All Hands On Deck
This sermon was preached on 1/29/17 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Huntington. It calls out the immoral actions of our government for banning refugees and Muslims.
I grew up in Central Jersey in the 70s and 80s. The family stories get told a little differently every time, as family stories often do, but each of my grand-parents were either the only sibling who was born in the States, or they were an immigrant themselves. Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, Sicily (yes, it wasn’t just Italy, it was specifically Sicily) and my other grandfather I never knew – but my one Grandmother remarried a Spanish-speaking man who sadly died before I was born. My mom grew up speaking a smattering of Italian, Spanish and English. That’s mostly gone now. Many Italian immigrants back then felt pressured to lose their cultural identity to survive or thrive in the States. On my Dad’s side, I come from Pennsylvania coal-miner stock.
Before I was 5, we were renting an apartment in a multi-family tenement on the outskirts of Perth Amboy, a mostly Latino city. Our downstairs neighbors were Egyptian. When I was turning 5, my parents bought a house in another part of Jersey, Woodbridge township. It was a working class black neighborhood made up of mostly multi-generational households. Across the street from our new home, was the lone Jewish family in our neighborhood – and I was the only white child in my neighborhood (The Jewish family across the street didn’t have kids.) Like everyone else around, I grew up with my grandmother and my uncle living with us. The schools drew from a wider area, so I was lucky to grow up knowing kids from every background. I remember one of my mom’s closer friends during my childhood; she was an African woman who was seeking citizenship in the States while her children were raised back home with her husband and mother. It would take her 20 years to legally bring her family over to the U.S. Twenty years to do it legally.
This is my America. German, Slovak, Italian, Egyptian, Latino, Black, Immigrant, African, Jewish, Catholic – and that was just my experience by maybe the age of 8. In grade school we learned about the Statue of Liberty – it was almost a religious sense of patriotism – about what was right and true in the world – what was our story and our birthright. The Lady in our NY harbor said, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
After this weekend, I’m not sure we deserve her any longer, but we can find our way back still. This past Friday, January 27, 2017, on the 75th anniversary of Holocaust Remembrance Day, while failing to include Jewish people in his statement of remembrance, our sitting President signed an executive order banning all Syrian Refugees and citizens from several Muslim states. (We’ll surely learn soon that those nations will ban our people from visiting them in return.) On Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Trump banned refugees who are fleeing a genocidal government from seeking sanctuary on our shores. This sickens me. This is so far past partisan divides now. If you’re for this horror, you’re ignoring America’s heritage and story and the American Dream. We need to be better than this. Lady Liberty is weeping.
And this doesn’t stop neatly with who gets banned from our shores. There’s a fear that sets in when we begin down this road. One friend of mine, Farah said, “The trickle-down effect is that I and those who look like me will have to start carrying our papers everywhere. It means that I will be hassled at every border. It means that my family will be hassled when they come to visit me. It means that any of us could be detained, harassed and deprived of our rights as American citizens.” We know this to be true, because we see this in our Border states where Latinos – even US citizens – live in fear of harassment and need to carry proof of citizenship at all times. Now we begin this with our Muslim neighbors.
Jewish and Christian Scripture is very clear on how we’re to treat refugees, the stranger and our neighbor. When Jesus is asked, “who is my neighbor?” He tells the story of the Good Samaritan in reply; he tells the story of a foreigner of another religion as his answer to who is my neighbor. [1]We teach our children these values, and this ban wouldn’t stand up to a kindergartener’s test for simple fairness, or any biblical test of righteousness. But we know this story from our past too. One of our members and a public school teacher, (Theresa) reminded me of this yesterday, “A U.S. President did this before… On June 6, 1939, the St. Louis arrived in the port of Havana, Cuba with hundreds of Jewish refugees. FDR forced the ship to turn back. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died.[2]”
We are past hyperbole, or partisanship here. This isn’t an election cycle or a political issue; faithful people from all political walks of life should oppose this. This is basic human decency. This is about our religious conviction that freedom of religion, that religious pluralism, is a spiritual value and a human need. We have refugees – green card holders – legal residents – legal residents – who were detained in JFK calling their lawyers and suing the US for unlawful detainment – while they waited to find out if they will be sent back to dangerous ports. The ACLU won a stay, which just means that no one is being sent back right now, but this Executive Order was haphazardly implemented and we still don’t know what will be next. This on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Will we remember?
