Worship

"Occupy Main Street "

A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
November 13, 2011

READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN

Our first reading this morning is from the ancient text of Nehemiah:

While I was in the citadel of Susa, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed…

Our second reading is a passage from the book, “On Being Human Religiously” by James Luther Adams:

Few things in human history are fixed, least of all reputations. As Santayana remarks of Hamlet, the reputations both of the great figures of fiction and of their creators have usually had an evolution and a history. One age extols Shakespeare as abiding our every question; another devotes itself to” improving” him. One age wishes Milton could be living at this hour; another regards him as the blight of English poesy. One school honors Plato as the “father of all orthodoxy”; another excommunicates him as the “source of all heresy.” Hence, the admonition “Let us now praise famous men” raises again and again the questions “Which men?” and “How praise them?”

SERMON

18 th Century Unitarian minister, philosopher and transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once commended a class of Harvard Divinity School graduates to preach by raising up the issues of their day so that those issues might be better viewed through the lenses of religious sensibilities and values. To what end, I ask? So that we might be better prepared to relate to those issues in intentional, transformational and religious ways.

I don't think that the suggestion from Emerson is that the preacher ought to direct what the response from the pew should be. The suggestion is only that it is essential within the spiritual/religious quest to ground our religiosity in the real world and to lift up that real world, the one in which we currently live, with the deference and esteem that we might more typically reserve for matters of the divine, denying the possibility that those two concerns were somehow separate from one another. It is within the realm of the preacher's responsibility, Emerson suggests, to invite the gathered congregation to consider who they are in relationship to the events of the day, so that those members might choose their own course of relationship and response to them.

I take both parts of Emerson’s charge to heart. I try regularly to hold before you the very worldly happenings of our time in an attempt to invite you to view our relationship with those events in ways that might make our lives more religious, more spiritual, by being more connected. And I do not presume, or want to appear to presume, what your responses to those events ought to be.

Today marks the 57 th day of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on September 27 th over at Zucotti Park in Manhattan. Since it started the movement has spread to over 100 cities across the United States and to over 1,500 cities around the world. Occupy Wall Street has become something more of an Occupy Main Street movement, as it seems it's nearly everywhere. It has become a major event of our day; one well worth our investment of attention and inquiry through the use of our religious lenses.

I begin with this thought by Quaker theologian and author Wendell Berry who wrote: "It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."

I wonder how many of you have had the chance to visit Zucotti Park in these last couple of months? I've had the opportunity to go twice. My first visit was on a warm, sunny, early autumn afternoon. The second was on a cold and windy, mid-autumn morning.

The primary difference in those two experiences was that on my first encounter the community was just out there. Talk about transparency! The predominantly young crowd was living out in the open in view of the whole world. Their lives and their possessions, including sleeping bags and everything else, were on display for everyone to witness. There was an immediate feeling of connection with the demonstrators. There were no sanitary facilities available except for, of all ironies, at a sympathetic McDonalds restaurant not too far away. Word on Liberty Square though, was that it was to be used discreetly and only when absolutely necessary. And that was of course only during business hours. Still, there was no olfactory or visual evidence of the absence of facilities in the encampment. Oh, and there was lots of drumming.

My second visit, a few weeks later, was several days after the big pre-Halloween snowstorm. By then, the park was carpeted with waist-high camping tents, occasionally interspersed by larger tents that were used for the information center, for first aid, for women's dormitories, and for the food collection and distribution center. Many of the encampment residence were inside the various tents. Much of the intensity that I witnessed on my first visit was visually less tangible, but it was still quite palpable. You couldn't see it so well, but you could feel it.

Many of the Liberty Square residents who were out and about were quite engaged in the organization of the enterprise as well as engaging of passersby. There wasn't any drumming going on this time, save a solitary bongo player who sat atop one of the surrounding marble walls. He was playing quietly, almost to himself. Another huge difference was that some porta-pottie's had been put in place just a couple of blocks away. Even though it was something of a trek, the facilities were there and open round the clock. I don't know, maybe that had something to do with dissipating the need for drumming. Maybe not.

On both visits, what was clear to the observer was how, for the most part, this was a young person's movement. Still, it felt important for people like me – older and perhaps more conventional in appearance – to be there in order to both support those who were there for the long haul, living on the street, and also in order to bolster the visible numbers and the diversity of the movement so that it might continue to be an event that could draw national and international attention. The press was everywhere.

