From a
Distance:
Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
Sermon Delivered By
Reverend Nancy Bouchard
November 30, 2008
She
was just a young girl, the age of some of our children - Grace, Emma,
Katarina. She sat at the dining room table and was feeling proud as she
quietly repeated the words printed in big letters.
“FIRST
DAY OF THE DAVID STAR”
Her
father had put down the newspaper paper and sat with his head resting in
his hands. Judith Magyar
Isaacson, didn’t understand the sudden feeling
of sadness. She picked up the newspaper, looked at it in wonderment and
handed it to her father. “What does it say daddy? Read it to me”
Can you imagine the reluctance and the pain? A parent trying to speak
to a mere child about the reality of the impending danger. About the
danger of wearing a yellow star…
Her
father started to read, slowly with hesitance and increasing despair.
“Today, April 6th, 1944 all Jews over six years of age- and
Christians designated as Jews…must wear the yellow star in times of
peace as well as war. The star, of canary yellow velvet, wool or cotton,
must be prominently displayed. It is to be worn in all public places,
streets, shops…..”
Judith Isaacson would write about her experience of the Holocaust, in
her book Seed of Sarah. She would be one of the survivors of
Auschwitz. Her memoirs are an incredible testimony to the resilience of
the human spirit, and the courage that can give way to hope and
forgiveness.
Adolph Hitler had come into power as chancellor of Germany in 1933.
During his reign he would invade nearly every country surrounding
Germany:, Austria, Belgium ,Czechoslovakia, France,
Poland, just to name a few. From a
distance, Hitler seemed unstoppable. From a distance, the world saw
Americans struggling with their own system of discrimination and
mounting tensions between people of color and immigrants. From a
distance, Americans were content to remain at a distance from
the atrocities of Germany, swimming in their own anti-Semitic
sentiments.
But
nearly 4,000 miles away from Germany the American Unitarian Association
was voicing outrage at Nazi persecution of Jews and other innocent
victims. At the onset of the Nazi Regime, Unitarian Association
Director, Robert Dexter and his wife traveled to Europe several times.
They were so disturbed by the inhumanity; the violence they returned to
Massachusetts with determination to help in whatever way need be...
The Associations Service Committee raised $40,000, and asked Unitarian
Minister Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha, to be part of an
underground rescue mission in Prague, and then France. Rev. Sharp is one
of Pennsylvania’s heroes as well. He was ordained and served the
Unitarian Church in Meadville, PA. The Sharps were equally outraged by
what they heard and so compelled by the urgency; they accepted the call
to be representatives of this critical mission. They left their two
children in the capable hands of their Wellesley, MA. Church members and
traveled into the war zone.
Marge Piercy said it well. The people I love
the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and
swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
Martha Sharp described the scene in Prague as they arrived,
“[there were thousands of people standing or kneeling in the snow before
the chapel of the Town Hall, bareheaded, praying; oblivious to the
melting snow or the tears coursing down their faces.” “We had
never felt such an urge to act before it was too late — to serve these
brave people, to help them save their world and our own.”
The Sharps spent nine months in Prague and barely
missed being exposed to authorities they moved into France to continue
their work helping children, women and men escape Nazi torture.
In
1940 the Universalist Board of Trustees would join the
Unitarian Service Committee in providing needed financial support
for continuation of relief activities.
In
1963 the Unitarian Service Committee and the Universals Service
Committee would merge to become he Unitarian Universals Service
Committee (the UUSC).
Last Sunday I discussed radical hospitality reaching out to the neighbor
who is not in your immediate peer group; the marginalized, the poor,
those different than you, those you don’t know. Through the Unitarian
Universals Service Committee (UUSC) we extend our meaning of neighbor,
we honor our seventh principle and we strengthen our commitment to
social justice.
With our support through the Guest at Your Table program, the Unitarian
Universals Service Committee goes beyond kindness and compassion, the
Service Committee engages in actions that change the world.
The UUSC has “jumped into their work” Our “missionaries” are
carrying the message of justice and worth throughout the world. Working
alongside the migrant workers of Texas, the Navaho Community in New
Mexico, the Passamaquody’s in Maine, the victims of Katrina’s and the
Asian tsunami our Unitarian Universalist web has been spinning. UUSC has
been fighting ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur, and our
contributions have helped to protect free election processes in Kenya
and in the current efforts to end the war in Iraq.
I
love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like
water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck
to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.
Marge Piercy may well have pointed to many of you and many of our fellow
UU’s, People who give and give, work and work and even now, in times
when it might be easier to feel inclined towards scarcity, may we l do
our best to support the important mission of the UUSC.
And
just as a visual reminder of the many ways you can treat your special
box I invite the Zipprodt family to help me with:
Don’t sneeze on the
cheese:
First meet the family that
hurries about
They forgot the box,
didn’t put it out
On the day that it is due
Every one of them will get
the flu
And the family, where
few words are spoken
The box is out, just as
a token
Money goes in without
much care
The click of coins is
all you hear
Ah the Zipprodt’s, if
you please
Kind and polite, they
don’t sneeze in the cheese
They read Stories of
Hope, money goes in the box
Follow their example,
they’rer the tops!
Blessed Be, Shalom, Om Nahmah Shivia, Amen
by Ghanda Di Figlia, Harvard University, author of
Roots and Visions UUSC.org/timeline