I’m reading this book by John Philip Newell about spiritual seekers, and I’m seeing current events play out in Minneapolis and around the country, and I’m finding connections that help us in the UCC figure out how to respond. So today, as part of our continuing sermon series on John Philip Newell’s book The Great Search, we will begin by exploring the work of Martin Buber and I-Thou relationships, then I will talk about ICE in Minneapolis and how some in the UCC have been responding.
A few weeks ago I told you about Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who centered her life on the presence of God deep within her, and sought to bring forth the presence of God deep within every person she met. Martin Buber, an Austrian Jew whom Newell also profiles, describes something similar and calls it an I-Thou relationship.
Newell writes,
This is when my depths, for instance, meet your depths, or when the open heart of one person encounters the open heart of another. . . . But always, says Buber, when we encounter the Thou in another, whether that be in another person or in another life-form or in the radiance of sun, moon, and stars, we are encountering “the eternal Thou.” We are experiencing the divine presence in and through the other. [Newell, The Great Search, pp. 52-53.]
This I-Thou relationship is in contrast to the I-It relationship:
This is when something has become an object to us, a focus of our thought or action or intention. It is a way of relation when the other has ceased, at least for that moment, to be a living portal of presence to us. Instead, we are simply remembering or reflecting upon the other or making plans or working alongside the other. This, as we shall see, is for Buber neither good nor bad in and by itself. It depends on whether the balance is right and whether there is a true integration between these two ways of relating in which the I-It is allowed to serve the I-Thou at the heart of life. [53.]
So, for example, if I’m having a direct encounter with Frank, my spirit to his spirit, that would be an I-Thou encounter. But if I’m telling you about Frank, then he has shifted to the third person; he has become someone I’m talking about, not someone I’m experiencing directly in that moment.
Buber saw his relationship with God as an I-Thou relationship, never an I-It. Newell writes,
God can be “addressed,” says Buber, but can never be “expressed.” We can speak to God, uttering from the depths of our souls, but we can never truly speak about God. A German pastor once asked Buber if he believed in the divine. Buber responded by saying, “If to believe in God means to be able to talk about God in the third person, then I do not believe in God. But if to believe in God means to be able to talk to God, then I do believe in God.” [59.]
As a professor in Germany in the 1930s, Buber watched the rise of the Nazi Party. Nazis treated Jews as Its, not as valued human beings, fellow creatures of God. In 1938, he fled to Jerusalem.
[D]uring his professorship at the University of Frankfurt, [Buber] witnessed the Nazi rise to power in Germany and the silencing of Jewish academics and the denial of public education for Jews, early signs of what was eventually to be known as the “Final Solution,” the Nazi policy of systematic genocide of the Jewish people. He witnessed his people being viewed and treated as “It,” as a so-called “problem” to be got rid of. [64.]
In 1938 Buber, fearing for his family’s safety, fled the country with his wife and children to find sanctuary in Jerusalem.
But in Jerusalem he witnessed Jews perpetrating on the Arab population of Palestine some of the same wrongs that were being done to his own people in Europe. . . . He saw that many of his Jewish brothers and sisters were blind to the presence of God in the Arab population, and he lamented the way violence was being used by them to create nationhood. In the following years of conflict in Palestine, he asked, how is it that otherwise good and loving people have come to believe that “brother-murder will prepare the way for brotherhood.” [65.]
We are seeing that I-It treatment of Palestinians continue today to murderous effect.
So it is with a rising sense of alarm that we see our government treating the residents of this nation as I-It: things to be manipulated and abused. Not just immigrants, not just trans athletes, but all of us. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are being deployed all over the country to hunt down immigrants, harass them, terrify them, kidnap them, separate them from their families, ship them to detention centers, and deport them. Some of these people are U.S. citizens. Even those who are not citizens and who have broken no other law than entering the country illegally, who are trying to go to work and raise their kids and pay their bills, they are being treated as disposable, as less than human, as unworthy of respect or due process.
But ICE showed up in Minneapolis, which learned a few things after George Floyd’s murder five years ago by men in uniforms. One of the things that Minneapolis appears to have learned is not to give up on “Minnesota Nice.” Protestors are angry, they are shouting, they are out in the streets, but at least from what I’m hearing on NPR, they are not rioting. Their governor and mayor are urging people to exercise restraint in their protests, because otherwise the protestors play right into the script of why ICE “needed” to be sent there in the first place: to deal with an “out-of-control” city. Minneapolis has been amazing. Minnesotans have been practicing Martin Buber’s concept of I-Thou relationships with their neighbors, refusing to dismiss any of their immigrant neighbors as “Its,” but rather insisting on the value of every human being, regardless of their immigration status.
Here’s what Minnesota Nice has looked like: people organizing to warn others when ICE shows up. People standing on street corners and outside schools in sub-zero weather every day to make sure kids get to and from school safely. People taking food to families who don’t dare leave their homes. People showing up to protests with their signs and their phones, to speak up and to document what’s happening. The Minnesota-Nice protestors are being beaten, tear-gassed, bullied, and executed willy-nilly, and then we hear lies to try and tell us we didn’t see what we just saw.
About two weeks ago, clergy in Minneapolis put out a call to clergy across the country to come to their city last week and march peacefully through the streets of downtown. Somewhere around 700 clergy dropped everything and got there, including 11 UCC clergy from this conference. They joined with tens of thousands of people who marched through the streets of downtown Minneapolis on Friday, January 23, the day before Alex Pretti was executed.
