Scripture | Matthew 4:12-23

Reflection #1 | by Bethany Davey

I imagine most of us have seen–or at least heard about–the billboard sign on 71, between here and Cincinnati, that reads, “Hell is real.” The sign has become the butt of many jokes, the inspiration for memes and mocking.

I used to find this billboard offensive, a clumsy attempt to terrify onlookers into salvation, an evangelical effort to take seriously the Great Commission…even on the highway. I found it healing to poke fun at my fundamentalist background through this sign. Humor has provided comfort to my inner child, who is still a bit terrified of the idea of Hell as it was conveyed to me in my younger years.

But this week, when that billboard came to mind, it no longer felt quite as silly. When I read it instead as “Hell is real…on Earth,” something that once struck me as slightly ridiculous suddenly resonates. These days, hell on earth seems particularly real.

I am in the final semester of my Master of Divinity program, and two weeks ago, I participated in an intensive course focused on immigration advocacy and immigrant solidarity. Though the experience was supposed to take place in Arizona, at the US-Mexico border, unexpected circumstances led us instead to an immersion experience closer to our school, in the state of New Jersey. Initially disappointing, it was quickly apparent that this shift was essential: the border is now everywhere.

On one evening of our intensive, we went to Delaney Hall, a warehouse-made-detention center, run by the notorious Geo Group.

Our cohort joined local organizers outside the facility during Tuesday evening visiting hours. Waiting families, enduring personal and communal traumas, wait in an environment that reflects the overarching realities of carceral violence. Visitors must wait–sometimes for hours–in the biting cold until their loved one’s cell block time arrives. Unbeknownst to first time visitors, they are expected to arrive an hour before the designated visit time; they may arrive to discover they have “missed” their visitation window completely. Visitors are supposed to wear–or, not wear–very specific clothing and shoes. The restriction for women and girls’ clothing is long, and prohibits yoga pants, rips in jeans. Men and boys have fewer restrictions, but visitors cannot know ahead of time that the crocs on their feet will keep them from admittance. Visitors are at the whims of the gate guard who can arbitrarily–depending on his mood–deny admittance if visitors arrive “late,” even if he is running ahead of schedule. Visitors wait in long lines outside the gate, only to wait again in the facility “courtyard,” and then again in the indoor security line. Visitors attempt to avoid undue attention from the gate guard–though interaction is unavoidable. Visitors must not stand in the driveway, since ICE vehicles fly through at 30mph, directly beside the visitor waiting area. Garbage covers the ground and blows in the breeze. All the while, families wait.

Hell is real.

The facility sits on a busy industrial corridor, through which innumerable semi-trucks pass. Close to the Newark airport, the detention center is down the road from the prison, trash incinerator, the petroleum plant, a chemical plant, the place where animal carcasses are incinerated. The smell was unlike anything I have experienced before: it was a stink that never went away, a dust that settled on our clothes and in our lungs. We were told not to walk into our homes with the shoes we wore that night, as toxic chemicals had been discovered in local air and dust samples. On this industrial corridor of death, kidnapped humans are housed in frigid, unsanitary conditions, fed half cooked food and denied access to healthcare and attorneys.

Hell is real.

We did not go inside, but remained outside the facility with local organizers who provide direct support to families visiting loved ones. Organizers collect donations so they can provide hats, gloves, hand warmers, snacks, water, food, regulation clothing, diapers and hot drinks to families waiting in the cold. These gestures do not change the circumstances, yet they offer tangible comfort and human connection in the midst of personal and collective hells.

We do not need to leave our state, our city, our neighborhoods to recognize that Hell is real.

And how are we to keep going, when our hearts throb with despair and grief? When war and genocide and torture and terror rage? When we fear for our neighbors, our loved ones, ourselves? When the institutions in which we may have found comfort crumble?

How do we go on when we know–deep in our being–that hell, on earth, is real?

Recognizing, naming, acknowledging our pain can sustain us, can bring us into presence with what is so that we might imagine and live into what might be. Pain may have words, and it may not yet–or ever. But can we hold our pain in the nest of our hands, trusting that it wants to be heard–as a whisper, or a scream–as we listen, as we honor the attention and breath it needs.

In just a moment, we will hold a three-minute period of silent meditation together. You are invited to experience these minutes as you wish. You may choose to simply sit and rest, breathe. You may choose to stretch. You may choose to draw or write your pain, or meditate on the tender nest holding it–and you. You may choose to pray with words or with presence. However you would like to engage these minutes, please do as you feel so led. And, feel free to leave your camera on, or to turn it off, as you feel most comfortable. I will speak into the room when the three minutes is concluded.

Reflection #2 | by Elisa Stone Leahy

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:13-16 ESV

In a time of great pain and grief in our world, it feels good to come together with all of you. We are a people who reach out to each other, a people who find ways to be together in community, even through our screens. We are people who love each other.

The stories we tell shape who we are.

Seth Godin, a marketing expert, says that the most powerful storytelling message is this one: “People like us do things like this.”

That phrase boils down to two things: identity and action.

“People like us do things like this.”

I grew up hearing stories about WWII, heroic, powerful accounts of bravery in the face of great horrors. Knowing what I know now about the roots of colonialism in this country, the direct line between slavery and American economic power, the residential schools where so many Indigenous children were harmed, the Japanese American internment camps and so forth, I understand that heroic stories told by the victors are limited, to say the least. I wonder sometimes how many remarkable stories of resistance have been lost under the layers of retelling that our society uses to sanitize the past.

