As I was preparing for Lent, I read about one of the first bills to be introduced in this year’s session of the Alabama Legislature.  The bill proposes that any illegal immigrant can be found guilty of trespassing and sentenced to a year in prison simply for being in Alabama.  You and I can be found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison for knowingly taking an illegal immigrant to the doctor or the grocery store – or their immigration hearing.

The language used to justify this kind of action is so hateful.  “We have been invaded, and the invasion continues to this day,” said a retired teacher from Montgomery.  The campaign is so dehumanizing.  The people pushing the cause are so judgmental.  If only they could hear themselves.

If only I could hear myself.

I sound like the Pharisee in Luke 18, who stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people-robbers, evildoers, adulterers [fill in the blank]-or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  In other words, I can be so judgmental of the judgmental.   I can be so inhospitable toward the inhospitable.  I can be so self-righteous toward the self-righteous!

Lent is often looked at as a ball and chain to be dragged about for 40 days, but it’s really a gift.  We’re invited to remove the veils that we’ve draped between ourselves and our God.   We’re invited, in the words of Joel 2, to “rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”

So I’m going to give up something for Lent.  I’m going to give up my hostility towards those who are hostile to undocumented residents in our state.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up.  I’m still going to stand up for justice & mercy.  But I’m going to try to do it how Jesus did.  I’m going to try to do it how Martin Luther King did – I’m going to try to win them over with love.

-Rev. Angie Wright