as preached on January 19, 2025 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
I start my sermon in an unusual way. I offer you a bit of the Bible. The passage is Luke 16:19 to 23. In it we find Jesus sharing this story:
There was once a rich man, who used to dress in purple and the finest linen, and feasted sumptuously every day. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, who was covered with sores. He would have been glad to satisfy his hunger from the rich man’s table. Dogs used to come and lick his sores. One day the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and there, far away, was Abraham with Lazarus close beside him.
In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and there, far away, was Abraham with Lazarus close beside him.
This was among the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s favorite biblical parables. He included it in one of the last speeches he gave before he was assassinated.
He was in Memphis, Tennessee supporting striking garbage workers. Two Black men, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had been crushed to death by a defective packing mechanism that the city had refused to update. The city would not give their families life insurance. The city would not pay their families workmen’s compensation.
Echol Cole and Robert Walker, they died because the city of Memphis would not spend money on better equipment. Echol Cole and Robert Walker, their families were left with nothing. Echol Cole and Robert Walker, the garbage workers went on strike because of them. Echol Cole and Robert Walker, I include their names in our service because the civil rights movement was a movement. It was not just Martin King. It was not just Martin King and Rosa Parks. It was not just Martin King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Barbara Jordan. It was thousands of ordinary working people protesting, marching, sitting in, speaking up, and staring down old Jim Crow to improve their material conditions. It was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Riders, the March on Washington, Freedom Summer, and the Selma to Montgomery Marches. It was hundreds of Black garbage workers in Memphis who went on strike for safe working conditions, better wages, and recognition for their union.
White establishment refused to negotiate. The workers invited Martin King to come lead their effort.
He told them about Lazarus and the rich man. He cast them as Lazarus, the children of God “in need of economic security.” He cast the White power structure as the rich man. He said, “America is … going to hell … If … [she] does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty.”
America is going to hell, King warned us at the end of his life. America is going to hell if the country does not do something about economic inequality, about poverty wages, about the price of groceries, and the price of housing, he told us before he died.
America is going to hell; it appears that the country is about to arrive at its destination.
The country is about to arrive at its destination, it is customary on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day to celebrate how far the nation has come since Old Jim Crow had his wings clipped. It is typical to lift up King’s dream and the magnificent speech he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “I still have a dream … that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed,” he said. “I have a dream that one day … the sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood,” he shared.
I have a dream, America is going to hell, we are between a dream and a waking nightmare. Tomorrow someone who pals around with white supremacists, who encourages insurrection, who has callous disregard for human life, who maligns women, who sees fit to nominate sexual predators to the nation’s highest offices, and who is devoted to government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, will re-occupy the White House.
Tuesday, he is promising, the deportations begin. Tuesday, families will be sundered, and lives will be shattered. Tuesday…
I have a dream, the President Elect’s last term in office was traumatizing. This Sunday as we celebrate the great dreamer, I want to talk with you about the trauma and the dream. The dream has been long deferred. The only way to overcome the trauma is to realize it.
The trauma, you might recall, is the way our bodies respond to being overwhelmed, to suffering violence, and to experiencing abuse. It is not the abuse itself. It is the way we react afterwards.
For many of us, the words abuse, and trauma bring painful memories. Naming the reality of what we are collectively facing is not easy. It might help to ground ourselves, in the present moment, take a deep breath, and to take sanctuary–safety–with the members of this religious community. Describing what is happening is not easy. But it is necessary if we are going move through the next four years. So, breathe again with me as we continue our sermon.
Abuse is not always physical. It can be psychological. Often it is about trying to control how someone experiences reality–the stories we tell each other about what is true and what is real. The well-known phenomena of gaslighting is a favorite tactic of abusers.
What has happened with the narrative around January 6, 2021, is an unfortunate illustration of how gaslighting works. On January 6th, there was an attempt to overthrow the elected government of the United States and install someone who had lost a presidential election into the nation’s highest office. We all saw it on television or on small screens. An angry mob–many of them white supremacists, some of them waving Confederate flags, some of them carrying Neo-Nazi symbols–invaded the Capitol with the intention of stopping the peaceful transfer of power. They were instigated by the man who will be President tomorrow.
Since then, he has repeated over and over the untruth that the event was a “day of love.” He has denied the violence that took place. He has sought to replace the truth of what happened with a false narrative that benefits him. This is gaslighting, the repetition of a lie so often that the truth becomes obscured, lost, and people begin to doubt their own experiences. It is a form of abuse.
