When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God’s Presence

Rev. Phil reflects on immigration enforcement after American sailor Joshua Aviles, deployed over nine months on the record-setting USS Lincoln, learns that his father Luis Manuel Aviles was arrested by ICE during a racially targeted traffic stop in Florida despite having a job, Social Security card, paying taxes, and pursuing a green card. Phil notes that in July ICE arrested nearly 50,000 people (about 1,600 daily), arguing many are nonviolent immigrants targeted for skin color and accents, with families separated and children detained and given court dates without parents or counsel. Connecting this to Christianity, he cites Jesus’ teaching about welcoming strangers and caring for the least, argues Christians should be angry at injustice, and warns against confusing personal prejudice with God’s anger. He describes a planned church pilgrimage to the US–Mexico border as a step toward transformation, insisting righteous anger must lead to action.
 
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Rev. Phil describes preparing to join their church on a fall pilgrimage to the US–Mexico border and reflects on conflicting feelings. They list three reasons they don’t want to go: pilgrimages are uncomfortable (they’re attached to a king-sized bed and travel comforts), require physical movement (they resist being pushed to move), and are meant to transform a person (they like who they are and dislike a shame-based self-improvement narrative). They then offer three reasons they do want to go: the discomfort reveals their worship of comfort and convenience and forces emotional engagement with anger over US treatment of immigrants and refugees; movement counters confusing stagnation with stability and connects them to “immigrant siblings” defined by movement; and transformation deepens understanding of God, self, and love, embracing uncertainty and trusting God’s more imaginative plans

Rev. Phil argues that scripture repeatedly highlights the vulnerability of the immigrant experience and urges listeners to digest it, relate to it, and see themselves in it. He says many people already feel vulnerable due to economic instability, environmental volatility, and a vicious political climate, yet society is being convinced to fear immigrants as threats, which he calls a convenient lie. He emphasizes Jesus’ command to love neighbor—including those of different nationalities, cultures, religions, and races—and to seek the humanity in one another because every person bears God’s image. He presents Jesus as embodying divine vulnerability—born into poverty, becoming a refugee, living itinerantly, and suffering torture and public execution—and condemns exploiting immigrants through detention, incarceration, violence, and deportation. He frames the church’s trip to the border as a pilgrimage to connect to immigrants as family and be spiritually transformed.
 
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This week’s podcast reflects on how Paul’s relationship to citizenship was complex: Jewish in identity, born in Tarsus in Roman-controlled Cilicia, raised partly in Jerusalem, and able to claim Roman citizenship to demand due process, yet ultimately executed under Nero’s campaign of terror against Christians after the great fire in Rome. It parallels Paul’s death with the killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican-born man who lived in the U.S. for 35 years while pursuing legal status, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a documented Colombian immigrant; both were chased by agents in unmarked cars and executed after being mistaken for someone else. It defines “martyr” from Greek martureo (“to witness”) and asks whether these deaths should be recognized as martyrdoms. Rev. Phil argues that Paul’s theology rejects national, cultural, and racial barriers—“Our citizenship is in heaven”—and urges examining citizenship’s role as Church of the Redeemer approaches a borderland pilgrimage.
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In this week's podcast Rev. Phil explains that immigration, refuge, and being a “stranger” are central to the biblical story and to Christian identity. He explains that God’s covenant with Abram required him to leave his homeland and become an immigrant, and traces the same theme through Moses and the Hebrews’ experience of refuge, fear, dehumanization, slavery, and migration, as well as Ruth’s life as a poor immigrant who becomes part of Israel’s royal line and Jesus’ lineage. He emphasizes that Jesus was an immigrant and refugee in childhood and that his ministry located God’s blessing among outsiders. Rev. Phil challenges American Christians to consider how immigrants are treated today, warning that failing to honor and love immigrants reflects a misunderstanding of God, covenant, salvation, liberation, and Christian heritage.
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Rev. Phil recounts telling an older Christian leader that religious beliefs should not influence voting, reflecting on a conservative church upbringing where Republicans were assumed to be the Christian choice. After moving to Los Angeles and becoming Episcopalian, he encountered a politically diverse church environment and grew convinced that no party fully represents a Christian worldview, becoming weary of using Christianity as a political weapon. The older man responds that faith in Jesus shapes how he sees and treats people and therefore must influence his vote. Over time, Phil distinguishes this from “Christian values” rhetoric and rejects Christian nationalism as un-American and contrary to Jesus, arguing the goal is not to make America a Christian nation but to see, love, and act in the world through Jesus’ concern for healing, justice, belonging, and care for all people.
 
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Rev. Phil reflects on Psalm 139’s claim that God is present everywhere— in heaven, the grave, the sea, and even in darkness—while acknowledging that people often experience God as alternately obvious or painfully silent, citing C.S. Lewis and Mother Teresa’s journaled sense of prolonged silence. After recent deaths in the church community, he says people shouldn’t be shamed for asking “Where is God?” and notes the same psalmist also cries, “How long, O Lord?” Phil says his belief in God comes from personal, non-transferable experience, including feeling God’s presence during the deaths of his father and grandmother despite unanswered questions about suffering. Faith, he concludes, is not solving unanswerable questions but practicing looking for grace and blessing where God seems absent, dedicating the message to grieving friends.
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Rev. Phil reflects on a sincere question from a politically opposed relative about whether God cares about income inequality, answering through the Lord’s Prayer: praying “thy kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven” implies rejecting radical inequality as unlike heaven and taking responsibility to act after saying amen. He argues this is practical Christian striving: creating communities of peace, love, and justice that treat all people with dignity. Continuing a series on loving political enemies, he says building a more Christ-like world requires refusing the win/lose dehumanization of opponents, even while condemning policies he sees as racist, anti-LGBTQ+, harmful to schools, veterans, and poor seniors. Citing Dr. King, he describes ending racism as healing for all and calls Christians toward equity and shared liberation.
 
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 And as a Christian, I have the responsibility to do so in a way that acknowledges and honors the human dignity of my enemy, not to sink into the mire of hatred for them, not to allow myself to indulge in hateful speech, even if my political enemy relishes hateful speech. My decision to love cannot be dependent on anything but God, who has promised to help me love if I am willing to commit to loving.
 
Why am I so tempted to see this kind of love as weak or ineffectual? I believe I resist loving the politician who is my enemy in part because I am scared that it will not accomplish enough. I believe I am also resistant because I get a moment of cheap satisfaction in dehumanizing my political enemy.

Rev. Phil reflects on Jesus’ command to love enemies, offering the Book of Common Prayer’s “Prayer for Our Enemies” as a practical starting point. He begins a series focused on loving different kinds of enemies, especially political ones, and addresses the political enemy who is a friend or family member. He argues politics are personal and can rightly strain relationships, noting such divisions are not new and even existed among early Christians. Rev. Phil suggests that when people share political views they reveal hopes, fears, and something of their hearts, even when they may be wrong or harmful. Loving them does not require minimizing differences, but recognizing their humanity, listening where possible, and praying toward reconciliation rooted in humility, because love is the reason for human existence.
 
Enjoy this podcast that originally aired on February 7, 2025. Use the buttons below to listen or read more.