February 7, 2010
Making Room
The Rev. Mark Ward, Minister
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville
Asheville, NC
SERMON
It was late June 2008, and I was seated on a stage at General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, having only minutes before having received this stole from members of this congregation in celebration of my having attained final fellowship as a Unitarian Universalist minister. Having marched up and sat down in along with some 100 other ministers being honored for various accomplishments, I watched as the choir stood to sing a song with these words.
Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?
Would you harbor a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew,
A heretic, convict, or spy?
Would you harbor a runaway woman or child,
A poet, a prophet, a king?
Would you harbor an exile or a refugee,
A person living with AIDS?
Would you harbor a Tubman, a Garret, a Truth,
A fugitive or a slave?
Would you harbor a Haitian, Korean, or Czech,
A lesbian or a gay?
Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?
The song, sung in a chant-like cadence, was written by Ysaye Maria Barnwell, member of the group Sweet Honey in the Rock, who in the 1970s founded the Jubilee Singers at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. But it had a special resonance that evening.
Gathered in the main hall of the convention center, adjacent to Fort Lauderdale’s port, we fell under the restrictions of the government’s Homeland Security rules. Guards were posted at entrances and demanded government-issued identification to enter. Those of us who had flown to that place, and so had already had to show identification to be allowed to travel, had our drivers’ licenses or state IDs at the ready. But if you didn’t have a license or for some reason were undocumented, you were shut out of the place.
Since 9-11, most of us have become accustomed to this drill, to being confronted with the demand for identification that some authority deems sufficient in all sorts of settings. And yet to have an official demanding ID to enter our own religious conference was jolting.
As Victoria Safford, the minister delivering the sermon at that celebration put it, “At what point does our orderly, responsible compliance become complicity? At what point do we take another small step into the gathering twilight of repression. Will you harbor me? Will I harbor you?”
We know there are good and sober reasons for the travel restrictions we live with today. As the September 11 attacks showed, there are people in the world today prepared to inflict catastrophic damage on Americans. Yet, the system created to respond to this threat has proven ham-handed and clumsy, disrupting our common life far more thoroughly than terrorists could ever hope to.
One could offer some cynical assessment to explain this state of affairs, probably organized around a dismissive joke about the ability of government to get anything right. But I don’t buy it. The failures of the system have less to do with bureaucracy or technological glitches and more to do with our deep fear of the other.
It is such fear that drives us to create blanket rules, to paint those unfamiliar to us with a broad brush and to dismiss their troubles as beneath our concern. We see it not only in how homeland security rules are enforced, but also in draconian immigration laws, in the lack of resources for the poor, in housing and workplace discrimination, in opposition to extending simple civil rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Sitting on that stage at Fort Lauderdale, I felt myself tested by Ysaye Barnwell’s litany. Who might we harbor? A poet, a prophet? Probably. An exile, a refugee? Well . . . . A runaway woman or child? A person living with AIDS? A heretic, convict, fugitive, slave? A Christian, a Muslim, a Tubman, a Truth? A lesbian or a gay? Who would I harbor? And who can I have confidence would harbor me?
We are known in many ways, by many identities. Today, standing in this pulpit, decked out in a jacket and tie with this stole around my neck I project one kind of image, but what if I were in scruffy jeans standing along the side of the road beside a broken-down car with my thumb out?
In the great wisdom stories of the world’s religions angels and gods are often portrayed as presenting themselves in unassuming forms to unsuspecting passersby. The arc of the story is nearly always the same: these disguised ones are generally shunned and reviled, especially by those of privilege or with authority, but eventually some humble person welcomes the strangers, admits them as guests beside a campfire or into their homes and offers aid, comfort and consolation.
As the visit goes on, it dawns on this host that there is something unusual about his or her visitors. In some stories, the visitors reveal themselves to their hosts as the extraordinary beings they are. In others, it is not until after the guests depart that their identity becomes clear. But uniformly the host receives a blessing of some kind for her or his kindness.
There is a reason, I believe, why these stories cross cultures and play such a central role in faith traditions. For they speak to what is probably the most difficult task of attaining spiritual maturity – looking past our individual concerns and learning to see others’ interests as our own, the practices of compassion that embody hospitality.
It begins as early as childhood when we are taught to share, to extend ourselves and take joy in the pleasure of others. We start with a quid pro quo – if I am kind to another, then she or he is likely to be kind to me. But in time the act itself brings pleasure. When we make a practice of sharing, of being concerned with another we begin to care for him or her. Our circle of concern widens to embrace that person.
That’s pretty easy when we’re dealing with just a few people. It gets more complicated when the circle of people we deal with grows. We can’t know all the people we interact with on an intimate level, and some of them are pretty different from us. They look different, sound different, act different.
