i moved to the Middle East in 2012 when the Syrian war started, and so we worked with Syrian refugees for a long time, and there was, like 28 million displaced people at that point. So in 10 years, it jumped by, you know, 100 million. Uh, we've always seen migration around the world. It's not a new thing. People have been moving all over the place. In the Bible, the Bible really is a story of migration, of people wandering, going from place to place, and finding finding a home with God and God tabernacling with them in the midst of migration, right? How? So can you just set the stage for us that migration isn't just about me trying to, I don't know, like, personally, just get in somewhere because I want to wreak havoc or do something or get my own job, but it's just a fact of life that's been there from, really, from the beginning of time. Yeah,
Unknown:no, that's a really good point, yeah. So maybe on, on one angle, like, yes. I mean, what it means to be a human being is to move like, this is, if you don't move, you're dead. That's not good that's not a good thing. But, you know, we're always moving like, that's, that's a way of telling, like, the story of our species. Moving with for hunting. You know, you need to survive, so you hunt for food. Move with the climate, with the seasons. Move because of threats of violence. So, yeah, I mean, and this North American, Central American, South American landscape. I mean, is a geography of movement. I mean, if you look back at the indigenous peoples in this area, I mean, yes, there's like clusters of people groups in different areas, but they kind of overlap, and they kind of move around. So it's, it's, yeah, movement is, is normal. It only becomes something that's a problem with when borders are enforced in the particular ways that they are, and people think of national identities as over against, you know, basically brown people here in the United States. But, but yeah, like your turn to the Bible too. You know, yes, the Bible is a migration from the very beginning, it's a migration story. You have Adam and Eve, who are forced out of the Garden of Eden, you know, for their own good, as a punishment for sin, let's say, there in Genesis. And then you kind of have this trajectory, the story of migration with, you know, with Abraham, with, with Moses, with this sense of movement across time. And so yeah, in the Bible Garden of Eden, you know, movement from there. And then at the very end, I was just as you were talking, I was just thinking that the Bible ends with a migration story. But it's an interesting one, because the new in the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem, actually migrates from heaven to earth. So it's like God's promise for new life is also a migration. It's not us leaving Earth. It's actually heaven coming to earth. So it feels like migration, up and down, all around is just part of the human story, part of the Bible story, the incarnation is God's migration story. You know this God who has come among us. We used to sing this song back in my charismatic days, Lord, I lift your name on high.
Joshua Johnson:Oh, I could sing it. You could sing
Unknown:but that line, you came from heaven to earth to show us the way, yeah, that's the migration. I mean, that is God's migration. Because God loves us to be with them, to be close to us. So yeah. So I think that one of the things that I want to do with this book is to change the conversation to be like, hey, look actually at the migration part. That's the normal part. That's what God's does. That's what God's people do. I mean, from the early fourth, fifth century, Augustine of Hippo writes this super important book that we still read today, called the City of God. And in it the way that what he called, what he terms the church is a pilgrim people. What it means to be the church is to be on pilgrimage. On Earth
Joshua Johnson:where a pilgrim people. That is very true. We're always going to have foreigners among us, the call to the care for the foreigners among us is really clear in the Bible. It's a clear call to love our foreigners. You talk about the road to Emmaus story, and how that really amplifies what we're talking about. So could you take us into the road to Emmaus and what that story is, and what you get out of it when it comes to the foreigner, stranger?
Unknown:Yes, yeah, yeah. Emmaus, I love, I love that story. Luke, 24 so after, this is after the resurrection. Jesus resurrected, but nobody knows quite what's going on. So, you know, we remember the women, they lead the way, and they're there at the tomb, and it's empty, and Jesus tells Mary, said, you know, says, like, this is me, go tell the rest of the disciples. And she's like, Oh my gosh, she tells the rest of the disciples they don't believe her. You know, disbelieving women is like, has been a problem for men for a long, long, long time. But yeah, there's they. They're the ones. They're the faithful to. Disciples, the first ones to bear witness of the good news, tell the male disciples, they don't believe them. They're all bewildered what's going on here. There's Cleopas, so there's just bewilderment in Jerusalem. All the disciples, they know what's going on. Their friend is back alive, but they they're just not sure what that means. Cleopas and his friend, other disciple, are are leaving Jerusalem to go back home to Emmaus, and they're talking about all this, trying to process what's going on. And all of a sudden this person, this guy, just comes up and said, Hey, what are you all talking about? And this guy is Jesus, but they don't know it. It's Jesus incognito. And they call him the Greek word is parocao, which means somebody in a place without citizenship. So a foreigner without citizenship. So, you know, our translation could be alien. Foreigner, stranger is typically how I think, like the NIV and NRSV translate it, but it's part okay, it's alien. It's somebody who is like without citizenship in that land. So that's how Jesus looks to them. He looks like a foreigner. And I don't know, I feel like Cleopas is a little ornery when he encounters Jesus here, because he says he has this line where he's just like, Are you the only one who does not know the things that have happened in Jerusalem? But if you think about it. You're just walking with your buddy, and all of a sudden this stranger comes around and just like, wait, what's Why are you like interrupting here? Anyhow, all that to say that resurrected Jesus there in the story, appears as a foreigner, an alien stranger, someone without citizenship in that land, and he's an intrusion, you know, he like, comes and interrupts these folks, and then he stays with them. He like, you know, he handles the annoyance and stays with them. Keeps on talking, asking questions. They walk all the way back to Cleopas and the disciple, other disciple, the unnamed disciple their home, and cleopa says, You know what, it's getting really late. It's probably dangerous for you to walk back at this point. Just stay with us. And he's like, Okay. Jesus is like, okay. So he's there, staying with them. They're around the table. It's time to have a meal. This is also the wild part is, you know, everyone talks about this. They're sharing bread. Jesus breaks bread and into that moment, and then thinking, God blessing it. In that moment, their eyes are opened and they see who he is, and then he disappears. All that's amazing. The part that I I'm just always amazed by is it's just this little detail where so Jesus comes in. He's this foreigner. These guys are offering hospitality to him, the stranger who they just met. And it's time to eat food, and it says that Jesus offers them their bread. So it's like Jesus goes to the pantry or the kitchen or the like refrigerator, grabs their bread and says, Hey, let me feed you in your with your own food in your own home. It's wild. So Jesus is the guest who becomes the host in the story, which I think was the power of the way the gospel is always flipping the scripts, flipping, messing with our power dynamics. So, yeah, I think that this story is important just to show that the way that Jesus or that this foreigner turns out to be Jesus among us, and we should attend to that like, that's the Bible story. I mean, it's, you know, it's there in in Genesis as well, where you have Abraham and Sarah in their tent, and all of a sudden it said, I mean, this isn't also just so interesting textual moment, because it says the Lord visited them. And then in the next verse, it says three strangers visited them. So it's these three strangers who the Bible identifies as the Lord. This becomes important for iconography, for for these this account being these three persons as the Trinity. Hebrews picks up on this passage too. In Hebrews, it says, hey, look, be careful to entertain strangers, because some have entertained angels, unaware that this is the Christian life, is we? We offer hospitality to strangers who actually might turn out to be God's presence among us. So
Joshua Johnson:in hospitality and then the breaking of of the bread, we recognize Jesus, and sometimes when we, when we show hospitality, or we're a good guest, and we're, we're hosted by the foreigner and the stranger, we actually get to recognize the face of Jesus. We get to see the face of Jesus in this interaction and this moment. Yeah,
Unknown:you said that better than I did. Thanks, Joshua, that's better.
Joshua Johnson:I'm just reflecting back to you. So you said it. I'm just reflecting back. I just think that it's just a it's a beautiful it's a beautiful thing that what hospitality does, and that little moment of flipping the script, when Jesus becomes host instead of the guest. As a Westerner, I really like to host people. People and show people hospitality. I'm not as good at receiving hospitality as we are showing love to our the foreigner among us, the immigrants, the refugee. How can we be a good guest to them, which then elevates who they are, and I think shows greater humanity among them. I'm not here to co fix them. I'm here to encounter them and be with them. You've
Unknown:gone to the crux of the Christian life. Christian life because, I mean, that's what it is. You know, it's the gospel. Is that we've been given a life by God that through no fault of our own, you know, like we have life we didn't give ourselves life like we depend on others, parents, neighbors, caregivers. So much of who we are is dependent on the grace of another, and sin teaches us to live in this life as if that's not the case, that that is the case that we're we know that we're independent, that we can do it on your own, that we've actually made something of ourselves, that these gifts that make us who we are actually possessions that we deserve. Yeah, you know this Jesus who says, Look at the birds of the air. You know, like God takes care of them. You know, they don't have bank accounts, they don't have possessions. And what does it mean that, like all of our possessions end up possessing us, like they become a spirituality that says you live in the world only because you you have to, you know, make the most of it, and defend yourself against others, because they're there to take your stuff. Yeah, this is, like, the fundamental thing. And I don't have an answer. I mean, I like, I do have a retirement account that hopefully, I mean, it seems to be shrinking these days. Actually, I need, I think I need that money to survive. And, you know, there's Jesus who's like anyone who asks you give to them, well, like, because it's not ours. It's not ours to begin with. Think, I mean, there's Basil of Caesarea has this great line. Notice, John Chrysostom has this great line where he's like, might be either of them, or both of them. No, think about it. If you own two coats, you've stolen one from the poor oh my gosh, yeah. Like that was that is real anyhow. So I think all like what you're deeming here and but
Joshua Johnson:my eight coats have different purposes. I have different purposes.
