The Reverend Manisha Dostert
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- Bernard Floyd
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1 Epiphany 5A (Feb 4/5), 2017 at Christ Church Cranbrook You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. My parents are immigrants. They came to the United States from India. They arrived in the early sixties, during a time of racial tension and marches for Civil Rights. They settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where my father had a job as a civil engineer. They were fresh off the boat, as we Indians call people from the homeland, so my mom wore a sari in the Pennsylvania winters and did not speak English well and was vegetarian back when meat and potatoes ruled the land. My dad had a thick Indian accent, which caused him all sorts of trouble, even though he knew English. He is also darker skinned than I am, so he experienced a lot of discrimination and marginalization in his work place. My mother and father were foreigners, who did not know the ways of the people they now lived with, and they were often alone and lonely, because, back then, there wasn t a huge Indian community in Harrisburg. My mom and dad rented a house from a couple called the Zimmermans. The Zimmermans had a farm, a farmhouse and a log cabin that was 125 years old, where my parents lived. The Zimmermans would call it their old log house, and my mother would chuckle because she came from a land where old meant it had been built centuries before they lived. Now the Zimmermans were Mennonite. My Mom and Dad did not know what they meant, except they knew that the Zimmermans were Christian. They also knew the Zimmermans were also people who made a difference in their lives. What did the Zimmermans do? Not much as it turned out. And plenty. The Reverend Manisha Dostert My mother said the rent was low and she thinks they kept it low to help them out, as they were new Americans. Mrs. Zimmerman would give my mother vegetables from her garden. And Mr. Zimmerman helped my father dig out his car when there was a blizzard that dumped thirty inches on their brand new car that was stuck on the bottom of the hill and covered because of the wind.
2 Page 2 of 5 Ordinary things that may not have changed the world, but they changed the world for my parents. The Zimmerman s farm was a place of refuge for my parents, a sanctuary in a land filled with foreign ways and people who sometimes did not look kindly on strangers. By the time I was born, my parents had moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and bought a house in a nice suburb with good schools. We were one of a handful of families who were not white there were a dozen or two families who were Asian- Chinese, Indian, Filipino. No black folk. And I am not sure if this is true, but as I grew up, I believed we were one of the very few families who were not Christian. We were Jain, an ancient Indian faith dating to at least 500 BC. And back then, we did not know any better. We were admittedly ignorant. We believed it when we heard America was a Christian nation. So, we assumed all people who were white were Christian. And unfortunately, we did not have the best experiences with some white folk. We experienced regular discrimination. My father would be harassed by people driving by our house when he was out mowing the lawn. They would yell racial epithets. Sometimes they would tell us to go back where we came from. Once we got a death threat in our mail box. Our neighbor was a Baptist minister. I think he must have been afraid of us or didn t approve of us, because he never said a word to us and wasn t very neighborly. So, this is sort of mean, we would call him Tukbhagaat. Tukbhagaat is mowing the lawn. Tukbhagaat forgot to pick up his garbage can. Tukbhagaat got a new car. Tukbhagaat in our language means fake. Then, for a year, while I was a senior in high school, our house was egged every week. We did not why or what we had done to cause something like that to happen. It was just eggs, but we never knew if one day it would be more than eggs. It was frightening and we lived afraid of our own neighbors. Eventually, we found out who was doing it. A bunch of white teenage boys who went to my school, who I would see at the bus stop and always said hi to, but they would never say anything to me. I guess they did not like me or my family in their neighborhood. It was difficult to experience the racism, but it also ended up confusing me, not just about white folk, but about Christianity, remember, I did not know any better and I thought all white folk were Christian, and I thought people who were Christian would act differently. So I would ask questions like, Why is it that people who are Christian do not like people like me who aren t Christian? Why do Christians always think they are better than others? And truth be told, I began to become prejudiced myself- I did not like Christians. At all. I want to share this with you because obviously something happened. If any of you know my husband, you know he is white. And clearly, I am Christian. So what happened to lead to the conversion? Ordinary things that may not change the world, but they changed me.
3 Page 3 of 5 When you live as a person of a minority race or culture or religion in the midst of people who are part of a majority race or culture or religion and you have experienced discrimination at the hands of the majority race or culture or religion, you have two ways of seeing the majority either they are all irredeemable and they are your enemies. Or you have to weigh all those folks who treated you poorly on the same scale as all the people in the majority culture who were good to you. And since I was always surrounded by white folk, I had amassed a large set of data points of people who treated me with dignity and respect. So, I was willing to look at a white person on a case-by-case basis, rather than discriminate against a whole race because of some acts of ignorance. Most of the time. I imagine it is the reason it could be harder when you belong to the majority culture or race. You have fewer opportunities to interact with all the people who are different than you and your race, religion and ethnicity because there are fewer of them around. But how blessed are we to be living in metro Detroit! We are surrounded by minority races, ethnicities and religions. Even though we are still geographically segregated over racial and economic lines, we all live within driving distance of each other. Lots of opportunities for amassing large sets of data points, right? Now, for whatever reason, it was easier for me personally to deal with my racial prejudices, but I had a really hard time with Christians. I still experienced Christians as a whole as arrogant and self-righteous. So, I was devastated when Troy and I were dating and I learned he was Christian and asked him a hypothetical question-would you ever a marry a non-christian? And he answered, No, I do not think so. So I told him it was over because there was no way I would EVER become a Christian. But eventually he saw the error of his ways and agreed that I was the best thing that ever happened to him. And we decided to get married. