Sermon 10.9.16
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
Here’s an imaginary conversation I was having recently with an imaginary congregant. They said:
Hey, Rev. Emily, I came to parts 1, 2, and 3 of your 5-part series on Healing the Heart of Democracy, and, you know, so far you’ve really painted this picture that’s all gray – all this ambiguity and paradox! You know: Part 1 was about us all being interconnected, “we’re all in this together” … and then Part 2 was about getting out of that “Us & Them” mentality, and Part 3 was even more paradoxical: “Standing in the Tragic Gap” … “holding the tension”? At what point in all this ambiguity and balance do we actually make some decisions, take some action?
…And to this imaginary congregant I respond, “Today, dear friend. Today!”
HUMILITY AND CHUTZPAH
Parker Palmer wrote the book that inspired this sermon series, and he explains that the first three habits to heal the heart of democracy are about humility. Today’s fourth habit is about chutzpah. In order for democracy to thrive, he says, we need citizens with both humility and chutzpah. (So: yikes, we’ve arrived at more paradox!)
But today we talk about “chutzpah,” the fourth habit of Personal Voice and Action.
As my imaginary congregant did understand, those first three habits are crucial – it IS important for us as citizens to listen to the voice of the other and to be open to changing our minds…
AND it is also important for us not to get lost in moral relativity, not to get stuck in analysis paralysis, not to assume that the action will happen without us.
SPEAKING OUT & ACTING UP
It is essential for us to SPEAK OUT AND ACT UP.
So don’t let all my talk about ambiguity and paradox imply that we cannot still act boldly and resolutely. For in fact we must.
Much depends on our Speaking Out and Acting Up.
Hear this poem by Rev. Amy Shaw of Wisconsin:
I have a voice.
It is a small voice, perhaps, but it will not be silenced.
When you call for black people to be beaten, and excluded, and even removed— I will say no.
When you attempt to silence Hispanic & Latinx voices—I will say no.
When you mock the disabled and threaten the oppressed—I will say no.
When you shout your plans for exclusion and division and terror over and over again I will say no, and no, and no.
If you build a wall, I will stand in the way of your builders. If they knock me to the ground, I will lie in their path.
If you come for my Muslim siblings I will force you to take me first, and I will not go quietly. I will say no.
If you ask that they register, I will be Muslim, or Jewish, or black, or Baha’i.
And I will be at the head of the line, over and over, with each thing that you do;
You will hear my voice, ringing in the stillness,
Saying no.
We say NO, because deep in our bones there is a YES.
A YES to the inherent worth and dignity of all people.
A YES to the call to speak up for those whose voices have been drowned out and silenced.
A YES to the call of our own intuitions, our own experiences, our own deep wisdom.
A YES to FAITH – faith in the power of love, peace, and justice – for some of us that is God, Goddess, Mystery. For others is it is hope.
WHY DON’T WE?
But too often we don’t raise our voice.
Sometimes we don’t speak up because we think others will do it better. There is a cult of expertise in our culture that says only the authorities on a subject should have a voice. Or only the heroes, those supposed exceptions in history.
So, often in our educational environments, or even in our family life, children aren’t asked about their experiences, their opinions; instead they are simply required to repeat others’ conclusions. So we grow up not valuing our own intuitions, not pursuing our own questions, not feeling like actors in our own play, creators and shapers of our world.
There’s another reason we might not raise our voices… There are repercussions. People of color, women, LGBTQ people and other minorities are often silenced, harassed, fired, shamed, or killed for speaking up.
All the more reason for those of us with privilege to use our voices.
COMMUNITY
I could list many more possible reasons why we don’t speak up
…but all those reasons dissolve in the presence of a powerful community.
Claiming our voices often begins with finding a community, a person, a people who can say to you: You’re not crazy. What you experienced happened. What you are feeling is real. What you care about is valid. And I am here alongside you. How shall we go on together? And then we can speak from our true voices; then we can act from our deepest values, then we can’t help but speak up – our lives themselves become our voices, our actions. We let our lives speak.
Our community doesn’t need to be huge. Even just two or three kindred spirits can give us the courage we need to find and raise our voices.
Even when we feel ourselves to be islands in the sea, think of an island…look beneath the surface…For, as the philosopher William James said, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Too often we separate the person from their community. Our history books do this (at least the ones I remember). They pretend the heroes of our past were self-made men (yes, usually men) whose extraordinary personal character and skills simply launched them into significance, all on their own.
Rosa Parks.
How often did you hear the version of the story that one day Rosa Parks just decided to sit down on that bus seat? …When in fact that moment was one she had planned and organized together with a group of people with whom she had already been working in the struggle?
And she was not the first to be arrested for this same act of civil disobedience. Almost a year before, Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith had all refused to give up their seats on buses. These four women worked with the NAACP to bring a case to federal court to challenge the bus segregation laws.
In fact, while the case crafted from Rosa Parks’ arrest got bogged down in local courts, it was these four women’s case that went to the Supreme Court and successfully resulted in the order for Alabama to desegregate its buses.
I tell this history not to detract from the role of Rosa Parks. Certainly, she became an icon for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which put pressure on the courts and likely produced the favorable court ruling…as well as launching Martin Luther King into leadership and basically beginning the Civil Rights Movement.
I describe this history to explain that it took a community to raise Rosa Parks, and it took a community to multiply her act of civil disobedience into social change. The same goes for Martin Luther King – just look into the role his advisors had on the course of his strategy.
SOLIDARITY
This history also assures us that we do not have to be a Rosa Parks or an MLK to have our voice be heard.
During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the people walking to work instead of taking the bus knew that elsewhere in the city, others were doing the same.
We often need to know that, if we speak up, if we act up, there are others doing the same. If I use my voice to say, “Excuse me, I find that comment sexist,” I know I have companions in the struggle – people who would do the same, people who perhaps are doing the same, right now in another place.
I need “my people” to go to, when doubt creeps in and I question my voice.
AND I need “my people” to hold me accountable when I get it wrong.
This is how we become true citizens. Humility and Chutzpah.
SHOW AN AFFIRMING FLAME
I’ll give the final word to W.H. Auden, with the last two stanzas of his poem, “September 1, 1939.” That’s the date on which Germany invaded Poland, launching a war fueled by a fascism more virulent than most Americans imagined possible, and some still desire. Lest we forget:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
If we want to heal the heart of our democracy, we must ensure we are no audience to that democracy, we are participants who speak out and act up.
-Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon