Sermon: Trouble the Waters

A young man arrives at his evening custodial job at the Montessori school down the street from his home in Fort Worth, TX. He’s been working here for seven years while in High School and college. His mother is the CEO and his sister is the principal of the school. When he arrives he’s told that the alarm was set off earlier by accident and that the other custodian on duty already called it in as a false alarm. This is not a big deal, alarms get set off all the time when you work a night job. As he starts doing his rounds, the man begins to feel a migraine coming on so he turns off the lights in the classroom where he’s working and puts his head down on the desk.

 

The next thing he knows there is a loud rapping on the classroom window and a bright light shining in his eyes. A police officer barges in.

 

The man explains to the officer that he is a janitor at the school, his mother is the CEO. He pulls out his wallet to show his I.D. and his electronic entry card.

The officer does not look at either.

When the man starts calling his mother to let her know the police are there and she needs to come identify him, the officer tells him to: “Put the phone down before I have to put my hands on you.”

As he closes the menu on his phone and starts to put his hands above his head, and says “Sir, please don’t put your hands on me, I will comply.”

The officer replies, “You know what?”

Then he grabs the man’s wrist, twists it around his back, slaps cuffs on him, and informs him he is, “Resisting arrest.”

When the man asks what he is being arrested for, the officer simply says, “Resisting.”

Eventually, the man’s mother arrives and convinces the police to let him go before he is taken to the police station.

The young man in this story is Raziq Brown. He is Unitarian Universalist. He is currently serving our UU Central East Region as the Youth and Young Adult Coordinator. I’ve met Raziq and we worked together at Goldmine this summer. From what I can tell he is a fairly public UU figure.

I’d like to share with you something Raziq wrote to me about what happened to him: He said, “In the space of an hour, a police officer threatened to hurt me, threatened to arrest me on several bogus charges— including resisting arrest. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news lately, but young black men are shot by cops for “resisting arrest” all the time. I cannot stress this enough: You have no idea how scary it is when a man with a gun tells you that “You’re fighting and trying to walk away from me” when you’re standing still.

You are powerless to comply further, because you are already complying. You are complying and yet you know something terrible is still happening.”

Right after his experience with the police, Raziq posted about it on Facebook. There, he reported what happened to him in a matter of fact way.

After he wrote this post, people started responding. And some of them responded by praising him for his calm and measured response to the incident.

What if he’d been angry? What if his post about the incident had not been calm and measured?

How people might have responded then? I wonder if someone might have told him to calm down, to just not be so angry?

Why not be angry? This incident calls for anger and indignation at a system that still allows and in fact, encourages and rewards this type of abuse of power. The way in which Raziq shared his experience online was simply him being his authentic self. But if someone else’s response is anger, we need to honor that authentic response, too.

We just sang together, “God’s gonna trouble the water.” There are different interpretations of this line and it’s meaning. And as UUs, we have many meanings for the word “God.” I like to think of God as a force for good in the world. Martin Luther King, Jr told us, ”History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily… We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men and women willing to be co-workers with God.”

We are being called to be co-workers with God to trouble the waters of the racist system in which we are living. In other words, we are being called to take action to disrupt the system. Regardless of our immediate responses to incidents of racial profiling and abuses of white privilege and power, angry or calm, grief stricken or outraged, we MUST take action to disrupt the status quo – to get in there and be co-workers with God and trouble the waters.

ALL black lives matter. Not just the Unitarian Universalist lives like Raziq, not just the lives society has decided are to be valued because they fit into some notion of what is acceptable (calm and measured) behavior from a black person. Because as we have seen again and again, this system oppresses people based on the color of their skin, regardless of upbringing, education, religion, money, or demeanor.

Harassment and abuse and worse is happening daily to people of color all over our country. I know Raziq because we are both UUs who work with Youth. He shared his story and gave me permission to use it today. He is also one of many black UUs who is asking us, as a people of faith – their faith – to actively engage with the Black Lives Matter movement. 

 

Black Unitarian Universalists, are calling for all Unitarian Universalists to engage in the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the 2015 General Assembly, an action of immediate witness was adopted recognizing “that the fight for civil rights and equality is as real today as it was decades ago and urging member congregations to take initiative in collaboration with local and national organizations fighting for racial justice against the harsh racist practices to which many black people are exposed.”

