The Humanity of the Nations

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Psalm 9:9-20        A Prayer for the Triumph of Justice
Ephesians 2:11-22


The Holy One of our ancestors who were oppressed and enslaved in Egypt lifts up those who are oppressed today into a safe and secure retreat
A safe and secure place in times of distress

Those who know your name, Holy One, will trust in you
Because you have not—and will not ever—abandon those who seek you

Sing to the Holy One of our ancestors, whose eternal dwelling place is a safe and secure retreat in a city of peace!
Proclaim the deeds of our liberating God among all people everywhere!

Because the One who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized remembers them;
Our God does not forget the crying out of those who are afflicted

Have mercy on me, Holy One. See my many sufferings at the hands of my enemies. You are the One who lifts me up from the gates of death!

If I am instead at the gates of your safe and secure place . . . if I am instead at the gates of your city of peace,
I can rejoice in your deliverance and recount your praises in song!

The nations around me have sunk into a pit they have made;
Their own foot has been caught in the net they hid for others

The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors has made himself known; she has executed judgment.

In their own handiwork, those who do wicked things are ensnared.

Those who do evil—the nations around me who forget their divine mandate for justice—will return to Sheol:
a graveyard of their own—completely separate from God.

Because the person in need will not always be forgotten!
The person who is poor will not lose hope forever!

Rise up, God! Thou shalt not let humankind prevail!
Let the nations around me be judged in your presence!

Put them in terror, Holy One of our ancestors.
Let the nations around me know that they are, indeed, only human.


The thing about the Psalms is that they a real. They are human. They speak the truth of what we really feel when we really feel it.

Like how many of us feel this weekend after watching yet another community ripped apart tragically by the deep underpinning of violence that dehumanizes our nation in ways we can no longer choose to ignore. Surely our very humanity is at stake. Surely we can understand in this moment what kind of wrenching anguish that would cause the psalmist from our Scripture reading today to cry out in desperation for a “safe and secure place” where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time. For those who have been victimized to be avenged by a God who will not ever forget their name. And, in the end, for God’s great mercy to prevail among us all.

In a prayer that speaks the truth of the experience of any human being who has suffered at the hand of another—of any human being who has suffered the inhumanity of the nations—the psalmist prays for vindication, for the triumph of justice, for deliverance from the gates of death that surround him on all sides.
You are a God who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized, the psalmist insists, even as we cringe at the violence of these words. You are a God who can put terror in the hearts of my enemies, the psalmist says, of the ones who do not even see me as human. You are a God who will rise up and judge the nations who have forgotten their divine mandate to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you. You are a God who will remind the nations that they, too—that we, too, are only human.

I first came across the power of this psalm when I was serving a church in Tucson and faced the reality of our nation’s immigration crisis on a daily. It occurred to me that this must also be the prayer of the migrant who does not make it. The one who dies in the desert between the United States and Mexico. Or the one who returns to Mexico with bleeding feet, or worse. Or the one who builds a home directly across from the border wall—from the gate of death we have built as a deterrent to anyone who would dare pursue a dream of life abundant. A wall whose explicitly stated purpose at its creation was to drive the migrant into the most dangerous parts of the desert. Where every one of them is dehydrated. Traumatized. And if you are female, most likely raped.

Surely this was the prayer of Jose Mario Ocampo Rivera when he migrated from Mexico at 41 years of age. Surely he cried out for a safe and secure place where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time as he, too, perished senselessly. Discovered in the desert on January 9, 2012. Cause of death: exposure to the elements . . .

Surely this was the prayer of Maria Martha Luna Sanchez . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 13, 2012 . . . cause of death: organ failure . . .

Surely this was the prayer of Juan Cruz Garcia . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 27, 2012 . . . cause of death: blunt force injuries to the head.

Surely this was the prayer of every migrant who has died crossing the desert from Mexico to the United States, beginning from the time the wall of hostility that lines the U.S. border with Mexico began to scar the landscape between Douglas, Arizona, U.S.A. and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, and continuing until that day when we can reclaim the humanity of the nations. And break down the walls that divide us, both literal and metaphorical. And proclaim finally and forever that God has made peace for those who are far off and for those who are near, as the writer of our Scripture lesson from Ephesians begs the early church to proclaim.

The names of migrants who have died crossing the desert have been called out in a vigil of prayer every Tuesday of every week of every year since the border wall was constructed. One of the sponsors of the prayer vigil is an organization called Frontera de Cristo, which is one of six official Presbyterian ministries along the U.S.-Mexico border. And just in case you didn’t know, the national coordinator for Presbyterian Border Ministries is our own Micaela Reznicek, and her office is right here at Madison Square.

I joined this prayer vigil one Tuesday several years ago with a mission group on behalf of the church I served in Tucson. We began our prayers at a street corner a quarter mile from the border wall, each one of us picking up a plain white cross with the name of a migrant who had died. We spoke out that person’s name, if we knew it. If we did not we named them, “Desconocido/a.” And then we shouted with all our might, “presente!” So that they might somehow hear from the great beyond that they are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints . . . and members of the household of God.”

The words of judgment from the psalmist were fresh on my mind as we crossed back into Agua Prieta after our prayer vigil in Douglas. We drove along a road ironically named the “International Highway,” because it travels along the official border between Mexico and the United States. But there was no United States to be seen. All we could see was that gate of death to our left, for miles ahead, all the way up the hill to the horizon and through the rear view mirror all the way back to the horizon behind of us. Half of us were already sick with a stomach ailment. All of us were tired and full of despair. All of us felt helpless to do anything but lament our common inhumanity. And lamenting our inhumanity is, I would argue, an act of faith with deep integrity.

But it is not the end of the story. The psalmist continues: The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors lifts up those who are oppressed today! God has provided and will continue to provide a safe and secure retreat in times of distress! The nations may forget the cries of the afflicted, we may disregard the names of those who die in the desert, but God does not! God remembers!

As we drove along that border fence—still in an attitude of prayer from our vigil in Douglas—we just happened to look up through the windshield and a miracle from God appeared before our eyes just ahead: a double rainbow had formed, beginning on the U.S. side of the border wall, crossing high above, high into the heavens, leading into Mexico, where it merged into the clouds. God’s covenant promise for all the nations available to us, who are only human. All we have to do is open our eyes and capture the vision.

“This wall is coming down!” one of our group declared boldly, as we prayed through the power of that moment. “The Berlin Wall came down in Germany and Nelson Mandela came out of prison in South Africa, and this wall is going to come down!” God has willed it to be so. All we have to do is catch the vision and make it real. This is the Word of God to us today!!!

Desmond Tutu often says that the prayers of the women were the deciding factor in the end of apartheid in South Africa. That their trust in a liberating God, that their honesty with God and one another about their suffering and anger, that their hope in the midst of despair kept the movement alive in its most difficult days. And it can continue to be true today. I, for one, believe in the power of prayer to change the world. And to change you. And to change me. And maybe even to change our broken immigration system along the way . . .
And so I ask every one of us to join again in the prayers of that vigil along the U.S.-Mexico border that takes place every Tuesday. And to turn our prayers into action by joining our adult education conversation about immigration in the next five weeks. And to trust that God will always welcome us home to the joyful work of restoring the humanity of the nations. And join all of our prayers together into one beautiful cadence from one family, built together in the Spirit into a beautiful dwelling place for our God, proclaiming peace to those who are far off and to those who are near, no longer strangers and aliens, but every one of us citizens with the saints and members of the one household of God.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.