Dislocated exegesis: Reading the Bible in unexpected places
It is a bright, cold Holy Thursday morning, and I am standing outside an immigration detention center that is creepily located in a suburban office park in Cary, North Carolina. Unmarked white vans pull up to unload people who have been newly detained by officials of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
I am here to participate in a foot washing and a demonstration on behalf of detainees, who are frequently, as ICE executive director James Pendergraph indelicately put it in 2008, made to "disappear." As my friends and I gather, a white van pulls up. A man is taken out and led into the building. He looks at us. He looks down. He looks like Jesus to me.
As we start the foot washing, the police tell us to leave. I feel queasy, but I stand with the others under threat of arrest. Hours later, the police change their minds and tell us that we can stay as long as we want—so, of course, we decide it is time to go home. Before we leave, we gather for a moment of prayer.
