Two weeks ago we honored the members of this congregation who, over the generations on fields of battle, gave of themselves-some gave their lives-to fight our nation's wars. During that service, I mentioned that I grew up in a pacifist household and thus bring a complicated set of memories and emotions to the task of honoring those who fought and those who died. What I said was true. It was also an understatement.
I grew up in a profoundly religious environment. My father is a minister, my mother's father was a minister, six of my eleven uncles are ministers, as are about a dozen and a half of my 56 first cousins. With the exception of me, all the ministers in my extended family are Mennonite ministers. Most people today are less familiar with the Mennonites than with their more distinctive and more conservative first cousins, the Amish. Even in New York City, the Amish are relatively well known. Their vegetables and produce appear at farmers' markets, their chickens appear on restaurant menus, and Harrison Ford even fell in love with one of them, played by Kelly McGillis in the movie Witness.
The Mennonite tradition began in the wake of the Reformation, that brutal and stormy conflict in the 16th century which split the Christians of Western Europe into two opposing camps: the Protestants-initially made up mainly of Lutherans and Presbyterians-and the Catholics. Of course, when the Protestants weren't busy combating Catholics, they were busy disagreeing among themselves. Unlike other reformers, for example, Mennonites believed that individuals should be baptized not when they were unknowing infants but only when they became assenting adults, hence the designation Anabaptists. Mennonites-also unlike other reformers- believed in the separation of church and state, which for them meant not going to war on behalf of the government. The bottom line for Mennonites was that religion was not merely a set of dogmas, it was a way of life. Following Jesus' example, they endeavored to live simply and peacefully. So have the Amish who broke away from the Mennonites in the 1690s to take an even more conservative approach.
These were not popular beliefs in 16th century Europe, however, neither the part about peace nor the part about adult baptism. In 1525, the Protestant-controlled City Council of Zurich, where the Anabaptist movement began, issued a decree that parents who failed to have their infants baptized within eight days after birth were to be arrested and banished. Within several years, belief in Anabaptism was made a capital crime throughout much of Europe, in both Catholic and Protestant regions.
I have at home on my shelf a thick book-it's more than eleven hundred pages long-titled The Bloody Theatre or the Martyrs' Mirror, which contains countless stories of how early Mennonites suf-fered and died for their faith. My grandmother used to tell me stories from The Martyrs' Mirror when I was a young boy. Some I heard so often that I can almost quote them verba-tim.
For almost two hundred years, the Mennonites, in the words of one historian, "lived the life of hunted beasts, not knowing whither to flee for refuge, in constant dread of losing possessions, liberty, even life itself." Several countries sent out soldiers and executioners-numbering a thousand strong in one case-whose sole task was to ferret out Anabaptists and put them to death. Those found in field or on highway were killed with the sword. Others were dragged out of their houses and hanged on door posts. Still others were imprisoned in barns or houses, which were then burned to the ground. By 1535, most of their 71 congregations in Switzerland had been exterminated, and only a handful of Mennonites were left in the back mountains and valleys of the Swiss Alps. On the whole, the persecution accomplished its deadly purpose.
Even though the mettle of the Mennonite faith proved strong, when the promise of religious freedom in the New World beckoned, Mennonites began in the seventeenth century to emigrate to America. Daniel P. Guengerich, my great-great-great-grandfather, set sail from Germany with his extended family on May 9, 1833, bound eventually for Iowa. In his diary, he wrote about the final hours of the 72-day trip, which was easier than many-only one passenger died en route-but nonetheless was filled with storms and sickness.
On Sunday August 11th the pilot came, then there was great joy on the ship among the people. At night many stayed on deck. About midnight light towers were sighted on the American coast. In the morning at day break we saw land on the right and on the left. There was great rejoicing that we once more saw land.
Imagine that sight: after generations of oppression and hardship, of torture and death, at last there comes a new horizon filled with promise. Like so many others who came to the New World, the Mennonites longed for a place where they could believe in accord with their conscience, worship in accord with their faith, and live in accord with their calling. And so they came to America. Arriving here, there was great rejoicing indeed.
Those scenes of eager arrival, replayed countless times throughout our history and even today, remind me of one of the most famous of all American poems. It is titled "The New Colossus."