But, back to WWII. In my home I heard many stories of good people hiding Jewish families, smuggling children out of Germany, feeding and protecting others, even secretly working to undermine Nazi operations. The heroes were varied. Corrie ten Boom was a fifty-year-old Dutch woman, Sophie Scholl was a teenage girl working with the White Rose resistance, Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist. And of course there was the singing Von Trapp family who fled Austria because of the father’s principled stand. Yes, I know that one is highly fictionalized, but it is one of the stories I internalized, so deeply that I can quote the entire thing. And sing it, but trust me you don’t want that.

The heroes of these stories took a moral stand against the evils of the Third Reich. And I, like so many others, identified with them. I understood that in this story I was on their side. I was a person like them. Even as a child, I knew that I would be one of the helpers Anne Frank wrote about. In her diary Anne wrote: ‘While others display their heroism in battle or against the Germans, our helpers prove theirs every day by their good spirits and affection.’ For 25 months Anne, her family and four others lived in hiding in a set of secret rooms in her father’s office building. Unable to leave for any reason without risking certain apprehension by the Nazi occupiers, Anne and her friends could never have survived without their helpers, a group of dedicated Dutch and Austrian citizens who brought them food, news and friendship. And 5 library books a week.

Lately, I have become “low-key obsessed” with Miep Gies, the young woman who was Otto Frank’s secretary, their family’s dear friend and their secret keeper. This is a woman who was told by many in her society that the right thing to do, the legal thing, the patriotic thing, was to follow the laws of the state. When Otto Frank came to her and asked if she would help, she did not hesitate. When it was time, she was there to guide them to safety. For 2 years she was their connection to the world. Despite what the messaging of the state told her about right and wrong, she chose to follow her conscience, at great personal risk. She chose to be a helper.

“People like us do things like this.”

It is an easy thing to call yourself a moral person. We read stories of those standing up to great evil and say, yes, I am like them. But to act, to put into practice the faith that guides us, requires more. It requires us to do things.

I have been glued to my phone the last few weeks. I have witnessed great horrors, as I know many of you have. But I have also witnessed remarkable action. I have watched networks of neighbors joining together, showing up as they are for each other. In bathrobes, ski goggles, flip-flops, arctic-ready parkas, shorts, with whistles and with phones, Minnesotans are out on the streets, standing up to evil. Their courage is impossible to ignore. For some, it is written in their blood.

It reminds me of the German teens who formed their own group to counter the Hitler Youth. They started with mild rebellions-growing their hair long and listening to jazz. But eventually the Edelweiss pirates were posting signs denouncing Hitler’s violence and sabotaging Nazi munitions. At one point it is estimated they had 5000 members, all teenagers. But after the war, few Germans seemed interested in talking about the Edelweiss pirates. In reference to this embarrassed silence, Jean Julich, one of the surviving pirates said, “If there is one hero in the country then the rest of the country could say they knew nothing about what was going on. But if there is one hero on every street, then it looks bad for the rest of the street.” 

Minnesota right now is showing us streets full of heroes. And they are the most Minnesotan heroes you can imagine. Elderly couples who never protested before in their lives are standing on corners, shaking their heads and preparing for pepper spray. Preschool teachers are organizing patrols. Ordinary people delivering food to immigrant families are writing the addresses on pieces of paper small enough to swallow if ICE stops them. Let me repeat that. In Minnesota, people delivering food to their neighbors have been instructed not to input any addresses in their phone because of surveillance, and if they are stopped, to tear the paper into small pieces and eat it before ICE finds it. This is in direct response to ICE agents who are now waiting outside grocery stores to follow white people to immigrant homes, since so many of them are taking food to their neighbors.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “salt of the earth person” as: “a very good and honest person or group of people.” If anyone is the salt of the earth, it is these folks showing up for each other. These are the people I want to identify with.

“People like us do things like this.”

People like us are the salt of the earth. We raise money for those afraid to go to work, we learn how to build school safety patrols, we lend hands to create signs, we print zines and whistle kits, we train others in rapid response, we sign up for ICE watch, we check in on neighbors, we walk kids to school, we open our homes to those who need it, we visit detention centers, we memorize our rights and tell others theirs, we brave the cold for mass protests, we honk our horns in solidarity, we order more red cards, we offer rides to court, we accompany strangers to doctor appointments, we don’t let those ignorant comments slide, we pass information to those who need it, we call congress, we share stories, we make art, we donate to desperately needed mutual aid, we create spaces for each other where we can break, we have difficult conversations with family, we hold our children close, we mourn, we are present, we wonder if it’s enough. People like us do things like this.

It never feels like enough.

After 25 months of hiding the Frank family, Miep Gies was at her desk in the office one day when the Nazis came. Someone had betrayed them. Miep was helpless as her dear friends, who she had protected for so long, were led away. Desperate to do more, Miep raised money for a significant bribe, marched straight into Nazi headquarters and asked for her friends’ freedom. She was thrown out, shaken and without the money, but remarkably, alive and free. Heartbroken, she returned to the hiding place. Among the ransacked belongings the Nazis had deemed too insignificant to take, Miep found the notebooks and papers where Anne had kept her diary. It is because of Miep that we have that story today. Miep Gies, who was devastated that she was unable to save Anne Frank, or her mother and sister, brought the story of one girl’s life under fascism to us.

When she saw the power of Anne’s story as if swept across the world, Miep said: “It confirms my conviction that any attempt at action is better than inaction. An attempt can go wrong, but inaction inevitably results in failure.”

What good is salt, if it loses its saltiness? What good is morality if it is a personal, individual thing? Miep’s light may have been hidden from those who would snuff it out, but in the annex, in that small set of secret rooms, Miep’s light shone clear, bringing warmth and solace to a group of people living in darkness and fear. May your light shine before men. May your salt melt the frozen hearts of this world. May we be a people on a hill, courageous, impossible to ignore.