As a child, we wondered how everyday citizens in Germany could let the horrors perpetrated against the Jews, Gypsys, gays and dissidents occur. How could any people allow the systematic dehumanization to occur to the point where lives were treated as chattel. We now understand that it happened piece-by-piece and bit-by-bit. What was once outrageous became acceptable – pushing further and further back the line of what was considered normal. Denying refugees the safety of our shores is not normal; it does not fit the American Dream, and it’s in direct opposition to our religious faith. This needs to be the next line we draw as a nation and as a religious community.
Religious institutions, at our best, are bedrocks for prophetic witness. And as an institution, we need all hands on deck for what’s happening in our name. We need to call out injustice where it weakens the spirit and the hearts of our people. When worldly greed, fear and hate, take root in our government, we need to make clear the road back to righteousness. Righteousness. In Jewish Scripture, the word we translate in English to righteousness, has lost some of it clarity over the generations. We often conflate it with self-righteous and have a reluctance to embrace it because of that shadow side. In the original meaning of the word, it’s much more positive, and a word that holds us accountable to something beyond just our lone egos. A contemporary translation would be closer to, “behavior that’s in solidarity with the community.” Righteousness means to act in accordance with the needs of those around you – and to do so knowing that your neighbor is your own and you’re your neighbors’ as well. Righteousness. Bans on refugees fleeing genocide is not righteous. Bans on citizens from Muslim countries – except of course their Christian citizens – is not righteousness. That’s base religious bigotry – and base religious bigotry does not get to easily parade itself as a partisan issue – it’s a moral issue, it’s a biblical issue. And those are our issues; that is our call as a religious people.
Our Fellowship has made numerous commitments to the immigrant, to the refugee, to peace. Over 15 years ago we led the move to start the interfaith collaboration that we now call HIHI where migrant men are offered shelter in religious homes throughout Huntington, 7 days a week, during the cold weather months. We do this for many reasons, but it began in the tragedy of a man freezing to death over-night. Politics being what they are, are not always a viable solution for some of our people to survive. That’s why we need religious institutions like ours, to shine a light on what needs to be seen.
As low pay farm-workers out on eastern long island are struggling to make a living, with limited other options, large farming corporations have used loop-holes in the law to take advantage of lower than minimum-wage work. As they continue to protest and advocate for their own rights, last year we used our space to house protest marchers overnight as they walked from Eastern Long Island all the way to Albany. We’ve hosted their art in our art gallery, we’ve educated about their plight from our pulpit, and some of our members continue to work in solidarity – to work with righteousness – for their needs knowing that their needs are our needs. Sometimes, religious institutions become a sounding bell to ensure we all hear what needs to be heard.
Sometimes we make space, or hold space, for others to be heard. Non-partisan, issue-based groups that align with our religious values, are using our building more and more to organize locally. NOW (the National Organization for Women), LITAC (Long Island Transgender Action Coalition) as well as a newly forming LI based Latinx Transgender rights group are just a few who know that our community is a safe-haven in these troubling times. Institutions matter – and when we’re living our values, when we’re responding to our call as a religious community – our institutional values matter. We will continue to adapt to address the needs of each generation – generation after generation.
Together, we make this religious institution possible. Living in accordance with the needs of those around us, knowing our neighbor is ourselves, and we are our neighbor – is the sense of righteousness we are seeking for ourselves, and what we’re raising another generation to value. Before Friday’s ban on refugees and Muslims – this service was planned to be a straightforward kick-off to our annual pledge drive where we talk about our financial commitments to living out our values. Today the tone is different. We’re funding our grassroots spiritual home that commits to making sure our neighbor lives another day. We know that politics and movements come and go – but there are eternal human values, moral values, that we need to ensure are not forgotten in the wider public. We need each other to be faithful to our highest ideals, and strive toward that lofty goal of the beloved community, step by step. And we need to ensure that we’re strong as a community to do that hard work – day by day – generation after generation – together. This is what stewardship means for us; for our generation and the generations to come.
Our social justice, social action, social witness wing of our denomination – the UU Service Committee – was originally begun as an organization devoted to helping get survivors out and away from the Nazis during the occupation of Europe. It’s in our very DNA. Yesterday, the UUA and the UUSC issued a joint call to action in the face of the growing barbarism coming out from our capital. The statement reads, “At this extraordinary time in our nation’s history, we are called to affirm our profound commitment to the fundamental principles of justice, equity and compassion, to truth and core values of American society. In the face of looming threats to immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and the LGBTQ community and the rise of hate speech, harassment and hate crimes, we affirm our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. In opposition to any steps to undermine the right of every citizen to vote or to turn back advances in access to health care and reproductive rights, we affirm our commitment to justice and compassion in human relations. And against actions to weaken or eliminate initiatives to address the threat of climate change – actions that would threaten not only our country but the entire planet – we affirm our unyielding commitment to protect the interdependent web of all existence. We will oppose any and all unjust government actions to deport, register, discriminate, or despoil.
