Bread, Wine, and ICE
How the Lord’s Supper Changes the Immigration Conversation
By Dr. Craig W. Wong, Executive Director of New College Berkeley and Joshua E. Livingston, Managing Editor for the Center for Asian American Christianity
This essay is an abridged version of Craig Wong’s “How the Lord’s Supper Changes the Immigration Conversation,” Pamphlet 18 in the Ekklesia Project’s Renewing Radical Discipleship series, edited by Joel Shuman (2012).
Beginnings
Over half a century ago, in the largest Chinese congregation in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Eucharist was observed on a quarterly basis. It was a joint fellowship among the Cantonese-, Mandarin-, and English-speaking congregants. The tone of this communion experience, by most accounts, was one of solemnity. It was an occasion for the “truly spiritual,” as demonstrated in at least two ways. On one hand, to rise and process to the table was to make public a clean conscience: Jesus and sinner were on good terms. On the other hand, to remain seated was to demonstrate another form of piety: there remained some sins to work out, making one unworthy to partake in the supper. To sit out the supper meant that one’s outstanding sins were being taken very seriously.
With the communion event reduced down to a public performance of one’s spirituality, it was only natural to engage in either religious voyeurism or self-preoccupation.
Why is Mel going up to the table? We all know what he’s been up to! And look at Teri, sitting there all smug and self-righteous. Clearly, she’s just putting on a show for the rest of us. What should I do? What will Trent think if I walk up to the table? Or Bernice, if I remain seated?
In the end, such banal motive-interrogation demonstrated that the Lord’s Supper was more about us—what we brought to the table—than about Jesus and what He has done on our behalf. Charting the shift from communion being about us to being about Jesus is difficult, especially since it is an ongoing journey, but over time, it led this church to some profound theological observations: First of all, the Eucharist was where we embraced our shared brokenness. Watching each other walk up the aisle was a visual reminder that we were broken and needy people and we, therefore, needed each other. And second, like loaves and fishes, Christ received our feeble offerings at the table, broke them, and returned them, sending us out with more to share than what we started with. The table spoke of Christ’s abundance—we need not fear scarcity.
In light of such revelation, what difference can the liturgical practice of Eucharist make, not as a creative tool for church-based social activism, but as a redeemed social imaginary? How might the Lord’s Supper re-animate the relational and economic dimensions of the Church’s engagement with today’s immigration conversation? What radical reorientation can this Christian sacrament make in a society where the lines drawn between “legal” and “illegal” persons are hardened not only by prejudice, politics, and law, but also by barbed wire, tear gas, tasers and firearms?
Into the Mission District
In 1992, my family and I found ourselves as part of an offshoot of this Chinese American fellowship, at a time when God was leading the church to find a new home in the Mission District, home to a majority of San Francisco’s immigrant poor who came from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. In this way, we did not pick the immigration issue as much as it picked us. We found ourselves situated in a new neighborhood, clueless about our neighbors but with a well-intentioned desire to serve. With due diligence, we conducted a community needs assessment, identified a felt need for computer skills training and English literacy, and created a program to address it. Not wanting to operate in an overtly paternalistic fashion, we emphasized the word “partner” to connote a two-way relationship. Not only would we offer skills to our neighbors, our neighbors would be encouraged to offer something back, for example, “I’ll teach you MS-Word and you can teach me how to make pupusas.”
So why did most of the visiting participants, after just a few short weeks, stop coming? We found out later that they sensed our frustration whenever they arrived late or failed to come consistently. Also, the dinner was provided within a very narrow window of time. Visitors learned to make a choice: be punctual or be hungry. In the end, our neighbors grew tired of failing to fit into our tightly-engineered expectations and schedules.
Far more insidious than our cultural blind spots, however, was our relational blindness. When a woman from the neighborhood entered the doors of our church, who did I see? Did I see a poor person looking for help? An undocumented immigrant taking advantage of free resources? A single mom whose irresponsible life was messed up beyond repair? These are typical questions of privileged people who are used to having resources at their disposal, and who expect others to be able to live likewise.
Perhaps the most important gift we received from our neighbors at the time was a perspective that questioned our sensibilities, that challenged our high-powered, middle-class assumptions. Lydia, a young mom from Central America, gave us this gift: “I really have a hard time relating to your problems,” she told us. Lydia struggled to survive in America after being persecuted, physically abused, and forced to flee her war-torn country. By contrast, our “struggles” befuddled her as we shared in small group about our angst over which home to buy, the safety of our daughter’s pre-school, or finding a job that is more personally fulfilling.