What was also clear was the earnest desperation on the part of participants. There was and is urgency in their desperation. There are so many different groups: the unemployed, the underemployed, the educated unemployed with enormous college loan debts, the homeless and the newly homeless who lost their homes in foreclosure, union members who are being squeezed, people who were every color of the rainbow, and people whose hair was literally every color of the rainbow.

They and others were all there desperate for a change in business-as-usual in the intercourse of a whole host of human affairs from social, to political, to religious, to economic. They had identified corporations as the standard bearers of the status quo, and so it was within the shadows of those symbolic corporate temples of downtown Manhattan that they brought their protest. I want to read from the concerns posted by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) press. I'll print the entire declaration in the text version of this sermon, but I want to share just a bit of it to give you now some of its flavor now.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

I have to admit that, as something of a socialist, I have considerable appreciation for many of the 23 concerns that are being levied by the protesters. Things are incredibly broken in our world and in our institutions, and we – humanity – have broken them. In so many ways this is the result of the hegemony of the corporate driven world economy. The current state of things is that nations make laws and argue with one another, while too often, corporations make fortunes in profits, and they roll over one another, or anyone, or anything else that might stand in the way of those profits.

At the same I have to admit that, as something of a capitalist, I have considerable trepidation regarding the viability of anarchy. First, there many corporations whose mission it is to make profits for its shareholders in responsible and sustainable ways. Second, to serve the needs of humanity we need institutional systems that recognize and respond to the dynamics of supply and demand. Meeting the needs of humanity is a religious quest, especially for those of us with Universalist leanings. Corporations are among the institutional manifestations of those religious leanings.

The problem is that things have gotten so far out of whack that no one – not the Wall Street Occupiers nor the top-heavy institutions of corporate structure – know how to get those things back into whack. The governments of this new, global world do not hold the answers either. They have yet to learn how to promote the general welfare of their citizens within the context of their newly reduced sovereign roles.

The walls of Jerusalem are indeed breaking down and those who have so far survived are growing fewer and fewer in number. The middle class is dwindling to naught and the numbers of those falling beneath the poverty line are growing exponentially.

Wendell Berry wrote: "It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."

It seems that our real work is at hand and that we have now to embark on a journey that will allow us to reclaim prosperity – to the land and to its people. The thing is though we are going to have to learn new ways of doing things that will be sustainable. The old ways cannot get us there. And, because we have lost grasp, to some considerable extent, of some of our basic and universal ecological and human needs, we will need to recognize and employ new ways that can get us all to where we want to be going.

When I went on both of my visits to Zucotti Park, I couldn’t help but to be struck by the lack of direction the OWS Movement was taking in addressing their grievances. They had articulated well so many of the problems, but I felt disappointed that I couldn’t see any recommendations for what ought to be done about them. It took me a little time and some perspective to realize that the answers simply do not exist. It would be disingenuous for the protesters to posit any. Their response was a very honest not knowing.

And so I thank goodness for the young people in the Occupy Wall Street movement as they bring home, not necessarily solutions to the problems we face, but at least an articulation of so many practices that are simply untenable in a world where we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, in a world where we affirm and promote the inter-dependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

The OWS’ers are helping to show the rest us that we really don't know what to do. Sort of humbling isn't it? And yet they are showing us where we must begin this journey. Sort of empowering, even frighteningly empowering, isn't it?

We might look at what the folks in Zucotti Park and encampments across the country and around the world are doing as articulating prayers. Their actions, on their own behalf and on ours, are a sort of prayer in the face of not knowing what to do, a humble supplication of sharing in the responsibility for what has gone wrong and a willingness to participate in making things right, an open ended request for whatever wisdom might be found to lead the world forward and out of this chaotic injustice.

Now let us praise good persons? Industry and the corporation were instrumental in building and making this country great. Still, a new day has dawned. A new kind of greatness is required. It is one that will need the kind of spiritual/religious values and fortitude's that cannot allow for any chosen few to reign supreme. It is one that will demand a vision of justice with a wisdom that recognizes the interconnectedness of all beings and things.

It is in these very connections, I believe, connections of industry and labor, values and fortitude, wisdom and justice, where we will find evidence of the divine as it speaks to us in this our time. And I have faith that it is through our participation in these very connections where we will find the fertile ground we will always need to grow our souls and to feed our spirits.

If you've come for answers today, about what must be done regarding the OWS movement or about its concerns, I'm sorry, I have only my questions to add to yours. But I do know this: we don't get to choose the world we are born into. We do though get to choose how we will live in it. The occupiers are right – the power is ours.

Let us raise up the issues of our day so that those issues might be better viewed through the lenses of our religious sensibilities and values. It is time in the larger scheme of things for prayer, and may our praying not always be so silent.