Whose Promised Land?

"They made many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it."
-- Luther Standing Bear

Meditation: by the Austrian born Jewish poet Erich Fried, who fled to England in 1938, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. This is a poem entitled “What Happens,” translated from the German by Michael Hamburger.

It has happened

and it happens now as before

and will continue to happen

if nothing is done against it

The innocent don’t know a thing about it

because they’re too innocent

and the guilty don’t know a thing about it

because they’re too guilty

The poor don’t notice it

because they’re too poor

and the rich don’t notice it

because they’re too rich

The stupid shrug their shoulders

because they’re too stupid

and the clever shrug their shoulders

because they’re too clever

It doesn’t bother the young

because they’re too young

and it doesn’t bother the old

because they’re too old

That’s why nothing is done against it

and that’s why it happened

and happens now as before

and will continue to happen

Reading: by the historian Aviva Chomsky from Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal  (p. 26) 

Some of the unspoken foundations that support the idea of illegality today come to us thanks to Christopher Columbus and the European expansion that followed in his wake. It might surprise [you] to hear that many of the structures that have led to the current ways that people are moving around the planet – or prevented from this movement – date back to that same colonial expansion.

The “age of exploration” sent Europeans around the globe with the aim of settling and ruling distant lands and peoples. They developed an ideology to justify this exploration: an ideology that granted full humanity, free will, intellect, and strength to white Christians. To those who did not fall into that category, the Europeans… attributed irrationality, brutality, stupidity, and barbarity.

Along with the ideologies went ideas about movement: who belonged where. Europeans, apparently, belonged everywhere. Christians needed to expand their realms and bestow the benefits of their government to others, and settlers needed to fulfill their pioneering spirit and manifest destiny by applying their will and their capital to new lands and peoples. And they created countries, governments, and laws to authorize themselves to do these things.

Reading: by Robert Young, a professor of English and Critical Theory Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (p. 45, 49, 50)

In many colonized countries, settlers created vast farms and estates by driving off those who had traditionally lived on that land, some of whose descendants continue to this day to live in an impoverished landless limbo….

The experience of dispossession and landlessness is… typical of settler colonialism, and is historically most difficult to resolve. …The struggle for “native title” has… been a major concern for native Americans in North America, for aboriginals in India, and for the dispossessed African farmers in Zimbabwe…, while dispossession from family land and the claim for the right to return represents the central issue in Palestine.

These are all postcolonial struggles, typically dealing with the aftermath of one of the most banal but fundamentally important features of colonial power: the appropriation of land. 

Reading: by Louisa Fletcher a poem entitled “The Land of Beginning Again”

I wish that there were some wonderful place

In the Land of Beginning Again.

Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches

And all of our poor selfish grief

Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door

and never put on again.

I wish we could come on it all unaware,

Like the hunter who finds a lost trail;

And I wish that the one whom our blindness had done

The greatest injustice of all

Could be there at the gates

like an old friend that waits

For the comrade he's gladdest to hail.

We would find all the things we intended to do

But forgot, and remembered too late,

Little praises unspoken, little promises broken,

And all the thousand and one

Little duties neglected that might have perfected

The day for one less fortunate.

It wouldn't be possible not to be kind

In the Land of Beginning Again,

And the ones we misjudged

and the ones whom we grudged

their moments of victory here,

Would find in the grasp of our loving hand-clasp

More than penitent lips could explain...

So I wish that there were some wonderful place

Called the Land of Beginning Again,

Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches,

And all of our poor selfish grief

Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door

And never put on again.

Whose Promised Land?

A Sermon Delivered on October 26, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Ever since my wife, Elaine, and I moved to Urbana, we have been homeowners. Before coming here, we always rented.

I remember buying property was a big deal. The financial implications were frightening, the whole experience humbling. And I confess, I am still coming to terms with the rights and responsibilities involved.

So, for instance, I know that, being a property owner, it is my responsibility in the winter to keep our sidewalk shoveled. And in the summer, over the years, neighbors have explained repeatedly that it is my responsibility to keep the branches of our massive forsythia bushes reasonably pruned, so they don’t become pedestrian hazards. 

Our little plot of land is a corner lot with neighbors to the west, and neighbors to the north. And I know exactly where their property ends and ours begins. I shovel snow and rake leaves right up to the invisible line that marks the border of my land. And when the branches of my neighbors’ trees grow over my property, and when the big leaves of their magnolia tree fall on my driveway and clog my gutter, I notice. And I quietly resent how they are infringing upon what is rightly mine, and what I legally own.

