Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] July 7, 2019 “Profiting Off the Misery of Children 1st Kings 5 - see the story within the text My sabbatical earlier this year was full of experiences that left me overflowing with joy. There was one notable exception. My friend Chris, the pastor at Sixth Avenue UCC, and I went on a mini-civil rights tour of Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama. Our first stop was at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four little girls were murdered by white supremacists who threw a bomb at the church on Youth Sunday. We remember their names: Denise, Carole, Addie, and Cynthia.[1] Across the street there were memorials to the 4,000 nameless school children who braved police dogs and fire hoses, including a statue of children behind jail bars.[2] In Selma, we walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. But the real reason for the trip was to visit the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, otherwise known as the lynching memorial.[3] It is a monument of stunning proportions including 800 coffin shaped steel boxes hanging above your head, engraved with the names of more than 4,000 documented victims – men, women, and children. Like 14-year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi, accused of flirting with a white woman. Among that list of names[4] there are a disturbing number of 14, 15, and 16-year olds, like Ernest, Charlie, Jesse, Willie James, and an 18-year-old pregnant Mary Turner. Accompanying the lynching memorial is the Legacy Museum, which shows the uninterrupted, ever-adaptable strategies of white supremacists to dehumanize – methods that morphed from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow laws to the pre-school to prison pipeline of mass incarceration.[5] One particularly brutal exhibit is a hologram of a woman crying out for her children who had been ripped from her arms and sold on the auction block. Naturally, children are on many of our minds this weekend, this weekend of celebrations for our freedom and independence, all the while migrant children are still being locked in cages, now debating the necessity of soap (?), ripped from their parent’s arms as they flee violence and seek asylum. Didn’t I just preach about this? I looked back and found my sermon from one year ago entitled “Children Ripped and Scattered”[6] in which I read from the poem Home,[7] written by Warsan Shire (pronounced “she-ray”), the British/Somali poet. Here is an excerpt: you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark no one crawls under fences no one wants to be beaten pitied no one chooses refugee camps or prison… i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. Those lines are so painfully poignant as we recall images of the father and daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande two weeks ago, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria.[8] A year ago, we were shocked that the intentional cruelty of this administration could descend to such an unimagined level as to lock kids in cages as a strategy. Now it doesn’t shock us at all. Just more business as usual for the administration which was forced to admit there was no registry created to reunite children with their families, despite reassurances, and that a year later, some 300 are yet to be reunited.[9] There are fears that some may be adopted without permission of their parents. Those fears are not unfounded.[10] Families who agree to foster migrant children are told explicitly that they may not adopt those children. That didn’t stop one family in Michigan from suing to do exactly that, claiming they feared for the girl’s safety.[11] They probably read the glowing reviews from Bethany Christian Services about the joy of fostering a migrant child. Like Juanita.[12] When Juanita and her older brother were apprehended by immigration, they were separated, and Juanita was placed in detention with other minors. Her brother was sent back to Guatemala. Juanita was sent to a family in Michigan. She didn’t want to go, but the testimonial claims that “over time, Juanita realized how much her foster parents cared for her. She slowly began to trust them. And eventually, that trust turned into love.” “Now,” she said, “when I think of family, the first thing that comes to mind is my foster family.” Today Juanita is completing a college degree in social work to help others navigate their own difficult journeys. What an absolutely lovely sentiment, an uplifting outcome. I am grateful for families willing to offer a loving home. And horrified at how absolutely normal such testimonials portray the role of organizations like Bethany Christian Services, the Betsy DeVos funded agency, well connected and extremely well-compensated for their work.[13] It may seem necessary and justified, but one day we’ll realize it is just as complicit as all the Christian denominations that facilitated the efforts of the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man” during in the boarding school era.[14] Another example of black and brown children ripped from their families, including plenty of “success stories” about children who were “educated” in those nightmare schools to become doctors and other professionals, overlooking the generational trauma of forced family separation.