“I Have Come to Bring Fire”
This morning I heard that Germany was once again hit by a mass shooting. The New York Times reported that late Wednesday, February 19, a 43 year-old gunman opened fire in Hanau at two bars frequented by immigrants, killing nine. According to the Times and other media outlets reviewing the evidence, the shooting was motivated by ethnic hatred and right-wing extremism.
Germany has seen a substantial increase in right-wing extremism in recent years according to this morning’s report on NPR’s Morning Edition. Experts speculate that though Germany has taken aggressive steps to tamp down this element in their society, it has grown steadily partially in response to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to keep Germany’s borders open and give shelter to hundreds of thousands of refugees.
While in general, Germans have a strong humanitarian impulse, their much praised “welcoming culture” has been somewhat less evident as those fleeing for safety with differing religious and racial backgrounds settled next door. The past five years have exposed significant rifts in public thought concerning immigration issues. And an ugly, xenophobic side of a portion of the population, hidden when there were fewer immigrants, has been exposed.
Globally, the mass movement of refugees into new regions has uncovered fear, anxiety, and racism. If we look carefully, it’s not hard to see resistance to the incursion of new people groups in many, many nations around the world. While the vast majority of people have a compassionate heart and view themselves as sympathetic to the victims in war-ravaged Syria, or the chaotic Democratic Republic of Congo, or the gang-infested regions of Central America, being open to allowing victims to move to the house next door makes them uncomfortable.
I believe immigration tensions expose a deep seated fear in many of us, particularly if we are part of our country’s or community’s dominant culture. We fear that the world we are adept at navigating will change and we will be diminished. We are often sub-consciously distressed that those of us who enjoy special status and privileges will see those advantages stripped. The power we now own economically, culturally, linguistically, and politically is threatened when “others” seek to find a place in our world.
The Pledge of Allegiance in the United States describes a republic that is “under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Unfortunately, the history of our republic has not always reflected those ideals. Our past is littered with violent and oppressive opposition to those who didn’t fit a particular ethnic, religious or language profile.
Examples are not hard to find. The native populations of North America were aggressively exterminated or forced to relocate from their ancestral territories in order to accommodate the acquisition of valuable land by Anglo-Europeans. Africans were abducted and forced into life-long slavery in order to supply labor for large agricultural enterprises run by Euro-Americans.
Over 500,000 square miles of land was taken from Mexico at gun point during the annexation of Texas and the Mexican American war. From 1881 to 1941, most of the Chinese population was excluded from immigration to the US and prevented from becoming naturalized citizenship. Though their contributions to the American west were substantial, the small Chinese population was subjected to significant racial persecution throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
US-allied Filipino rebels were betrayed by the US at the end of the Spanish-American war and were not given independence. When the Philippine people objected and proceeded to fight for independence, American forces fought a scorched earth conflict resulting in somewhere between 200,000 and 1,000,000 civilian casualties.
Mention could also be made of persecution of Catholic immigrants from Ireland as well as southern and eastern Europe. Both overt and covert discrimination against Jews in the U.S. resulted in a policy of blockade against Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s. Japanese-Americans were forcibly detained in internment camps during WWII. The list could continue indefinitely if all the small scale aggressions against others of different races, language groups, religions, and cultural patterns were itemized. And I haven’t even begun to discuss the long-standing and systematic oppression of women.
I say all this not to knock the country of my birth. Even given all its faults, I would far rather be from the United States than any other contemporary country. The fact is, ethnocentric behavior, xenophobia, and the persecution of those not in the class of privilege and power is a part of almost every complex society on earth. We all may like the abstract idea of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but we tacitly reject it when it threatens our own status quo. Sometimes, those of us in the dominant culture can subtly manipulate circumstances in order to maintain our comfort level; but sometimes, violence and paranoid reaction erupt. Sometimes we can pretend to be color-blind; but sometimes our true racist colors are plain for all to see.
So what happens when someone comes along and tries to truly bring about a world of justice and equality? We have a pretty good example in Jesus. He was crucified! Before that event, however, he let his followers know in no uncertain terms that if they were to truly seek the Kingdom of God in opposition to the norms of this fallen world, they would be strongly opposed.
In my Scripture reading this morning, I encountered this cautionary line from Jesus.
Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51-53, NIV)
But rather than seeking to avoid such a conflict, Jesus clearly let us know where he stood.
“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49, NIV)
If we truly follow Christ, we will seek to build a world that reflects its true King. That world will be a world of love, justice, and equality because those are the values of our God. But if we pursue this route, we should not be surprised when we confront strong opposition. It will always be so until Christ ultimately returns.