I have a piece of paper in my desk at home that says this land is mine. A legal document, signed and notarized, says that we own lot twelve, in block two of Shuck’s subdivision of lot six, eighty-three and fifteen hundredth feet off the north end of lot seven of James S. Busey’s addition to Urbana, as per plat recorded in deed record 15 at page 307, in Champaign County, commonly known as 502 West Oregon Street.

We bought it fair and square from a kindly gentleman names Jack Simon, who had lived here all his life. I have a legally binding warranty deed that says: To have and to hold, the above granted premises is ours “forever.” Forever, that is, until we might chose to sell it and settle on a different this plot of land.

Our plot of land originally belonged to James Busey, a descendent of Colonel M. W. Busey, the man who founded Urbana in the 1830s. Before that, according to our city history, the first pioneer settlers built the first house here in 1822. What the city history doesn’t say is who lived in this area before the settlers arrived. 

* * *

In a book entitled An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz makes the case that the accounts most of us learned in school about the history of this country do a very poor job providing an accurate portrayal of how it was settled. 

She is reminded of how skewed the average American’s sense of history is every time she teaches a class in Native American studies. She always begins her class with a simple exercise. She asks her students to quickly draw a rough outline of the United States at the time it gained independence from Britain.

Invariably, every time she conducts this simple test, the majority of students draw a map that has about the same shape as the present US, that reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Of course this is wrong. At the time of independence in 1783, the US consisted of just 13 colonies, from Georgia in the south, to Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the north. All of the colonies, with the exception of Pennsylvania, bordered the Atlantic Ocean.

“When called on this,” Dunbar-Ortiz writes, 

“students are embarrassed because they know better. I assure them that they are not alone. I call this a Rorschach test of unconscious “manifest destiny,” embedded in the minds of nearly everyone in the United States and around the world. This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previously been terra nullis, a land without people.” (p. 2)

Imagining the United States as a much larger country in 1783, the students are not describing historical facts, but historical aspirations. Though there were only 13 colonies along the east coast in 1783, the settlers were indeed determined to take possession of the continent that extended thousands of miles to the west. This hunger for western expansion was a key factor in the American Revolution. 

You see, the land west of the colonies, on the other side of the Appalachians and the Alleghenies, was Indian Territory protected by the British, stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. The British wanted to stabilize relations with Native Americans, and control the frontier conflicts caused by settlers encroaching on Native American lands.

Just four years after the American Revolution, and a year before the US Constitution was written, our founding fathers ratified the Northwest Ordinance, which provided a legal basis for taking over that Indian Territory, and beyond.

* * *

We think if this as the land of the free, the home of the brave. We sing, America, America, God shed his grace on thee, from sea to shining sea. O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat, across the wilderness. 

We imagine this nation’s founding as the story of Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land. Yes, we know there were conflicts with Native Americans. The common narrative in our history books describes it as a “cultural conflict.” The frontier is described as “a zone of interaction between cultures, not merely advancing European settlements.” American culture is imagined as “an amalgamation of all its ethnic groups,” a benevolent multiculturalism. All of these stories, Dunbar-Ortiz writes, 

“are meant to obscure the fact that the very existence of this country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources…  This approach to history allows [us] to safely put aside present responsibility for continued harm done by that past and the questions of reparations, restitution, and reordering society.” (p. 4)

She writes: 

“US history… cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from the ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in consciousness of US Americans.” (p. 9)

* * *

Part of what makes it easy for European Americans to ignore the unsettling realities of how this country was settled, is that, every step of the way, the government created laws that declared our intentions and actions “legal.”

Aviva Chomsky writes, 

“Europeans used laws to assert their superiority and their right to move, and to deny others the right to freedom of movement, all the while asserting that the rule of law must be held sacred… Over the past one thousand years, Europeans have used religion, race, and nationality – that is, countries and citizenship – as organizing principles to divide people in categories or castes. Each has been used hierarchically to justify social inequalities and differential legal treatment of different groups. Once status becomes inscribed in the law, this becomes an automatic justification for inequality: “it’s the law!”” (p. 25)

Treaties were ratified and treaties were broken. When Native Americans were able to defend their territory against the encroaching settlers, land rights were grudgingly granted. Once settlers realized they really wanted that land – like when gold was found in the Black Hills of South Dakota – those land rights were withdrawn, and US military moved in.

All of this was done legally. It was based on legal precedent reaching back to fifteenth century Europe. One of the first and most lasting principles of international law is justified by the “Doctrine of Discovery.” The Doctrine of Discovery was created by the pope in 1455 and granted the Portuguese monarchy the right to seize West Africa. After that, it provided a legal basis for the European conquest in Asia, Australia and America. 

