The Church Must Be Salt Against the Ice
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
Beloved of God,
It is winter in the United States.
Across the country, the land is held in the frigid grip of snow and ice. And anyone who has lived through winter knows this: snow can be beautiful, even honest in its presence. You see it falling. You prepare for it. You shovel it. You walk carefully.
But ice…
Ice is something else.
Ice is hidden. Ice is silent. Ice comes when you least expect it. One moment you are steady on your feet, and the next you are on the ground, broken, bleeding, breath knocked out of you.
Ice does not announce itself.
Ice is treacherous.
Ice can kill.
And brothers and sisters, there is an ice in our common life right now, an icy cruelty, an institutional coldness, that has spread across the sidewalks of our society. It is not made of water and wind…
It is made of fear.
It is made of power without compassion.
It is made of policies without mercy.
It is made of enforcement without justice.
And it falls hardest upon the stranger, the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the refugee…
Upon the least of these.
Jesus tells us plainly: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”
Not “I was a stranger, and you detained me.”
Not “I was a stranger, and you hunted me.”
Not “I was a stranger, and you made my children afraid.”
He says: “You welcomed me.”
And when we fail to welcome the stranger, Christ does not treat it as a small political difference. He treats it as a spiritual crisis.
Because what we do to the vulnerable, we do to Him.
Beloved, the Gospel is not neutral.
The prophets were not neutral.
The cross was not neutral.
The Kingdom of God does not tiptoe around cruelty.
It names it.
It exposes it.
It casts it out.
There are systems in this country that have grown cold, so cold that they can no longer feel the warmth of human dignity. There are institutions that operate like black ice: invisible to the comfortable, deadly to the poor.
A father taken in the night.
A mother disappeared into detention.
Children left weeping in a doorway.
Neighbors afraid to drive to work, afraid to go to school, afraid to worship, afraid to exist.
Tell me, Church:
What Gospel is that?
What Christ is served by terror?
What holiness is found in intimidation?
This is not order.
This is not justice.
This is winter without a hearth.
And the Lord speaks through Jeremiah:
“Woe to the shepherds who scatter the sheep of my pasture!”
Woe to those who build their power by scattering families.
Woe to those who claim righteousness while sowing fear.
Woe to those who wrap cruelty in the flag and call it virtue.
God is not fooled.
And the Church must not be silent.
Now hear me clearly:
Our call is not hatred.
Our call is not violence.
Our call is not revenge.
Christ does not ask us to destroy people.
Christ asks us to dismantle oppression.
Christ asks us to melt what is frozen.
Christ asks us to warm what has grown cold.
The work is not to harm, but to heal.
The work is not to curse, but to liberate.
The work is not to harden our hearts further, but to make them burn again with the fire of mercy.
And so I say to you today:
If there is ICE in our streets, it must be removed, lest people fall.
If there is ICE in our policies, it must be confronted, lest souls be crushed.
If there is ICE in our hearts, it must be repented of, lest we forget what it means to belong to Christ.
The Gospel is a thawing power.
The Spirit is a springtime force.
And the Church is called to be a shelter in the storm, a refuge for the hunted, a home for the stranger, a witness against the cold machinery of dehumanization.
Beloved, Jesus is still out there.
Still walking among the vulnerable.
Still disguised as the immigrant.
Still present in the refugee.
Still trembling in the child.
Still waiting at the border.
And He is asking His Church:
Will you recognize Me?
Will you welcome Me?
Will you stand with Me?
May God give us courage.
May God give us tenderness.
May God give us prophetic clarity.
And may every cold empire melt before the coming Kingdom of Christ,
Where mercy reigns,
Where strangers become family,
And where love is the law.
And now, beloved of God,
May Christ, who comes to us as the Stranger,
soften every hardened place within us,
and warm our hearts with the fire of divine mercy.
May the Holy Spirit make you salt upon the ice,
a safeguard for the vulnerable,
a witness against cruelty,
and a sign of welcome in a fearful world.
And may the blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always.
Amen.