Increasingly, she found the chasm between her experience and ours too difficult to bridge and she eventually parted ways with the church. We realized after Lydia left that we were losing a gift far more valuable than we were able to appreciate when she was present with us. Such wake-up calls served to make us more mindful that the welcome of strangers is not only a biblical imperative. It truly changes our lives for the better.
Perhaps the most important gift we received from our neighbors at the time was a perspective that questioned our sensibilities, that challenged our high-powered, middle-class assumptions.
At the Lord’s Table, we’re mercifully stripped of our misrecognitions and delusions. Here, the cross disabuses us of any claim to moral superiority or self-made-ness. So deep is our sin, yet Christ died for us. Moreover, Jesus invites us to the table to have communion with God and with fellow sinners. No more dehumanizing prejudice or pedestals. All are valuable simply because each one is deeply loved by God.
A Salvadoran man, Manuel, helped us to see these uncomfortable realities one Friday night over dinner: “My friend’s farm no longer generates enough money to support his family. The Salvadoran government recently accepted the U.S. dollar as the national currency. This has raised the cost of living a lot, especially for the poorest families. Only the wealthiest in El Salvador, like those who work for corporations, can afford to pay for things at American prices.”
His story was consistent with what we learned at a church-based citizenship fair at which a couple of our members who are lawyers volunteered. At the entrance to the fair was a photo of El Salvador’s president, and ours, shaking hands. Not knowing what this was about, I later learned that the Central American Free Trade Agreement had just been signed, a boon for North American multi-nationals at the expense of countless Salvadoran farmers. Sadly, economically-destabilizing policies like these are nothing new to our Salvadoran brothers and sisters. Yet, many draw inspiration from the life of Archbishop Romero. An advocate for the poor, Romero was assassinated in 1980 by one of the infamous “death squads,” trained in part by a U.S. government intent on keeping Central America open for business. Among our Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Honduran, and Filipino friends we heard similar stories, ones about regime change, covert operations, torture, and other political strong-arming on the part of our government that has forced the very illegal border crossings we decry.
There is, indeed, an economic question lying at the intersection of the Eucharist and the immigration conversation. As experienced by my Chinese ancestors, the enmeshment of immigrant sentiment and the economy is inextricable inasmuch as the value of an immigrant, whether spoken or unspoken, is based almost solely upon whether they are deemed an economic asset or liability. While much of the venomous language used of immigrants over the years may sound more judicial than economic, for example, “illegal,” “law-breaking,” or “criminal,” the reality is that such invective invariably spikes in times of fear concerning economic insecurity.
However difficult, these are the kinds of realities we must be willing to bear if we are to take our Eucharistic theology seriously. How might the national immigration conversation change if we truly confessed our need before Christ and one other? That immigrants are more than mere economic assets or liabilities? That if we truly believed in a God of abundance, we can live as though there really is enough for everyone? That sharing isn’t scary? That securing America’s economic dominance in the world is not only delusional and immoral—especially when it comes at other nations’ expense—but that it ultimately isn’t even necessary?
Embracing ICE Agents as Neighbors
Given such behavior, and the violent unrest that has recently unfolded in Minnesota, it seems a natural response to vilify the men and women of ICE, to view them as imperial storm troopers, void of humanity, who execute their responsibilities with ruthless efficiency. Some of us have engaged in opportunities to publicly rail against them, marching in front of their headquarters with “Who would Jesus deport” signs and t-shirts, condemning their practices and letting them know that Jesus is on our side.
Theologically speaking, there are legitimate grounds to “demonize” ICE as an institution for, inarguably, powers and principalities are indeed involved. We could even go so far as to say that some ICE agents today behave as if they’re possessed by a fury that feels beyond human. However, the Lord’s Table does not allow us to view these men and women as anything other than human beings themselves, people deeply loved by God. In the midst of all of this madness, is it possible for us to imagine ICE agents breaking bread at the table alongside those of who advocate for their victims?
As the Lord would have it, in 2010 we were given the unusual opportunity to co-host this very thing, a meeting in our church sanctuary with ICE. There they were, a Eucharist banner literally hanging over their heads. On one side sat twelve ICE and DHS officials, some from the local field office and the others from department headquarters in Washington, DC. On the other side were a dozen or so immigration advocates, including clergy and lay leaders who serve immigrant families. The event got under our skin, and we sensed the Spirit helping us to re-imagine what it meant to engage the powers that be as Christians. Imagining Christ at the table, and the wideness of His mercy, began to change everything for us.
