Sermon
November 13, 2016
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
PLEASE NOTE that the recording cut off several minutes before the end of the sermon, which you can find below.
Reality, Grief, and Hope. The theologian Walter Brueggemann talks about three urgent prophetic tasks: Reality, Grief, and Hope.((Note that I am using Brueggeman’s language here of “Reality, Grief, Hope,” but not necessarily the content in his book by the same title.)) Those will be the three sections of this post-election sermon.
REALITY
Many people in the country and the world right now are in deep pain and fear over the election of Donald Trump. This pain and fear is not just about republican versus democrat, not just about having lost an election. It’s about the reality that half of voters chose a candidate who has encouraged and advocated racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.
Regardless of whether Trump had won, we would be living with the reality that he had already emboldened huge portions of the population to be unapologetic in their bigotry. Now that he has won, people feel particularly emboldened and justified.
Hate crimes have been spiking all over the country.
I’m going to give just a few examples of these hate crimes because I want to make sure we clearly see the reality. …Because we might be tempted to say: “How bad could it be?” or: “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
To that I respond: It is bad, it is real, and it is already happening.
For those of you who are already painfully aware of these realities, feel free to tune me out for this part, or even leave the room. Or you might need to practice the five senses activity that trauma survivors are often taught to practice – pay attention to your breathing and find 5 things in this moment that you see, feel, hear, taste, smell – this practice assures your brain that this moment is safe, even though other moments have not been safe.
My intention is not to cause more despair for those already despairing, or more trauma, but to help all of us see one big part of our reality.
At a school in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, students chanted: “Cotton Picker, You’re a Nigger, Heil Hitler”
The door of the Muslim Student Association’s prayer room at NYU was defaced with the word TRUMP scrawled in black marker.
In a college dorm room, a student left a note for her roommate: “Hey Maria, Trump won so, here’s a little preview of what is to come. #wall Love, Izzy” Maria found down the center of their shared room a wall made of shoes, hangers, and books.
A sign placed on a car in North Carolina: “Can’t wait until your “marriage” is overturned by a real President. Gay families burn in hell. #trump2016 #repent #godbless
An Asian woman at a gas station said a man yelled at her: “We won, Now get the f*** out of my country”
A woman at Walmart said to a woman in a hijab: “this is not allowed anymore, so go hang yourself with it around your neck not on your head”
Many reports of women being grabbed by the “pussy”
A woman at Starbucks said “I set up my computer and received a facetime call from a Deaf friend. This guy came marching up to me and got up in my face, “This is White America now. Take your retarded self and go somewhere else. Trump is president now.”
The reports go on and on. These are just a handful, and not even the worst. There has been physical violence, too. And, yes, some (much fewer) reports of violence toward Trump supporters.
The truth is that Trump is not the cause, but the symptom. This ignorance and hatred was already present; it will now be even more blatant and rampant.
Our country has been undergoing a time of rapid and immense social change. We have been taking huge steps forward in terms of great diversity and inclusion, and now fear has caused many to want to take a huge step backward.
People are also fearing the policies of a Trump administration, aided by a very conservative House and Senate. People are afraid of mass deportations, rights stripped from LGBTQ people, increased difficulty finding healthcare, especially for those with disabilities, astounding steps backward in terms of climate change, strained and uncertain relationships with other countries, further losses in reproductive rights, possible economic recession, and more.
This election has also revealed many people’s deep distrust of our political system.
Half of our country didn’t vote, probably for many different reasons. I know that some of you didn’t vote, mostly for reasons of conscience: because you don’t believe in government, or you couldn’t vote in good conscience for any of the candidates.
Many are deeply and rightly disappointed in the power of corporations in politics, in the two-party system, the corruption and deceit, the compromises made by progressives, the influence of the media, the ways people place too much power in politicians and not enough power in their own hands… Many analysts are arguing that many Trump supporters were just plain fed up with the elitism of politics and wanted some kind of change no matter what.
We are in a rough place.
But the truth is, we have always been in this rough place.
THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE REALITY
The reality is now simply more visible to all of us.
The poor black woman has probably always been aware of it. The transgender woman has always been aware of it. The undocumented teenager has always been aware of it.
Many of us have been protected from these realities by the color of our skin, or by our income, or our education, or our gender, or our sexual orientation. And the truth is, some of us will continue to be protected from it. That’s why REALITY is the first section of this sermon.
The poet David Whyte wrote:
Sometimes we have to make a complete and absolute disaster of our lives in such an epic, unavoidable way so that it can suddenly become absolutely clear to us what we have been doing all along.
I believe this is where our country is now.
If Hillary Clinton had been the one to edge out Donald Trump, all of these underlying issues would still be present – perhaps they’d be less blatant, but, either way, there is still white supremacy at the root of our country, unresolved. There is sexism; there is xenophobia; there is classism. There is corruption. There is apathy. There is dysfunction.
THRESHOLD
We are at a threshold. The divisiveness of this election, and the shock of the results, has put our country at a threshold.
Threshold is an interesting word. As you know, it’s that part you walk over as you pass through a door. It’s also that point at which something begins or changes. The word is derived from the word “Thresh,” which means to separate the seed from the husk for harvest.
