Welcome Beyond Walls Nov. 3, 2013 Unitarian Church of All Souls Rev. Lissa Anne Gundlach

Transcription

1 Welcome Beyond Walls Nov. 3, 2013 Unitarian Church of All Souls Rev. Lissa Anne Gundlach I want to share a story with you from our Unitarian history. I m inspired to tell it after experiencing the powerful film 12 Years a Slave. The movie chronicles the life of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in Saratoga, New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the mid 19 th century. If you haven t seen it yet, I encourage you to experience it with someone you love, maybe someone from All Souls. The story begins in Macon, Georgia 1848, with a married couple born into slavery, Ellen and William Craft. Over the Christmas holiday, they were granted a pass to head to the next town to celebrate the holiday, and launched their escape plan to travel the thousand miles to freedom in Philadelphia. Ellen, the child of her slave mother and her white master, was light skinned and disguised herself as a Southern gentleman traveling North to seek medical care. Her husband, darker skinned, played the role of his master s doting slave. By train and by steamboat, the Crafts made the thousand-mile journey first to Philadelphia, where they stayed with a Quaker family, and then quickly moved to Boston, where they settled within the free black community. In Boston, William started a carpentry business as a cabinet maker and Ellen became a seamstress. Both were heavily involved in the abolitionist movement, lecturing and speaking. They encountered the public abolitionist work of Unitarian minister Theodore Parker and his ministry at the 28 th Congregational Society in Boston. At the time, Parker was amongst the inner circle of Boston abolitionists, an active participant in the Underground Railroad to Northern freedom and a fiery pulpit presence of the moral abhorrence of slavery. The Crafts became members of his Sunday morning congregation. Parker welcomed them heartily, visited them in their home, and knew the full story of their lives and their daring escape from slavery. Gundlach, 1

2 In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed as a part of the Compromise of 1850, which ruled that free and slave states alike must assist in the recovery of men and women who had fled their captivity. Parker openly condemned the law as "a hateful statute of kidnappers, a bloodhound law which encouraged law enforcement and ordinary citizens to conspire with bounty-hunters and kidnappers to entrap free blacks and former slaves and return them to slavery. Parker and Craft, together with other blacks and whites, people of faith and clergy, formed a Vigilance committee to defend the free African American community. The Crafts themselves became the target of kidnappers, and the Vigilance Committee took up arms to protect them. Ellen and William were separated to better protect them, with William in the care of the Vigilance Committee and Parker harboring Ellen in his own home, which made him the target of huge fines and imprisonment if discovered. The kidnappers were driven out of Boston, but the Crafts could no longer remain safe on Northern soil. The Vigilance Committee raised enough money to send the Crafts to England to live as free persons and start their family. Before they left, realizing they had never been legally married as enslaved persons did not have that right, Parker married the Crafts in his congregation. With a Bible and a sword, he charged Ellen and William to cherish and defend their freedom, body and soul, above all else. At the time, Parker was criticized for his rash actions by other Unitarian ministers at the time for breaking the law, putting himself in danger and the safety of the congregation at risk. But he stood strong and clear in his call. Listen to his words from the sermon on 1851 On the Fugitive Slave Law: I have in my church black men [and women], fugitive slaves. They are the crown of my apostleship, the seal of my ministry. It becomes me to look after their bodies in order to 'save their souls.' This [Fugitive Slave] law has brought us into the most intimate connection with the sin of slavery. I have been obliged to take my own parishioners into my house to keep them out of the clutches of the kidnapper. Yes, gentlemen, I have been obliged to do that; and then to keep my doors guarded by day as well as by night. Yes, I have had to arm myself. I have written my sermons with a pistol in my desk, loaded... and ready for action. Yes, with a drawn sword within reach of my right hand. This I have done in Gundlach, 2