As Gale Courey Toensing concisely describes it, the Doctrine of Discover “was essentially a racist philosophy that gave white, Christian Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the lands and resources of non-Christian peoples and kill and enslave them—if other Christian Europeans had not yet already done so.”  

In 1792, then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson claimed the Doctrine of Discovery was international law applicable to the new US government. In 1823 the US Supreme Court ruled [that the Doctrine of Discovery] was also the law of the United States. Therefore, as Dunbar Ortiz writes, “European and Euro-American “discoverers” had gained real-property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag.” The Doctrine of Discovery has never been overturned. It continues to guide legal decisions to this day.

* * *

For descendants of the settlers and for legal landowners, the history of United States is a story of bravery and freedom. We worked hard to build a land of liberty and justice. I worked hard to earn the money I needed to buy the land I now rightfully and legally own. I have a piece of paper that clearly states that I am legally right. But what that piece of paper doesn’t address is whether I am morally right.

How does morality and legality apply when we are dealing with stolen goods?

Chief Crowfoot of the Siksika First Nation said, 

“Our land is more valuable than your money.  It will last forever.  It will not even perish by the flames of fire.  As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to [people] and animals.  We cannot sell the lives of [people] and animals; therefore we cannot sell this land. It was not put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us.  You can count your money and burn it within the nod of a buffalo's head, but only the great Spirit can count the grains of sand and the blades of grass of these plains.  As a present to you, we will give you anything we have that you can take with you, but the land never!”

* * *

The Promised Land that is so central in the Biblical tradition, was never merely a matter of actual, literal earthly turf and territory. The notion of a “promised land” was used in a symbolic sense to express the wholeness of joy and well-being that comes with social cohesion and social justice. God’s promised land describes our human longing for belonging, for safety, prosperity, dignity, and freedom. 

The Promised Land cannot be geographically measured or legally acquired. The Promised Land is a figment of our moral imagination. It is a dream we long to make real.

We all truly long to live in a land of the free and home of the brave, just as our national anthem says. But we are not there yet. In order to get there, we need to look at our history, we need to recognize our responsibility, acknowledge our complicity, and realize the harm done by past actions that may have been legal, but certainly weren’t morally sound.

The first step we need to take is to re-examine our history and acknowledge what happened. We need to realize it happened, and it happens now as before, and will continue to happen, if nothing is done against it.

And then, with a deeper understanding of all peoples’ rights and responsibilities, we need to begin again. Our next step is to imagine a new promised land, a Land of Beginning Again, where all our mistakes and all our heartaches, and all our of our poor selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby coat at the door and never put on again.

Our next step is to imagine a land where the one whom our blindness had done the greatest injustice of all could be there at the gate like an old friend. And the ones we misjudged and the ones we grudged would find in the grasp of our loving hand-clasp more than penitent lips could explain…

May we have the wisdom to learn from the past,

And may we have the courage to boldly move toward a better future.

Amen.

In Search of Sanctuary

"Sanctuary is often something very small. Not a grandiose gesture, but a small gesture toward alleviating human suffering..."
-- Elie Wiesel

Reading: by the Muslim author and religious scholar Reza Aslan from No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam (p. 3) 

In the arid, desolate basin of Mecca, surrounded on all sides by the bare mountains of the Arabian desert, stands a small, nondescript sanctuary that the ancient Arabs refer to as the Ka’ba: the Cube. [No one knows who built the Ka’ba, or how long it has been here …It] is a squat, roofless edifice made of unmortared stones and sunk into a valley of sand. Its four walls [are] so low it is said a young goat can leap over them… At its base, two small doors are chiseled into the gray stone, allowing entry into the inner sanctum. It is here, inside the cramped interior of the sanctuary, that the gods of pre-Islamic Arabia reside: Hubal, the Syrian god of the moon; al-Uzza, the powerful goddess the Egyptians knew as Isis and the Greeks called Aphrodite; al-Kutba, the Nabataean god of writing and divination; Jesus, the incarnate god of the Christians, and his holy mother, Mary.

