This being the first Sunday of summer and all it seemed like a sermon on summer spaciousness was appropriate. After all, isn’t that what summer is about? Out of our usual routines, out of our ruts, time for a anew perspective, time to get away from the daily oppression of the news cycle.

Oh yes, the news cycle. In conversations with a number of you, I know that you, too, just don’t quite know what to do with the news of the day these days. It just seems so constant. How do we keep informed and not let ourselves get overwhelmed by it all. It is difficult these days.

And this week it was even more so.

The decision by the Trump administration to separate children from their parents when they are caught trying to enter the country is what has caused the latest crisis. While this policy has been considered in the past, other presidents have not implemented it. This administration did. The uproar led the president to back off that decision. And that seemed to defuse some of the immediate uproar. But what we have now are families being detained indefinitely. And in addition to that we have hundreds of children still separated from their parents. And it isn’t at all clear when they will be reunited, if they are reunited at all.

And that just isn’t right. We are living in times when we seem to keep hitting new lows in terms of how we treat the least among us. How we are together in what we call a civil society.
Part of what’s so troubling about all this is how I feel complicit in it. I may not agree with it but it is being done in my—in all of our—names. We are citizens, we are it is important to say no.

It is important to bear witness.

Immigration has long been a hot button political issue in our country. Over the last several years there have been a number of attempts to fix what most agree is a broken system. But those attempts to find some kind of compromise have failed over and over again. There’s a lot of fear that leaders will get on wrong side of the issue and that keeps anything for happening.

Who’s in and who is out has been an issue in this country pretty much from the beginning. Many have wanted to come here but just how that happened—or didn’t happen—has been woven into the fabric of our nation. Those who were here originally, the first nations peoples, have long suffered at the hands of the Europeans. And of course most African Americans didn’t come here by choice but against their will as slaves. And generations of immigrants have often been looked down upon by those who were already here. The ideals we hold up about diversity and equality in our country have far from reality for a long time.

And meanwhile people keep coming, although it should be noted not as many as came a few years ago. These days they are increasingly people—indeed whole families—fleeing violence in central America. They don’t feel like they have anything to lose even with what they face coming here because life back home is just not tenable. One person from Guatemala I read about this week said that the gangs targeted his teen-age son and if the son didn’t kill someone on behalf of the gang the gang would kill the son. He felt they really didn’t have a choice but to flee.

This is a larger issue that is happening all over the world. Last week, the United Nations Refugee Agency released an annual report that cited a record-high 68.5 million displaced people, including 25 million refugees, pouring out of places as far-flung as Syria, Myanmar, Congo and Venezuela. Analysts cited war, economic hardship, unstable governments and climate change to suggest this unprecedented displacement is the new normal and bound to get worse — with no clear international road map over how to address the phenomenon.

The sad thing is that when you look at this from a global perspective it is a problem that will not be easy to fix. But what is happening around the world, just like what is happening here, are proposals to build all kinds of walls. It is ironic at a time when so many of the boundaries of that have kept people and information so separate for some long, as those boundaries come down we are in times when there are so many calls for walls to go up and to keep people apart. Truth is that desperate people don’t feel like they have a choice to flee.

And sadly our leaders exploit the situation. Seeing children used as pawns in all of this is particularly galling. It is easy for all of this to tap into our fears of what or who is out there… all the danger we are in… and we can quickly come to see the world, not for what unites us but for what separates. We come to quickly see others as just that, the other. And that is when we can lose sight of our basic humanity.

It is important to remember that we could be them.

Seeing the images of children and families this week has brought to mind a photo from my own family. I had to dig a bit but I was able to find it. This is a photo of my grandmother—my mother’s mother—and her five children, in a refugee camp in what is now Turkey in 1917 and 1918.

My grandparents, in their young married life, immigrated from Switzerland to Russia. My grandfather was a cheese maker.

He’s in the next photo, third from the left behind that big wheel of cheese. He went to Russia first, and when he had made enough money he sent for my grandmother. They had a sizeable family in a short time and they were doing quite well. But all of that changed overnight with the Russian revolution. Most foreigners, including my grandparents, were told to leave. All their money was been seized and they were given a day to get out of the country. What they could carry with them was all they could take.

