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I. Moses' call

Excuses. Like Moses we have plenty of excuses. No, God, there most be some mistake. You don't really want me for this job. You really meant for someone else to do this. After all, I'm not qualified. Why would anyone listen to little ol' me. They may be my people, but I don't know them. I didn't grow up among them. I grew up in Pharaoh's household, the seat of power that has oppressed them...why on earth would they want anything to do with me?

God works among the poor, we know that. But God also works among the rich and powerful. After all, in this broken world, it's hard to get anything done without doing so. Moses is God's middle man, the intermediary agent between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the divine and the all-so-human.

"I have indeed seen the misery of my people..." says God, "I have heard them crying out...I have come down to rescue them...So, now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people... out of Egypt."

"But, but, but..." Moses doesn't get very far with his excuses. God insists, "I will be with you."

Yikes! This is no easy call.

In a recent Hispanic Ministry Leadership Training session in the Tennessee Annual Conference, we were all asked to pick a biblical character with whom we could identify. I picked Moses. God is calling me to speak out for an oppressed people, in my case the Hispanic population of the U.S. And I've come up with my share of similar excuses to Moses.

God, I'm an Anglo woman, why would the Hispanic population listen to me? I have grown up with the privileges they lack. My first language is the language they so want to learn. They have every right to not trust my motives for speaking their language and speaking out for their immigrant population. After all, what do I know about oppression?!

Just like Moses, I worry about my speaking skills. After all, Spanish is my second language. While I'm fluent, I still stammer sometimes and fumble for words. Why, God, would you want me to be a spokesperson for Hispanic immigrant rights?

But like Moses, God answers re-soundly, "I will be with you."

Like Moses, God has called me to be the go-between, the navigator between two languages, two cultures, two societies, between the powerful and the powerless. To speak out for those who have been silenced, a voice for the voiceless.

But don't think you're off the hook if you don't speak Spanish or another language. God calls all of us to be a voice for the voiceless. In our broken world there are so many groups of God's children that are voiceless...orphans, immigrants, domestic violence victims, the disabled, the list goes on and on.

Where is your burning bush? What is your call? Who will you lead out of the chains of oppression?

The call is never finished. We live in the in-between. Christ is risen, but God has not redeemed all of creation...yet. Until then, we journey on, answering God's call one step at a time.

• II. Hispanic Ministry

As your candidate for ordained ministry, I want you all to know a bit about my journey thus far. I am a quarter of the way through my master of divinity degree at Vanderbilt Divinity School now, and an integral part of my education is my placement in ministry. I work at West Nashville United Methodist Church, specifically for the Hispanic Ministry.

Now West Nashville is a bit different than Ebenezer. It's a city church in a rough part of town. We are in direct and daily ministry with a large homeless population. Violence and poverty surround our church. Church meetings let out early because after dark drive-by shootings are a fairly regular occurrence in our neighborhood.

A little different than our country church? Yes.

But, it's a perfect place for ministry.

This once large congregation has dwindled, but the congregation that remains is incredibly dedicated with hearts of gold, very much like Ebenezer. They want to respond to their changing neighborhood, to reach out and be in ministry with our whole community. Part of that ministry is our weekly Thursday night meal where we serve 40-50 homeless people each week. Another part of that outreach is where I fit in. The Hispanic Ministry.

The lay pastor for the Hispanic Ministry, Laura Feliciano, and I both started working at West Nashville in October. Since then, we've started: weekly worship in Spanish, English classes, small group meetings, Bible studies, and helped host many cultural events in coordination with the Global Education Center just down the street.

Next week we'll be holding a Vacation Bible School in Spanish and the week after that we'll be starting computer training courses. In September we'll be starting a soccer team that will foster mentoring relationships between teen boys with no father figure and adult men.

It's been quite a journey so far, and the journey's really just begun!

I have seen God's hand at work in beautiful ways at West Nashville. While it hasn't all been success, and the path hasn't always been clear, God has provided a way.

