BREAKING THE SILENCE
First Week in the March to Jerusalem
The telling of the removal of the demon that makes a small boy mute, silent in his torment, is told in all three gospels. When the disciples ask Jesus why they could not remove this demon, Matthew has Jesus answer that they still have so little faith and that with the faith of a mustard seed they could move a mountain. Luke says jesus removed the demon and all just sat there amazed at his power. In Mark Jesus says, “this demon only comes out with prayer.”
I think all are true - it is the difference of the way people remembered what happened and the way they understood Jesus was teaching them, the lesson they were given.
What we know is that Jesus is beginning his journey to Jerusalem where he will confront wickedness and hypocrisy with his innocence – the innocence he seeks to give us in a world that seeks to call us criminals.
What we know is that he begins this journey – which he has prepared himself for on the mountain with his ancestors and with God – by healing a boy that is suffering because a demon is keeping him silent and making him suffer in silence.
The gospels are also clear about justice – and about the injustice of the situation we face in this country. That is why Jesus tells the parable of the workers. Those we came first thought they should be paid more than those who came later in the day – because they worked longer hours. But the master paid them all the same. He said, “It’s my money, I can do what I want with it”. For “money” read “justice,” for that is what Jesus is explaining. God gives no more justice to those who have been here longer - as long as the time since the genocide of the Native Americans - as long as since the time of slavery - as long as since the time of conquest and theft of the land, no more to them than he gives to those who recently swam the river or crossed the desert. In fact, he says, the first will be last and the last will be first!
What is happening in Washington this week is not a good thing for us. They are debating, first in the Senate, to come up with a bill that will give the dreamers legalization and perhaps a road to citizenship. The debate is what they will take away from everybody else if they give this to the dreamers. That is not the worst of it. Whatever they ass in the senate will go the house where the republicans have an absolute majority. The house has not even agreed to vote on the bill the senate passes. They have a much worse bill that definitely does not give the dreamers citizenship ever – and which will end family reunification and make it much easier to deport everyone else – and will cut legal immigration in half, admitting very few people of color from now on. Whatever the senate passes the house will make it worse.
Gone from the discussion is the thousands of Haitians, Salvadorans, Honduranians that Trump is taking their TPS status away, telling them to “get out of white America by Sundown!”
On top of all this Trump has given them a budget to pass which cuts food stamps, cuts medicare, cuts Medicaid – but increases the number of ICE agents by over a thousand. In the midst of all this Trump has turned up his rhetoric talking about the undocumented as criminals, killing and rapists, attacking U.S. citizens, holding rallies to stir up the people to “get rid of these criminals!”
Trump started this wicked process by ending the DACA program and giving the congress until next month to find a solution for the 800,000 dreamers who have signed up for DACA – and whom ninety percent of the nation supports and wants to legalize! Trump hopes that the bill that is finalized in Congress is so bad that democrats in the senate will vote against it and he can say “See the democrats could have saved DACA, we gave them a chance but they didn’t do it.”
Some people saw this coming. Congressman Gutierrez saw it coming and he called a meeting right here in this church to tell the people what was coming. Many among the dreamers saw it coming. They told the democrats that they would not be used as pawns to deport their parents and the eleven million. Together Gutierrez, a few other congressman and the leadership of the dreamers told the democrats, “vote only for a clean bill, a dream act that has no other parts to it, that does not make it easier to deport anyone else.” They told the democrats to get this dream act or refuse to vote for a budget, closing down the government. But the democrats folded - and so here we are.
Didn’t we do our job? Didn’t we come out of the shadows and convince the majority of people in this nation that it was wrong to separate families, that it was wrong to use workers forced to come here by what the U.S. did to their countries, employ them at cheap wages with no rights – and then throw them away when they numbers became to great for white sensibilities, that it was wrong for young people born here to have their families taken from them, that it was wrong for those brought here as babies to be denied the citizenship their friends have.
It was a long struggle. We defeated the fear that came from 9/11 and made our case at great risk and at great cost. We put ourselves before the nation to make them see the truth. Was it not enough to convince the majority, to show them the truth?
The racist structure of U.S. elections, a result of the history of segregation and slavery in this country, propelled these wicked men to victory. That is now a fact of history. Still now the country is awake and in three years we will move forward. Yet it is also a fact that we will live with this wickedness for nearly three more years.
How will we live with it? Will we let these demons keep us silent, suffering, watching each other suffer, unable to even speak truth, unable to gather in faith and solidarity with each other, unable to defend ourselves?
First we should take note of the most important fact in the story of Jesus and the boy and his father: Jesus healed the boy, called out the demon so that the boy was free and could speak, no longer in tortured silence, united with his father and his family! All three gospels agree on this fact – and the fact that Jesus went on to lead thousands in a march on Jerusalem.
Well I guess some will pray, some will get up and move the mountain and some will just be amazed! But let’s talk about what we must do.
Some say we must mobilize for the next elections in November. Good. We all agree. But remember 2016. Trump and the Republicans won in this crooked democracy by mobilizing thousands in rallies and demonstrations in state after state, carefully avoiding people of color. Clinton sent out mailings and made phone calls and had press conferences. You don’t win elections when your people are demobilized, sitting back watching T.V. or smoking dope. If we want to make gains in the elections we need to mobilize, consistently, bigger and bigger each week, each month.
