Toward World Community
© Rev. Peggy Meeker, 2011
6/5/11 Sermon at Brockport UU Fellowship
Meditation: “This is How We Are Called,” by Kimberly Beyer-Nelson [How We Are Called: A Meditation Anthology, Mary Benard and Kirstie Anderson, Eds., p. 1, Skinner House Books, 2003]
In the hours before the birds
stream airborne
with chiming voice,
a silent breath rests in the pines,
and upholds the surface of the lake
as if it were a fragile bubble
in the very hand of God.
And I think,
this is how we are called.
To cup our hands and hold
this peace,
even when the sirens begin,
even when sorrow cries out, old and gnarled,
even when words grow fangs and rend.
Cupped hands
gently open,
supporting peace
like the golden hollow of a singing bowl,
like the towering rim of mountains
cradling
this slumbering and mist-draped valley.
Sermon
All this past church year we’ve been talking about Unitarian Universalism’s principles and sources. We began, last fall, with the seventh and last principle, the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We’ll finish, two weeks from now, with the first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Today, we’ll take up principle number six, the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice—fair treatment—for all. In a way it’s what all the other principles point toward—world community, and justice for all.
Is that a realistic goal? Should we even be putting that out there? I don’t know if it’s realistic. I don’t expect to see it accomplished in my lifetime. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working toward it. We name our vision, even if we don’t think we’ll get there. And then we pitch in and work on the piece that’s in front of us, as generations before us have done, and as generations to come will do.
I love that ours is a denomination that encourages us to do this work. There is, in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, a program called the Social Witness Process, by which Unitarian Universalists across the country choose social issues to study and act on. Right now, UUs are working on two issues—ethical eating and immigration—and the issue before that was peacemaking. Here’s how it works.
First, every two years—and this is one of the years that this will happen—congregations are invited to submit proposals for issues that they believe warrant four years of study and action. The proposals are received by the Commission on Social Witness, and they select six of them for a congregational poll. This November, we will have the opportunity to vote in that poll. The five issues that get the most votes will be considered by delegates at the General Assembly in the summer of 2012, and one of those issues will be selected for study and action.
It sounds like a complicated and tedious process, but it’s a democratic process, and the parts of it that I’ve witnessed have been quite exciting. I was at the General Assembly in 2010, in Minneapolis, and I loved the business meetings at which these issues were hammered out. It was my second General Assembly, or GA, and I heartily recommend the experience. Members from congregations across the country gather together to conduct the business of the Association and to take part in incredible worship services and workshops, plus there is always an opportunity for social witness. There was something quite wonderful about walking down the streets of Minneapolis last summer with hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists, many wearing their bright gold Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts, to rally in a downtown park in support of equal marriage. It was a totally inspiring experience.
The five potential study/action issues that were considered at that GA were energy—safe, affordable, and sustainable energy; economic reform—seeking a more just way of living for all; immigration as a moral issue; the ending of slavery—which does still exist; and revitalizing American democracy. The issue chosen by the delegates, after much impassioned debate, was Immigration as a Moral Issue.
I was pleased about the choice because I had just finished my first year as Organizing Minister of this congregation, and during that year I had come to see that immigration was an important local issue. I had tried to learn as much as I could about it through joining the Brockport Ecumenical Outreach Committee, which has hosted the Bienvenidas to welcome the migrants each year, and the Coalition of Migrant and Farmworker Services, which brings together people from many different agencies, from the Oak Orchard Community Health Center to the New York State Department of Labor. It was here in Brockport that I began to understand immigration as affecting real people, people who only want to work and to support their families and improve their lives, people whose labor enables our way of life, people who deserve respect and justice. It was here that I began to meet people like Ami Kadir, of the Independent Farmworker’s Center in Albion, who spoke at one of our Second Sunday events just a couple of months ago, and to learn of the reality of police officers and Border Patrol agents watching the comings and goings at drug stores and fast food outlets, and of people getting picked up for things like driving while non-white.
