Sermons

One Tribe

October 16, 2011

by Rev. Michael Ellick
Minister


Ancient Testimony ~ Matthew 5:6

So I’ve shared this with some of you already, but for the rest of you here: if you want to experience a truly surreal and wonderful moment, I recommend the following. Wait for a sunny afternoon – preferably a Sunday, preferably around 2:00p - 2:30p - and walk down Thompson Street here in the Village, past everyone sitting on the sidewalks and eating their brunches, and do it with 100 of your friends while carrying aloft a Golden Calf in the shape of the Wall Street Bull.

Now today I had planned to talk about the idea of “foreigner,” and what that idea does to your mind. I was going to talk about the relationship between the immigration crises and the economic crises, and as you maybe guessed, I was going to talk about the Dream Act, and how important it is, despite some of its flaws. Fortunately, Cesar is here to do some of that for us, and I thank him deeply for his testimony. This is a congregation very much committed to immigration issues, and I know you are very well received.

But this week, and especially last night, Occupy Wall Street literally came to our front door. Instead of finishing the sermon I had intended to write, I was here at Judson with Donna & Warren & Alana, and many others who were here last night in a flash as soon as we put out the call. [ Please stand if you were here last night. Please stand if you marched with us last Sunday.] For those of you who weren’t here last night, or who didn’t march down to Zuccotti Park with us last week, I want to give you a sense of what Judson’s been doing this week, explain why everything may seem a little crazy around here, and perhaps overwhelming, and why I think it’s wonderful and worth it.

But first, I need to take a second to thank this entire congregation for all your extra volunteering this week, for your prayers, and your general all around support. I can’t say how grateful I am to be part of a place like this, how truly blessed I feel to be part of such an amazing history – one that not only gives us as Clergy the chance to do true Public Ministry for the Common Good, but one that continues to draw such fantastic people into true community. Thank you, all of you, so much.

So let me bring everyone up to speed: last week we had a different Golden Calf that James Salt from Catholics United had made for us, and as you recall we used it in our Sunday worship. Like this one, it was made in the shape of the Wall Street Bull, which we have been calling out as a false idol. In support of Occupy Wall Street, we organized faith leaders from around the city to join us, and it was a truly raucous scene. There were over 100 people marching down with us, and it was like something out of a movie with Judsonites filling up all the sidewalks as we made our way downtown. Now of course before we finally arrived, we didn’t know how we were going to be received. But I’m here to tell you, Zuccotti Park erupted into thunderous applause for us. There were cameras everywhere, people cheering us on, and even more faith leaders and their congregations waiting to join in the call that we put out. But then we had to give an actual service down there, and of course, we didn’t know how that was going to go, either.

Reporters were asking us – what do we think we’re going to add? Do we have a specific set of demands? What is it that we’re asking for? Now a lot of people have been asking these questions of Occupy Wall Street, but I had asked our faith leaders to resist falling for, and responding to, this line of reasoning. Because I believe that what we’re seeing in Zuccotti Park is the first real movement of the national conscience to hit the street in a long time, and it has more than just one thing to say. It’s bigger than that. As I said it down in the park: this isn’t just a jobs issue, or a tax issue, or even an immigration issue. It’s a spiritual issue, about what the United States has become.

What I believe the faith-community specifically can do, and what Judson Memorial Church has been organizing them to do, is to reframe all the separate “economic justice” issues that all of us work on separately, as one issue, a moral issue, a crises of conscience for the American People.
Now I’ll get more specific at what I think the next step is, but it starts here: with the recognition that something is fundamentally broken in our society, and it effects all of us in countless different ways. Something is sick in the blood and bones and maybe even the soul – and that as such it is the responsibility of every church and temple and synagogue and mosque in this city and in this country to call out this brokenness, to speak truth to power (as this church always has), and to strive for truth with religious fervor.

Now that’s basically what we said at the park last week, and we didn’t know how it was going to go, but people got it. And not just the people down there, a lot of people got it. For the past week it’s been all over the media, in one day over 100 faith leaders signed on to our “statement of support,” which you can find on our website. And now, the national attention is starting to gather: I met with Jesse Jackson’s pastors last Thursday; Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry was here at our press conference on Friday; and Jim Wallis has been calling on my cell-phone.

