NACO, Sonora - The third annual border procession featured food, music and prayer on Saturday, but it was the recently-constructed fence on the U.S.-Mexico border that was the topic of the day.

Last year, participants walked down the border to where the fence ended and they shared grape juice and bread and sang. But construction of the border fence at that location prevented them from doing the same this year.

The organizer of the event, Seth Polley, originally wanted people to meet near the port of entry at Naco and take part in a "call and response" activity and possibly sing a song through the wall. But new construction of a parallel fence there prevented that, too.

"When we saw the construction, we thought maybe this is not going to work," said Polley, who is the vicar of St. John's Episcopal Church in Bisbee and the border missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona.

So, instead, the event started with the dedication of the Migrant Resource Center at Naco, Sonora.

Roldolfo Navarrete, pastor of Iglesia Presbiteriana Lirio de Los Valles in Agua Prieta, Sonora, read a Bible passage from Galatians that basically says people should not use their freedom as an excuse not to love.

"The fact that we can all gather here is a symbol of liberty. God tells us in his word that we have this freedom so we can love one another. The fact is we are here and through that freedom we are here to gather together from two countries and bless this center," he said.

"God has told us we must be careful with this liberty he has given us. Sometimes governments think they are in charge of the freedom. They believe themselves to be sovereign. And based on this understanding of liberty and sovereignty they want to protect what they believe is theirs. But as the psalm says, this world belongs to our God," he added.

Craig Bustrin, a priest at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Phoenix, then carried a thurible containing burning incense as he led the procession several blocks away to the Church of Guadaupe in Naco, Sonora.

Kirk Smith, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, discussed a psalm about the Battle of Jericho, in which God told Joshua to take his men and walk around the city and blast trumpets and give a loud shout and then the city's walls collapsed.

"Joshua was up against some similar odds as we are. He was facing a wall of fortification that looked like it was impregnable. No one had ever conquered it before," he said.

"At first it looks like we are up against the same thing. We have this high-tech wall that has been built here with all kinds of electronic gizmos and barbed wire and steel and looks pretty impregnable and we don't look very powerful against it," he continued. "Like Joshua, we wonder what could we do against these odds. But the people who built that wall forgot something. They forgot that God does not like walls. And every time we put up a wall, God knocks it down."

He pointed out the wall in Jericho and the Berlin Wall in Germany were both destroyed, and some day the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border will be torn down.

An agape meal ceremony was held outside the Church of Guadalupe, during which people ate bread and drank grape juice.

The agape blessing was read: "Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving spirit may so move every human heart that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that your divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

About 100 people from the United States and Mexico attended the procession. Most of them were Americans.

Agua Prieta resident Ramona Leon, who attended the event with her daughter, Anyra Huerta, 7, said she agrees with the messages of the speakers.

"If there weren't a wall, we would be more free, right?" she said.

On the Net: http://www.svherald.com/articles/2008/04/20/news/doc480babeb6c510409197287.txt

HERALD/REVIEW reporter Jonathon Shacat can be reached at 515-4693 or by e-mail at jonathon.shacat@bisbeereview.net.