The Irish writer John O’Donohue says:
The threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness. And I think there are huge thresholds in every life…a very simple example: If you’re in the middle of your life on a busy evening – 50 things to do – and you get a phone call that somebody that you love is suddenly dying. It takes ten seconds to communicate that information, but when you put the phone down, you’re already standing in a different world. Because suddenly everything that seemed so important before is all gone, and now you’re thinking of this. So the given world that we think is there and the solid ground we’re on is so tentative….A threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and I think that very often how we cross is the key thing.
So, especially for those of us in despair and in shock over this election, and for those of us in denial or apathy, I think how we cross this threshold is the key thing.
And this is where we arrive at the second section of the sermon…
GRIEF
What I mean here by grief is to allow ourselves, to ask ourselves, to sit with whatever arises in us related to this election. …To resist the inclination to shut down, or to check out, or to shift too quickly into analysis or action.
For some of us that might mean turning off the news for a bit, shutting off our need to absorb or process information because it might be distracting us from the heart of the matter. We may need to listen to the anger that eventually will activate us, to the grief that will inform us, to the fear that will inspire us.
For some of us, we may need to turn on the news (or find different news); we may need to seek out stories of how this election is affecting the marginalized; we may need to let our protected hearts be broken just a bit. Because a broken heart is one aware of our interconnectedness, and capable of wise action.
So, if you haven’t already done so this week, give yourself permission to, for example: vent your anger to a friend who really gets it, or let yourself curl up in a fetal position, or sit in meditation with your fears, or pray prayers of lamentation.
The better we can fully be present with our responses, the more naturally we will move without effort to the next step…
HOPE
Here are three ways to find HOPE:
Through reflection
Through faith
And Through action
Hope through Reflection. This is the time to search for any bit of common ground we can find with those of different political persuasions: I promise you there is common ground somewhere – if we ask truly honest open questions, and we listen intently. Through reflection, we find more of ourselves in others than we would have imagined.
Hope through Faith. Any actions we take must be grounded in our faith, our deepest values, our ultimate concerns. Perhaps your faith is that love always wins, that love always prevails over hate. Or perhaps your faith is that sometimes love doesn’t win, but we go out loving, and in that way, love does win.
Hope through Action.
One of the best ways to find hope is to DO something. Do something outside your comfort zone.
The greater your social privilege, the more risk you might take.
Rebecca Solnit wrote:
Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; …hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.
HOW CAN WE ACT?
Last Sunday, this church – your church – was called to action.
We had a planning retreat. The Board members, several committee chairs, and I gathered with Natalie Briscoe from the Unitarian Universalist Association whom we brought here to help us with our two main goals for the year: Growth and Financial Sustainability. But you know what…? We didn’t end up talking much about Growth and Financial Sustainability. She asked us a series of questions about our church, she looked around, and she said (paraphrased) – “Hmmm: You guys are good. You’re a healthy church with a beautiful building, a good mission statement, a core of committed volunteers, a newly called minister… We could spend a bunch of time on technical approaches that would help you think about how to grow and how to run your next stewardship campaign…but the biggest thing that keeps churches from growing is that they look inward; they don’t move beyond their walls to actually do the work of the church in the world.”
And she doesn’t only mean that we each individually go and do our good work, but that we do it together.
Natalie challenged us: “What if you pick one ministry you will do in this community for the next few years, and you go do it? If you do that, I bet your goals around growth and financial sustainability will solve themselves.”
I think Natalie’s challenge to us comes at just the right time – just the right threshold.
Could it ever be clearer than now how much we are needed?
There is work that needs to be done in this area that no other church (perhaps in some cases not even any other organization) can or will do.
Think about how badly the Permian Basin needs support for LGBTQ issues. Think of the teenagers who need a safe place to come out. Think of the parents looking for resources for raising their transgender child.
Or, think about who will stand up for Muslims in Midland, or join in welcoming refugees?
Who will talk about climate change in oil country?
Who will lobby for a woman’s right to choose?
These are just some of the issues the Board is considering bringing forward to the congregation to consider. They can’t do it without you.
If we want to do this kind of work well, we can’t do it from within the safety of our walls.
I know it can feel hard in Midland, TX; it can feel risky to stick our necks out, to rise up and be counted, to move together beyond the safety of our walls. But there are so many who need us who would never find their way – on their own – to our doors.
If, instead of asking them to venture into unfamiliar territory, we venture out ourselves, we will discover more like-minds in Midland, TX than we could imagine. We will discover strengths we did not know we had. We will find hope in the connections we make, in the changes we create.
KEEP REPEATING THE CYCLE
These are our three prophetic tasks: Reality, Grief, Hope (Hope being another word for Action!)
In the time that lies before us, we will have to keep repeating this cycle: Reality, Grief, Hope – sometimes minute to minute, sometimes day to day, sometimes week to week.
This is what it means to have a liberal faith. Remember when we talk about liberal religion, we don’t mean liberal as in Democrat necessarily. But liberal in that we keep adapting our faith to the reality of the time. And we continue to act based on that reality, and that faith.
I’ll end with a quote from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, posted on his Twitter account Tuesday:
This is the end of nothing. This is the beginning of something new and solemn and so important. You must be part of what comes next.
The world needs us, now more than ever. We can do this.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon