Christians on both sides of the border between Mexico and US processed along the border, detoured but undeterred by the presence of the expanded wall system growing along the US side, and sharing an agape meal.
The Sierra Vista Herald reports that the Bishop of Arizona, the Rt. Rev.Kirk Smith, took part and, using the image of the wall that surrounded Jericho, said
“Joshua was up against some similar odds as we are. He was facing a wall of fortification that looked like it was impregnable. No one had ever conquered it before,” he said.
“At first it looks like we are up against the same thing. We have this high-tech wall that has been built here with all kinds of electronic gizmos and barbed wire and steel and looks pretty impregnable and we don’t look very powerful against it,” he continued. “Like Joshua, we wonder what could we do against these odds. But the people who built that wall forgot something. They forgot that God does not like walls. And every time we put up a wall, God knocks it down.”
He pointed out the wall in Jericho and the Berlin Wall in Germany were both destroyed, and some day the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border will be torn down.
An agape meal ceremony was held outside the Church of Guadalupe, during which people ate bread and drank grape juice.
The event was a binational effort of church groups from Mexico and the United States. Last year, participants walked down the border to where the fence ended and they shared grape juice and bread and sang. But construction of the border fence at that location prevented them from doing the same this year.
The organizer of the event, Seth Polley, originally wanted people to meet near the port of entry at Naco and take part in a “call and response” activity and possibly sing a song through the wall. But new construction of a parallel fence there prevented that, too.
“When we saw the construction, we thought maybe this is not going to work,” said Polley, who is the vicar of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bisbee and the border missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona.
So, instead, the event started with the dedication of the Migrant Resource Center at Naco, Sonora.
Read the rest here.
UPDATE: Video from the procession is now available