At the end of July, a dozen Black UUs gathered in Cleveland, OH with over 1,500 other Black Americans to “build, heal, learn, and organize.” The UUs gathered as a people of faith caucus and stated that their Unitarian Universalist faith calls them to insist that Black Lives Matter. They state that they see a direct link between our UU 7 Principles and the Movement for Black Lives, and they created the 7 Principles for Black Lives. They wrote, “Our hope is that this direct connection between our faith & the fight for Black liberation will make clear the URGENT need for all those who call themselves Unitarian Universalists to declare, without caveat or clarification, that Black Lives Matter.” ( https://medium.com/@BlackLivesUU/the-7-principles-of-black-lives-8afb62c797ab )

The First of the 7 UU Principles is, The inherent worth and dignity of every person.

The First of the 7 Principles of Black Lives is, All Black Lives Matter which states:

“Queer Black lives, Trans Black lives, formerly incarcerated Black lives, differently-abled Black lives, Black women’s lives, immigrant black lives, Black elderly and children’s lives. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER and are creators of this space. We throw no one under the bus. We rise together.”

They continue, “The Movement for Black Lives calls on the Unitarian Universalist faith — a faith willing to make the bold proclamation that each person inherently matters — to live up to that claim by working toward a future in which black lives are truly valued in our society. We call on UUs to actively resist notions that black lives only matter if conformed to white, middle-class norms, and to challenge assumptions of worth centered around clothing, diction, education, or other status. Our value is not conditional.”

So how do we engage with the Black Lives Matter movement? I for one, on a personal level, am challenging myself to talk about this more. I will wear my Black Lives Matter bracelet and engage in conversations on the street and on the subway when or if people ask me about it. The more I learn, the more I want to do. I want to get in there and trouble the waters with all of you. I know that bracelets, banners, t-shirts, and posts on Facebook are not enough. I also know that I will make mistakes and I will stumble and even fall down sometimes, and I will be uncomfortable. And yet, my discomfort is nothing compared to the discomfort people of color experience every day in this country. The one thing I do not want to do is be paralyzed by my fear of making mistakes in this work. Or be paralyzed by the overwhelming nature of the task.

On a congregational level, I would like to see us support a local Black Lives Matter chapter by asking them how we may be involved in meaningful and supportive ways.

I want to know what you are already doing and involved with that supports the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a congregation of do-gooders in the best possible way. I know that most of you have devoted your lives in some way or another to working for the common good. You are teachers and mid-wives and doctors and social workers and therapists and activists.

We have a group here at First Unitarian called Weaving the Fabric of Diversity that has been racial justice work for nearly 20 years. They are a small but mighty group of about 15 people who over the past two years have hosted a forum on Ferguson, they have hosted many discussions and some anti-racism trainings. A small group of us joined the big Black Lives Matter march in Manhattan last year. Weaving has joined in calling for police accountability in the deaths of Kyam Livingston and Eric Garner. They also have a full calendar for this year, including forums on Syria and the refugee crisis. All this is in addition to their work in maintaining relationships with the local Haitian and Muslim communities through annual events and fundraisers. 

If you are interested in working for racial justice I encourage you to go to the Weaving table in the undercroft during coffee hour to sign up to be involved and watch the church bulletin for announcements of their upcoming events. Join the discussion, The Language of Oppression, here on Sunday, Oct 25th. We need someone to come forward to lead a group from First U to participate in the Rise Up October National March and rally on Saturday, Oct 24th in Washington Square Park.

But most of all, as a white person, I challenge other white people in this congregation, like I challenge myself, to continually work to unlearn the racism we’ve has been taught by our culture. To challenge racism whenever you encounter it, overt and covert racism. I challenge you to be an ally and to be a listener, rather than a speaker. I challenge you to not be so comfortable in your own skin.

And speaking of being uncomfortable, writing this sermon was very challenging for me and early versions of it included unintended micro-aggressions and subtle racism. I never could have done it without the help of Lynn Chandhok. Lynn – thank you so much for your honesty, your advice, and your patient guidance in helping me write this sermon.

We are a heretical faith and we are and have been a counter-cultural movement for justice. From the early Unitarians and Universalists in Europe to the abolitionists of the 1800s and the civil rights activists of the ‘50s and ’60’s, to the marriage equality activists of today and the contemporary UUs fighting for reproductive rights here, and gay rights in Uganda, we get in there and we trouble the waters. If we do uphold the notion that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere, then we need to do more than we are doing now.

One young adult UU leader, Elizabeth Nguyen, reminds us “It is better to have an imperfect movement for racial justice, than no movement at all.”

We are called by our faith to make change. Let our answer be YES we will disrupt the system; we will trouble the waters.