SERVICE TO CELEBRATE THE RELEASE FROM SANCTUARY OF MALIK AND ZAHIDA
INTRODUCTION BY STEVE JUNGKEIT (audio only)
REMARKS BY MALIK AND ZAHIDA, Our sanctuary family (audio only)
REMARKS BY LINA TUCK, Chair of our Immigration Assistance Committee
CONCLUDING MESSAGE BY STEVE JUNGKEIT
RECESSIONAL MUSIC BY THE FUNKY DAWGS BRASS BAND!
LINA TUCK Celebration – Free from Sanctuary at Last
After 212 days in Sanctuary, Malik, Zahida and Roniya are now back in their beloved home and community of New Britain. It has been quite the journey for them and an even more incredible journey for all of us. Malik, Zahida, and Roniya’s presence have brought us so much joy and great fellowship. As much as I am so overwhelmingly happy for our dear friends, selfishly, I will miss them terribly.
I have received many calls and emails these past few days, thanking me for this great success. But to be honest, I cannot accept this accolade. It wasn’t me, it was all of you.
This church community’s willingness to help others and the passion we feel about the mission work we do is what has made this sanctuary work a success. I am but the facilitator, I do the asking, without your volunteerism we wouldn’t have been successful.
I will invite you in a few minutes to join me in a brief exercise that will demonstrate my point.
Let’s begin. For all those who volunteered:
- To help organize our first Immigrant Fundraiser last year on September 9th
- Donated an item for the fundraiser either food or for the silent auction
- Attended/supported the fundraising event
- Provided Financial Assistance to the FCCOL Immigrant Fund
And once Malik, Zahida, and Roniya arrived, for all those who volunteered on the:
- Legal and Research Team
- Advocacy Team
- Communications Team
- Family Health and Wellness Team
- Family Counseling and Medical Resource Team
- Education Team
- Food Team
- Laundry Team
- Overnight Sleepover Team
- Lead an activity (yoga, knitting, needlepoint, ESL lessons, pottery, drumming and music)
- Local and National Press, Writers and Performers
- Made a visit
- Came to play a game
- Participated in a potluck supper
- Bought groceries
- Organized or participated in a music circle
- Provided Massage therapy
- Had a playdate or shared an activity with Roniya
- Provided encouragement or a kind word
- Said a prayer with hope for justice
Please stand. Look around at one another, shake each other’s hand and say, Well Done!
It is your commitment and support for this work that has brought us all here today. Malik, Zahida, and Roniya could not have flourished without our collective love and support. I could not have organized this level of commitment without you.
Last April, when I first spoke to you about my own family’s immigrant story, I invited all of you to think about that one thing that could make a difference in someone’s life. That we would need many hands to make a change during this immigration crisis. I asked that we work together to keep our country strong through our acceptance of all that we are, a land of immigrants. You were the grace and love this family needed to make it through, I will say it again, well done!
Our immigration work however, is not over, we will walk with Malik and Zahida as their immigration case continues through the Immigration Court System. They will need to report to ICE for check ins and someone from our community will be with them at each visit. Their lawyer, Glenn Formica, will continue to work on a pathway to legal residency and he will need our research support.
We will continue to aid the cases we have been supporting for this past year. We hope that they too will find relief and a legal pathway to permanent residency. We continue to be ready to assist those who may seek our help in the future.
We pray for Sujitno and Dahlia who have been in Sanctuary at UU Meriden for over one year and Nelson at First and Summerfield New Haven, who is reaching his one-year anniversary in Sanctuary very soon. We wish that they too will find legal relief and are able return home to their families.
Today we celebrate, tomorrow we continue to do all we can for a fair and humane resolution to the immigration crisis that we are facing.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge Bill Slivinski. Bill, you have kept vigil over Malik, Zahida, and Roniya during their entire stay. You were the last person to see them each night, as you tucked in our beloved church building along with Malik, Zahida and Roniya. You welcomed us each morning by unlocking our church doors to continue our hopeful work. You ensured that any change in the normal rhythm of our church community was brought to attention. You were our quiet vigilant observer, making sure all was as it should be. Thank you.
