Cross Purposes

President Trump used his Thanksgiving Address to announce that he intends to halt all immigration from poor countries.  This decision is his response to the shooting in Washington DC of two National Guard soldiers by an Afghan national who’d previously worked for the CIA.  So it seems that millions of poor people around the world will pay for the crime of one person. 

When I read Trump’s decision, I could hear a cry of despair rise from the poorest people in the world who had dreams of one day coming the United States for a brighter future. 

Trump might not be aware that Thanksgiving this year came close to the beginning of Advent in the Christian calendar.  He should have called my wife for guidance.  She watches one online English Advent Carol Service after another and would have pointed out the ironic and cynical timing of Trump’s decision.

This past Sunday, I was working on a project while my wife was watching one of the English Advent services in another room.   Somehow, my ears caught these words from what is known as the Bidding Prayer:

“In the name of God, who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, we welcome you: grace to you and peace. . . .  As we seek to renew our allegiance to God’s loving purpose, we pray for all who at this time especially need his pity and protection: the sick in body, mind or spirit; those who suffer from loss of dignity or loss of hope; those who face the future with fear, or walk in the shadow of death.”

Aren’t those words a perfect description of the world’s poor?  Sick in body, mind, or spirit.  Those who suffer from loss of hope.  Those who face the future with fear.  Those who walk in the shadow of death.

But the phrase that hit me in the gut was this one: “As we seek to renew our allegiance to God’s loving purpose.”  In other words, we promise our loyalty, indeed our whole lives, to God’s dream for the world, and that dream includes protecting the poor of the world.

To use ancient language, woe to us if we live at cross purposes to God’s purpose, if we promise something that we have no intention of doing.  The Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, and the Quran agree on this: the purposes of God include serving the needs of the poorest.  They also agree that when we say one thing in our prayers and live out the opposite in our lives, we should understand that God is never fooled.   

Pope Francis told a story about the night he was elected pope in 2013.  The first person to speak to him after the vote was a cardinal from Brazil who whispered these simple words: “Do not forget the poor.” 

I don’t know what the first words Trump heard when he realized he’d been elected, but I doubt that they were “Do not forget the poor.”  Our country and the world would be far different if he had.