Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are not a callous people. We cannot put off feelings of sadness because they make us uncomfortable, nor can we wrap ourselves in the blanket of anger because we feel pain. Instead, as Christians we must feel them, and feel them as Christ did from the vantage point of his cross; not from the vantage point of our own concerns.
Episcopal Anglicans often awake before dawn to say these words: “The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
We sing Zechariah’s song while it is still dark outside because we believe the light coming over the horizon is not just the sun rising on another day, but God’s mercy rising to meet us, and because we believe that the first work of our day ought to be with feet turned toward peace.
Tuesday morning, that light rose on Canal Street in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood at around seven o’clock. It rose on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, riding to the homebuilding company that had employed him for most of the last thirty-five years. He was shot, dead at Ben Taub Hospital by sunrise. The dayspring visited him, and he received a mercy that ensured in a certain hope that he rose to his savior’s arms.
His sons are American citizens. Lorenzo brought them through college on the wages of his early mornings. Now they sit in grief. And because they are our brothers, we cannot say we have not been wounded: If one member suffers, all suffer together. Moreover, they are our brothers and our fathers; they share with us our humanity and God’s provision of dignity in all that this means.
I do not presume to speak conclusively on this matter. Judgments are for courts and officers of the government, charged as they are with finding the truth. I do join The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and all those concerned that this be reviewed and investigated. People in our country should not be shot for a civil immigration infraction. This is similar to being hunted, pursued, and shot for a misdemeanor. Particularly when Mr. Araujo had been attempting to receive legal status, and our U.S. Government had not kept their promise of due process. This does not make Araujo's situation unique; in fact, it is normal. What makes it unique is that he was killed for a minor civil infraction.
The government’s officers tell one story: that Mr. Salgado Araujo tried to evade arrest and turned his vehicle toward an agent, who shot him in self-defense. His family and neighbors tell another story: that this longtime employee, a man with no criminal record who has been working toward citizenship his entire life, was scared by the appearance of unmarked cars at dawn. Mr. Salgado Araujo’s son has filed a complaint and requests not only that justice be served but that we see all the evidence: the dash cam footage, the arrest reports, an accounting that shrinks from nothing.
But before this happens, before we sort out custody and commands, we must deal with scripture because that is our part. I wish to say what we have nearly forgotten how to say: this was a man. “The stranger that dwelleth with you.” Immigration status, legal definitions, and enforcement priorities, all of these may be true, but they are not the first words to be spoken about a person from our perspective. The first word said over Lorenzo was that he was made in God’s image.
Scripture will not allow us the convenience of dehumanizing an other human being; for any reason. The bible says, “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The God who spoke that truth against the Egyptian custom binds our treatment of immigrants to the memory of our own history. Egypt, Babylon, Rome, and all governments are all powers. And, in scripture and for ages these words have addressed them. And, lest we forget running from the powers that wished to kill him the Lord rode into Egypt as a refugee, in his mother’s arms. When we look on this man on Canal Street we see one whom Christ would not be ashamed to call His brother.
Let us pray, then, as the Church has learned to pray when nothing else can be done:
O God, whose Son had no place to lay His head and was numbered with the transgressors: receive Lorenzo Salgado Araujo into the arms of Thy mercy, and let light perpetual shine upon him. Comfort his sons in their fatherlessness, and be Thou the Father of the fatherless. Bring every hidden thing to light, that justice be neither counterfeit nor delayed. And give us grace to behold in our brothers what we had trained ourselves to see as a case. Through Jesus Christ our peace, who is Himself the Dayspring from on high. Amen.
Notice what we have prayed for: we have asked the Dayspring to visit us. Not Lorenzo only, but us. And we have asked to be led into peace.
There is no abbreviated version of that, and there is no escaping it. If you want to care for human beings, that means we care for immigrants, and we welcome refugees to your parish. Sit with the grieving; accompany the fearful. We are forever invited to sit with this family and all families like it. You will tell the truth about what happened, demand the truth from officials, and reject sterile polemics about which side is tougher on crime.
As followers of Jesus, we bring our brothers’ death to the altar, where another Man’s dying was made into our life, and there you will receive that life again. We do not know yet how this went according to God’s will. But we do know how to walk into His presence.
It will remain dark on Canal Street, and weeping endures for the night. But we say the Benedictus in the dark so that we will remember to say it when the sun comes up. The dayspring from on high hath visited us, us, and Lorenzo and his sons. Let us go. Let our feet be guided into the way of peace.
Your brother in Christ,
C. Andrew Doyle