In all, there are said to be three hundred and sixty idols housed in and around the Ka’ba, representing every god recognized in the Arabian Peninsula… 

It is… possible that the original sanctuary held some cosmological significance for the ancient Arabs…. The seven circumambulations of the Ka’ba -…still the primary ritual of the annual Hajj pilgrimage – may have been intended to mimic the motion of heavenly bodies…. The Ka’ba, like the Pyramids in Egypt or the Temple in Jerusalem, may have been constructed as an axis mundi, sometimes called a “naval spot”: a sacred space around which the universe revolves, the link between the earth and the solid dome of heaven. That would explain why there was once a nail driven into the floor of the Ka’ba that the ancient Arabs referred to as “the naval of the world.” …The ancient pilgrims would sometimes enter the sanctuary, [throw themselves on the ground], and place their own navels over the nail, thereby merging with the cosmos. 

Reading:  by Unitarian Universalist ministers John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker from A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-First Century - A Sanctuary for the Spirit (p. 147)

The people of Le Chambon, a small village in France, harbored hundreds of Jewish children during World War II. Years later, when they were visited by one of the children – now a grown man – who had been sheltered there, he found himself asking why that village had sheltered Jewish children when so many others had not. He found his answer observing their simple worship practices. Le Chambon was a Huguenot, Protestant village. A religious minority, accustomed to struggling to survive, they regularly gathered to sing hymns, to recall the faith of ancestors who had held fast to the spirit of love even in times of trial, to offer thanksgiving, and to pray for one another. When he asked them to explain, they said that they could not imagine responding in any other way. It was simply the shape that their souls had. Their ways of worship had formed them for courage and resistance.

Reading: by the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh from Living Buddha, Living Christ (p. 116)

When you say, “I take refuge in the Dharma,” you are expressing confidence in the Dharma [the teaching]… and you want to orient yourself toward it….

Mindfulness is the key. When you become aware of something, you begin to have enlightenment. When you drink a glass of water and are aware that you are drinking a glass of water deeply with your whole being, enlightenment is there in its initial form. To be enlightened is always to be enlightened about something. I am enlightened about the fact that I am drinking a glass of water. I can obtain joy, peace and happiness just because of that enlightenment. When you look at the blue sky and are aware of it, the sky becomes real, and you become real… This is the way to take refuge in the Buddha… You do not have to abandon this world. You do not have to go to Heaven or wait for the future to have refuge. You can take refuge here and now… 

In Search of Sanctuary

A Sermon Delivered on October 19, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Last Sunday I wasn’t here. I attended a different church. My wife, Elaine, our daughter, Sophia, and I were in St. Louis. We had joined observances in Ferguson the night before, and so on Sunday morning we worshipped at Emerson Chapel, a small UU congregation in a western suburb, that was planning to devote its worship service to the justice themes of the weekend. 

The sanctuary in which we gathered for worship was strikingly different from this sanctuary I know so well. The folks at Emerson Chapel don’t have a building of their own, and so they rent space on Sunday mornings in a local high school cafeteria.

Curtains are draped in front of the vending machines. A portable platform is assembled, with a pulpit on it and space for singers. Every Sunday they also set up a sound system, stage lighting, a big projector screen off to the side, and several rows of plastic chairs.

I confess, as I settled into my seat and tried to ignore the noise of the soda coolers behind the curtain to my left, I felt kind of sorry for the members of the congregation. I thought it must be quite a challenge to transform a high school lunchroom into a church sanctuary every Sunday. Maybe a hopeless challenge. 

Sitting there before the service began, I longed for the beauty and serenity of this sanctuary. The high ceiling, the solid stone walls, the well-worn wooden pews, the simple stained glass windows, and the fine organ front and center. This is what a sanctuary should look like. A place in which we gather, week after week, to celebrate life’s joys, to grieve life’s losses, to ponder life’s purpose, and to wonder at life’s mysteries. The space itself conveys a spirit of reverence, or maybe even what some might call a sense of the sacred.

Like the ancient idols of all the gods in the Ka’ba, the wall-hangings here symbolize all the world’s great religious traditions we seek honor, along with all their deities, their prophets and their teachers. A sanctuary is a place where we can be reminded that we are one with the cosmos, that we are inseparable from all humanity. 

But what really surprised me last Sunday was that once the bell was rung, the announcements read, the first hymns sung; once the opening words and unison affirmation had been spoken and fine music was heard, I was drawn in. I found myself deeply affected by a powerful and moving worship experience. I felt profoundly connected to this community of friends I had only met that morning. 

* * *

Sanctuary is a religious idea with a long history, which has taken shape in many different ways around the world. A sanctuary is a sacred place. A temple, a shrine, a place of worship. But above and beyond that, a sanctuary is also a place of safety, a sheltering harbor, a refuge.

