Keeping Heart

Throughout the long sanctuary trial, a black banner hung in the sanctuary movement's media office in downtown Tucson. "The Truth Will Set You Free," it said in big letters cut from colorful cloth. On the end of it someone had tacked a piece of computer paper with the handwritten word, "Eventually."

The humorous afterthought referred, no doubt, to the seemingly endless nature of the trial. But now, after eight sanctuary workers have been found guilty by a federal jury and face possible prison terms of up to 25 years, the one-word footnote offers bittersweet comfort and profound theological insight.

For in the end, the sanctuary trial was less about the issues of sanctuary than it was about control of the truth. It had less to do with U.S. immigration law than it did with selective prosecution and selective presentation of evidence and law. It was more about faith than about crime. It represented injustice rather than justice. And the trial was not so much about conditions of violence and oppression in Central America as it was about the grim condition of relations between the U.S. government and those persons and groups that oppose its domestic and foreign policies.

The guilty verdict was not merely a reflection of the blatant bias of U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll, the corruption of government informant Jesus Cruz, the ruthless and shameless pursuit of convictions by Immigration and Naturalization Service investigator James Rayburn and prosecutor Donald M. Reno Jr., or even the conclusion of 12 jurors, but rather the policies and decisions of larger governmental bodies and more powerful government officials. The investigation of the sanctuary movement was ordered, after all, by top immigration officials in Washington intent on silencing the truth about U.S. policy in Central America.

The guilty verdict is heinous not only because it is grossly unjust and means that eight people of God may spend time in jail. It also symbolizes our government's willingness—its tendency—to violate its own laws and the rights of its citizens and the church when necessary to preserve its own power. If the guilty verdict, coming on top of the trial itself, can shock us and shake us into a more astute understanding of the principalities and powers, then perhaps we will be better prepared to serve our Central American brothers and sisters and to fight the next battle, which is sure to come.

The sanctuary trial and the guilty verdict mark not the end, but rather the beginning, of a period of intensifying church-state conflict. Therefore, we must learn from the trial the importance, and the cost, of being faithful to those who suffer and to what it means to truly be the church. We must learn the discipline of persevering in the midst of persecution, of running with single-mindedness the race God has set before us, of fixing our eyes on Jesus Christ, our hope, and of trusting our defense to the God of justice. For now, more than ever, we join our brothers and sisters in Central America in saying:

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body...

Therefore, we do not lose heart....For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. —2 Corinthians 4:8-11, 16-18

And the truth will set us free—"eventually"—even as we are serving and suffering for God's justice.