And a Kid Shall Lead Them

Louis was one of my favorite students—perhaps my most favorite. He showed up every day ready to work, learn, and get on to the next offering of his new and strange American life. Our alternative high school completion program was not designed for Louis; it was intended to address the crises of violence that targeted Dominican students and drove them from our city’s public high schools. Louis was Mexican, and our Dominican and Mexican communities didn’t concern themselves with each other’s fates. Nonetheless, Louis found his way into the Dominican dominated program.

He was among several promising students whose families fled violence and economic crisis in their homelands, only to find a different brand of violence and economic crisis in Camden, New Jersey, USA. For these students, survival involved a series of practices, routines, and procedures only understood by those who have  counted the cost of the perilous cavalcade north.

Families such as Louis’ live quietly, work quietly, and even drink quietly. Some weekend mornings I found piles of empty Coronas quietly deposited in the grass near the corner, leaving me to wonder why I hadn’t heard  the laughter, the loud voices, and the fighting that usually accompanies such a volume of empty bottles.

Absence

I worried on the day my favorite student did not show up for class. We had colluded with an official from a local college who was visiting us that day, bringing assurances that he could get undocumented students into his institution. His only condition was that we asked no questions. We gleefully complied. I wanted Louis to meet our co-conspirator, but of all days Louis was absent.

I tried to scold Louis as he showed up early the next morning, but he always carried an unguarded grace which muted my corrective ambitions. Instead, I implored him to explain what kept him away from class. He explained that in the early morning hours of the previous day, he had been stopped by the police while driving through a neighboring suburb and was detained for hours.

He had kept an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror. This was the crime for which the police pulled him over. Louis never suspected his real crime was simply being in a car full of Mexicans in a New Jersey suburb.

I chided Louis, “You’re just a kid, only 16. What are you doing driving a car?” Louis sank his head just enough to reveal the top of his carefully gelled hair. He explained that it was his duty to drive his parents and older siblings to the graveyard shift, cleaning at a factory near the town where he was pulled over. “I’m the youngest,” he said, so if they arrest and deport me, it hurts the family less than if it was my mother or father or sisters.” The family had counted the cost, and Louis had decided that “hating” his mom and dad, leaving them, and surrendering himself to the cruel system of deportation was the worthy act of a friend, a disciple, and a son who loved his family so much.

A Spirit of Gracious Surrender

Jesus’ conditions of total surrender are difficult to grasp within my culture of outrageous privilege, privilege attached to my ‘Made in America’ stamp. Even as an African American, born during the Jim Crow era, living among the troubled ghetto landscape, low on the spectrum of American privilege, I have never been called to carry the cross in the way Louis did every morning on his way back from his family’s low-paying, under-the-table job. My encounters with traffic cops result in warnings or fines instead of deportation and family obliteration. Cheap is my cost-counting when compared to Louis and his family, for my stamp has accustomed me to enjoying discipleship plus possessions, uninterrupted relationships, wealth, options, and lawyers when the traffic cops go too far. 

Louis, on the other hand, was only stamped with a spirit of gracious surrender, the kind of surrender Jesus encouraged in that f1st Century- audience who first heard the words of today’s text.

The most important risk I took was exposing my “southern border” to the amazing grace of full surrender that I found in a 16-year-old kid. Like the would-be disciples gathered near Jesus in our text, Louis was stamped by an oppressive empire as the problem, which meant that one false move toward righteousness could easily cost him everything, including, family, possessions, and life itself.

Is there a more fit disciple than this unsuspecting kid, innocent enough to believe the police would overlook his alien status and just see the air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror, and humble enough to count the cost, embrace the cross, and risk it all?