No matter what is won in November we will have Trump or his Vice President, a worse racist, a dedicated racist, for three more years. Politicians and legislation will not protect our people. In our ministry, we have found our defense in sanctuary.
Sanctuary includes legal actions to protect what we have won. These are actions like the important one in California which has kept alive the right of dreamers to renew their DACA status. We are in the courts ow with new legal theories, These legal actions really just assert that the government can not promise you that you can stay in this country so that you make plans, buy houses, start families – and then just change its mind. We will see how these legal theories work.
We didn’t start the sanctuary movement when Elvira Arellano announced she was staying in our church in 2006. We began the sanctuary movement in the1990’s preparing workers for INS raids. Remember the skits that Jacobita and Guillermina used to do? We showed the workers how to keep watch and how to give warning, how to hide those without papers and how to obstruct the agents, sometimes physically. Yes we broke the law! You like the underground railroad stories of resistance to slavery? When the people made false identity papers they broke the law. When they hid people they broke the law. When they stood in the way of racists and kept them physically from capturing people, they broke the law. Some went to prison – and yes some were killed. They broke the law of the land but they kept the law of God!
Maybe we should remember that Jesus was killed – and we should definitely remember that he rose on the third day, a seed planted in the ground that became the corn, a united and spiritually renewed people of God! God proclaimed his innocence! From these next three years of struggle, of healing each other in common struggle, there will come a people made new that will transform this nation and perhaps the continent of the Americas!
Sanctuary is an act of civil disobedience by people willing to pay the consequence for their resistance. After we began the sanctuary in Chicago there formed a whole coalition called the new sanctuary something or other. The first thing they did was have lawyers draw up guidelines for what churches could legally do. That is why it took so long for churches to finally open their doors and resist evil. Sure, know and use the law but know that Sanctuary is illegal – but righteous!
Before Elvira’s Sanctuary we organized the largest marches in the history of this country, millions in city after city, the undocumented walking and chanting side by side with the citizens. Sanctuary is illegal and sanctuary is based on organized solidarity in action. That takes hard work and it takes heart, lots of heart.
Sanctuary is civil disobedience but sanctuary is also truth. Elvira’s sanctuary – and the testimony of people across this country, awoke this country to the wickedness of separating families, of deporting people who had been forced economically to come here by U.S policies, who had formed families and had children here. In the midst of action, of civil disobedience, we must keep the truth of our message out front.
Sanctuary is also a spiritual movement. In sanctuary we reject jealousy and competition and the corruption of the dollar, of grants and bribes. We replace ego with solidarity, arrogance with humility. We choose not to be like the oppressors we fight in the way we are with each other.
The young boy that was tortured by the demon suffered. He suffered because he could not speak. He had no voice. No one could join with him because no one could hear him. Listen to what the scriptures tell us: Jesus HEALED him!
Those dreamers whose lives in this nation are now threatened need to be heard. They cannot be left by the demons of hate and fear to torment and self-doubt. Their families, and the millions of those now threatened by the Trump administration need to be heard – heard by each other and hard by the nation. That is why we celebrate those dreamers who came forward and said “We will not be used as pawns in the efforts to deport our parents and any of the eleven million. Now we are called to insure that the whole next generation stands with them.
When Frances stands in sanctuary and when you stand with her you are healing many more, driving out the demons that would make them suffer in silence. When Miguel now is in his second week of a hunger strike and when you stand with him you are healing many more, driving out their demons.
When the father of the boy with the demon that made him suffer in silence was told by Jesus that he needed faith, the father replied, “Increase my faith!”
We have faith because God is working. We have faith because, legalized or not there is a whole generation of actually three million dreamers now young adults in the struggle no matter what their age. We have faith because there is now a new generation of over six million U.S. citizen sons and daughters with undocumented families they are prepared to fight for. That is an army of nine million that God has reserved for this fight. We have faith because Trump and the sheeted wicked cannot keep this nation from becoming a majority nation of people of color, for God has planted a people here to be like oaks of righteousness, to transform what the original genocide, slavery and conquest had placed on this land.
In each of our lives we live and persist through difficult situations – in personal relationships, in work, in addictions, in trauma, in disappointments of plans and dreams unfulfilled. Recovery is not easy and it does not happen overnight – but it comes if we persist, if we are patient with time and impatient with injustice, if we are humble and ready to make the change we want first a change in ourselves, if we trust the love God has placed in our hearts.
The season of Lent began this Wednesday. Some say it is a time for fasting, for denial. But best we heed the words of Isaiah about the kind of fasting the Lord wants. to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. In the seasons of scripture, Jesus is beginning his journey to Jerusalem. He will confront wickedness and hypocrisy with his innocence – the innocence he seeks to give us in a world that seeks to call us criminals. Many will be healed if we walk with him if we break the silence!
We don’t fear the crucifixion because we are sure of the resurrection – that those who carry the seed of righteousness, of love, of faith become the people of God, destined to inherit the earth! We will break the silence – and we will heal each other.
The Holy Scriptures for the First Week in the March to Jerusalem
Isaiah 58:6-12
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday
Matthew 20:8-16 The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Matthew 17: 14-20 Jesus Heals a Demon-Possessed Boy
When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him.15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” 17 “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.”18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” 20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”