A couple of weeks ago, Ami invited me to speak at a rally and press conference at the Monroe County office building about a government program called Secure Communities. Secure Communities—or S-Comm for short—was designed to make our communities safer by identifying dangerous criminals in U.S. jails who are also illegal immigrants, and getting them out of the country. In participating counties, like Monroe, when arrestees are booked, their fingerprints are sent to immigration databases, and if there is a match, that individual can be sent to a detention center, such as the one in Batavia, often hundreds of miles from anyone they know, and eventually deported. Unfortunately, Secure Communities turns local police officers into immigration agents. Studies have shown that it encourages the police to look for reasons to arrest anyone they think might be undocumented—that is, anyone who looks or sounds foreign—and it discourages immigrants from reporting crimes committed against them—violations of labor laws, for example, or domestic violence—because any dealings with the police put them at risk of being apprehended and deported. Further, data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, has shown that the vast majority of individuals taken into custody under this program are never convicted of a crime.
In New York State, Secure Communities was authorized by Governor Paterson about a year ago, and since January, fourteen counties, including Monroe, have implemented the program. The goal of the rally, and of the local immigration reform community, was for Monroe County to rescind its agreement to participate in Secure Communities, and for Governor Cuomo to rescind statewide participation.
I was happy to be asked to speak. I’ve been to quite a few rallies over the years, on various issues, but this was the first time I’d been asked to speak. To be honest, though, I don’t see myself as an exciting, rallying, kind of speaker. I’m not a cheerleader. So I was a little anxious.
But I knew what I wanted to say. I kept thinking of a passage from the Bible, from the book of Hebrews. “Continue to love each other like brothers [and sisters], and remember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Keep in mind those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; and those who are being badly treated …” And to continue the parallel structure—as though you were being badly treated with them [Hebrews 13:1-3, NRSV].
And so I told my fellow ralliers and a few members of the press and the cars and buses passing on West Main St. that there are scriptures and guidelines in every religious tradition telling us to welcome the stranger and treat others as we would like to be treated. In Judaism, the Talmud says, “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary” [Shabbat 31a]. The book of Leviticus says, “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall do them no wrong, the strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” [Lev. 19:33-34]. From Buddhism we have “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” [Udana-Varga 5:18]. From Hinduism, “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you” [Mahabharata 5:1517]. From Islam, “None of you [truly] believes until [you] wishes for [your] brother [and sister] what [you] wishes for [your]self” [No. 13 of Imam Al-Nawawi's 40 Hadiths]. Confucius, when asked “Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?” replied, “It is the word ‘reciprocity.’ Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire” [Doctrine of the Mean 13.3]. And Jesus said, “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the Law and the Prophets” [Matthew 7:12].
Secure Communities, I told the press and the passers-by, is the opposite of all this received wisdom. It’s a policy that treats the stranger as undesirable, alien, unwanted. It’s not “welcome the stranger,” it’s be very suspicious of them, be afraid of them, and do everything you can to entrap them and get rid of them.
An hour before the rally I had been visiting the Rev. Sally Hamlin of First Universalist. “I know what I want to say,” I told her. “I just don’t know how to make it exciting and rally-like.” And it was Sally who suggested my conclusion: “We can do better than that.” And so that’s what I said to the folks at the rally: Is this what we want to be about? Entrapping the stranger in our midst? Or can we do better than that? I think we can do better than that. I think our country can do better than that. Let’s be better than Secure Communities!
Now two things happened after that rally. The first thing was that it changed me. Before the rally I had been interested in these issues but hadn’t really gotten involved. After the rally I had invested something. I had stood there. I had held a sign. I had spoken out. I was even quoted in the paper. Now it mattered more to me. The rally changed me.
The second thing was truly amazing. A few days later, word came from Gov. Cuomo’s office that he was suspending New York State’s participation in Secure Communities! Illinois had been the first state to withdraw from the program, last month, and now New York was the second. We won. We are better than Secure Communities.
