Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson on Sunday, July 4, 2021
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”
The Sufi mystic Rumi asked this question almost 800 years ago. And it is piercing questions like this, coupled with Rumi’s playfulness and love of life, and Coleman Barks’ accessible translations of work, that make Rumi the most popular poet in the United States today.
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Why do we impose so many restrictions on ourselves, when there are so many possibilities available? Why do we hold back from joy, from daring, from deeper faith, from greater pleasure?
For a nation that loves to talk and sing about freedom, why are we so repressive of one another? Why do we here in the United States imprison more of our people than any other nation on earth? We who claim to be the beacon of freedom, the land of liberty, we are number one when it comes to the rate of incarceration of our citizen, number one of all the nations on the earth. And still, we love to to gather on July 4th and sing, “the land of the free, and the home of the brave!”
I love our national anthem, and love singing it with people out in public. I still believe in the promise of America, that out of many, diverse peoples, we can be a nation that stands for goodness and decency and a better life for all. There’s plenty to love about this land, this place we call home:
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
The great pastor, preacher, and activist William Sloane Coffin had this to say about patriotism, he said
“There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world.”
National holidays like the Fourth of July can tend to bring out the uncritical lovers of our country. Those who can stand no criticism of the red, white, and blue, who say, “Love it or leave it.” But what they miss is that those of us who are working for reform, for more freedom for more people, that we do this because we love this country too, and we only want it to be better, to live up to its ideals.
And this isn’t new. In his farewell address to the nation, back in 1796, our first president, George Washington, as he left office, warned his fellow citizens, to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
What he was saying, I think, is to be wary of those who love to wave the flag and quote our high-minded words about liberty and justice, but who are’t willing to walk the talk, who are more concerned about their own freedom than liberty and justice for all; who are more interested in their own needs than the common good.
I’m sad to say that it seems that our American flag is at risk of becoming a threatening and divisive symbol, because some of those wrapping themselves in it are ones who want to return to a whiter, less diverse, more repressive America.
There’s always been a strong streak of individualism in America, and that’s been part of our strength, but it needs to be balanced by a concern for the common good. Take the vaccine, for instance. Some folks are saying they don’t need to get vaccinated, because they don’t think they’re personally at risk for getting COVID. Some of them are saying, “Don’t tell me what to do; don’t trample on my freedom.” They don’t seem to be able to see that getting vaccinated is a a way of loving your neighbor as much as yourself, a way of helping build the common good.
Listen to these words by another of our great leaders, Eleanor Roosevelt. She said,
“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry their own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”
It’s great to talk about freedom, but then you need to walk the talk. That’s the cost of freedom. You need to carry your part of the weight. And for some of us, this is hard to do. It’s always easier to talk than it is to walk; it’s easier to comment and complain and be snarky online than it is to be part of the solution, right? Democracy is hard, and messy, and time-consuming. Like church leadership can be! But the invitation, and something that you in this congregation are already good at, is to be engaged, to listen as much as you speak, to be willing to listen to those you disagree with, and even be changed by them, to do the work that’s needed to move things forward.
Listen again to those lines from Rumi, that invite us to be openhearted and connected to one another:
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise…
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf,
and feel the shepherd's love filling you…
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought.
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down
in always widening rings of being.
We are living in both hopeful and troubling times. The pandemic is receding, things are getting better, and we have a lot more freedom these days than we did at this time a year ago. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that we’re in an uncertain time in our country. People seem on edge, more tense, and maybe that’s a natural human response as we come out of this pandemic. But ome of us seem to have forgotten how to be civil with one another, to show common decency and kindness.
Even worse, there appears to be an increase, these days, in hateful words and deeds. There’s a growing number of antisemitic, racist, and bigoted incidents. And this isn’t just happening in other parts of the country, it’s here, in Massachusetts. There was that shooting a week ago in Winthrop, where an armed white man who’d written racist and antisemitic things killed two innocent black people. Last Sunday, “three openly armed men” were seen placing racist stickers on cars during the black and brown owned outdoor market held in downtown Haverhill. And the other day a rabbi was attacked and stabbed in Brighton.
Even closer to home, we recently discovered some stickers that had been placed on our front doors on Kenoza Avenue, and on our church sign. And these stickers were symbols of a white supremacist organization. After learning about this, I called the Haverhill police, and I’ve been heartened by how seriously they are taking this incident. The police advised us to share the news, and to be vigilant—to pay attention, and to call attention to anything that seems unusual.
I also reached out to area clergy, and I was moved by their responses. Several of us got together yesterday to talk about how we’ll stand together against bigotry and hate. We have a strong history here of faith communities and faith leaders coming together when anyone is threatened, and I’m so grateful for these companions, for their faith and their courage.
So in these days, let us be faithful, and courageous too. And let us be vigilant. We could heed the words spoken not far from here 150 years ago, when the abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips addressed that Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He said:
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”
My spiritual companions, I hope that these summer days will offer you some peace and ease and freedom. You deserve it. And at the same time, I remind you that freedom comes with a cost, and that cost is vigilance. That we are called to ever pay attention and to call attention to what is going on, in our own selves and in our relationships; and also out there, in our society and in our world.
The cost of freedom is having the courage to be awake and aware; knowing what prison doors are open, and walking through them. And joining hands with others to help pull open those doors which are still imprisoning too many people.
On this day when we mark our nation’s birthday, let us recommit ourselves to working for more liberty, and more justice, for all of us. Now and forever,
Amen.