Mike MacMillan, a pastor who serves a church in Florida, posted this on FaceBook on that Friday—and just a warning: his language gets a little spicy:
Someone asked me today why I came all the way up here from the warmth of Florida to the frigid temps of Minnesota, to march in the protest, and my answer was simple: 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' But, I also came because I lived 40 years in this community of the Twin Cities and love this place very much—its people; its love of diversity; its love of community; and its love of neighbors—especially culturally diverse neighbors. I knew I had to come and stand shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm with my fellow Minnesotans and tell ICE they fucked with the wrong place.
I also came for the stories we are seeing unfold on our screens—stories of heartbreak, cruelty and injustice. The little 5 year old boy, Liam Ramos, who is sitting in a detention cell in Texas, flown from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport (where 100 clergy and people were arrested today protesting those flights), after being used as a lure to arrest his father and likely his mother. They were asylum seekers, having gone through the proper channels. Gut-wrenching. Or the little girl Chloe Villacis, who was with her father, returning from a grocery store trip yesterday when they were followed home. They were also asylum seekers, and did not have a pending order for removal. They were targeted. Both were flown out of the MSP airport on a commercial flight to TX, where they now sit in a detainment facility. 2. Years. Old. Sickening. I cannot even imagine as a father of two little girls...
I also came for the old man that was unconstitutionally dragged, unclothed, from his house last week only to be released later. Or the multitude of people being harassed, detained, followed, threatened, gassed and yes even shot by this gestapo-like force that has been unleashed on the streets of Minnesota, Maine and other places around the country. What a sick and twisted time we live in.
I leave in the morning, to go back to a state that is known to have like 20 times more "illegal immigrants" in it, yet no presence like this for obvious reasons. . . . As the Imam at the rally at Target Center said tonight so beautifully—"You are not garbage—you are gorgeous. You are not a foreigner—you are familiar." Sounds a lot like something Jesus would have said.
So in these times, peace be with this amazing state! Peace be with our immigrant sisters and brothers and communities! Peace be with those resisters! Peace be with the neighborhood watch folks, pastors and others getting arrested protesting, people recording and documenting history, the folks showing up at protests and rallies, and all those who feel so sad and helpless in these evil times. We're ALL Minnesota! And we're all in this together—and we shall overcome—TOGETHER! Long live the resistance...
Leah Atkinson Bilinski, pastor of Fauntleroy UCC in West Seattle, was one of the 11 UCC clergy from the Pacific Northwest Conference who traveled to Minneapolis. She posted this a week ago Saturday after flying back here. “I’m home; I’m ‘safe. Our country is not.” And then, after describing the execution of Alex Pretti, she continues,
SHAME on anyone who continues to reason this state-sanctioned violence away.
I saw a lot of beauty in Minneapolis, a lot of people following Jesus as they love their neighbors, a lot of resilient spirits working for true safety on their streets and city under siege (amid negative teen temps). May God give them the strength to endure yet one more senseless, traumatizing death.
And here is part of what the General Minister and President of the UCC, Karen Georgia Thompson, wrote on January 24 in response to the murder of Alex Pretti:
“This is God’s Message: Attend to matters of justice. Set things right between people. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the murdering!” (Jeremiah 22:3, MSG)
The United Church of Christ joins the faith community in strongly condemning the on-going actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as it continues to bring death and violence to the streets of Minneapolis. The use of lethal force on unarmed and non-threatening individuals continues to result in loss of life and injury. The abduction of people on the streets of major cities, the profiling of individuals, the targeting of immigrants, and the escalation of deportations are violating the human rights of millions. Added to the increased militarization of cities, communities that house some of the most vulnerable now find themselves under siege. It is time to stop the murdering. It is time to stop the violence. It is time to return peace to our nation’s cities.
The deployment of masked agents in the nation’s cities has escalated fear, anxiety, and tension in communities where immigrants and people of color continue to be profiled and targeted to be stopped, detained, and arrested. As people of faith, we call for the removal of ICE from Minneapolis and other cities, and for the removal of the National Guard. We call for truth telling and for accountability in these two deaths, seeking justice for the lives lost, and for those whose lives are disrupted by the actions of ICE.
Some Sundays we want to come to church, see our friends, sing good music, be comforted and forgiven and inspired. And that’s all good. But wait—there’s more. Because Jesus was all about comforting the afflicted, but also afflicting the comfortable. He was out there leading the protests, and if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, then it behooves us to know what the justice issues are, who is being oppressed, and how we might help. We get to practice I-Thou relationships with everyone we meet, to know that no human being is less-than in God’s eyes, regardless of race or class or immigrant status. So we light candles, say prayers, we call our legislators, we march in the streets, we feed the hungry, clothe the naked—we help however we can, whether that’s in the frigid, besieged streets of Minneapolis or here at home.
Turn to someone near you and say “You matter.” Take those words in as you hear them said to you. We get to practice living into being people who know that everyone matters. You matter. And so do all the rest of them. Our government wants us to believe that foreigners are a scourge to be scrubbed out of this country by any means possible, the more violent, the better. Refusing to cooperate with that message is a profound form of civil disobedience that foils their goals. Practice I-Thou love and relationship. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. Amen.