It has taken a long time to begin to gain the trust of the Hispanic community that surrounds our church, and we're still working on gaining it. In five of the surrounding states, immigration services has made raids on Spanish-language worship services. So they have good reason to be wary of churches.

After months of struggling to get more than 4 or 5 on Sundays for worship in Spanish, and some Sundays when no one showed up at all, in the last three months we've consistently had 10-15 people for Sunday worship! Slowly but surely, a community of God's people is forming, and it's an amazing thing to watch.

We've had four confessions of faith, will be accepting our first official members to our congregation in August and will have our first baptism in August as well.

We've also dealt with some challenging issues. We've helped some of our families get through incredibly difficult immigration situations and dealt with issues of domestic violence.

We've cried together, laughed together, and in good Methodist style we've eaten lots together!

• III. Victor's Story

But, for you to truly get a taste of God's work in our ministry, I would like to share with you the story of one of our Hispanic families. And they have given me permission to do so.

Victor and Felicitas came to the United States eight years ago in search of a better life for the family they were just beginning. They did not have documentation, but were desperate for a life where they knew their children would receive good education and they would be able to feed them well.

Victor worked manual labor jobs earning peanuts by American standards but plenty according to Mexican standards. Felicitas stayed home and raised their children. Their first and third child were born here in the United States making them US citizens. Their second child was born in Mexico when they returned for a brief time.

When we started our English as a Second Language course back in November, Victor was our first student. He was eager to learn, but unable to come after that first week due to his work schedule. Instead, Felicitas came every week after that.

All was well and good until April when a crisis rocked their family. Victor was arrested for being undocumented and quickly sent to a detention facility eight hours away in Louisiana. Felicitas was scared. She didn't know where they had taken her husband. She was left without income to support their three children. And she was five months pregnant.

Expecting Victor to be deported, we helped Felicitas make arrangements to travel back to Mexico as soon as she got word that Victor was already there. Felicitas sold all their furniture so that she would have the funds to pay for their plane tickets. She was five months pregnant and sleeping on the floor until I practically forced her to use an air mattress that we had to spare.

We were all so worried that Felicitas would be arrested in the airport as she was trying to leave the US to head back to Mexico because, believe it or not, that happens sometimes. If that had happened, she and her middle child would be put into a detention facility and her two other children who are US citizens would be put into foster care. And who knows when or if they would see each other again.

In the middle of all this worry and stress, Felicitas was growing in her faith. She shared with us that she and her husband had been planning to move back to Mexico in another year or so because they felt God was calling them to work in ministry in Mexico. She told me, matter-of-factly, "Well, I guess God decided we needed to do that sooner."

She began coming with her children to church and Bible study every week and was moved by the compassion and hospitality of our tiny congregation. When she'd ask her children on Sunday mornings where they wanted to go to church, they would respond "to the love of God church" referring to a song we sing in Sunday School. And so, we have now adopted this as our nickname, the love of God church. Not a bad thing to be, right?

Meanwhile, Victor was also growing in his faith while in the detention facility in Louisiana. During the few phone calls he got to make home, he heard how our congregation was taking care of his family and he praised God. He began to preach to the other immigrants in his facility, sharing his testimony, announcing God's love for the world, and praying with anyone who would let him pray with them. Sound biblical? Maybe that's because that's just what Paul did when imprisoned throughout his missionary travels.

Then one marvelous day in May we got wonderful news! Victor had appeared before the judge and instead of deporting him, the judge decided to grant him a voluntary departure since his record was clean as a whistle.

• This meant that he could pay a bail and return to his family in Nashville, and that they had four months to leave the country as a family and return to Mexico where he would turn in the appropriate documentation to the American embassy to verify that he had indeed left the country.

• This leaves enough time for their fourth child to be born here, and this baby is due any moment now.

• This also means that they have documentation to leave the country so there is no fear of them being taken in the airport.

• And lastly this means that they have a little more time to learn about God's word and prepare for their new ministry in Mexico.

What glorious news! Our ministry organized a grand fiesta to celebrate his return and the re-unification of their family.