We don’t often win—we who work for justice. So many forces are arrayed against us. Big corporations, big money, big government. But we don’t do this kind of work because we think we will succeed every time, we do it because it’s the right thing to do for people who need to be treated more fairly. We do it because we know—I think we all know—what it feels like to be judged unfairly and treated unfairly, and hopefully we know what it’s like to be treated with compassion and respect, and helped to flourish. And we do it because we dream of a better world, and we are impelled to do our part, however small it may be, toward getting there, and because sometimes we will succeed. As John Lennon once famously put it, “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”
This work is the work of love, the work of God in the world. When we stand with the powerless, when we speak for those whose voices are not being heard, and especially when we are able to do these things in a way that honors everyone, it is sacred work. It is a privilege to do such work. And this is the work that our national Association of Congregations helps us, in very practical ways, to do.
As we move through the four-year cycle with each study/action issue, there are study guides that congregations are encouraged to use, there are workshops—both at GA and locally, in our districts, there are suggestions for community organizing and service. Toward the end of the four years, workshops focus on what has been learned, what has been successful, and on future possibilities, and a Statement of Conscience is prepared, which is debated at yet another GA and must be approved by a two-thirds vote and which then represents our consensus and our public stand on the issue. And finally, the staff of the UUA and any congregations who choose to be involved focus for another year on implementing that Statement of Conscience with further actions. And there the process ends, but social witness does not end, because—just like with me and the rally—once you’ve gotten involved with an issue, it stays with you. You’ve stood in solidarity and it’s become personal—it’s almost as if you’re the one who’s been treated badly. You’re sensitized. You’ll always be more aware, and more ready to take action if needed in the future. You will be one of the people helping to move our country toward our goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
In closing I’d like to read a poem about welcoming the stranger that most of us know in part. It was written by Emma Lazarus and it’s called “The New Colossus,” which is a reference to the Greek Colossus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, a bronze statue of the god of the sun that rose over 100 feet out of the sea in front of the city of Rhodes, often depicted with one foot on each side of the entrance to the harbor, symbolizing the city’s wealth and power. The “new” Colossus is the Statue of Liberty.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Amen.
In the hours before the birds
stream airborne
with chiming voice,
a silent breath rests in the pines,
and upholds the surface of the lake
as if it were a fragile bubble
in the very hand of God.
And I think,
this is how we are called.
To cup our hands and hold
this peace,
even when the sirens begin,
even when sorrow cries out, old and gnarled,
even when words grow fangs and rend.
Cupped hands
gently open,
supporting peace
like the golden hollow of a singing bowl,
like the towering rim of mountains
cradling
this slumbering and mist-draped valley.
Sermon
All this past church year we’ve been talking about Unitarian Universalism’s principles and sources. We began, last fall, with the seventh and last principle, the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We’ll finish, two weeks from now, with the first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Today, we’ll take up principle number six, the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice—fair treatment—for all. In a way it’s what all the other principles point toward—world community, and justice for all.
Is that a realistic goal? Should we even be putting that out there? I don’t know if it’s realistic. I don’t expect to see it accomplished in my lifetime. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working toward it. We name our vision, even if we don’t think we’ll get there. And then we pitch in and work on the piece that’s in front of us, as generations before us have done, and as generations to come will do.
I love that ours is a denomination that encourages us to do this work. There is, in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, a program called the Social Witness Process, by which Unitarian Universalists across the country choose social issues to study and act on. Right now, UUs are working on two issues—ethical eating and immigration—and the issue before that was peacemaking. Here’s how it works.
First, every two years—and this is one of the years that this will happen—congregations are invited to submit proposals for issues that they believe warrant four years of study and action. The proposals are received by the Commission on Social Witness, and they select six of them for a congregational poll. This November, we will have the opportunity to vote in that poll. The five issues that get the most votes will be considered by delegates at the General Assembly in the summer of 2012, and one of those issues will be selected for study and action.
It sounds like a complicated and tedious process, but it’s a democratic process, and the parts of it that I’ve witnessed have been quite exciting. I was at the General Assembly in 2010, in Minneapolis, and I loved the business meetings at which these issues were hammered out. It was my second General Assembly, or GA, and I heartily recommend the experience. Members from congregations across the country gather together to conduct the business of the Association and to take part in incredible worship services and workshops, plus there is always an opportunity for social witness. There was something quite wonderful about walking down the streets of Minneapolis last summer with hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists, many wearing their bright gold Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts, to rally in a downtown park in support of equal marriage. It was a totally inspiring experience.
The five potential study/action issues that were considered at that GA were energy—safe, affordable, and sustainable energy; economic reform—seeking a more just way of living for all; immigration as a moral issue; the ending of slavery—which does still exist; and revitalizing American democracy. The issue chosen by the delegates, after much impassioned debate, was Immigration as a Moral Issue.
I was pleased about the choice because I had just finished my first year as Organizing Minister of this congregation, and during that year I had come to see that immigration was an important local issue. I had tried to learn as much as I could about it through joining the Brockport Ecumenical Outreach Committee, which has hosted the Bienvenidas to welcome the migrants each year, and the Coalition of Migrant and Farmworker Services, which brings together people from many different agencies, from the Oak Orchard Community Health Center to the New York State Department of Labor. It was here in Brockport that I began to understand immigration as affecting real people, people who only want to work and to support their families and improve their lives, people whose labor enables our way of life, people who deserve respect and justice. It was here that I began to meet people like Ami Kadir, of the Independent Farmworker’s Center in Albion, who spoke at one of our Second Sunday events just a couple of months ago, and to learn of the reality of police officers and Border Patrol agents watching the comings and goings at drug stores and fast food outlets, and of people getting picked up for things like driving while non-white.
A couple of weeks ago, Ami invited me to speak at a rally and press conference at the Monroe County office building about a government program called Secure Communities. Secure Communities—or S-Comm for short—was designed to make our communities safer by identifying dangerous criminals in U.S. jails who are also illegal immigrants, and getting them out of the country. In participating counties, like Monroe, when arrestees are booked, their fingerprints are sent to immigration databases, and if there is a match, that individual can be sent to a detention center, such as the one in Batavia, often hundreds of miles from anyone they know, and eventually deported. Unfortunately, Secure Communities turns local police officers into immigration agents. Studies have shown that it encourages the police to look for reasons to arrest anyone they think might be undocumented—that is, anyone who looks or sounds foreign—and it discourages immigrants from reporting crimes committed against them—violations of labor laws, for example, or domestic violence—because any dealings with the police put them at risk of being apprehended and deported. Further, data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, has shown that the vast majority of individuals taken into custody under this program are never convicted of a crime.
In New York State, Secure Communities was authorized by Governor Paterson about a year ago, and since January, fourteen counties, including Monroe, have implemented the program. The goal of the rally, and of the local immigration reform community, was for Monroe County to rescind its agreement to participate in Secure Communities, and for Governor Cuomo to rescind statewide participation.
I was happy to be asked to speak. I’ve been to quite a few rallies over the years, on various issues, but this was the first time I’d been asked to speak. To be honest, though, I don’t see myself as an exciting, rallying, kind of speaker. I’m not a cheerleader. So I was a little anxious.
But I knew what I wanted to say. I kept thinking of a passage from the Bible, from the book of Hebrews. “Continue to love each other like brothers [and sisters], and remember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Keep in mind those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; and those who are being badly treated …” And to continue the parallel structure—as though you were being badly treated with them [Hebrews 13:1-3, NRSV].
And so I told my fellow ralliers and a few members of the press and the cars and buses passing on West Main St. that there are scriptures and guidelines in every religious tradition telling us to welcome the stranger and treat others as we would like to be treated. In Judaism, the Talmud says, “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary” [Shabbat 31a]. The book of Leviticus says, “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall do them no wrong, the strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” [Lev. 19:33-34]. From Buddhism we have “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” [Udana-Varga 5:18]. From Hinduism, “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you” [Mahabharata 5:1517]. From Islam, “None of you [truly] believes until [you] wishes for [your] brother [and sister] what [you] wishes for [your]self” [No. 13 of Imam Al-Nawawi's 40 Hadiths]. Confucius, when asked “Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?” replied, “It is the word ‘reciprocity.’ Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire” [Doctrine of the Mean 13.3]. And Jesus said, “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the Law and the Prophets” [Matthew 7:12].
Secure Communities, I told the press and the passers-by, is the opposite of all this received wisdom. It’s a policy that treats the stranger as undesirable, alien, unwanted. It’s not “welcome the stranger,” it’s be very suspicious of them, be afraid of them, and do everything you can to entrap them and get rid of them.
An hour before the rally I had been visiting the Rev. Sally Hamlin of First Universalist. “I know what I want to say,” I told her. “I just don’t know how to make it exciting and rally-like.” And it was Sally who suggested my conclusion: “We can do better than that.” And so that’s what I said to the folks at the rally: Is this what we want to be about? Entrapping the stranger in our midst? Or can we do better than that? I think we can do better than that. I think our country can do better than that. Let’s be better than Secure Communities!
Now two things happened after that rally. The first thing was that it changed me. Before the rally I had been interested in these issues but hadn’t really gotten involved. After the rally I had invested something. I had stood there. I had held a sign. I had spoken out. I was even quoted in the paper. Now it mattered more to me. The rally changed me.
The second thing was truly amazing. A few days later, word came from Gov. Cuomo’s office that he was suspending New York State’s participation in Secure Communities! Illinois had been the first state to withdraw from the program, last month, and now New York was the second. We won. We are better than Secure Communities.
We don’t often win—we who work for justice. So many forces are arrayed against us. Big corporations, big money, big government. But we don’t do this kind of work because we think we will succeed every time, we do it because it’s the right thing to do for people who need to be treated more fairly. We do it because we know—I think we all know—what it feels like to be judged unfairly and treated unfairly, and hopefully we know what it’s like to be treated with compassion and respect, and helped to flourish. And we do it because we dream of a better world, and we are impelled to do our part, however small it may be, toward getting there, and because sometimes we will succeed. As John Lennon once famously put it, “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”
This work is the work of love, the work of God in the world. When we stand with the powerless, when we speak for those whose voices are not being heard, and especially when we are able to do these things in a way that honors everyone, it is sacred work. It is a privilege to do such work. And this is the work that our national Association of Congregations helps us, in very practical ways, to do.
As we move through the four-year cycle with each study/action issue, there are study guides that congregations are encouraged to use, there are workshops—both at GA and locally, in our districts, there are suggestions for community organizing and service. Toward the end of the four years, workshops focus on what has been learned, what has been successful, and on future possibilities, and a Statement of Conscience is prepared, which is debated at yet another GA and must be approved by a two-thirds vote and which then represents our consensus and our public stand on the issue. And finally, the staff of the UUA and any congregations who choose to be involved focus for another year on implementing that Statement of Conscience with further actions. And there the process ends, but social witness does not end, because—just like with me and the rally—once you’ve gotten involved with an issue, it stays with you. You’ve stood in solidarity and it’s become personal—it’s almost as if you’re the one who’s been treated badly. You’re sensitized. You’ll always be more aware, and more ready to take action if needed in the future. You will be one of the people helping to move our country toward our goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
In closing I’d like to read a poem about welcoming the stranger that most of us know in part. It was written by Emma Lazarus and it’s called “The New Colossus,” which is a reference to the Greek Colossus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, a bronze statue of the god of the sun that rose over 100 feet out of the sea in front of the city of Rhodes, often depicted with one foot on each side of the entrance to the harbor, symbolizing the city’s wealth and power. The “new” Colossus is the Statue of Liberty.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Amen.