It is far from the only instance of abuse committed by the man who will be President. In a civil trial, a jury found that he sexually abused a woman in a department store. More than twenty-five others have alleged that he assaulted them as well. There is an audio tape of him bragging about his assaults.
In the face of this abuser-in-chief, we have four traumatic responses. We fight. We fly. We fawn. Or we freeze. Fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, name the range of responses that people have in reaction to trauma. If Martin King’s dream is ever going to be realized, then we will need to find the resources to fight. The dream itself contains the power to help us combat the abuser-in-chief and wake up from the nightmare, to stop the country from going to Hell.
We will return to the power of Martin King’s dream shortly. Before we do, it is important to observe how people are freezing, fawning, or flying as the abuser-in-chief ascends.
Freezing, this is one of the most common responses. Many of us simply do not know what to do. Not knowing what to do, we do nothing. Eight years ago, when that man from Mar-a-Lago was sworn into office there were mass protests. Millions were in the streets. Millions pledged to resist.
This time, not so much. For many, the situation feels hopeless. Billionaires appear poised to loot the country and undermine our underdeveloped infrastructure. White supremacists are gleeful. Rights of all kinds are under assault. No easy path forward to protect them appears.
Not knowing what to do, the impulse is to do nothing. I have had this reaction myself. The constant barrage of gaslighting, of misinformation, of manipulation, takes its toll. Part of my response to this abuse has been to tune out what is happening–to freeze and pretend that life is just going on. I know I am not alone in this response. Across the board, viewership of liberal media outlets is down. Many people are frozen.
The problem with freezing is that it does not change the dynamics. The old adage, misattributed to the philosopher Edmund Burke, is true, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” If we do nothing, then nothing will change.
Flight, we often respond to trauma by trying to escape. People talk of leaving the country, moving to Europe or Mexico City or any place where women are respected, transgender people are not targeted, where it will not feel like life is a constant struggle against the abuser-in-chief.
Some people in our community have already made this decision. They have left Texas for states that protect women’s reproductive health. They have left the country for places that are friendly to transgender children. They have departed the United States to live lives where they can feel a bit more free.
I am sympathetic. I have found myself wanting to retreat to somewhere, anywhere, where I can avoid what is to come. In my fantasies I find myself living the life of a mystic, pursuing inner freedom while the world around me burns. I find inspiration in the words of the Chinese recluse poets who during times of civil strike forsook the world. Po Chü-I:
No esteem for the stately caps and carriages of consequence,
in love with woods and streams, I go out and doze, perhaps,
drunk beside the pond. I’ve stopped trying to save the world,
just wander herb paths, keep my little fishing boat swept out.
Such inner efforts at flight are rarely fully successful. The world often comes crashing in. As for leaving the state or the country, sometimes it can work. The disturbing truth is that the ascent of white supremacist or authoritarian movements right now is worldwide. They cannot easily be escaped. Argentina, Italy, Hungary, Israel, the number of countries under the sway of right-wing governments seems to be increasing. For the politically informed, the option of flight is reminiscent of an old Hungarian Jewish joke.
It comes by way of the scholar Marc Loustau. He observes that it “features the two stock characters of all Hungarian jokes, Kohn and Grün.
Setting: Things are getting tough for the Jewish community where they live.
Kohn: Well, it’s time to leave again.
Grün: Yup. Let’s look at the globe over there and figure out a country to go to.
Kohn (pointing at a country): How about here?
Grün: Nah.
Kohn: Here?
Grün: No way.
Kohn: Here?
Grün: Nope.
Silence
Kohn: Next globe please!”
Next globe please, so much of what the abuser-in-chief will make worse, resurgent white supremacy, an exacerbation of the climate crisis, growing economic inequality, destruction of public infrastructure, will found almost everywhere in the next years.
Just as significantly, flight might make sense for some of us–if you have to leave Texas or the United States there is no judgement here–but it is not an option for all of us.
Fawn, this seems to be the response of much of the political class and the economic elite. They are accepting the outcome of the election. They are deferring to, normalizing, the former and future President. Human weathervane Mark Zuckerberg is again changing his social media platform’s policies to accommodate an incoming administration. Senator John Fetterman visited the abuser-in-chief in Florida. Former President Obama has been seen joking with him.