Unknown:No, right? I mean, you get hold of Kansas City,
Joshua Johnson:that's right, I know.
Unknown:But I think what ends up happening is we this like mentality of scarcity that we believe in with our lives, with our checkbooks, you know, with our work. You know, not maybe, like we don't think about it very much, but we, we live a life that believes in it gets leveled up into this thing called a nation state, this recent invention of the what 18th century, that now determines where people live and how they move and how they relate. And now all of a sudden we're like, yeah, you know, we got to protect this country from others. And yeah, that feels like it gets more and more dangerous, more and more sinful, more treating like this world as our possession, and that's that's wrong, that is not the gospel. I mean, that's wrong. Feels right, but like it's just not the gospel. That's not how we're taught to live. There is
Joshua Johnson:enough. You are enough. We are enough. And there, there is enough to go around for everybody, and it is proven that there is enough like we if we actually have a a different way of life, a way of not scarcity, but a way of sharing and cooperation, like there's there's enough for all of us and to live an abundant life In the kingdom of God. So as you were writing this, there's a lot of stories that you know about, that you've experienced, that you have been a part of. What are some of the stories? What are some of the things that give you hope when it comes to people actually showing love and care for immigrants? Yeah,
Unknown:I mean, the one story is, maybe this says too much about me and my disposition in the world, how I how I think about things, my personality, whatever. But when I think about your question about hope and what gives me hope, the story that comes to my mind, it's actually one that's very like I find very meaningful in a somber way. So there's this artist in Arizona, Southern Arizona and Tucson. His name's Alvaro, Alvaro and SISO. And he's a, he's a immigrant from Colombia. Came here, you know, decades ago. He's older now, and he has started this. A installation project, art project where he makes crosses in his studio at home from found objects in the desert, where people who've crossed the border, you know, they've left stuff because they're running away from a border patrol and have to drop backpacks, or whatever it might be, or they just have to, you know, drop stuff in order to keep on living, make their packs lighter. Or, in some cases, somebody might die, and their, you know, their remains and their, what they had with them is there in the desert anyhow. So he collects these items as found objects that he incorporates into his crosses as relics. And so for him, these, these, all these different items that he finds, he says that they tell a story that we'll never know, and they tell a story of a life that we'll never know, but they need to be remembered, because we want to honor those people's lives. And so they, his crosses, tell a plot line for a story that is a mystery to us, is how he thinks about it. And so he makes these crosses. And then the the coroner's office there in southern Arizona, and the University of Arizona, they've developed, developed an online database that documents with GPS coordinates wherever remains were found, somebody was found who was crossing the border. Part of it, the reason why they're doing this is so that people from family members who are wondering where their loved ones might be can look in this database to see if they might have died in the desert. Because they know they're able to put whatever kind of personal information that they can, identifying information they can in the database. Anyhow. So a little uses this GPS, the GPS coordinates, and he goes out there and plants across. And he takes people with I went with him, and he plants. It has a ritual for planting across in the ground, where the exact place where they found the remains, in order to honor that person's life. And it's a moment. It's a contemplative moment. It's a moment to like, think about shared humanity. What does it mean to live in this country where this happens? How do we become responsible caretakers for the dead? I mean, he really thinks about this as, how do we care for the dead? His art project is called where dreams come to die. And it's, you know, he says, you know, he chased the American dream at a time when this country welcomed immigrants, and that has changed, and now this is a place that Borderlands is where dreams come to die. That database has, I think, 4000 people who've been logged in, people who've died in that desert in Arizona. I think they started keeping track in like early 2000s maybe 2001 and Alvaro says he will. So his routine is, once a week, he does this. He goes out and plants three crosses. He finds three different places to do it. He's done, I don't know, over 1000 crosses at this point. And he says that he will finish his art project when he turns 127 unless, I mean, that's if people don't keep on dying, which they are. I mean, this is, this is his life. This is what he does. So I find this both like the realism of it. Here's somebody who's like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to change this world. But here's something I can do. And this is super meaningful, because Christians are always people that care about the dead. I mean, this is something you can trace through the history of the church. Is that we, you know, starting with Jesus and those women who carried cared for his corpse and watched after his tomb. We are people who care for the dead, and this is what he does as like the one thing that he can do to somehow sustain his hope for a world where at some point people won't die in the desert. That's
