Loving Neighbors in Times of Fear

Community Defense Corner in Pasadena, June 2025

Loving Neighbors in Times of Fear

“Sue, things are really rough here,” I received in a text two weeks ago from a Korean American chaplain friend in St. Paul, Minnesota, where more than 2,000 ICE agents have been deployed.

"My husband got a message from our neighbor across the street that there were multiple reports ICE was in the neighborhood. They are going door to door searching for Hmong and Asian people, so he turned off the lights, bolted the door and had our neighbor walk me from the garage to the house when I got home... Our children's school is cancelled Monday. Online learning Tuesday and perhaps longer. Their school has a large K'nyaw (Hmong) population."

Friends, these are apocalyptic times- a time of revealing and uncovering. From Los Angeles to St. Paul, we are in a collective awakening and collective remembering. In 1942, under Executive Order 9066, the U.S. government "legally" authorized the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Today, we again see the most vulnerable in our communities being targeted and removed: grandparents taken from their homes, mothers pulled out of their cars, children baited and detained at schools. Whether we are citizens, documented, or undocumented, ICE is racially profiling our neighbors.

And yet, through these horrific and traumatizing realities, some of us are awakening to a deeper truth that we are each other's keepers. We are seeing more clearly that each person bears the image of God and belong to God. Thus, we belong to each other.

Now is time to wake up, show up, and take up the cross to follow the One who suffers with us. 

Being a peacemaker at such a time can take many forms in our daily lives.  For some, it looks like attending vigils and protests. For others, it is buying groceries, delivering food, giving rides, offering childcare, or quietly checking on neighbors who feel unsafe to come out. For some, it means patrolling neighborhoods or calling representatives to demand defunding ICE. Every act of courage counts as we share the heavy load that our neighbors are facing.

At such a time, may we remember and follow the words of Jesus, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25: 35-37, 40).”

May we choose to love God and our neighbors every day.  This is the time to practice hospitality with small but radical acts of love and kindness that will heal us all.