Address: “Don’t Let the Lights Go
Out”©
The Rev.
This week, with the start of
Hanukkah on Friday at sunset, millions of Jews around the world will light
candles in remembrance of the victory of the Maccabees. In 165 BCE, this group of small, independent
farmers – weary of bearing the brunt of oppressive taxes imposed by foreign
rulers, and incensed by the forced imposition of Hellenistic culture and the
banning of Jewish religious practice, fought back against all odds, and won the
first recorded national liberation struggle.
Hanukkah, which means “dedication”,
celebrates a miracle that occurred after this victory when the Maccabees were in the process of purifying and rededicating
the Temple in Jerusalem. As they relit
the eternal lamp that was to glow within, they found only enough oil for one
day. They set about the arduous process
of preparing new oil, but the flame stayed lit for the eight nights of Hanukkah
until the new supply of oil was made ready.
Hanukkah is in a deeper sense a celebration of the human spirit – from
the depths of despair we can find new
hope; from oppression, liberation; from darkness, new light. Rabbi
Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine describes the
miracle of Hanukkah this way:
…a critical mass of people had some to recognize
that there was a force in the world that made possible the transformation of what is to what ought to be. When this
recognition takes hold of large numbers of people, the “power of the people”
becomes greater than all the technology and manipulations of the most
sophisticated forms of oppression.
Perhaps nowhere in the world do we
need to rededicate ourselves more to the vision of transforming what is to what ought to be than in the Darfur
region of Sudan. While the statistics I
quoted during our chalice lighting are startling enough, events this week will
certainly make things there even worse. On
Thursday, the United Nations was forced to airlift 134 nonessential aid workers
from the main Darfur town of El Fasher
due to rising tensions and the threats of attack by rebel groups. The schools and markets have been closed, Janjaweed militiamen have looted the cattle markets, and
more aid workers will be evacuated if the fighting escalates. The Red Cross withdrew from Kutum in northern Darfur just
yesterday after an attack on staff residences, impacting a large effort to
repair water sources and support health clinics in the region. Thirteen Sudanese workers have been killed
since May.
Let me offer a little bit of background
for those of you who are unfamiliar with what started this mess in the first
place. Sudan, which is one of the
largest and poorest nations in Africa, has been plagued with governmental
corruption and civil unrest since its independence in 1951. The current humanitarian crisis was kicked
off in 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the
Justice and Equality Movement, attacked government outposts to demand greater
representation for black farmers living in the western region of Darfur.
The Arab-led government’s response
was swift and brutal; they equipped a proxy militia, the Janjaweed
(or “evil men on horseback”) to launch a scorched-earth campaign to wipe out
the black farmers altogether. Their
methods include burning homes and crops, destroying wells and granaries, and
raping, torturing and murdering millions of innocent civilians.
The only thing that has kept the
death rates from skyrocketing in Darfur has been the
presence of the most elaborate humanitarian aid system the world has ever seen,
based in El Fasher, the largest city center in the
region, and the supply center for the many refugee camps in the area. Over the
past six months, aid workers have increasingly come under attack, and if the
aid system collapses the monthly death rate in Darfur
could top 100,000, according to outgoing UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian
Affairs, Jan Egeland.
One of his biggest regrets is that more was
not done for Darfur in the early stages of the
crisis.
We're saving really the assets that we can at the moment,
protecting the life of our own people," he said of the UN pullout from El Fasher. But we're
not protecting the lives of the vulnerable women and children and there are
four times more of them now than when we started in 2004.
Back in September of 2004, President
Bush declared the crisis in Darfur genocide, a
statement he repeated last week in South Africa, but he has steadfastly refused
to use his influence to make Darfur a priority. Even a million postcards sent to President
Bush this spring by concerned citizens didn’t seem to have an impact. The situation now seems so
dire as to be hopeless. And yet, it is
my belief in this season of lights, that we can still make a difference – that we must not refuse to make what difference we can. With Gandhi, I do accept that we are one
human family, and that each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all
the others. I also stand with Margaret
Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world.