Ever since their return, you have not seen a family more dedicated to the work of God. They are tireless! They come to every event that the Hispanic ministry holds and pass out fliers inviting everyone they meet to come as well. In his precious little time off, Victor volunteers to do odd jobs around the church. And best of all, they have been in ministry with families in similar situations. Felicitas has reached out to several women in similar situations to comfort them, give them hope, and lead them towards Christ.

Victor has been participating in the Hispanic Ministry Leadership Training sessions that the Tennessee Annual Conference holds once a month. Felicitas has learned how to lead a Sunday School lesson. Oh, and their eight-year-old son tells me every week that he wants to be a pastor when he grows up!

This family has a powerful testimony to the love of God as manifested through the body of Christ, the church. And I believe our epistle lesson speaks beautifully to their experience.

In a 21^st century immigrant's experience, the text might read something like this:

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor deportation, nor governments, nor immigration services, nor hunger, nor racism,

Nor borders, nor fences, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

• IV. Conclusion

God working through immigrant populations is nothing new. In fact, much of the Bible is about displaced peoples:

• Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden of Eden.
• Abraham is called to immigrate to a new land.
• Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt, later followed by his whole family who immigrate due to famine.
• Moses leads his people out of a foreign land of slavery into a promised, yet unknown land.
• Daniel and his people are exiled in Babylon.
• Jesus and his parents must flee the country to safety in Egypt.
• Upon returning to his country, Jesus suffers under the oppression of Pontius Pilate, a representative of the foreign power of Rome.
• Paul travels to and is imprisoned in foreign lands in his efforts to spread the gospel.
• John was exiled to the island of Patmos where he received a Revelation.

Exile and exodus, all this is a part of what it means to be God's people.

From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 and beyond, we are a wandering people

And God's work among immigrants, refugees, and exiles is not done! It is going on right now all around us.

Now some may think I've crossed the line into politics, but immigration is not just a political issue, it's a God issue. Whenever children of God are hurt, abused, and oppressed, it's always a God issue.

What you think of immigrants' reason for coming here or how you think our country should proceed, these are besides the point. Whatever you think, whatever I think, they are here. They are our neighbors and I don't recall Jesus saying that we only have to love our neighbors who have legal documentation. Whether you want them to be here or not, here they are and they are God's children. Will you be like Moses and use your voice to defend their humanity?

• Will you speak up when friends use cultural stereotypes and derogatory names to describe immigrants?

• When an acquaintance goes on a tirade about how this is our land, will you remind them that whether or not immigrants should be here, all the Earth belongs to God?

• When a Christian co-worker complains about immigrants will you remind that co-worker that we too are immigrants and that in the book of Leviticus God instructs us that "the alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Leviticus 19:34)

Using your voice to defend the voiceless will mean different things for different people. It may mean fighting for a guest worker program or it may mean fighting for a more humane deportation process. It is not a Democratic agenda, it is not a Republican agenda, it is a Christian call to serve our neighbors. The details of your specific call are for you and God to work out.

But whatever else this call might entail, it definitely involves clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and visiting those in prison.

You may remember that Jacob's sons also traveled to a foreign land in search of food and work. In fact, that's part of the story that leads up to our passage today. Now was it the right thing to do for Jacob's sons to travel to Egypt in search of food and work? We don't know. The text doesn't tell us. What the text does tell us is that God is with them on the journey and continues to work through them once in Egypt...just as God is working through Victor and his family for the glory of God.

"I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt," says God to Moses. "So now go, I am sending you"

God's voice echoes through the centuries all the way down to us in this little country church in the year 2008, "So now go, I am sending you." We are called to stand up for God's people who are oppressed whoever they are, in whatever place, for whatever reason. After all, we proclaim with Paul:

"Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"

"No! IN all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

With this confidence, let us go and do God's work in this world.

Angela Flanagan is a member of Ebenezer UMC in Woodbine. The above commentary is excerpted from a sermon she preached there. Read the complete sermon at www.bwcumc.org/***.