Theologically speaking, there are legitimate grounds to “demonize” ICE as an institution for, inarguably, powers and principalities are indeed involved. We could even go so far as to say that some ICE agents today behave as if they’re possessed by a fury that feels beyond human.
A transformative moment, the convening ultimately led to quarterly meetings between ICE and local San Francisco faith leaders. Like our secular activist colleagues, we talked with them about the egregious effect upon families, and the larger society, when deportations tear them apart. How public safety is compromised when immigrants fear reporting crimes. How victims of crime cannot trust law enforcement officers who are ostensibly called to protect and to serve.
Likewise, today we want to hold ICE accountable to humane detention practices. And we seek a departmental commitment to prosecutorial discretion that spares non-criminals from deportation. But we don’t want to hold these conversations as adversaries. We don’t want to treat ICE agents as villains but as fellow human beings who are no more sinners than any of us. When they say “they’re just doing their job” we want to extend them enough dignity to tell them that they are more than mere cogs in a machine, that they’re subjects, not objects, with the agency to make moral judgments and to exercise them within the structures they find themselves, even if it might come at personal cost.
We went into these meetings not knowing what the end result might be. We didn’t expect our actions to change enforcement policy in the near term. But we did want to be persistent in one thing: that we demonstrate the love of Christ that welcomes sinners to the table regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. We wanted to proclaim, and embody, the hope of Christ’s return, when a great multitude from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages—Lydia and Manuel, advocate and ICE agent, documented and undocumented—stand before the throne and before the lamb crying out, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
Epilogue: Craig’s Story
Like many of my fellow congregants, my family story follows the “immigrant success narrative,” but the truth is that I wouldn’t be here were it not for a small Presbyterian church that advocated for my grandmother in 1917. Wong Shee was about 22 years old when she left her war-torn country and arrived at a United States dock on Angel Island with great anticipation for a better life. What she hadn’t anticipated was being immediately incarcerated in an immigration detention facility for nearly six months where she seriously contemplated suicide under the duress of months of arduous interrogations, crowded and unsanitary conditions, poor food, inadequate medical treatment for her trachoma, and the constant fear of deportation back to China, where an abusive mother-in-law awaited her.
Immigration records obtained from the National Archives reveal an amazing paper trail of tireless advocacy… correspondence between the leaders of the Presbyterian Mission in San Francisco and the immigration authorities based on the island. There were appeals, backed with money, to medically treat a condition that would have established grounds for her deportation. Also included were letters of reference to verify her legitimacy and fitness for entrance under the exclusion laws. Lastly, there were assurances that she would be taken care of, once released from the Island. These letters were written with grace, humility, and respect for the authorities who received them.
After six long months, my grandmother was finally released and re-united with her husband. At last having settled in the U.S., she began to raise a family, eventually giving birth to my mother. I am eager to learn more about this little Presbyterian church that advocated for my grandma. I do not know how they engaged the immigration issue theologically. I know little about their liturgical practices, the hymns they sang, or the way they did communion. But this I know, that they welcomed the neighbor in spite of the prevailing bigotry and draconian laws of the day. They were inevitably transformed as they received countless immigrants, like my grandmother, into their fold. They gave generously, with time, energy and money, as those who knew they were ultimately provided for. They treated others, even those who held their loved ones in captivity, with respect and human dignity. And they served with perseverance and stubborn love, as ones who knew the One who writes the end of the story. May it be said of the Church today.
All people in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s red cards give examples of how people can exercise these rights. However, they do not provide individualized legal advice. Community members are encouraged to check in with a trusted legal service provider for questions about their situation.
Learn how to order red cards, print your own in many languages and effectively use them.
Dr. Craig Wong is the Executive Director of New College Berkeley, a partner organization of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers. He received his DMin and MA at Western Theological Seminary and BA at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a former, long-time board member of the Christian Community Development Association and Dayspring Technologies, a gospel-rooted company based in San Francisco. He has founded two ministry nonprofits, both of which emphasized collaboration and conversation around ecclesial witness. Having met through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (where Craig served on staff), he and his wife went on to get married and raise four children in San Francisco where they live and serve to this day.