STEVE JUNGKEIT
Texts: Acts 9: 1-19; I Corinthians 13: 4-13
The Greatest of These Is Love
And so what are we to say about these things? There are words of thanksgiving, and there is much for which to be thankful. There are words of encouragement and promises of ongoing support, because courage and ongoing support will be necessary in the months to come. But what are we to say about these things theologically? How has God been a part of this incredible endeavor of hospitality and compassion called Sanctuary? Deliverance from captivity is our theme for the morning, and there are stories about Moses, and about Jesus that get at the theme quite well. But it’s another form of deliverance that I’d like to emphasize, a deliverance of the spirit from a form of captivity. It’s found in the book of Acts, and it occurs when Saul encounters a loving presence on the road to Damascus. It’s a story that can be read as a parable for the immigration crisis we’re confronting in our country. And it’s also a story that serves as a parable for the experience of Sanctuary we’ve just come through.
You heard the narrative a few minutes ago. A kind of contagion has broken out in Jerusalem, as a group of renegade misfits has begun to proclaim a strange new faith, born from the teachings of a crucified man. Those teachings were spreading, the number of followers was growing, and authorities within the city found it destabilizing to the prevailing consensus. Saul was, at that time, a law and order man, and he takes it upon himself to stamp out the practice, which in time will become Christianity. The text tells us that, in that moment, he breathed threats and murder against those who adhered to the new teachings.
Here’s what was happening. The law had set out to find, and punish, those who had transgressed a kind of border, those who organized their lives according to new and different practices. The law was at that time being aided and abetted by violence. Just prior to Saul’s journey to Damascus, he had been present when one of the early followers of Jesus was put to death. You can imagine what that event did to the early Christian community, and how they would have gone underground, living in hiding for fear of what the authorities, or their neighbors, might do. They were being targeted, and hunted, by officials like Saul.
The story continues. On the road to Damascus, where he is planning another manhunt, another raid, Saul is knocked off his horse by a blinding light. And a voice speaks to him through that light. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” the voice says. The voice, of course, is that of Jesus, but pay attention to his language. He might have said, “Why do you persecute them?” Instead, he says, “Why do you persecute me?” In speaking as he does, Jesus becomes identified with each of those who was living in fear, with each of those hiding from violence, with each of those trying to hold it together when forces beyond their control threatened to tear their lives apart. Jesus appears to Saul in that moment, and he says not only am I with them – I am them. “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus says.
You might understand that to be a confrontational moment, and I suppose it is. But I understand it to be an encounter with love, an encounter with God not as the almighty, but God as one who suffers with, who weeps with, who stands with, who strengthens and upholds those who need it most. It is an encounter with a God exposed as a vulnerable human being, made of flesh and blood, one who simply asks: why are you hurting me? Why are you doing this to me?
There’s more to this story of deliverance. Scales harden over Saul’s eyes, and for a time he can no longer see. The encounter with that vulnerable Spirit, who identifies with all of those vulnerable individuals living in fear, leaves Saul disoriented, no longer able to find his way. That is to say, no matter how justified Saul may have been in terms of the law, the encounter with vulnerability shakes him to the core. It forces him to question all that he had taken to be true. The scales that harden over his eyes indicate just how blinded Saul had become by his rigid obedience before the law, how unable he was to perceive the pain he was inflicting upon others. But note this as well: the scales represent blindness, but they also suggest dryness. Not only could those eyes not see; they could not weep. Saul was incapable of feeling what others were feeling, of allowing his heart to be broken. Those scaly eyes had never been exposed to pain, or sorrow, or laughter either. And they had certainly never given consideration to the lives of those he was hunting. Saul’s were dry and unfeeling eyes.
But then the text says this: after a period of time, filled with soul searching and meditation, the scales fell from his eyes. The scales fell from his eyes. There are few words in the Bible more suggestive than those six small words. Whatever had blocked and distorted Saul’s vision disappears. Whatever had prevented him from seeing the lives of others, and the consequences of his own behavior, disappeared. Whatever hardness of heart, whatever coldness of soul, whatever lack of feeling he may have carried simply fell away. In that moment, Saul becomes Paul, but really, I think we can say that Saul discovers his own precious humanity, along with the humanity of those who lived in fear of men like Saul. The Spirit of God, of Jesus, goes to work on Saul, and he emerges with a heart not of stone, but of flesh and blood, with eyes that weep, and with tears that see.
