Texts: Exodus 1: 12-14, 22 – 2-10
A River of Humanity, and a Basket of Pitch
[Following Steve’s sermon is a beautiful rendition of the hymn
“Shall We Gather at the River”
Sung by Brian Cheney]
Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”
Exodus 1:22
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I want you to notice the basket first of all. It’s made of sticks and reeds, coated with a sticky mixture of pitch and tar that binds it together. It’s not pretty, but the ones who made it weren’t doing it for aesthetic reasons. They did it to save a life, perhaps many lives. Note the basket, made of whatever materials were at hand. The basket is a life raft, upon which hope floats.
Next, notice the child, floating in that basket upon the river. He is placed there in an act of desperation, for hunters had come to find the child. And so his mother makes a bargain only the devil could devise: face the certain death of her child, or to cast him onto the river, where he might drown, where he might starve, where he might become prey to some other creature, or…where he might be rescued, where he might just survive. Consider the child, entrusted to the flow of the river.
Now pay attention to the decree, and the one who made it. The Pharaoh is the ruler of Egypt, and he has a problem on his hands. For years, the Hebrew people had been a captive population, performing the labor the Egyptians wouldn’t do for themselves – building, cleaning, serving. But they reproduced at a rate greater than the Egyptians themselves. The captives would soon outnumber the captors, which has a way of making those maintaining brutal, or asymmetrical relations of power quite nervous. Just ask the French in Saint-Domingue, what later became Haiti. Ask the 18th and 19th century plantation owners in the Carolinas. Ask the Israelis, now facing the same reality with Palestinians. The Egyptians, in other words, confronted the problem of a surplus humanity, too many extra people, and so the Pharaoh devised a solution: Hebrew boys would simply not be permitted to live. Every Hebrew boy born after the decree would be drowned in the Nile. The girls, however, could live. Consider the decree, a solution to the problem of a surplus humanity.
Shift your focus once more, this time toward the women in the story. One is a Hebrew mother, desperate to save her child. When the hunters come, she devises a plot, disobeying the Pharaoh’s decree for the sake of her child, for the sake of all children, for the sake of human life everywhere. It is a woman burdened with concern who creates the basket that floats, a life raft for the child, shaped by pitch and tar, by prayers and by tears.
But I want you to notice another woman as well. She too is on the banks of the river, though far downstream from the Hebrew woman. This second woman is the Pharaoh’s daughter. And she is troubled in her heart and mind. She lives in the seat of power. She is the recipient of privileges and advantages that would have been unimaginable, certainly to the Hebrew women that serve her. But she has heard the rumors – of children drowned, and of mothers bereft. She is unsettled by it all, but she is paralyzed by her position, by her privilege, by the hand of fate, which placed her in the palace.
Now consider the cry. The cry is what interrupts the stasis and paralysis of Pharaoh’s daughter. The cry is what quickens her conscience, what sets her in motion, what changes everything for her, but for the very course of history as well. When she hears the cry coming from the basket of pitch and tar, she knows immediately what it must mean, and she knows what she must do. She disobeys her father’s decree. She saves the child’s life, using whatever means of deception and sleight of hand she can employ in order to keep the child safe. In effect, she uses her position to shelter that life, floating in the basket of pitch and tar. Because of that courageous decision, to obey her conscience rather than the norms and laws being enacted around her, the Pharaoh’s daughter set the stage for a great reckoning, one that restored a captive people to their full dignity and humanity.
Hold onto each of those elements – a basket and a river, a human life and an inhuman decree, a woman of tears and a woman of defiance. And then hold onto the cry coming from the bulrushes, the catalyst that quickens the conscience, that alters the flow of history, that corrects a perennial imbalance that somehow, keeps on occurring. Hold onto them all, for we’ll need them in the journey ahead.
You know the rest of the story, I imagine. How the child grows to become a man named Moses, who encounters a god without a name burning like a flame, a Presence that gives him the courage to defy the power of the Pharaoh, and to insist on the humanity, and thereafter the autonomy, of a population deemed extraneous. The flame, the Presence, had been there all along – guiding a Hebrew mother, quickening the heart of an Egyptian woman – but it grows into a mighty conflagration, where those treated as the refuse of history are afforded their full humanity. It’s a flame that continues to burn.
The power of the story – of the basket and the child, the women and the flame – does not reside in its historicity. Its power resides in its universality, its capacity to name not only mythical realities, not only historical moments, but contemporary ones. The power of the story resides in its capacity to unmask processes and dynamics that occur in all times and places, and to supply a set of alternative choices and possibilities for behaving otherwise within a dehumanizing narrative. The story, together with all of its elements, is a window not into the past, but into the present.
There has always been such a thing as surplus populations. And there have always been techniques employed by the Pharaohs of the world for containing such a population, or for eliminating them altogether. Several among us just returned from Mexico, where we were reminded that 90% of the indigenous population in that region were killed – through slaughter or disease – during the Spanish conquest. The rest, like the Hebrews, were enslaved. But the same has been true here, of course. The process was different, though no less brutal. An indigenous population was killed, or enslaved, or contained. Likewise, a population of kidnapped Africans was put to work, building the infrastructure of the new world. In time, both came to be regarded as surplus populations. One strategy our country has used has been the reservation system for the indigenous. It’s a policy of containment, a kind of spatial prophylactic that prevents contact with the world outside. To put it crudely, a reservation is a kind of condom, preventing that population from touching the social body. Another strategy has been mass incarceration. After the US economy was deindustrialized in the 1970’s and 1980’s, whole swaths of urban dwellers who had migrated to industrial cities for work became human surplus, no longer necessary to the functioning of the economy. Most, though not all, were black. Prisons, in other words, have become a technique for warehousing extraneous populations. The story of the Hebrews helps us to understand the dynamic of surplus populations, and how the Pharoahs of the world find ways to neuter their humanity.
But the river helps us see something as well. The river represents the means of escape, a place just beyond the control of the Pharaoh. It is a place of movement, flowing through different geographies. It has a current. It has a flow. And it is, therefore, a relay system, where those who embark upon it at one end come to be received by those in another location. That’s what’s happening today among those who flow north from places like Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. They too are a population deemed extraneous. Indeed, it is, above all, that population that I’d like you to consider this morning. Some are fleeing violence. Some are fleeing poverty. Some flee a future of servitude, indentured to drug cartels. They leave parents, siblings, spouses, and children behind, all of whom fear for their safety on the river, but fear more for their safety at home. And so they enter the flow of the current, submitting to its power, its force, its flow. To enter that flow is an act of desperation, but also one of hope. It is an act remarkably similar to what the Bible deems faith, setting out without knowing the way. The river helps us to see the means of escape used by those deemed extraneous. There are people on that river. And there are hazards within that current.
But there are also baskets that are bearing those people along. They’re made of whatever materials or elements lay near to hand. The baskets represent the ingenuity, creativity, perseverance, and hope that keep everyone on that river afloat. But the baskets also represent the provisions and prayers offered by those on the banks. It’s the shelters, or the small acts of kindness along the way – a meal, a bed, a set of reliable directions. The basket is a makeshift device, hastily constructed, and prone to disintegration under duress. Still, there are baskets, and they do float upon that river, each of them bearing a unique and precious human life.
One such traveler is with us today. The flow of the current brought him north from Honduras, all the way here, to Old Lyme. His name is Jose, and he’ll be residing in our sanctuary space downstairs while he gets his bearings in this unknown place. Jose is 23, and he was a farmer. After a local gang tried to extort money from his farming operation, Jose was faced with the same decision confronting millions of others: to remain within a deadly situation, or to find the river, the line of flight, the means of escape. Jose said goodbye to what he knew. He chose the river. The current brought him through Mexico, and then into Texas, where he encountered rocky shoals, and dangerous rapids. First, he was picked up and detained at the border. After a month in a detention center in Texas, he was then transferred to Rhode Island, to an overflow facility for migrants called Wyatt. It’s just outside of Providence. From there, he was transferred to another facility, this one in Massachusetts, called Bristol. It’s not far from Boston. The current, the shoals, and the rapids, brought Jose to New England.
Jose was in detention for a total of five months. He was released a little more than a week ago, and he came to stay with us last Monday. Prior to that, the only thing he had seen of the United States was its detention centers, places not fit for animals he told us. Clearly, the rocky shoals and rapids of the river have threatened to capsize Jose. But he has been born along on a basket, supported by his own ingenuity, and by the efforts of a number of helpful people, basket makers who know how to keep people floating.