This second sense of sanctuary can be traced back to medieval England. According to Catholic teaching, a person fleeing from justice or persecution could find refuge in a consecrated place, a church. The right of sanctuary was based on the inviolability of all things sacred. From the 4^th to the 17^th century in England, “a fugitive convicted of felony and taking the benefit of sanctuary was afforded protection from thirty to forty days, after which, …he had to "abjure the realm", that is leave the kingdom. Violation of the protection of sanctuary was punishable by excommunication.” (Catholic Encyclopedia)

This second sense of sanctuary today is inspiring what is called a New Sanctuary Movement. The Sanctuary Movement is an interfaith effort aimed, above all, at providing safe haven for immigrants and refugees facing workplace discrimination and deportation. UU congregations across the country are involved in this effort. 

A few of you were here last month, when fifty-some church and community members gathered in fellowship hall to hear a speaker from the National Immigrant Justice Center talk about the situation of the rising number of Central American children that have been streaming into the United States - tens of thousands this year - and what we in Urbana-Champaign can do about it. 

We learned that the young children from Central America who leave their homes, and embark on a harrowing trek to the United States, are compelled by a perfect storm of factors: an ever-increasing crime rate, and ever-diminishing opportunities to safely pursue an education, or to find a job. Many of the children have been separated for years from parents living in the United States, and have lost faith in legal channels that might allow them to reunite. The parents are desperate to get their children out of harm’s way. In the past five years asylum applications have increased seven-fold. 

Boys and girls in their early teens, and younger, are now traveling through the most dangerous migration corridor of the world. They take buses, travel on top of trains, walk for miles through jungles and deserts, and often through areas controlled by organized crime and gangs. Most travel with smugglers who may exploit or abuse them during the trip. According to the U.N. over 60 percent of these children could be qualified as refugees.

Those actively involved, locally, are working to provide shelter and legal support for five children from Central America, who are now living in Urbana-Champaign, helping them avoid detention and deportation, and gain legal residency here. One of the children was present at the meeting last month. And we heard stories of the incredible obstacles he overcame on his journey here. 

Our church would like to help. I encourage you to join the meeting of our Immigration Justice Task Force on Thursday evening and learn more about what is going on, and the many small ways we can make a difference.

* * *

This is not the first time our church been actively involved in such efforts. Thirty years ago, back in the 1980s, we also witnessed a surge of refugees from Central America, from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. They were fleeing the violence and destruction of U.S. backed wars ravaging their home countries. 

As our own church history describes it: 

“These refugees were treated like criminals by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and were often deported. In response to this injustice, clergy and others formed the Sanctuary Movement to help people cross into the United States and to provide shelter for them in churches and in homes. Some leaders of the movement were arrested and convicted for these acts of civil disobedience.”

Beginning in 1984, we became actively involved – both locally and nationally – with the Sanctuary Movement. We joined CUECOS, the Champaign-Urbana Ecumenical Community of Sanctuary, and helped several refugee families in our community, who eventually moved on to the safety Canada. 

* * *

Religious communities are uniquely qualified to embody the dual meanings of sanctuary. This is the lesson Rebecca Parker and John Buehrens draw from people of Le Chambon, who offered a safe haven for hundreds of Jewish children during World War II.

As a religious minority, the villagers had an intimate experience of what it means to be persecuted. They knew that their religious practice and their religious community could be a source of spiritual sustenance and safety, not only for those already members, but for the religious refugees driven from their homes. Given the villagers’ religious heritage and practice, helping out came naturally to them. They couldn’t help but see the people passing through their countryside, and in desperate need of support. And once they noticed their need, they could not imagine responding in any other way.

“Sanctuary,” Elie Wiesel says, “is often something very small. Not a grandiose gesture, but a small gesture toward alleviating human suffering and preventing humiliation. Sanctuary is a human being. Sanctuary is a dream. That is why you are here and that is why I am here; we are here because of one another. We are in truth each other’s shelter.”

Once we open our eyes to others, our hearts will also be opened. 

In her book Conscience and Courage, the psychologist Eva Fogelman tells the story of Bella Freund, a forty-year old Jewish mother of eight, was on her way to an appointment in a Jerusalem shopping center one day in 1991 when she heard someone shout “Terrorists! Arab!” Through the crowd she saw a young man pinned to the ground by a guard. Adnan al-Afandi, a twenty-one-year-old Muslim extremist had just stabbed and slightly wounded a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy. Freund heard shots and felt that “something terrible was going to happen.” Before she realized what she was doing, she threw herself on top of the Arab to protect him from harm. The mob was shocked. They spit on her, beat her, called her an “Arab-lover” and a traitor. Still, she remained where she was until the police arrived and took al-Afandi into custody.