[15] Today’s reading is one of those success stories too, although the Juanita-esque aspect of it can be easily overlooked. There is a detail we often miss from the story we tell of Naaman. My seminary friend Katy Hawker, however, isn’t one to miss such details.[16] But first, the story: Naaman was an exalted army commander who had successfully led his soldiers to win difficult strategic battles. But this valiant soldier had a skin disease – sometimes called leprosy, though this was probably not that. As the story goes, during one of his successful campaigns against Israel, he brought a young girl back to be his wife’s servant. That girl suggested to Naaman’s wife that he should go see the prophet back in Samaria, in the territory of Israel, to be healed. Naaman asked the permission of his king, who agreed to send a letter to the King in Israel. When the king received the letter, however, he thought it must be a trick. “I’m not God, I can’t heal someone.” Naturally suspicious of his enemy, the king pondered, “What does he really want?” Elisha told the king to send him over. So Naaman, with all his many horses and chariots full of jewels and gold and gifts, stopped in front of Elisha’s house. Elisha had his servant tell Naaman to simply go wash in the River Jordan seven times and he would be clean as snow. But the valiant and exalted army commander was furious. He was insulted that a mere servant spoke to him, not Elisha directly, and that he would tell him something so ridiculous. For one thing, someone of his stature was surely capable of a regimen more demanding than dunking himself in a river seven times. For another thing, the Jordan was a mud pit. The rivers back in Syria ran fresh and clean and pure, fed by the melting snow of the mountains. He was doubly insulted and underwhelmed. In a rage, he turned to go back home. But one of his servants carefully approached Naaman and suggested that if Elisha had told him to do something difficult, he would have done it. Why not do it if it’s simple? So Naaman, the great warrior humbled himself and went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as he was told, and his flesh was restored and became as clean as a young boy. It’s a great story with a happy ending. There are themes of humility and trust and what happens when you swallow your pride and ask for a little help. It’s a good story for fiercely self-sufficient people who proclaim, “I can do it myself, thank you very much.” It’s a story of international cooperation between enemies. It’s a story of “ask and you shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” It’s a story for anyone who has refused a simple instruction, such as, I want peace in my soul, but don’t ask me to forgive my neighbor. I want a better relationship with my spouse, but don’t ask me to go to counseling. I want better friendships, but don’t ask me to be a better friend. It’s a great story because Naaman, though reluctant, listened. It’s an even better story, however, because it all started with a little girl suggesting it. She, with no name and no power, proclaimed faith in the God of Israel and demonstrated God’s great power – available to everyone, not just those in Israel. But wait. The little detail Katie mentioned? That girl? She was war booty; a captive. She was kidnapped from her home and made to be a slave. The spoils of war. With news stories for the past year about children in cages, how could we miss the detail that this girl was ripped from her family, too? Perhaps it’s because we can too easily turn her into a Juanita “success story.” Thanks to the great faith of the little girl, everything is OK because the valiant soldier was healed and made whole again. But what about her? Was she set free? Allowed to go back home? All of this “success” without naming the girl’s pain and trauma from being separated. Katie notes this is a “familiar pattern – when those in power celebrate the “faith” of the little ones on whose necks they stand. Accolades from the mighty for the faith of those they disempower.” All of this is terrible and true. So, then what? What do we do with this? I don’t envy those who must figure out how to handle the humanitarian crisis at our border. But I can’t help but notice the familiar response to black and brown children is to remove them from their parents. And for “religious” people like James Dobson to call them such things as illiterate and unhealthy and declare them a threat to “our culture.”[17] Another white supremacist ever-adapting strategy to dehumanize black and brown people that must be dismantled. So, there is one last part almost always left out when this story is told. Even the lectionary leaves this last part out. After Naaman’s skin is made whole, he returned home. He had come prepared to pay for his cure, so he brought loads of jewels and gold and clothing. Elisha refused payment. Grace and healing are not commodities. They are gifts. Free. Well, Elisha’s protégé Gehazi saw an opportunity for a little profit for himself. He chased after Naaman and told him that Elisha had changed his mind and wanted payment after all. Naaman was more than happy to oblige and even doubled the amount Gehazi had requested. When Gehazi got back home, Elisha asked where he had been. Like a teenager, he responded, “Nowhere.” “What have you been doing?” “Nothing.” But Elisha knew exactly what Gehazi had been doing. And so, for using the situation of free grace and healing to make a profit, Gehazi was stricken with Naaman’s skin disease, which, Elisha proclaimed, will “now cling to you and to your descendants forever. And immediately, Gehazi’s skin became as flaky as snow.” I don’t know which makes this ending “happier.” Whether it’s thanks to the faith of that nameless little girl so Naaman’s skin was restored or the divine justice for those like Gehazi who seek to profit off the misery of others? Like politicians on both sides of the aisles. Like companies such as the GEO Group and CoreCiviv who earned $985 million from ICE contracts in 2017 alone. Or Southwest Key which in the past few years has amassed almost $1 billion in contracts.