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch whose flame is imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep ancient lands your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Those now-immortal words were penned by Emma Lazarus, herself a new immigrant to America. Today, they adorn the base of the Statue of Liberty. Yet, ironically, freedom and liberty for some brought oppression and servitude for others, as John Steinbeck recognized in his essay America and Americans. Indeed, the first settlers worked for this land, fought for it, and died for it. But they also stole and cheated and double-crossed for it. Theft of land from Native Americans was commonplace, as was the enslavement of non-Europeans, especially those brought here from Africa against their will. Even so, Steinbeck says, over time "we became more alike than we were different-a new society; not great, but fitted by our very faults for greatness, E Pluribus Unum [from many, one].Mottoes have a way of being compounded of wishes and dreams. The motto of the United States, "E Pluribus Unum," is a fact."
Even today, however, the motto of our nation is still not completely a fact for many Americans. Though we have made tremendous progress, the American experiment is not complete. Our unity as a nation is continually threatened by social division, ethnic fragmentation and economi-c polarization. Native Americans and African Americans still suffer the ongoing consequences of the racism that was built into our nation from the beginning. Even so, the American dream, however elusive, lives on. Our ancestors came to this land full of hope. Many of them suffered and some of them died, but all were grateful to live in a land where freedom was the goal and liberty the watchword. And whatever the differences among and between the many peoples who came here, they somehow knew that we shared a common destiny.
Which is why Pocahontas may be the quintessential American hero. The daughter of Powhatan, a powerful intertribal leader in the Chesapeake Bay region during the early 1600s, Pocahontas helped maintain peace between the English colonists and the Native Americans by befriending the settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, and eventually marrying one of them, a man named John Rolfe. But her place in American history was sealed by another act, both more dramatic and more courageous. According to an account written by Captain John Smith, the founder and leader of the colony, relations between the settlers and the Native Americans had deteriorated to the point that Smith himself was taken prisoner and sentenced to die. As the story goes, just as Smith placed his head on the sacrificial stone to await death, Pocahontas supposedly flung herself down and, embracing the captain's head, successfully implored her father to spare him.
In Steinbeck's terms, Pocahontas may well have been the first American-the first to sense that the destiny of the European settlers and the Native Americans must be shared if either was to flourish. The future, then as now, lay in the first person plural: we, the people. But using the first person plural is risky business, and not just in the sense Pocahontas demonstrated. It demands that we give up something. To be part of a we involves a change in our individual identity. The philosopher Robert Nozick puts it this way. If we picture the individual self as a closed figure whose boundaries are continuous and solid, dividing what is inside from what is outside, then we might diagram the we as two or more figures with the boundary line between them erased where they come together. To be part of a we means that we become part of each other's identity.
It also means, to some extent, that we pool both our well-being and our autonomy. My well-being is tied up with that of others in the we. If someone else is doing badly, I am responsible to help them out, and vice-versa. We are responsible for each other. And we agree to make certain decisions together. My freedom to think and act as I choose is constrained by your equal freedom to do the same. From many, one: we, the people. It's a pooled identity, a mutual sense of well-being, a shared destiny.
During the Great Depression, my father tells me, people who were then called tramps would often appear at the door of my grandparents' house in upstate New York. Many were filthy from months on the road, some were undoubtedly sick with tuberculosis, but all were hungry. Grandma Guengerich always fed them well, even if it meant there was less food for her own family, even if it meant she had to throw out the used dishes and utensils to protect her family from disease. "We should always be ready to help out those who are in need," she said.
Grandma knew about the first person plural, and so do we here at All Souls. It is a legacy to us from those whose presence among us we celebrate today. For twenty-five years and more, they have taught us the meaning of the first person plural: we, the congregation, the family of All Souls. When someone's having a tough time, for example, we help out. Like the way everyone rallied round when the Vladimir Marcano was mugged or the Lakota-Avildsens' house burned down. Or when a child needs help with her homework or a homeless man needs a hot meal. Or when a relationship breaks up or someone loses her job. Or when the building needs to be made accessible to people who use wheelchairs. We all rally round.
It's both a great gift and a great responsibility to be part of a we. This Thanksgiving, I'm especially grateful to be part of a community of people who care about each other. I'm grateful too for our shared hopes, our mutual aspirations, our common hopes and dreams. The golden door of All Souls is always open, the lamp always lifted high. Happy Thanksgiving! Copyright AllSouls 1999.