Next week, we’re putting together board rooms filled with faith leaders from all camps to try and figure out: how do we get ahead of this? How do we seize the collective frustration of this moment in American History, and reframe the true core of it for all to see and deal with – beyond political differences, religious differences, racial differences, and all the rest?
Well, like the Golden Calf last week, or the march, or the multi-faith service, we really don’t know how it’s going to go. No doubt there will be moments that don’t work, and other moments that do. No big. But the reason I wanted to share all of this, and the reason I’m asking the Judson Community to support us with the marches, and the actions, and the strategies, is because I believe that what we’re really acknowledging in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, is the keystone beneath all the other issues we deal with, the same reason why our democracy is failing all of us who don’t have billions of dollars to decide how all of our smaller issues should go.

I’d like to suggest that the simple root problem – and I’ve said this before – is that we are no longer a Democracy, and that instead we have become a Plutocracy - a government run by the rich. I’d like to suggest that the evidence is irrefutable, and it is simply the shock of truth that keep us all from narrowing in on it.

But here’s what I think might be happening now, along with one possibility of where we might go from here. And it may not be the best and final answer, but it’s where I think we must start the conversation.

It’s not that Occupy Wall Street is vague; it’s that the problems it represents are too all-pervasive for us to see clearly. They’re doing the best they can, and frankly I think they’re doing a great job – I don’t necessarily agree with everything they’re doing,(strategically, I don’t think they should be aiming toward civil disobedience yet) but to my mind they’ve got the Holy Spirit. They’re reasserting the people’s voice, and they’re reminding all of us what the people can do when we stand up and speak our truths. And right now, everyone’s saying everything, but by virtue of all of us saying it in the same place, we’re discovering how all these truths link up, and we’re seeing how the whole country will still listen if we learn to speak together.

As this momentum continues, however, we will all have to ask ourselves. What do we do now? What’s the next step? And it’s difficult to say, because all our separate truths agree that it’s our representative system of government that has been compromised – and Congress, by its current Plutocratic design, cannot be expected to fix itself. Our political channels are warped and clogged, and we all know any attempt to move through them warps and clogs the attempt itself. So then what do we do next? As one friend recently said, “what’s the ‘therefore?’”

Well, I think the first step is to spiritually recognize that as a country, we are entering a kind of kairos moment. Now more than ever, it is the responsibility of all people of faith to have faith in all people and to realize that the great spiritual work of our times is to restore our Democracy and the people’s voice in shaping the American Way. That’s the first step: understanding what we’re doing.

I believe the second step is moving the collective “occupy” frustration toward a Constitutional Amendment that truly addresses the root problem. We could call for a national conversation on this, but I like Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig’s suggestion: an Amendment that would require “publically funded elections, campaign contribution limits, and the limitation of independent expenditures from people like the Koch Brothers.” Do those three things and the Plutocracy is basically dismantled.

But it’s a big job: 34 States are needed to call a Constitutional Convention, then when an Amendment is proposed, 38 States would have to give the thumbs up before it becomes real. No small task. It would take long-term thinking and a committed effort to organize people all over the country through non-political channels. The good news is it is a real and legitimate option for us that circumnavigates a broken system in a way that is legal, and fundamental to our American contract. Because thinking long-term and organizing through non-political channels is the unique specialty of faith-based communities, this is also where I think our churches should be headed next. As Lessig has suggested, a constitutional amendment could be our country’s best shot at an “intervention,” and as anyone who’s ever been part of a 12-step program can tell you, all recovery hinges on having faith.

Faith is what’s at the core of Occupy Wall Street: faith that a revolution of values is still possible for us. Faith that underneath all the politicized differences used to alienate us and keep us apart, we are all of us one tribe, one people, and that a Government of the people, for the people, and by the people, can once again flourish on this Earth. This is the great struggle of our times. This is what we’re doing. And by the way, the next Golden Calf leaves the Judson Station at 2:00 pm and all of you here are invited and encouraged to join us. Amen.

 

 
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