Many congressional Democrats supported a recent anti-immigrant bill without winning any meaningful concessions. It limits the migrants’ rights to due process. It authorizes detentions of any immigrants who have been accused of theft or a variety of other crimes; not convicted, accused.
Such fawning is often done in the hope that the abuser will direct his gaze elsewhere. Members of the Republican Party have learned this lesson well. In the last decade those who failed to fawn the former and future President have found their political careers destroyed and themselves cast out into the political wilderness. For the rest of the party of Newt Gingrich and Strom Thurmond, fawning has been a response that has allowed them to survive and even thrive as the abuser-in-chief has taken control of their political movement.
Freeze, flight, fawn, we come now to fight. This was Martin King’s response to the abusive system of Jim Crow and white supremacist economic exploitation of the 1950s and 1960s. When Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death, he did not freeze. When he was asked to come to Memphis, he did not fly. When he was invited to lead the garbage workers he did not fawn. He told the White mayor, the White city council, the White power structure–who surely did not want to pay more taxes so that Black working people could have decent lives–that they were like the rich man in the parable of the Lazarus and the rich man. He warned them that if the whole country did not change its tact and find justice for all then “America … is going to hell.”
America is going to hell; it is difficult to talk about Martin King’s willingness to fight without acknowledging that it cost him his life. Sometimes, fighting is not without mortal risks. There are reasons why people freeze, fly, or fawn instead.
America is going to hell, fighting does not mean going alone. It is about coming together to build collective power. Things are easier when you are part of a movement. Being part of a movement allows us to be stronger together than we are when we are on our own. It is a bit like the Marge Piercy poem I read to you after the election:
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
The Memphis garbage strike ended with victory for the strikers. The city was forced to recognize their union and improve their working conditions and wages. The civil rights movement, and the dream, did not die with Martin King.
The dream did not die. The poet Langston Hughes asked:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
King’s dream has so often been reduced to the vision of people sitting “together at the table of brotherhood.” But this was only part of it. An important dimension that gets left out of the narratives, gets forgotten on the civic holiday, is removed from the media accounts, is that he dreamed of an “end to poverty” and “economic security” for all.
The widespread anger about the price of groceries, the price of housing, the recent round of inflation, led to the election of the abuser-in-chief. The widespread perception that Democratic Party does not care about working class people put him back in power.
In the next months, we will be reminded that he truly believes in plutocracy–government by the rich–while he practices kleptocracy–government by thieves–and embraces kakistocracy–government by the worst. The only way to wake up from this nightmare is to embrace King’s dream of economic security and build a spiritual movement to make his vision a reality. That is how the abuser-in-chief can be deprived of much of his appeal. That is how we fight. That is how we honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
So here comes my challenge for us as a religious community. What can we do together to help build such a spiritual movement? I believe that First Unitarian Universalist can do great things. Our voting justice ministry was nothing short of remarkable. We organized over 250 volunteers. We registered almost 1,000 new voters. We contacted over 30,000 voters. We spent more than 2,500 volunteer hours doing so. For our efforts the Unitarian Universalist Association recognized us as a Good Trouble Congregation.
A good trouble congregation, we have the potential to do more. In the coming years rather than freezing, instead of flying, in the place of fawning, what would it mean if we came together to do something concrete to help people achieve economic security? Maybe we could establish a new community garden? Maybe we could start a democratically managed affordable housing complex? Maybe we could support a union organizing drive? Maybe we could start a free health care clinic? Maybe we could help establish a worker cooperative or push the city to start a municipally managed series of grocery stores–as the city of Chicago is now doing?
This Sunday, as we sit at the precipice of disaster, as even President Biden must acknowledge that the country is being transformed into an oligarchy, there is still much we can do together to bring Martin King’s dream of economic security in being. Today, as so many of us are having traumatic responses, I invite you to dream what we might do together as a religious community in the coming months and years. I hope that this service will be an invitation for you to imagine our collective potential. I aspire to work with you to help make that potential a reality.
King knew that it was possible to make such dreams a reality. He closed some of his speeches thus:
I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” I come to say to you … however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
… How long? Not long, ‘cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…
Mine eyes have seen the glory, let us, this Sunday, and all the days of our lives, commit to be tellers of truth, workers for justice, and the keepers of the dream. Let us rise and meet the coming day by turning fear into courage and despair into possibility so that the best that we might imagine can become reality.
Mine eyes have seen the glory, let us commit ourselves to bringing that glory into being. And so, let the congregation say, “Amen.”