Bella Freund’s actions stirred a lot of debate at the time. She was a member of an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. She was supposed to be submissive, and keep out of the public eye. Instead she agreed to a television interview with the mother of the boy who had been stabbed. The mother was furious. “I am very angry at this woman, more than at the terrorist.” Bella was both incredulous and saddened by her experience. She had been taught that human life is sacred, and so she provided sanctuary to the young man in danger. “I simply protected someone because he was a human being,” she said, “and now I have to explain myself?”

That day in Jerusalem, Bella Freund’s eyes were open to the humanity of a young man in desperate need. Because her eyes were open, she couldn’t imagine responding in any other way.

A devout woman, her actions were guided by a deep faith, and a lifetime of religious practice that had shaped her soul. She simply knew that human life is sacred, and acted accordingly.

In a poem Nikki Giovanni captures something of this kind of conviction. She writes:

I would always choose to be the person running

rather than the mob chasing

I would prefer to be the person laughed at

rather than the teenagers laughing

I always admired the men and women who sat down

for their rights

And held in disdain the men and women who spat

on them

Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are

Safe…

Each of us can offer sanctuary to others, if only we are willing to open our hearts as well as our eyes. 

“Taking refuge,” Thich Nhat Hanh says, “is not based on blind faith or wishful thinking. It is gauged by our real experience.” Mindfulness is the key. Whether drinking a glass of water, whether looking at the sky, whether seeing the people around us. When we become aware of something, when we see and act with our whole being, we begin to have enlightenment. We don’t have to go to Heaven or wait for the future to have refuge. We can find refuge here and now.

“That is why you are here and that is why I am here,” Elie Wiesel says. We are here because of one another. We are in truth each other’s refuge.

The sanctuary each of us offers, and that each of us finds, will be different. We may throw ourselves on the ground, yearning to connect to the whole cosmos. We may throw ourselves on the ground yearning to protect all people, because we know that all creation and all life is sacred. We may worship on wooden pews or plastic chairs. We may practice mindfulness or political engagement. We may sing songs or sit in silence.

Sanctuary can be something very small. But even the smallest gesture matters. The mindfulness with which we drink a glass of water, or the moment we open our eyes to the real world, and the real people around us. 

May we have the wisdom and the courage

To create a safe and sacred space

For all people of world,

Beginning right here and now.

In our minds and hearts.

Amen.

When We Were Strangers

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
-- Tennessee Williams

Meditation:  by Thomas Merton from a poem entitled “Stranger”

When no one listens 

To the quiet trees

When no one notices

The sun in the pool

Where no one feels

The first drop of rain

Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where peace begins

And rages end:

One bird sits still  

Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond…

Closer and clearer

Than any wordy master,

Thou inward Stranger

Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner

Than the clamorous ocean,

Seize up my silence…

Reading: a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye entitled “Gate A-4”

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning

my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement:

"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please

come to the gate immediately."

Well--one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just

like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. "Help,"

said the flight service person. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We

told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.

"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-

se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly 

used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled 

entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the 

next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is 

picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would

stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to 

her--Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just 

for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while 

in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I 

thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know 

and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee,

answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool 

cookies--little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and 

nuts--out of her bag--and was offering them to all the women at the gate. 

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a 

sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the 

lovely woman from Laredo--we were all covered with the same powdered 

sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two

little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they

were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend--

by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag, 

some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-

tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This 

is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that 

gate--once the crying of confusion stopped--seemed apprehensive about 

any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other

women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

When We Were Strangers

A Sermon Delivered on October 5, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

I have lived in Urbana/Champaign for 18 years now. As many of you know, my wife, Elaine, and I moved here when our son was two, and our daughter was just a few months old. The kids are both in college now. 

We have lived in our big old house here longer than any other place in our lives. And though our kids were both born in upstate New York, Urbana is the place where they are rooted. It is familiar. It is home. 

I like being here. I like living in a familiar place. I like being here in this church, surrounded by familiar faces. And it is comforting to know that my face is familiar to you. 

* * *

This is not the way it has always been. For most of my life, I was a stranger, an outsider, an alien. Or that is certainly the way I felt. I was born in Germany, but moved to the U.S. with my family when I was three. Young enough to pick up English practically as my first language, but old enough to be singled out by classmates as a foreigner when I was in elementary school. Just when I felt I was fitting in and being accepted as a regular American kid, my family and I moved back to Germany when I was nine. 