The photo of my grandmother and children is from a refugee camp in what was then Constantinople, what is now Istanbul, where they spent several months in quarantine. The little boy in the front on the right side died of diphtheria in that camp. Eventually they made it back to their native Switzerland and a couple years later they were able to come here to America.

All these years later I wonder about what it was like for them and their children in that place? I wonder who helped them? I wonder who gave them food? I wonder what those days were like? And I wonder after all of that how they managed to again leave where they were from to come to this country?

For my grandparents, it was a sister of my grandmother who could afford to buy them passage to America in 1920. My mother was the first of their children born here in America. Despite all they had been through, this was the place they wanted to come and they were welcomed here.

And of course it is a straight line from her plight to the life of so much privilege I am aware that I am so fortunate to have today. And wondering just how different my life could have been had things been different.

There are all kinds of things that can be debated about immigration laws and statistics these days. But what can so quickly get lost—or just plain politicized—is the humanity of all of this. Real people and real lives that are being affected—perhaps for generations to come.

This crisis should be a reminder of so many people whose lives are affected by what our government does. And especially when those who are most vulnerable are affected, it is important to say no. It is not Ok to treat children—to treat anyone—in this way.

This week the Rev. Susan Frederick Gray, who is president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, spoke about the immigration crisis at the UUA general assembly in Kansas City, and she reminded us that this issue is not new. For a long time in our country parents have been separated from children—for generations African American families have been separated, through slavery and more recently through mass incarnation. Asian families were interred during World War 2 out of fear and before that there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. Native American children have been taken from parents routinely. People coming from Mexico and Central America leaving families behind to come here for work and more recently fleeing terrible violence in their own countries. People have been separated from children all too often in our country.

So it is both important to bear witness to the fact that this indeed is not new. And, at the same time, we need to remind ourselves that it is urgent. There is a proposed action of immediate witness that has come before our general assembly this week. It calls for the elimination of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement: It reads

“…Unitarian Universalists are called urgently to prophetic witness and concrete action that would stop the incarceration and separation of asylum seekers and to call for the abolition of ICE. We are called to do this work in relationship with immigrant-led organizers, and to support and amplify their goals and their voices, through monetary donations and by showing up.” (draft text as of June 23, 2018)

Susan Frederick Gray said, “As hate tries to close our borders, we will open our hearts and our homes…” That is important.

It is important for us as a religious community to bear witness. It is important to say no. And it is important to find the places where we can say yes.

I want to hold up the leadership here in our congregation from our Immigrant justice action group. Many of them are bearing witness today at the prison in Sheridan. If you aren’t on it, get on their list… it is a good way to keep abreast of these issues. Right now what to do, talk to our elected leaders and let them know your concern—and thank them when they speak out on these issues. A number of our elected leaders here in Oregon are showing up courageously around this issue.

One of the dangers of the times we are in is that it becomes easy to forget the very human consequences when people become pawns, when they become that other. When that happens it can become easy to forget their humanity. Maybe that’s why something so fundamental as keeping children and parents together is so basic.

I think that it is easy to get complacent in life. I think something, with time can become the norm, it becomes just the way things are. These days it seems ok to say anything whether it is true or not. Policies are implemented to stir up the base, no matter the consequences, not matter the costs. And I think one of the dangers of the times we are in is that the brutality, the ways that our separateness might become the norm. How that norm might become that we see our differences first rather than our commonality.

I think there are many choices we make and that is one of them that we make over and over again. It is how we might show up in the world. It is important to bear witness.

This is the first Sunday of summer. We are in a new season. Perhaps the question is how is it that we choose to show up?

The poet William Stafford said, “The earth says every summer have a ranch that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape that proclaims a universe.”

The universe is a vast and mysterious and wondrous place. It is the place that all of us—all of us—call home. But it is in our living—and in our witnessing and in our choosing and in our being—it is in all of it that we make that real. It is when we are asked to see ourselves as part of that whole and to imagine—and to bear witness to—the lives of so many others who make up that whole with us.

May it be so for all of us this day. Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life and of love, be present with us here be present with all who live in fear, who struggle to find hope. Grant us courage to say no, to bear witness to hate, to find the places where we can also say yes. On this day, most of all, we pray for the children. May they be safe, may they know love. May they know hope.
Amen.

Topics: Community