Is that not a parable for the experience that all of us have had as a result of this experience called Sanctuary? Is that not a story of deliverance that occurred among us these past seven months, and longer? Could we not say that scales have fallen from our eyes, as we’ve been invited into a relationship with Malik and Zahida and Roniya? The scales upon our eyes represent many things. They’re the systems that we all participate in, the laws that we respect and obey, the ideologies that shape our imaginations, the doctrines that pertain to our understanding of religion, but also the distortions and the lies and the stereotypes and the fears and the ignorance and the callousness and the sheer obliviousness – the will not to know – that all of us live with in one form or another. By coming to love this family, by coming to love Malik and Zahida and Roniya in their fullness as individuals, have the scales not fallen from our eyes? Are we not gifted with a new ability to see, and to feel, as a result of the experience we’ve had? Not only do we understand a little more of what this particular family is experiencing, but do we not now perceive what so many others in our country are experiencing as a result of cruel and inhumane policies? Have we not, because of the love we’ve discovered for Malik, and Zahida, and Roniya, awakened to our own humanity in a new way? Have not the scales fallen from our eyes because of this encounter with love?
This past Tuesday, following the press conference, we made our way out of the Meetinghouse, and I felt overwhelmed by the display of love that so many of you showed for Malik and Zahida. And I saw a lot of tears, yours, and my own. It called to mind a line from the poet Andrew Marvell, who said of John Milton, “those weeping eyes, those seeing tears.” What was it we saw through our tears in that moment of release? Maybe it was this: maybe we were seeing that goodness and light and love do exist. Maybe we were seeing that the power of friendship and ordinary acts of being together can hold back the worst darkness. (I’ve become convinced that as human beings, we can withstand most anything as long as we know we’re surrounded by people who love and care for us.) Maybe we were seeing that laughter is more powerful than all the powers of hell – Luther once said that if you wish to cast out the devil, you must do it through laughter. Maybe we were discovering that perseverance under tremendous adversity can sometimes, sometimes, win the day. Maybe we were realizing that even though there is work to be done, and even though the gavel may yet fall, we must celebrate what we can, and when we can, a universal truth that we all must take to heart, because sooner or later, the gavel falls for all of us. Maybe we were all weeping tears of joy because somewhere in the midst of this endeavor, through a conversation or a shared meal, through extending a hand in prayer or working together at the White Elephant Sale, that somehow in the midst of it all, we’ve found one another. Maybe it’s because even in the midst of hell itself, a state of grace took root, a power exceeding us all that embraced us and held us. Or maybe our tears were for the ordeal that Malik and Zahida and Roniya have suffered, an ordeal that isn’t over, an ordeal that so many others are suffering, the ordeals here and afar that we’re powerless to prevent.
I hope it’s not too much to say that the scales have fallen from our eyes, in whole or in part. It’ll be hard to rest easy, knowing what we know. But the great gift is that by growing to know and love Malik, Zahida, and Roniya, we’ve discovered our own humanity as well, a precious, precious thing in times such as these.
The Spirit of God, found in Jesus, went to work on one who breathed threats and murder against the earliest Christians. That same Spirit still exists in the world. It’s waiting to go to work on you, on me, and on the most recalcitrant people we might imagine. We must never lose sight of that. Miraculously, the same person who breathed those threats wound up writing some of the most profound words about love that have ever been written, found in a letter to the Corinthian church. We speak them at weddings. We speak them at funerals. We speak them whenever we need to be reminded of that which is best and truest in the world. “And now faith, hope, and love, remain,” Paul wrote, “these three. But the greatest of these is love.” I believe that Paul could write those words because of the encounter he had on the road to Damascus, when he was visited by one who represented all of those living in fear and hiding at that moment, a vision of frail and vulnerable humanity, a vision of love itself. The scales fell from his eyes. And he was never the same again.
Nor shall we be.
But now, it’s time to celebrate again. This morning we get to dramatize the deliverance from captivity that took place on Tuesday. The Funky Dawgz are here to help. Down in New Orleans, when there’s reason to celebrate something, brass bands lead second lines through the streets. Today, the Funky Dawgz will lead Malik, Zahida and Roniya, and then all of us, on an exodus out of the church doors, out into the world, out into the rest of their lives, the rest of all of our lives. There’s work to be done, but we celebrate what we can, where we can. And we’ve been given a reason to celebrate. We’ll gather first on the front lawn. After we’re all there, the band will pause, and I’ll offer words of benediction. But after that, the band will start up again, and they’ll lead us on a second line parade along Ferry Rd, back to the Parish House and into the Fellowship Hall, where we’ll have a reception in honor of Malik, Zahida and Roniya.
We’ve waited long enough. It’s time to strike up the band.
