After Sunday’s service, which addressed Martin Luther King’s argument that equating a person’s value with their financial means is an “unjust measurement of human worth,” Live Oak member Michael Van Slyke shared that he finds it frustrating when the news media describes someone as being “worth” their financial resources, e.g. “Elon Musk is worth 416 billion dollars.” How absolutely right! Having that much money does not mean the individual is “worth” that. If you separated them from their billions, would we still consider them to be worth that amount?

And conversely, having little means does not equate to an individual’s worth. I am in El Paso this week, doing an immersive seminar as part of the Doctor of Ministry program I’m in. The class is “Hermeneutics of The Sacred in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” and the main textbook is Resacralizing the Other at the US-Mexico Border A Borderland Hermeneutic by Gregory L. Cuéllar. In the book, Dr. Cuéllar (who is also the professor of the class) delves into the US policy and culture that minimizes the worth of the undocumented migrant as the dangerous and foreign “other” and proposes a framework for remembering the sacred nature of each human and understanding their “otherness” as unique and sacred.

It is an immersive experience and we’ll be cramming a lot into one week. From the syllabus, here are some of the places we’ll be visiting:

• El Paso Museum of History: a guided tour and discussion on El Paso’s cultural and historical narratives relevant to borderland themes
• Tres Ríos Presbytery/Border Foundation: discussion on local religious leadership in border communities, meeting with foundation representatives to learn about their border initiatives
• The Border Wall
• Border Network for Human Rights: overview of human rights work on the border
• Hope Border Institute: briefing on social justice advocacy and community support in the borderlands
• The Encuentro Project Border Immersion Experiences Neighbourhood: meet with Fr. Rafael Garcia and Bro. Todd for a direct look at border dynamics and community resilience

In his book, Professor Cuéllar writes, “Although forced into a life of migration, how does the will to live of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees at the US-Mexico border prefigure a reality that all humans will inevitably face and therefore set forth ways to extend human life?” As I see the news about the wildfires in California, yet another reminder of the climate destruction raging on our planet, this question has sobering meaning.

It may be that these sojourners from other countries may have the most valuable lessons for our future. Sacred people of worth.