“And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Galatians 6:9)
When I was a senior in high school in 1966, our choir was invited to perform for the Rotary Club annual convention. The Rotary Club itself was not unfamiliar to us; every classroom had a small plaque posted on the wall by the door showing the Rotarian Four-Way Test. “Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” I read those words every day for six years, and I can still recite them in my sleep! The Rotary Club sponsored achievement awards and recognized students who were graduating, and I remember attending the senior luncheon they sponsored and feeling very grown-up, realizing this was a threshold point in our lives. I really did not consider the wider relevance of the Rotary Club as a senior in high school, though; I couldn’t have put a face to any name, and I had no knowledge of their purpose. I had more pressing things to consider, preparing to leave for college and say goodbye to an environment that was both familiar and yet too constricting. I am sure it wouldn’t have occurred to me then that these people were a representation of integrity, faith, and compassion that was the backbone of a great America. They were blue collar and white collar, liberal and conservative, firmly established and just getting started, dads and granddads. But they loved their community and they believed in working together to make it better. They believed there was hope and a future. They believed in encouraging the next generation. America still worked together for a common cause. And I later learned that they opened every meeting by reciting that Four-Way Test. They took it seriously and it was woven into their decisions as they planned their goals. They still have it today.
Our choir director viewed this performance as a special event for us. Knowing we would be performing at the end of the closing banquet, he chose to start with “Love and Marriage”, a light-hearted favorite about the inevitability of meeting a sweetheart, falling in love, and getting married. The men smiled and nodded along with the tempo, thinking no doubt that they would soon be going home to their own happy families and all was well in their world. Life in America was predictable and good. Although the sixties had its own set of problems, among these men there was a belief that citizens working together with their neighbors could make things better in the world. When we finished the song, there was a round of applause, and then a pause to allow the mood to adjust as we prepared for our second song. When everything was quiet, we began
“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-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
This 1883 poem by Emma Lazarus, written to raise money to purchase the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, today appears on a plaque on the statue. In 1949, Irving Berlin set the poem to music, and it has endured as a patriotic and civic performance selection to this day. It is a stirring testimony to the heart and soul of an America that reaches out to oppressed people the world over and offers sanctuary and hope; an embrace of faith that love will find a way. When we finished singing, the room was utterly silent, and although we had been trained not to make eye contact with the audience, I had to sneak a look to see why no one was responding. I was amazed to see a roomful of grown men with tears in their eyes. Not because they didn’t like the song, but because they were so moved by the sentiment. After a minute, they began applauding. Being a teen-ager who loved to sing in choir, I went home happy that we had enjoyed an evening in which we did something well and had fun at it. Although I didn’t dwell on the implications of their reaction to that song, not then, I filed it away in my heart.
My desire to understand the ones on the other side of the political divide has caused me to question much of what I believed growing up. I have heard many others say the same thing. I was able to be quiet and get along for a while, especially to keep peace in my extended family, but when my faith in what Jesus says began to be challenged, I had to do some painful questioning about which road I would take. I had to ask how people can be good people and still not follow the teachings of Jesus. I had to learn what it means to love those who don’t believe what I believe. And that whole big question about not judging the other who supports injustice—that is such a very hard question to wrestle with, because I am not fit to judge another person. I believe more than ever now that people need our love and not our judgment.
Consider Matthew 10:37, where Jesus says, “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me”. This was hard when it came to people who raised me and formed me and who I trusted to know the truth. Sometimes their truth did not match my understanding of the teachings of Jesus, and they couldn’t explain why, and they would turn away from me rather than admit there was a gap between what they wanted and what I believed God wanted. I have spent a lot of time listening, way more than I have talking. If it mystifies me, I sit with it till I feel the Spirit nudging me; I don’t try to force an answer just so I will get the confusion behind me. I have been told by those I love, when I chose to follow the way of Jesus rather than the way of the world, “You don’t understand how the world works.” Those words were meant to silence me because the position I took was truth, and the accuser had no answer for the words of Jesus. I understand this; after all, how can you feed hungry people if you believe your supply is limited, even if Jesus says you are to feed the hungry? How can you welcome the immigrant and the stranger when you believe you must instead use your money to protect yourself from your enemy, even if Jesus tells you that you must welcome the immigrant and the stranger? The world is hard and so much of it is based on greed and fear; and it is true, if we live by the world’s rules, the words of Jesus will not work. You can’t do both. I think this is why Jesus said we must choose. We will not survive in this world by trying to live on fear, once we know the truth. That is the reason our souls are so restless for justice today.
Many of us have felt the pain of losing our America, the America we believed we could trust and offer to others as a beacon of welcome and support if they needed sanctuary. In my adult lifetime, America has tried to reinvent itself to become an angry, selfish, unwelcoming and heartless place toward anyone who does not serve its own interests; and America’s interests are increasingly dictated by the powerful elite who can manipulate the laws and ignore justice. I wish I understood it better, this rise in stubborn resistance toward others that has seemed to weaken our nation. I am not even sure Donald Trump understands what he has done to us. I don’t understand the alleged insider trading, the stock market manipulation, the threats of tariffs one day and removing them the next, and the clever fast-talking we get from the administration to smooth over any concerns we may have about possible issues caused by their decisions. I am not comfortable in my soul believing much that I am told by an administration that acts with such seeming disregard for its people, though. I know others see it differently and I respect their right to hold their own opinion. I am not an expert. I simply wish I could feel trust for my leaders.
My Dutch grandmother sailed to America from Rotterdam in 1910, with a toddler and a baby in her arms. (It surprises me that my family never talked about this during my childhood, or in fact in the whole of my father’s life. Now that my parents are gone, and all their siblings, I am just beginning through archives to try to learn the family history.) The ship carried just under 600 first and second-class passengers, along with the 1800 steerage passengers of which my grandmother and her children were a part. Steerage passengers sailed in the belly of the ship, where they were grouped together in large areas with no privacy. They slept on iron cots with straw mattresses and shared a few communal bathrooms. My grandmother spoke no English. She was following my grandfather who had arrived in America a few months earlier to set up a place for his family. I don’t know if you have seen pictures of Ellis Island in the 1900’s, and the many immigrants arriving and filing through the lines to be registered. Keith and I visited there a few years ago and it was truly an experience to imagine my grandmother with those two babies, being pushed and shoved by a crowd she couldn’t communicate with. How did she ever do it? Where did she get the faith and courage to follow that path? Ellis Island itself was no easy feat. Once arriving, the immigrants had to endure multiple physical exams, psychological tests, and proof they were fit for work. I can imagine the clerks were tired and stressed and doing their best to be kind and patient. I simply thank God that my grandparents had the faith and the courage to follow the Spirit’s leading.
Maybe this is why it breaks my heart to see the administration be so cruel and selfish toward the immigrants today who need America’s welcome and instead are turned away. It goes against everything I believe, everything Jesus teaches us, to turn our back on those who are fleeing persecution or poverty and tell them it isn’t our problem. My heart says it is our problem, just as surely as if it were me asking for refuge, just as surely as if it were my grandparents. How can my America fund ICE agents’ use of body cameras that will only share the footage at their own discretion? How can we fund electric shock gloves that come with a warning not to use them on pregnant women or the elderly or the disabled, and trust that ICE in the heat of the moment will heed the warning? How can we even consider instruments of torture to be used on anyone, for anything? These are our brothers and sisters. How can we allow them to be rounded up and imprisoned in facilities where the immigrants are being denied their life-sustaining medications and medical treatments? Where they are being fed meals that are not fit to eat? Where they are neglected when they ask for intervention, and some of them are dying? And tell me this: If you knew you would be sent to one of those facilities because of being arrested by ICE, wouldn’t you run? As followers of Jesus, we are not allowed to be complicit in cruelty, or to turn our backs on abuse or neglect. I can only hear Jesus saying, “…. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
So today I find myself thinking very often about that evening in 1966 and that song that moved grown men to tears because it touched something in their hearts that was true and good and hopeful. I find myself singing that song again in my heart, for my grandmother who spoke no English and had the courage to start again; and for the immigrants today who hide and wait and pray they will somehow escape one more change in the law that sweeps them up and forces them to leave after they have done everything they were told to do. And I pray to God for justice. I wonder what our America would look like if we had an administration that posted that Four-Way Test beside every doorway, and began every meeting by reading it, and understood the importance of hope and a future for everyone, rich and poor alike.
Sometimes it seems too big to fix. It seems too knotted to unravel. We have been stunned by the sheer consternation of it all, the rudeness for which we were unprepared, and we just don’t know what to do. So, we listen, we pray, we sit with it, we lament, we mourn what we have lost, we ask God to set us back on the right path. But we don’t turn away. Because the God we serve has promised us, we are on the right side. We can be assured as Paul tells us in Romans 8:37, “but despite all this, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us enough to die for us.” This is the best news, for we are free from the world’s injustice, and we can answer it with love. For the sake of our brothers and sisters, we find our center again; we hear the Spirit leading us to answer the call in whatever way we are blessed to answer. Then we get up and put one foot in front of the other, refreshed and renewed, because we are never alone, and love never fails.
Let us pray: Dear Lord, we are grateful for your constant presence. Help us to nurture hope in the world around us. If we are weary, remind us to reach out for companionship and to help another weary traveler along the path. May we recognize the light in our brothers and sisters and celebrate your blessings every day with thanksgiving. Give us strength for the journey. Forgive us our misunderstandings and grant us peace the world over. In the name of Jesus. Amen.