[18] Just one in the lucrative, secretive world of migrant-shelters.[19] 547 Wayfair employees had enough. They walked off the job, writing, “We believe that by selling products to contractors who enable the violation of children’s rights are complicit in furthering the inhumane actions of our government.”[20] Now, Bethany Christian Services, which collects $700 per night per child,[21] doesn’t seem similarly concerned, nor do they seem concerned about Gehazi’s skin disease for profiting off misery. What can you do? Are you certain you don’t have stock in companies like the GEO Group that profit off the misery of children? Do you have social responsibility screens on your investments? You can join us on our week long border immersion experience in September. Several UCC churches in Metro Denver, including ours, are collaborating right now to create a sanctuary space for families facing deportation in the building of one of our recently closed churches. It will need funding and volunteers. Those are only a few things. Forced separation is simply wrong. It is immoral. It is unethical. And it should be understood by all to be unchristian. But if they must be in our care, temporarily, are the children well cared for? Do they have enough to eat? Do they have soap, a toothbrush? Is someone lifting them when they cry? Is someone wiping away their tears? Are the children well? And is someone holding the adults charged with their care accountable for their crimes against humanity? Oh Lord, we pray for your divine justice for those who profit off the misery of children. And pray for the children and their families. "For Children at Our Borders"[22] By Alden Solovy God of mothers and fathers, God of babies and children, Youth and teens, The voice of agony echoes across the land, As children are taken from their parents, Perverting our values, Perverting the ways of justice and peace. So that a few may reap the political rewards of their suffering By playing tough at our borders. Source of grace, Creator of kindness and goodness, You call upon us to stand in the name of justice and fairness, To witness against this abuse of power, To battle the systematic assault on human beings, To speak out against their suffering. Bless those who rise up against this horror. Bless those who plead on behalf of the oppressed and the subjugated before the seats of power. Bless these children Who wait in misery To be reunited with their families Bless those bondage at the hand of the U.S. government. Grant comfort and consolation. Release them. Free them. Heal them from trauma. Reunite them with their families. Hasten the day of their reunion. Blessed are You, God of All Being, Who summons us to oppose violence, slavery and injustice. Amen [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm [2] https://www.birminghamal.org/experiences-and-itineraries/1357758/ [3] https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States [5] https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/museum [6] https://davidbahr.weebly.com/blog/children-ripped-and-scattered-book-of-job-part-1 [7] https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/warsan-shire-home-46630fcc90ab - I just used a short excerpt [8] https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/26/politics/mexico-father-daughter-dead-rio-grande-wednesday/index.html [9] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/trump-administration-family-separations-emails.html [10] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/immigrant-parents-fear-losing-their-children-forever/573331/ [11] https://www.apnews.com/97b06cede0c149c492bf25a48cb6c26f [12] https://bethany.org/resources/fleeing-for-safety [13] https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/26/bethany-christian-services-family-separation-betsy-devos/ [14] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/ [15] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/trauma-inherited-generations/573055/ [16] https://liturgyoutside.net/about-the-little-girl-naaman-elisha-and-the-child/ [17] https://act.faithfulamerica.org/sign/Dobson_Immigration/?t=1&akid=1624%2E154651%2E5VPpZM [18] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children/first-stop-for-migrant-kids-for-profit-detention-center-idUSKCN1Q3261 [19] http://www.justiceacademy.org/iShare/Library-NCCD/prison-bed-profiteers.pdf [20] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/26/cage-is-not-home-hundreds-wayfair-employees-walk-out-protest-sales-migrant-detention-center/?utm_term=.75d06eaeb0b5 [21] https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/26/bethany-christian-services-family-separation-betsy-devos/ [22] Slightly adapted - https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2018/06/19/3-prayers-children-our-borders
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