Here are a few of Jose’s basket makers. One of them is a friend named Alfredo, who was swept into the current after being pulled over for a random traffic stop. He was imprisoned, and was so moved by the stories he heard in detention, one of which was Jose’s, that he pledged to help when he got out. It was Alfredo who alerted Ben, an immigration lawyer in New Haven. Ben is helping Jose put together an asylum case. But then another important person was alerted. Vanesa is an ally and a partner in the sanctuary movement here in Connecticut. She works for the bail fund, an organization that provides bail for immigrants seeking release from detention. It was Vanesa who secured the funds necessary for Jose’s bail, and it was Ben and Vanesa working together that secured the conditions for his release. Alfredo, Ben, and Vanesa are extraordinary basket makers, skilled at using whatever materials are at hand to stabilize and secure a dangerous passage, which isn’t yet over.
Vanesa contacted me several weeks ago, and shared that the judge responsible for granting bail was unlikely to do so unless he was convinced that there is a support system in place for the detainee. And so if Jose had a letter from our congregation, along with letters from several other churches pledging their help, his case would be far more likely to succeed. I provided that letter. So did All Soul’s Unitarian Church in New London, and so did St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Norwich. Of the three, we at FCCOL had the greatest capacity to provide shelter and refuge for Jose while he gets on his feet, and so we were asked to provide it. That’s what we’ve been called to do, and so after speaking with our Deacons, our Immigration Committee, and our staff, we all agreed it was something we had to respond to – this is what we do. I want you to know that it was our pledge of sanctuary and support, along with that of All Souls and Saint Mary’s, that gave the judge the confidence to grant Jose his freedom. “Three churches!” he exclaimed during the hearing. We too have been tasked with helping to weave a basket that will keep Jose afloat.
But what of Pharaoh’s daughter, the one who hears the cry from within the current, and who finds her conscience on the banks of the river? I believe that role is a prophetic possibility that belongs to churches, as well as other institutions within our society. As often as not, the churches and other such institutions are a part of the palace structure, a child of the Pharaoh. They – we – are troubled in spirit about the reports from the edge of the empire, but are trapped in cocoons of privilege, prestige, and bottom lines. The challenge for those of us within these palace structures is to listen carefully, for there are cries coming from the bulrushes along the river. Having heard those cries, the question for churches, but also for all the other institutions that make up our civil society, is whether their – our – conscience will be quickened, and whether they will – we will – make moves to protect the ones floating in makeshift baskets upon the river. The question is whether churches and other institutions will play the role of the Pharaoh’s daughter, pulling the basket toward the shore, and protecting the life that resides there.
Now is the time to share that my hope for a renewed and reconstituted sanctuary movement in this country would be just that. A previous model of sanctuary occurred when those facing deportation took refuge in churches while their appeals process moved forward. That was the model we used with Malik and Zahida, but in the year since they left sanctuary, very few people have gone into sanctuary across the country, and very few have emerged. But there are asylum seekers, locked up on the border. And it turns out the US government is shipping those individuals to our own backyard here in New England. My dream is that this might represent a new model of sanctuary, where churches – and not only churches – go down to the riverside, hear the cries coming from the bulrushes, and pull the baskets to shore. To translate it from the language of metaphor, there are asylum seekers now in detention in places all around the country. And there are people who are helping to support those asylum seekers while they’re in detention. What congregations can do is to partner with supporters – basket makers – like Vanesa and Ben to get those asylum seekers released from detention while their cases proceed.
Thus far, it’s all of you, sitting here, that I’ve been speaking to. You’ll do your part, I know, and I want you to know how proud I am to be a part of such a place. But it’s really a much wider audience that I wish to address. It’s all of the churches, and all of the sister institutions that make up our religious and social fabric, that I wish to persuade. To all of them, I say: there are baskets of pitch and tar floating out there. Every asylum case that comes through the courts floats on such a basket. These are not, as some would have it, an extraneous or surplus population. They are precious children of God, with families far upstream who worry about them and pray for them. The challenge before us all is to learn to hear those cries from the bulrushes, and to pull the baskets to shore. What if every community that was troubled in spirit by what’s happening to asylum seekers quit wringing their hands on the shore, and waded into the current to retrieve one of those caught up in its flow? What if we all partnered with basket makers to pull one or two or several people safely to shore? What if, in other words, we all sensed the power of our most sacred stories, and we all chose to play the role of Pharaoh’s daughter in this inhumane and twisted moment of history?