Indeed,
it is the only thing that ever has.”
In September of this year, Holocaust
survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel appeared before the United Nations Security Council
along with the actor George Clooney to bring attention to the humanitarian
crisis in Darfur.
“If the
UN does not act it will be blamed for history.” said Wiesel.
After the Holocaust the world
said, “Never again.” We need to
listen to that mantra and act now in order to save those that are suffering and
dying in Sudan.[1]
This weekend, as one response to
this call, thousands of congregations of all faiths throughout our nation are
responding to a call for prayer for the situation in Darfur
in honor of International Human Rights Day.
I ask those of you who do pray to hold Darfur
in your hearts, and for those of you for whom prayer has no meaning, to hold Darfur in your conscience.
As one Darfuri woman asks:
I want to join my prayer to many other
voices. Every few months we are driven
away from one refugee camp to the other, so far in the desert where nothing,
nothing at all exists. This is no way
for a human being to live. No way to
live in such a shocking place – uncultivated, waterless, treeless and barren
region. Everything is burning around me,
around us, in me, in us. Everything is
barren, hell, hell…
This particular woman ends her
prayer by saying that she knows God is by there, beside her, and asking that
peace and tranquility be restored to her beloved country. This brings to mind a prayer composed by a
Holocaust victim before his death:
I believe
in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe
in love even when feeling it not.
I believe
in God even when God is silent.
Not everyone would concur with this
sentiment. One friend of mine who became
a staunch atheist after a rogue wave washed him from the shore of Maine,
breaking almost every bone in his body, would say that it is the very existence
of such inhumanity, and such capriciousness, that proves that God does not
exist at all. Elie
Wiesel too had his doubts about God after living
through the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. He recounts a time at Auschwitz when he
witnessed three rabbis actually putting God on trial for hostility, cruelty and
indifference because it seemed that he had abandoned his people at their time
of greatest need. After a lengthy
process of presenting evidence and careful deliberation, God was found guilty. “What shall we do now?” asked a man, stunned. The only answer that made sense to the people,
in the face of such reality, was that they should pray.
Regardless of whether our prayers
are simply cries into the vacuum of time and space, or whether they float like
promises, like candlelight, into the air and alight there, joining with the
great web of life and love, I believe that when we raise our consciousness, and
focus our intentions, transformation becomes possible. When we are silent, turning our attention
away, we become complicit with the suffering and humiliation being inflicted on
so many millions. Alone, we cannot
change the world, but when enough voices demand change, change comes.
Genocide is a particularly abhorrent
but also regular event in the history of humanity. It involves the mass killing of a group of
people because of their race, identity, ethnicity, national or religious
affiliation or any kind of grouping as defined by the perpetrator, be it
political or social. What is so
disturbing, is that we seem as an international body to only be able to respond
to genocide after the fact, but have not created the will nor the mechanisms
for effectively intervening while it is ongoing. Some of you have lived long enough to
remember the Nazi Holocaust, which targeted Jews, Gay and Lesbian people,
mentally ill and neurologically challenged individuals, Communists, trade
unionists, The Romany, and Catholics.
Others of us remember all to well the genocide in Cambodia at the hands
of Khmer Rouge, in Rwanda (in which 800,000 Tutsis were killed in 100 days),
and the so-called ethnic cleansing which took place in Bosnia. Now we can add to the list Darfur, where nothing will change I fear, unless an
international force is put into action.
It may seem like we are powerless as
individuals to effect such change, but it takes one voice joining another,
joining another, and so on to create the will to act. The timeless words of Martin Niemoeller from World War II come to mind:
First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist,Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me. left to speak up for me. I’m not indifferent to the fact that there are competing causes tugging at our hearts these days. In my own home, may husband Andy has been dealing with pneumonia, which has brought my attention close to home in recent weeks. So many of our friends and family members are challenged with illness or life transitions right now, and for some of us it is all we can do right now to tend to our own well being or that of our loved ones. Others are simply overwhelmed with holiday preparations, with all of its attendant demands and obligations. Our lives don’t stop just because there is suffering going on halfway around the world.