Joshua Johnson:a beautiful story, and that's beautiful what he does. And so if, yeah, somebody has moved and they want to join him in that project, you could actually help him finish that before he's 127 or 126 so go join join him in that. It's beautiful. You talked about. Scarcity is one thing that we that actually hinders our love of of immigrants and in a tangible way, I think fear is another thing. And I think especially in America, we are people of fear. We just are afraid that people are going to either take our stuff or we're afraid of all sorts of things, right? And for you, you know, that started a lot 911 like, Hey, we're afraid. It's a crusade we're gonna go kill like it's, uh, it's really tough. How do we counteract the fear in the wider culture? What are some, some ways that we could say love actually is greater than fear, the the way that we are, we're not called to be a people of fear. I
Unknown:mean, I don't want. Is to sell. This is like basics for me with the faith, I guess. And I maybe I could spell it out, but it's, it's the resurrection, I mean, at the end of the day, like, the reason why we don't have to be afraid is because Jesus has shown us the future for all of us, you know, like we are promised resurrection, that Christ has defeated death. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Paul says, so that fear. So this is where I think, like, I don't know how this gets mixed up in our world and for us as Christians, and our relationship to to non Christians is, you know, that there's this long trope, this myth, of characterizing Christians as being so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good, you know, like with our minds fixed on heaven, we were like, you know, we're just trying to escape this world, and God has promised us a room with many mansions and all that kind of stuff. But I don't think that's what the promise of resurrection should mean to us, at least it doesn't mean that for me. Instead, what resurrection means is that we have been freed from the power of death to rule our lives. We can live as if death were not because God's love for us and the world has defeated death. So I think that at the very core is just who we are as Christians. Like, I mean, even if we don't have enough, you know what I mean? Like, let's say we do live in a scarce world and resources. Or, you know, it's like apocalyptic, mad, Max world out there. The promise of the gospel is like, we don't have to sacrifice who we are as human beings, how we're created to be as people who love one another. We don't have to sacrifice that for anything. Because God resurrects the dead, that God cares for us even after we're dead. I don't know where you are The like theologically Joshua, but I mean, I feel this very like, straightforwardly orthodox on this that we have hope we don't have to live in the fear of death because we've been promised resurrection, because that's what Jesus has shown us.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. If we could receive that, yeah, I truly receive it, and then if we receive it, then we could live it, our world would be a totally different place than it is right now. So let's receive that life and the resurrection, life that dispels and defeats death so that we can live a non death, life here and now, beautiful. I
Unknown:like, I mean, this is where I like what, you know, some parts of what my Catholic friends and the Pope has talked about like this, the Gospel has something to say about this cultural of death that we live in. You know, this is their light, like we live corporations make money off of our fear of death, you know, like, I mean, the budget of this country everyone's talking about, it's not Doge or whatever to save money, it's the military, like the military, that is what our money goes to. We're this country is just like one big army that also worries sometimes about health care. That's basically what the budget is. The politics of this world is one that is about mitigating death and who is allowed to die and who shouldn't die, and we just have to extricate ourselves from that way of thinking about the world and our neighbors. So instead, you know, neighbors are not enemies. Instead, they're gifts from God.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. That's so good Isaac. Just a couple quick questions at the end here. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give? Whoa,
Unknown:you know what? Actually, I'm remembering now that I was listening to some of your podcasts, and I remember hearing that here, but I'd forgotten so, I mean, this is the thing. So I'm I'm now in my 40s, and I'm realizing now that I am stuck with who I am, no matter what we do, we just kind of have to realize that, like we are, who we are, God has given us new and that's not going to change fundamentally, and to be okay with that, I think in my 20s and probably into my 30s, I was trying to figure out if I could be somebody else, and fighting against, like, just personality things, you know? I mean, we have other people in our lives that we look up to, or like, Oh yeah, you know, I wouldn't be like that someday, and that's just not good. I mean, someday, if it's a good person, I guess. But like, just to realize, you know what, there's, there's just something okay about us, and we're going to make the best with what we got. I wish, I wish my 21 year old self would have known that and told me that, and I wish I didn't have to learn that. Now, in my 40s,
