Reimagining a Country ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
January 10, 2021
“They left for their own country by another road.”
So ends the tale of the Magi, the Wise Men, the astronomers from the East who saw a new star and followed it to find baby Jesus and to present him with gifts. The arrival of the Magi is celebrated each year in the Christian church on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. This has never been thought of as a major holiday. It’s the 12th day of Christmas, and considered the end of the Christmas season. I suspect that many people mark the day by unplugging the outdoor Christmas lights. But the reason for celebrating Epiphany all these thousands of years is that the arrival of the Magi signifies the recognition of Jesus as holy, as the Son of God incarnated on earth. Jesus’s true nature was revealed to the world. The word itself, epiphany, comes from the Greek word that means ‘to reveal’. Jesus was revealed to the Wise Men. And revealed also to King Herod, who had heard the prophesies of a new ruler for the Jewish people, and who was prepared to hunt down this new threat to his own rule, and to do away with him.
The threat was revealed to the Magi in a dream, and they left for their own country by another road, to avoid Herod.
And so, on this Epiphany, this past Wednesday, January 6, we also were forced to confront new revelations. And our country found itself once again needing to make new choices about which road to take to find our way home.
Wednesday was an absolute roller coaster of a day. We are still recovering, from a day that started with joy and relief among progressives the morning after the election of two Democratic senators in the state of Georgia, to be followed by the storming of the United States Capitol building by an angry mob in the afternoon. It felt like whiplash. In the aftermath of the insurrection there have been commentators decrying the violence and saying, “This is not who we are. America is better than that.” The President-elect, Joe Biden, said this in his remarks to the nation as the Capitol was occupied.
That Wednesday morning, it seemed as though yes, America is better than that. In the afternoon, we were slammed back to the realization that, no, in fact, we are not. In the aftermath of both of these events, we are forced to a reckoning, and it is this: that America has two personalities, at least two ways of looking at the world. We do not agree on what is meant by freedom and liberty, or just who should have access to them. We can’t agree on science; on where the balance is between protecting the public health and individual freedom. We disagree about who has the right to be here, and who can be considered a full citizen, with all the rights imagined by the Founders who wrote our Constitution.
What was revealed to us, and the world, on Wednesday, on Epiphany, once again, was that the United States was built along a fault line, built on unstable ground. We were founded on the highest principles of human potential and achievement, and, at the same time, founded on the backs of enslaved people who were afforded no right to participate in this grand experiment of human flourishing. Ever after, we have been trying to find a path, a road home, along this fault line that extends from the very beginning of our American journey far into the future, beyond what we can see. We move back and forth from one road to another, crossing the fault line. To put it another way, the pendulum swings in the other direction each time one vision of America becomes dominant.
Michelle Alexander, the author of the book The New Jim Crow, had this to say:
“For many, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency symbolized the imminent birth of this new America, and many whites feared their privileged status, identity and way of life would die in the transition. The reaction was swift and fierce. It shouldn’t have been surprising.”
Ms. Alexander continued, “As the historian Carol Anderson documented in “White Rage,” every single advance toward racial justice in this country has been met with virulent, often violent, resistance. But the 2016 election was not about only race or gender. That perfect storm had been brewing for a long time, drawing strength from many political and economic forces and gathering speed as the pace of change accelerated.” (“We Are Not the Resistance,” New York Times, September 21, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/opinion/sunday/resistance-kavanaugh-trump-protest.html)
What took place on Wednesday, with the election results in Georgia that produced the first Georgia senator of color, followed by stark images of a Confederate flag being carried through the U.S. Capitol, is a full experience of that perfect storm that Ms. Alexander described, over the course of just a few hours. No wonder we are disoriented, shocked, even traumatized. Which way are we heading? Are we the America of Stacey Abrams, with her vision and commitment to justice? Or the America of the militias, the Proud Boys and the other white supremacist groups? We have to ask ourselves, not just which road home are we seeking, which star do we follow, but what does home look like?
I have asked myself this question frequently over the past four years: what does home look like to Donald Trump and his followers? It has seemed in many ways that they have forced us to double back on our journey; they have tried to pivot and turn us completely around. At first I thought the goal was to completely undo any of the successes that could be attributed to President Obama, and that was true, as far as it went. But it became obvious that the intention was really to follow the path as far back as possible in order to undo any civil rights gains as well as any economic safety net. I thought for awhile that perhaps we were headed back to the Reagan Administration. As time went on, it has felt as though the current administration wanted to return us to the early 20th century, perhaps the Roaring 20’s, with its unbridled capitalism, Jim Crow laws, and highly restrictive immigration policies. We were returning home by an older, but very well-worn road; a home that refuses to share power with marginalized people.
In the ancient story in the Gospel of Matthew, the Magi had a choice. They could have done as the king asked, and returned to report on the location of the Baby Jesus. Instead, they chose to return home by a different route, to avoid the king.
America, too, has a choice. It always has had, because of the inherent flaw on which it was founded. Since our very beginning there have been two roads, running along a fault line. The roads are not strictly parallel, and they intersect every time one group appears to gain more power and leads the journeying people onto its route. We are at one of those intersections right now, and have been for some months. This past summer, after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, it seemed as though the injustice of police brutality was clearly revealed, and had finally penetrated to such an extent that white America could finally hear the words of black America; could begin to face up to systemic racism. But those who are threatened by a loss of power and prestige, particularly those in power, fought back hard. I remember the scary presence of unidentified troops in the streets, and threats by the president and the attorney general of takeovers of American cities. In the months following, we inched along, and were heartened by the presidential election, and just days ago by the senate election in Georgia.
Wednesday was a day of revelation, of epiphanies. The white supremacy movement revealed itself in full: out in force, for the first time since the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. We see that they cannot be considered an aberration, or a tiny fringe. Trump’s unfounded claims of a rigged election have emboldened them and brought them to center stage.
Wednesday was a day of revelation. We watched as the white supremacy insurgents made their way straight into the Capitol building with seeming ease, and left, most of them, with no consequences. We who watched protests unfold this past spring and summer are forced to see how the white insurgents were treated, in contrast to the far harsher methods to quell the Black Lives Matter protestors. Once again, the bias toward whites, the giving of the benefit of the doubt, the tendency to look the other way, was revealed in the bright light of day.
Which road home, America? What does home look like? How do we get there?
“Another world is possible,” wrote our poet this morning. “Imagine winning. This is your sacred task. This is your power. Imagine every detail of winning… Lean with all your being towards that day when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.”
As we Unitarian Universalists are often reminded, lean your hands on the moral arc of the universe. Help it bend toward justice.
The poet goes on to say, “Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live.” (Aurora Levins Morales, “V’ahavta.” http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/blog/vahavta)
We cannot escape a feeling right now that our country is hanging in the balance, stopped at a crossroads, trying to discern a way forward. Is it too dark to see a star to follow? Which road home, America? What does home look like?
We have choices. It is up to us. Keep the image of stars in your mind: “make (your dreams) burn clear as a starry drinking gourd.”
My friends, it is up to us. Keep seeking a star to follow, as the escaped slaves followed the constellation called the drinking gourd to reach the north, as the Magi followed a star to seek the holy, as people throughout American history have sought the road leading to a just way of life for all of us. Our country needs us to lead it home, to help once and for all answer the question before us: are we better than this? May we live into the answer in the days and years ahead.
Amen.
