The Wall Turned into a Table: Binational Communion at La Iglesia Fronteria

For here on either side of the wall are God’s children

and no man-made border can obliterate that fact.

Rev. Dr. martin Luther King, Jr.

 standing at the Berlin Wall, September 1964

I lived for five years in a place that pilgrims from all over the world come to visit. I have said prayers at all the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, always stopping at Station 8 to pray extra hard for the women of Jerusalem still weeping for their children. I have looked over Jerusalem, like Jesus, and wept for those who still do not know the ways of peace. I have sipped from the well in Nabulus where the Samaritan woman engaged Jesus in scandalous conversation and was given living water from the priest/caretaker when I explained this was my ordination story.

I lived in this place all call holy and I called home. I also preached and presided at the Lord’s table in Jerusalem and on the Sea of Galilee feeding hungry pilgrims from afar, local Palestinian Christians from the neighborhood, and ex-pats from around the world. I understand why people go on pilgrimage---a chance to feel, touch, the mystery of God’s presence. I believe we are all sojourners here too.

So, of course I needed to make the pilgrimage to Friendship Park on my first Sunday in San Diego, to participate in the world’s only binational communion service. Friendship Park is the historic border meeting at the western edge of the US-Mexico border where friends and families from both nations have met for generations. The park is the place where the drama of family separation and family reunion continues to take place as new families are separated daily. It is the place where lovers used to exchange notes or send kisses, where baby pictures were exchanged, where cries of despair mixed easily with cries of joy as fingers tried to reach out. It is a station on the Via Dolorosa, a place that marks suffering.

Since November 2011 it has also become the place where people on both sides come together on Sundays to share communion with their families and friends, sisters and brothers in Christ on the Tijuana side. For almost 10 years, La Iglesia Fronteriza, The Border Church has gathered to witness to God’s love that knows no boundaries, because nothing can separate or break up God’s family.

“Neither God nor God’s people will be limited by national boundaries.

Somehow, mysteriously the US Mexico border wall is turned into the

table of the Lord, a table at which all are welcome.”

Rev. Dr. John Fantestil

On the American side Rev. Dr. John Fanestil from First United Methodist Church shares the Gospel message, and words of institution in English and Spanish with Latino ministers on the Tijuana side adding their own prayers and music.

I was looking forward to attending or participating in communion at such a holy site in such a time as this at ground zero of the immigration/refugee crisis.  The situation is not an emergency requiring troops or the national guard, but it is a humanitarian crisis made by our unjust political and economic policies that have driven people from their homes to seek food to put on the table. The theological irony or coincidence is not lost on me; I am coming to break bread at table for a people who fled so they could put bread on their tables; I am coming to break open the body of Christ for a people broken by an immigration system that does not honor their dignity as whole human beings deserving dignity and freedom.  

As a person who also lived with another separation barrier, the Annexation or Apartheid Wall, another militarized border which separates families, and which is the model for this border wall now completed in San Diego, I wanted to go and pray, plead and weep that God help us to break down all these dividing walls of separation and hostility---- here and there.

But the forecast called for rain, so the service was moved indoors to an office space near the border entry and exit, in the chaparral neighborhood of Tijuana. The plan was for Pastor John and I to cross the border and worship with those on the Mexican side of Border Church, to be together physically not just spiritually---to share sacramental presence in each other’s eyes.

When we arrived at the California side of the border, I was shocked to see an outlet mall. I looked at the sign listing the shops and laughed when I saw “Justice” under “Armanni.” A store named Justice? Can you buy or sell justice? The capitalist system at its best making a mockery of everything I thought.

I had never crossed this border before and didn’t know what to expect.  My past traumatic experiences of crossing in and out of Israel made me anxious as I nervously checked out the border security eyeing people coming in. It reminded me of the way the Israeli soldiers look at you as you enter the West Bank. They don’t really care if you enter. They care when you leave and try to come back through, when you cross back into Israel. Same here.

As soon as we crossed, I felt a sigh of relief, the same sigh because I was safe and also because Tijuana looked like Bethlehem, looked like home---run down buildings, garbage in the streets, people selling things except there were no taxi drivers trying to hussle you for an expensive ride. And like any tourist town there was a big red sign proudly calling out, “Mexico.”

Pastor John explained that this was the place that people seeking asylum would come early in the morning to line up to get on the list to have their asylum cases first heard. If they could prove “a credible threat”, then they would either be taken into detention (and maybe separated from their family) or sent back to the mean streets of Tijuana to wait for their hearing.  At this hour of the day, it was just a welcome sign to Mexico. If you were leaving it was the sign that marked your acceptance, your life moving forward. It was also the sign that marked your denial or the beginning of your journey back to a known threatening place.

Breathe in the damp air, Loren, exhale the pain of these disturbing facts.

We entered the cluttered make shift office and were immediately welcomed with more love than I have experienced in a long time. The welcome brought forth my few words of Spanish. “Mucho gusto” to hands held out. “Mi nombre es Pastora Lorena McGrail. Yo trabajo con l’eglisa en el otro lado, Safe Harbors.” Roberto immediately took my hand and said in perfect English, “Welcome Pastora Lorena, you are most welcome. You work with one of our sister organizations.” 

Two things happened in this short interchange. I was renamed and anointed. I am now Pastora Lorena a title I never had in my five years in Palestine because women ministers don’t exist. Second, the recognition of my new ministerial role by a faithful Mexican leader was an affirmation that God had indeed sent me.  

While waiting for the service to begin, I noted that the handmade cross had a red banner across the top with the words, “God is Bueno” written in English and in gold. God is good not God is love. And I realized this is a theological message for me, maybe even a challenge. Good? How do you worship a God that is good when so many bad things are happening? I get God’s inclusive love, a love which will accompany us through thick and thin but good? Then I remembered the line from the hymn,” Goodness is stronger than evil.” Yes, we need a God that will triumph in the end. This is a big day for me. I have been renamed, anointed and now must open to another spiritual truth---God is good.

Pastor John read the Beatitudes and shared a message of how we are all part of God’s kingdom no matter our legal status or labels or hateful things they say. We can never be separated from God. After the message, Roberto asked us, John and I, to stand in the center and celebrate the eucharist. The tortilla looking host had a cross on it. My job was to assist in distributing the bread. I remembered that after the Gaza Offensive of 2014 I couldn’t break the bread for over a month. I couldn’t break the body of Christ after seeing so many broken bodies blown to bits. Now I was tearing apart small pieces to feed the over 40 people with one loaf.

I tore off the pieces and placed them in out stretched cupped hands lingering just a moment after saying, “The body of Christ broken open for you.” Tears came and went as I made my way around the circle taking in the holiness of this shared communion, the sorrow and the joy mixing. We celebrate this feast because God is indeed loving and good.

Sacramental presence is what Pastor John calls this communion on the borderlands, this coming together around a shared meal as the family of Christ. The meal reminds us to whom we belong. It is for this reason I am rethinking the theology of welcoming the neighbor or stranger. We are the body of Christ, one family. I feel the birth pangs of a new theology growing which begins here with this reality and knows and claims God is Bueno.

El Paso communion at the border