Joshua Johnson:that's really good. That's solid, but I really do think that that's probably something people do learn in their 40s. 90s, and it's just a natural way of life. This is what we learn in our 40s. If we're gonna continue life in a direction that's positive and healthy and we continue to grow, that's what we're gonna learn. Yeah, and so that's good. You're you've learned it in your 40s. Okay, good job. It can be
Unknown:a while with everybody else. What a nice girl here. That's right, anything
Joshua Johnson:you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend,
Unknown:ooh, well, I mean, just I watched this documentary a few times over the years, but you're you talking telling about that one document sure you just saw reminds me of this other documentary called santuario, s, I n, t, u, r, i, o, and is made by a friend, Pilar temp Payne, and she documents somebody who lived in Sanctuary during the first Trump administration here in North Carolina, Juana in Greensboro. And it's just this powerful documentary of of a woman who is fighting to stay here with her family and the church's witness in the midst of it all. And what I love about The documentary is that, like, I don't know, I still, I'm I want those, like, those moments where just like, oh, this is exciting stuff. We're doing something for the gospel. This is awesome. Gospel. This is awesome. But then realizing that most of the time doing church work is like making spreadsheets, spreadsheets or whatever, that is a very mundane and yeah, so this documentary captures the mundane life of a congregation and somebody in Sanctuary and just kind of like how ordinary it is to live together and to make this life possible, even though there's this threat looming on the outside. So Santo audio is what I would recommend.
Joshua Johnson:Excellent, exciting, good recommendation. How can people go out and get migrant God? Where would you like to point people to? Is there anywhere that you'd like to connect people with of what you're doing?
Unknown:Yeah, I'd say, yeah. The books available everywhere. Erdmans likes, likes people to buy it from their website. But, you know, it's on Amazon every everything's fine, but yeah, that's awesome. Please do buy the book. Hopefully it's inspiring to like, see what people are up to, what's possible out there, when in the world of immigration politics, would feel so bad for a lot of us, most of the time, but I'll say the other the group that I would highlight, you know, I mean by buy the book or not. But the but the people to pay attention to right now is actually Church World Service. I would say, like, go to their website, Church World Service. They're a national organization, Christian organization, that helps resettle people who sought asylum or refugees in this country, and the federal government has just cut their funding, and it's just throwing everybody into turmoil. People are being laid off friends of mine, and yet, there's people here who've been promised by the government to be taken care of, and yeah. So the way to support them is Church World Service. Look them up. I'm sure, if you're in a big city, I'm sure they have a local office. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:hey, excellent. Yeah. Go Church World Service. Go donate and help people keep jobs that are desperately needed and money to the families that have just come, that are promised for only three months, which is crazy, but and then they have to go and get get jobs and fend for themselves, and, you know, and that's learning a new language. And, oh, it's just, it's a lot crazy work. So we have adopted a couple families here in Kansas City, new refugee families. And the, yeah, the refugee resettlement agency lost all of their funding for this family, and so our church stepped up, donated all the money for these families, which is fantastic. It's awesome, but there's so much work that the church needs to do to care and love and so that's a great thing to do. Isaac, thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you. I enjoyed this, your stories that and the way that you just unfolded that the heart of God for all people and for immigrants and refugees and migrants in our community, and what that looks like to practically love our neighbor, to practically like come around people, and that our calling first, foremost is to love more than anything else, all the the policies and procedures to work themselves out, but we get to stand with people and for people. We get to receive people's hospitality and give hospitality so that we can see the face of Jesus in each other. So thank you. Isaac, was fantastic.
Unknown:Thank you. Joshua, yeah, it's been great to be with you. Yeah, really helpful, interesting, insightful questions and comments. So this has been left. Yeah, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much. You.