As people of conscience, we declare our commitment to translate our values into action as we stand on the side of love with the most vulnerable among us. We welcome and invite all to join in this commitment for justice.
The time is now.[3]
I have signed onto that pledge. We’ll have a link to it our Fellowship Facebook page shortly, and if you don’t use Facebook, the link will be in this sermon online as well. (I’ve begun speaking with our Board President, Michael A., asking for our Board to consider having our Fellowship sign onto the pledge as well.) This statement is our roadmap – it’s our mirror to look into as we decide who we want to be – how we live into the deeper call to righteousness. And it’s all hands on deck. I charge our committee leaders to review it seriously and see where their team’s work coincides with the religious precepts articulated in the ethical pledge. As individuals, I charge each of us to (as the Jewish proverb goes) to write those words on the tablets of our hearts. It’s a moral compass we can strive to live up to. Righteousness in the face of injustice is an act of communal solidarity – that’s both individual and institutional.
Maybe you’ve felt like you were in a sort of fog or haze over the last few weeks. So much of what we don’t agree with is happening so fast. Others are feeling the barrage very viscerally; some of us are less safe. It’s got a dispiriting effect. I’ve heard from many of us that there’s a way in which we’re feeling alone, or isolated. Maybe that’s a reason you’ve come through our doors today. In my own house, we’ve been trying to set time aside for doing things that are a bit more frivolous to keep our spirits up to do the work the world needs us all to do. My husband and I are largely focused personally and professionally on causes that feel under attack of late, and there comes a time when one needs a break.
Earlier this week, with popcorn in hand we sat down to re-watch the Harry Potter movies – another movie from the series most nights. He knows he missed one, but wasn’t sure which one he missed. On Wednesday night, we got to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For those unfamiliar with the series that started out as a children’s book but turned into a manifesto for the millennial generation – it’s a series about a magical kid who’s only alive because of his mother’s love. Harry Potter is pitted against a fictional character – Voldemort – who signifies fascism, anger, and bigotry. The heroes of the story are studying in school, and come from School “Houses” that signify courage, steadfastness, friendship, intellect and dedication. It’s a little more complicated than that, but this covers it well enough.
Well at the mid-way point of this book in the series (or movie), Harry is feeling very low. He’s not trusted by the wider magical world. The villain of the story, Voldemort, is still thought to have been defeated years back and gone from the land. Harry is one of the lone voices calling out of the impending dangers with Voldemort’s imminent return. He turns to his close friend, Hermione, and tells her that he feels all alone – that the world has turned on him, that he’s exhausted for not being trusted. Hermione turns to him and she says, “Voldemort, only wants you to think you’re alone Harry.”
We were watching this movie on Wednesday evening, only a few days after the historic international Women’s March, which drew millions of people in the US and countless more across the globe. I’m proud to know that 45 of our Fellowshippers were together at the March in NYC, and I haven’t heard what the formal count for those who made it to DC war. 45 in NYC!
‘In the face of looming threats to immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and the LGBTQ community and the rise of hate speech, harassment and hate crimes,’ we hear the calm, intelligent, caring voice, in that loudly loving Women’s March respond, ‘fascism, anger, and bigotry only want you to think you’re alone.’
I’ll close with how we began our service. In religious community, we gather to nurture our individual spirits through caring for one another and helping to heal the world. Our spirits are nurtured through care for one another – together. Our mission reminds us that we’re never alone; that we’re here for one another. Institutions are our bedrock in times of turmoil. We will continue to be a place of support; a place of organizing against that which defies our highest values; and a place of challenge when we fall into complacency. As we begin a new stewardship year, I encourage you to support this institution so that in the coming year and years, we can continue to be a Beacon in a world that needs more places of compassion and spirit – places that live to remind us all – we’re not alone.
If you’re so moved to take further action on our imminent refugee crisis and immoral ban on religious groups – Muslims – Theresa K. had pulled together language at each table for you to make phone calls to your local representatives here on Long Island. There’s a copy at each table, and more will be back in the Social Hall on at the social justice table. The table in the social hall also has other local actions that our team has reviewed for you to further consider.
[1] Thanks to Rev. Rachel Morse for lifting this up in social media
[2] https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
[3] http://connect.uusc.org/l/103112/2017-01-17/gpgn2
RevWho 
One Response to “All Hands On Deck”
Thank you, Jude, for this call to action. On a personal note, it certainly puts other things in perspective!