In a sense, we’re back to the same quandary we faced in childhood. I’ve got my tight, little circle of people I know and trust, but these other people I’m not sure about. Some I bump into often enough that I’m willing to widen my circle of concern to include them, but the others I’m fine with holding at a distance.
Oh, sure. I can see the benefit of being polite, following the social niceties, even allowing my heart to be tugged enough by people in need to send a few bucks to charity. But those people are not in my circle of concern. It doesn’t take much to put me on my guard, and once I’m out of my comfort zone my armor goes on, my heart shuts down and my suspicions get fired up.
It is to people in this state that these wisdom stories are intended to appeal. One way forward that they offer is to consider that perhaps this stranger before us is more extraordinary than we had thought. Certainly many of us have had the experience that once we opened ourselves up to someone who was different from ourselves we discovered commonalities and connections we had not anticipated. In some cases we find depth of character, intelligence, or skill that impresses us, that may even elevate this person to someone we admire.
But not everyone will be like that. Most will be just ordinary folks. Some will be confused, struggling souls, people with rough lives and a history of poor choices, or simply overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control.
This past week I had a conversation with a friend in town who is a retired minister. We talked of the events going on in Haiti lately, and he told me about a trip he had taken to that island some years ago. The group had organized what it called a “reverse mission” to Haiti. That is, their intent was not to convert people, but, as my friend put it, “to be converted by them,” to work with people, to see the deprivation in which they were living and to let that experience work on their hearts. The task he was assigned at a clinic for people who were dying, probably, he now realizes, of AIDS, was simply to offer them massages. And so he did. Moving from bed to bed among these ailing, emaciated people, most of whom could speak little if any English, he simply used his gentle, white hands to knead their dark flesh.
On returning home, he said, he wrote a sermon on the experience entitled, “The Bone that Sticks in My Throat.” He told the congregation that he was, indeed, converted by those people, converted to seeing how small the circle of his own concern was and how much wider it needed to grow.
And that, of course, is the deeper message of those wisdom stories, inviting us to see in every person we meet someone extraordinary, not because they may be an angels or gods, but simply because they are our sisters and brothers.
This is an understanding rooted deep in our Universalist heritage, the conviction that we each have inherent value. We don’t have to prove ourselves to anyone. We don’t need to be clever or rich. We are each deserving of care and concern, of being held by gentle hands.
Achieving this “conversion,” though, is not always easy. In the real world, after all, not all strangers go about the world with good intentions or love in their hearts. Some even seek to prey on those gentle souls who seek to reach out to them. The solution, though, is not to close ourselves off but to learn to be wise. Trust takes time to grow. In engaging others it’s important that we seek first to listen before we speak, to receive before we give.
Now let me speak for a minute to that fear that I spoke of earlier. All this talk about compassion for people different from us sounds fine, but when it comes to putting ourselves into situations where we must exercise it our anxiety peaks. We need to be gentle with ourselves. Some of us are capable of diving into the most stressful environments and making themselves at home. I think of volunteers from our church who enter the County Jail and engage inmates there in weekly conversation. I marvel at the bravery and compassion of that act, but I also know that it is more than many of us can fathom.
If you are one of those, then the place to begin is to listen to your heart. Where are you fed? When are you at home? Begin there. Perhaps it’s at your child’s school, perhaps it’s in your neighborhood, perhaps it’s here in this place. Find that center in your compassionate heart and let it be your guide.
Another way to frame the question, would you harbor me? is, can you make room for me? Victoria Safford, in her sermon in Fort Lauderdale, quoted the Quaker teacher Douglas Steere as saying that “the ancient question, ‘Who am I?’ inevitably leads to a deeper one, ‘Whose am I?’” That’s because, she noted, “there is no identity outside of relationship. You can’t be a person by yourself.”
To ask “Whose am I?” she added, “is to extend the question far beyond the little self-absorbed self, and wonder, Who needs you? Who loves you? To whom are you accountable? To whom do you answer? Whose life is altered by your choices? With whose life, whose lives, is your own all bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways?”
This religious tradition that we affirm is bound up in faith, faith that we can be made whole, that humankind can be reconciled if we can each live the gentle art of hospitality. Despite our fear, fatigue and dissatisfaction, there is room in our bounteous hearts for each of us; none need be lost or abandoned or lacking safe harbor.
It is our answer to the gathering twilight of repression. We are not our own, and we cannot endure as angry atoms or armed and gated camps. We must take the risk that by our own compassionate response we can break through the rising walls that divide us.
May this community be an impetus to each of us to make a chink in the walls that we have built for ourselves, may it be a harbor where we convert fear into compassion, and, being so, may it give us the courage to bring this work to the wider world.