At that point I was an English speaker, and thoroughly disorientated when I was plopped into a German school, barely able to speak, read, and write the language, and unfamiliar with German classroom culture. Once again, I was a stranger. Two years later, when I was eleven, we moved to a different German city, where I attended a new school, but faced very similar challenges, and started from scratch, again. 

Those were tough times. In my teenage years, I was convinced my misery was all my parents’ fault. Why did they have to keep moving us around like that?

But then, when I was in my early twenties, I chose to repeat a similar back-and-forth, every year or two, this time on my own. I went to grad school in Berkeley, California; then to Hamburg, Germany; then to back to the U.S. to wrap up my studies; then off to Germany to serve my first church. And then married Elaine, and then moved back to the States, this time to stay. 

For the majority of my adult life, I have felt like a stranger, seen myself as an outsider, and throughout most of my years in America, was – in legal terms – a resident alien. Though I looked like a citizen, I was actually a stranger.

* * *

In the three great monotheistic traditions our understanding and appreciation of the stranger is a central religious theme. 

In the Jewish scriptures, we are reminded again and again of our history: that we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt. In the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, we are told that we should not oppress the stranger, because we ourselves were once strangers. We should love the stranger as we love ourselves. In the book of Exodus, God says to Moses, “You shall not oppress the stranger; you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex 23:9)

In the Christian scriptures, Jesus says that he himself was a stranger, and that those who treated him kindly and fairly will someday receive a heavenly reward. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Mt 23:35) And later Paul reminds us that we should never neglect to show hospitality to strangers. For in welcoming strangers, some of us have “entertained angels unawares.” (Heb13:2)

In the Muslim Hadith, the sayings and stories attributed to the prophet Muhammad, we read that the teachings of Allah themselves began as something strange. Those who first heard the words of Allah didn’t know what to make of them. And the wisest and most devout among the faithful often seemed strange to those who are less enlightened. The Hadith says: “Islam began as something strange, and will return strange as it began, [therefore always offer] glad tidings for the stranger.”

* * *

We should be kind and compassionate to strangers, because we were once strangers. Remember what it felt like to be a stranger. Remember what it felt like when you were in desperate need of help and support. Remember how, when you were a stranger, confused and afraid, the tiniest friendly gesture could lift you out of the fog of despair. Something as simple as a smile from another person felt as bright as the sun, dispelled the dark, and restored a vision of hope, even on our most difficult days. 

* * *

There is something sacred about the stranger. And there is something strange about what we hold sacred. In the book The Idea of the Holy Rudolf Otto, describes the experience of the sacred as mysterious, terrifying, awe-inspiring, and fascinating. Men and women experience the divine as something strange, something “wholly other.” 

Building on Otto’s work, Mircea Eliade distinguishes between the sacred and the profane, two distinct dimensions of the world and of our experience. The profane is the everyday world we know. It is the familiar material, secular, non-religious realm. It is the world we try to understand rationally and objectively. 

The sacred is qualitatively different. It is rooted in subjective human experience that reaches beyond rationality. The sacred is found in a time and place set apart, where our experience of the world is heightened and deepened. We are no longer detached, objective observers of the world, but rather are profoundly affected and connected to creation, to the world and all people. We are touched and moved by deeper truths. 

Every religious tradition, and every one of us experiences the sacred and approaches the fullness of life in our own way.

* * *

In the Jewish Hasidic tradition, religious truth is found through “a life of fervor and exalted joy.” In his study of Hasidic teachers, Martin Buber describes the 18^th century Ukranian mystic Barukh of Mezbizh. Barukh was a “true and impassioned mystic,” for him the sacred and the profane were inseparable, Buber writes. “But his form of mystic life did not make for harmony with the world of [men and women]. It caused him to regard this world as an alien region in which he was an exile… He once [described] God and himself as two strangers in an unknown land, two castaways who make friends with each other.”

Elaborating on a passage in Psalm 119, Rabbi Barukh said: 

“He whom Life drives into exile and who comes to a land alien to him, has nothing in common with the people there, and not a soul he can talk to. But if a second stranger appears, even though he may come from a quite different place, the two can confide in each other, and live together henceforth, and cherish each other. And had they not both been strangers, they would never have known such close companionship. That is what the psalmist means: “You, even as I, are [strangers] on earth and have no abiding place for your glory. So do not do not withdraw from me, but reveal your commandments, that I may become your friend.” (Tales of the Hasidim, p. 89)

* * *

There is something sacred about the stranger, the “wholly other.” But even on a profane, pragmatic level, strangers are important.

In a book entitled The Necessity of Strangers, the business consultant Alan Gregerman makes the case that we have very good reason not only to welcome and support strangers, but to engage them as fully as we can. 

There is a common human tendency to regard strangers with suspicion and distrust. We have a natural inclination to keep to ourselves. We are most comfortable connecting with long-time close friends. We imagine we will be happiest, and most successful in our endeavors if we stick to the familiar. But this is a tragic mistake. 

As Gregerman sees it, “99 percent of all new ideas are based on the thinking and practices of others – strangers – in other industries, disciplines, walks of life, cultures, periods in history, or parts of the world… [We] are taught to believe that it is whom you know that matters, [but] that’s simply too narrow a perspective. It’s [who we] could know that matters more. The future belongs to the most curious people – those who are willing to connect with, learn from, and collaborate with strangers.”

One example he offers is Scott and Amundsen’s famous race to reach the South Pole. Robert Scott was a British naval officer, well-trained, well-financed, “who relied on his knowledge and the best expertise that mainstream [British] science had to offer” on polar exploration. The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, on the other hand, had taken two years during a previous arctic expedition to live and learn among Inuits. 

The Inuits were strangers to the Europeans. But they were strangers who had survived for countless generations in one of the world’s harshest climates. Amundsen learned the wisdom to dress in animal skins, rather than wear the heavy wool clothes favored by the British. To travel, he learned to rely on skies and dogs, rather than Manchurian ponies and motor sleds as Scott did. And this contributed significantly to Amundsen’s success.

Gregerman identifies several principles that should guide our efforts to move beyond the familiar. The first three are: humility, curiosity, and respect.

Humility is the awareness that there are limits to our knowledge and expertise, and that there is always room for improvement. Curiosity is the “innate gift for being open to new ideas, people, and possibilities.” Respect is the conviction “that everyone matters, especially people who are different than us, and that [we] learn and grow by engaging other people on their own terms.” 

* * *

A stranger is someone who seems unfamiliar, someone we don’t understand, someone who might be dangerous. And so our natural inclination is to keep our distance, keep to ourselves. But this is a tragic mistake. 

We should be kind to strangers, because we ourselves were once strangers. We should love them as we love ourselves, for we know their hearts. We know what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange land. 

We know what it feels like to be in stuck in an unfamiliar place, an airport, a bus stop, a train station, uncertain and insecure. Maybe we don’t speak the language, maybe the schedules have been changed, maybe we missed our connection and are stranded, separated from the safety of family and friends. 

We know what it feels like to be in unfamiliar territory. When the car breaks down, or the gas runs out, and we are hopelessly, helplessly stuck. Or when we take a wrong turn and suddenly lose our way. Every step we take may lead us into deeper trouble. Every step may move us further away from where we long to be. We know what it feels like to be confused, disoriented, and despairing. Like the poor Palestinian woman stuck at the Albuquerque airport, unable to understand the language, and why her flight isn’t taking off. 

And we know what it feels like when we reach out to someone in need. When we are the ones who speak the language, who know the critical bit of helpful information, who can serve as interpreter, as guide, as support. We know what it is like to offer a helping hand. And through a small gesture we wouldn’t give a second thought among friends, for the stranger in need, we are a savior.

We live in a world of strangers and saviors. We live in a world divided by fear and bound together by friendship. On playgrounds and in parks, on city streets and in countries near and far – wherever we are - we may encounter the “wholly other.” 

Wherever we are we, when no one else is listening, we may hear the quiet trees. When no one else notices, we may see sunlight on water. When no one feels the first drop of rain, or sees the last star, we may see the work of God all around us. We may know divine mystery and wonder. We may know holy fear and fascination.

We can each be stranger and savior for one another. When we are all lost and far from home, when Life drives us into exile and we find ourselves in an alien land, with nothing in common with anyone. But even then – or especially then – we will regain hope, when we turn to one another.

And even though we come from different places, we can confide in each other, and cherish one another. Had we not been strangers, we would never have known such close companionship. 

Then the simple act of sharing a sugar cookie can be a sacrament. And a cup of apple juice from a huge cooler can become a communion cup, that tangibly transforms a crowd of strangers into a community of friends.

This is the world we want to live in.  A shared world, where no one is crying in confusion, where no one is apprehensive about anyone else. Where we are all covered with the same powdered sugar, smiling. This can happen anywhere. This can happen at any moment. It can happen here. It can happen today.

May we have the wisdom and the courage to reach out to the stranger.

When we welcome the stranger, we will be saviors, 

transforming our fear into friendship.

In this way, 

may we save each other, 

and save the world. 

Amen.