3 Boston; in the middle of the nineteenth century; been obliged to do it to defend the [innocent] members of my own church, women as well as men! The Crafts returned to the United States after the Civil War to establish schools for freed African Americans. Theodore Parker never lived to see the end of slavery in his lifetime, but Ellen and William Craft and their children did. Theodore Parker s vision remained, touching the hearts of generations of leaders to come. You might recall these words, often attributed to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I can see, it bends towards justice. Church has many purposes in the world. Church can be a shelter for healing and a retreat, a place of safety for our souls to be free. Our Unitarian tradition reminds us that freedom, body and soul, is the essence of our very humanity. Our Universalist tradition reminds us that God s love embraces all life, and that all bodies have inherent worth dignity regardless of their race, class, gender, age or ability. Throughout our history, our Unitarian Universalist tradition has not existed merely within our walls, praised and worshiped in the beauty of our sanctuaries. When you hear the story of Theodore Parker and the Crafts, you know that our faith calls us to take great risks to protect, defend, and promote human freedom, worth and dignity, beyond the walls of our churches. All Souls knows this imperative deep in our bones. There have been times in our history that this church has chosen to forsake what was comfortable and safe to help promote the dignity of the most vulnerable. Courageous men and women of All Souls took the welcome beyond the walls of the church to in order to minister to the world. All Souls has many stories to remember our Heart and Soul Outreach Programs is celebrating its 25 th year of neighborhood services. Last Friday night, the dedication and service of the volunteers was honored. Over the next few months, you will be hearing more of the stories, including the one Taryn told this morning. As a part of Heart and Gundlach, 3

4 Soul, our AIDS Task Force poster campaign on buses, we were visibly standing on the side of love, inviting people living and dying to worship and feel welcomed. Our welcome moved us out of our walls into the city, into the hospitals. Ministers and lay people worked together to offer care for people whose bodies and souls needed welcome and protection, and ministered to the city in a deeply homophobic and fearbased time. We have so many stories that need to be told, celebrated, and shared, both from our past and our present. As we have just come up on the one year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, I remember the hub that All Souls became last year for many months of relief and recovery work. We were out in the world being the welcome beyond the walls of the church, helping people clean and fix their flooded houses, offering hospitality and being the shelter for others. The high school youth group today is sharing about their service trip to New Orleans, which they are planning to do again this summer. There is amazing work happening in our service and outreach programs. I hope too that our stories will not just be shared within our walls, but with the media, with our neighboring congregations, with our denomination. Perhaps we might join Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country, who are responding to issues by participating in the Standing on the Side of Love campaign, known for their yellow shirts and amazing public witness demonstrations. I wonder where our call will take us next. What vision of the world do we have what must be ended to make that world so? What risks are we willing to take to make that world reality? How might we be of service? We might find ourselves in unfamiliar places and unfamiliar neighborhoods we may find ourselves in prisons, shelters and clinics. Might our welcome call us into the streets? We might find ourselves on the steps of City Hall, Albany or the halls of Washington D.C.. We might our find ourselves tossed across the globe. Where in the world might our ministry really matter to people and help change their lives? In yoga, there is a concept known as taking the practice off the mat. Yogi Seane Corn uses this concept as the basis for her practice. In yoga, service is called Gundlach, 4

5 seva. Seane was first a passionate AIDS activist, driven by anger at injustice and from her own personal trauma. Her need for spiritual grounding and personal growth drove her onto the yoga mat, where she learned to heal and nurture her body and soul. After years of personal healing and growth, she noticed that she had stopped her activism all together. She was successful, and yet she wasn t giving back. And so she started serving. After a series of life-changing experiences, including one in India with trafficked children, she made the decision to devote her life to engaging the power of the 20- million or so members of the yoga community in meaningful service. She created the organization Off the Mat, Into the World as a way to invite the yoga community to broaden the idea of yoga practice to include body-soul-service. For Seane, the purpose of spiritual practices is for us to deepen our capacity to respond to the world with compassion and love instead of fear and reactivity, the source of so much violence, destruction and human cruelty. In service, our faith is tested and strengthened. It s not always comfortable, but transformation does not hold comfort as a priority. Friends, I invite you to join me in taking our ministry of the mat, moving beyond our walls and into the world. We are called to be beacon of hope for a hurting world, to make it more just, loving and kind. We are the voice of our faith in the world and our hands are the hands of change. We are prepared. We have this sanctuary to return to when we are weary, and to invite others in who are in need of healing. Our sanctuary is only made safe by our commitment to defend the freedom we cherish. We must risk our comfort to work towards true transformation. As we learn from our history, we know that we will be changed, as will our living tradition. May our souls and bodies be strengthened for the long journey ahead, and may we always have faith that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. Amen Gundlach, 5