Sermon: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor

When Dr. Craig Spencer took his temperature a few weeks ago and saw that it was

100.3, he went to the nearest hospital and was diagnosed with Ebola. You probably

know the story: he had recently come back from treating Ebola patients in Guinea

and he had been enjoying his time home in New York, going out with his fiancé and

friends, and celebrating a job well done. He had followed the Doctors Without

Borders guidelines meticulously, taking his temperature twice a day, taking his

Malaria pills, staying close to a hospital, and calling as soon as he became aware of

symptoms. He was admitted to the hospital immediately, he was successfully

treated, reportedly played banjo in the isolation unit, and was released Ebola-free

last week. It sounds like the plot of a compact story with a nice narrative arc and a

happy ending, right?

Except that the story didn’t end there. When Spencer was admitted to the hospital,

the news of an Ebola diagnosis in New York City spread like wildfire. All of the

apocalyptic nightmares popularized by movies like Contagion and books like The

Hot Zone came roaring to life in the public imagination. All the fears about

contamination from an ethnic “other” rose to the surface. And the immediate

response from the panicked public and even more panicked politicians was

quarantine and isolation. Now everyone who had had contact with Spencer had to

be quarantined. Everyone returning from medical work in Ebola-stricken countries

had to be quarantined. People were clamoring for an end to all air travel between

the U.S. and West Africa.

This despite the fact that the medical community opposed these quarantines and

restrictions. A mandatory quarantine for volunteers, already risking their lives to

serve overseas, would turn a two-week commitment away from work and family

into a four-week commitment. They’d be much less likely to do it. Restricting air

travel would make it harder for medical supplies and personnel to get to where they

were most needed. The calls for isolation persisted despite the fact that, in Spencer’s

case, the Doctors Without Borders guidelines worked exactly as they were supposed

to and nobody contracted Ebola from contact with him. The system worked and yet

the fear prevailed. Isolate them, isolate us. That’s the reflexive, go-to, default fear

position. Isolation.

It’s such a primal, early kind of fear response. In times of crisis we humans regress

to a primitive “us” versus “them” mentality. Keep our tribe safe at all costs. No

matter that other humans in other tribes will suffer as a result. And no matter that in

the long run, we will suffer too. Just keep the disease away from me.

When others are in need, instead of opening our hearts to them, we sometimes have

an instinct to protect ourselves from that need – to protect ourselves from being

infected by whatever caused it. Our own feeling of scarcity, of not having enough,

rears its head. It’s as if we fear that vulnerability itself is contagious and that by

opening ourselves too much to it, we will lose ourselves. The mortality of others

reminds us of our own. The fears and insecurities of others trigger our anxieties.

Others’ neediness can be terrifying. It can feel, and in fact it can be, bottomless. We

fear that if we let them, they will drag us down to the bottom of some emotional

ocean.

Think of that elderly relative who’s always calling to talk endlessly about their

health problems. Think of that panhandler who is always in the same place with the

same story scrawled on the same piece of cardboard. Think of that famished Indian

child on the Unicef poster. Think of the woman you run into sometimes who, if you

dare to make eye contact, will hijack your morning and talk and talk and talk

because she has no one else to talk to. Think of the poor guy on a first date who

commits the cardinal sin of admitting that he is lonely. We humans tend to treat

such people as if they had Ebola.

Except in communities like this one, where we at least strive to do it differently.

Here we are guided by the twin ideals of Unitarianism and Universalism.

Unitarianism teaches that a fundamental oneness undergirds all of reality. That we

are all truly one – there is no “them,” there is only “us.” You cannot isolate disease or

contain suffering in a far away place, because there is no far away place – there’s

only our one fluid planet shared with all our brothers and sisters. Our fates are all

intertwined. And our Universalism teaches the ideal of love for all. No amount of

need, no personal or national failure disqualifies you from that love. That love is

willing to risk everything to manifest itself in acts of kindness. To isolation and

quarantine, it answers connection and compassion.

You’re probably familiar with the poem by Rev. Martin Niemoller. There are

different versions of it, but this may have been the original one:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–

     because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the incurably sick, and I did not speak out–

     because I was not incurably sick;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–

     because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for the people in countries occupied by Nazi Germany, and I did not

speak out–

     because I was not in a country occupied by Nazi Germany;

Then they came for me–

     and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Isolation is not the answer. Isolation will not protect us. Isolation is, in fact, the

problem. The medical community has warned us that the best way, maybe the only

way, to keep us safe from Ebola is to reach out to help where the epidemic is the

worst. The true best way to keep our tribe safe is to ensure the health and wellbeing

of everyone else’s tribes.

Likewise, the best way to protect ourselves from being lonely and heartsick is to

build a community that embraces the lonely and the heartsick. The best way to

avoid being poor is to create a society that eradicates poverty. The best way to not

wind up an outcast in the Undercroft at Coffee Hour is to create a culture where no

one is an outcast. This is where the rubber meets the road here, in how we practice

in this community. This place is the perfect petri dish to culture our values as

Unitarians and Universalists, knowing that all of us will have times and ways in

which we need and times and ways in which we are in a position to give. Lodz spoke

so beautifully about the power of vulnerability – encouraging today’s new members

and everyone else to take a risk with a leap of faith into this community. The flip

side of this same coin is that it is incumbent on us, all of us, to be there ready to

catch them when they leap.

It’s our job to notice when someone is taking a risk, sharing something of

themselves, or even just coming up to one of us as a stranger to say hello. It’s our job

to listen, really listen to what he or she is saying, not just with voices but with their

eyes and bodies. In the words of one of our dharma statements, to bring our “gift of

listening to others in need.” It’s incumbent on us as Unitarian Universalists to

cultivate connection and compassion, welcoming the stranger into our midst.

These are also the principles on which this country is founded, although you would

never know it to hear today’s immigration debates. The text at the base of the Statue

of Liberty reads, “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to

breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the

homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” It’s a

wonderful image of lifting the lamp, inviting in, uniting and welcoming the universal

needy.

In this sense Dr. Craig Spencer is both the ideal American and the ideal Unitarian

Universalist – a man who, when he learned of a need, a suffering, a life-threatening

vulnerability, did not avoid it, but got on a plane and flew into the heart of it. He gave

of himself and he risked his life to help heal the world. And then, when he was sick,

when his temperature was 100.3 and he was scared and vulnerable, he reached out

for help and let himself be cared for and nursed back to health. May we, too, fly into

the heart of need. May we, too, lean on one another in our own darkest hours. May

we here at First U answer quarantine and isolation with connection and

compassion.