I sat in on a Passover Seder last night at the Holy Trinity Newman Center at Northern Arizona University. Then gave a talk to the group. (The Seder commemorates the Exodus of the Jewish slaves from Egypt.) During the ceremonial dinner there were readings about how hard the Egyptians worked the Jews, having them carry heavy stone “and toiling long hours in the fields.” At one point in the dinner, you eat a bitter herb to commemorate the bitterness of slavery. Toward the end of the dinner, the promise is that because of the pain these people knew first hand, they would stridently “defend liberty” in return… After the dinner I said to the some 40 college students that it was no longer Old Testament times, but rather: “the year 2006.” (I try to stay up on these things.) And I said in our current time, there were still “slaves” worldwide. (All you have to do is read Amnesty International’s literature.) I said among this slave population, I believed, were many of the illegal immigrants in this country who are ‘toiling in the fields” of the San Joaquin Valley in 110 degree temperatures sun up to sun down for minimum wage, or less. Or they are ‘carrying’ heavy burdens in the garment district sweat shops of L.A. and New York. Or they are sweating in the frigid cold, or oppressive heat, of chicken processing plants in the Midwest. Or… Then I said why many of these people leave family, friends, culture, country, is because their children are hungry or they are under political oppression. I told the students about traveling to Juarez, Mexico, where people work for $3 a shift in multi-national factories and live in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity, and their children are hungry. Then there is Heraldina in Nicaragua. Tiffin, Ohio’s Sr. Paulette Schroeder told me she heard Heraldina’s story during a trip to Nicaragua on a “Witness for Peace” tour. She said Contra forces had undertaken a campaign of terror there to undermine strides toward moving people out of poverty. In one village, she said grenades started exploding amidst intermittent gunfire. Heraldina grabbed her eight-month-old child and ran. A bullet pierced her back and lodged in the leg of the baby. Heraldina survived, barely. The baby lost his leg… I asked the students if they were living in a similar situation, how many would seek refuge in, say, America? Everyone raised their hands… I then exhorted the students to not come away from the dinner with just a bunch of empty symbolism about the “bitterness” of slavery and the “sweetness” of freedom. But rather, the night should motivate them to help free those in bondage to slavery today. I exhorted them to protest in solidarity with the immigration rallies of today. To flood their campus and local newspapers with letter to the editor about social justice for the illegal immigrants. I asked them to consider setting up a Sister Church project with a Church in Latin America to get as much help to the people there who want to stay, but are in seemingly dead-end situations… And I closed by saying none of the people in the room were “poor college students.” I said that was an absolute myth fostered by our insular socio-economic class system here. That is, if they were living in a dorm room with central heat and air, a nice bed, couch and CD player, a full refrigerator and full closet… and what’s more, were moving toward a career that would set them up nicely in suburban America — they were, in fact, “among the most privileged in a world — where billions live in abject poverty.” And there was one other perception they might want to lose as well, I said. That is, no matter what profession they were aiming at — “it isn’t any more important than a farm worker’s job.” That is, a farm worker helps provide us with life giving food, I said. So even if society doesn’t acknowlege (monetarily, or status wise) that a farm worker’s job is as important as, say, a lawyer, or accountant, or stock broker — “at least now you know,” I said. And I continued it something God knew as well. “So,” I said, “if you leave here and begin making, say, “$45,000 a year, and decide to spend most of it on yourself as opposed to sharing close to half of it with a farm worker and his family (who is making $7,000 a year and doing just as important a job, if not more important) what do you suppose God might say to you at Judgement? I told the students He might, oh, echo the passage in Isaiah 10 about: turning aside the needy from justice and robbing the poor of their right. Later in that passage it asks specifically of those who rob the poor of their right: “What will you do on the day of Judgement?”… An apt question, not only for all the college students currently moving into “Generation Me” — but for all of us. Note: In Flagstaff, Arizona, the other day I saw a bumper sticker that read: “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”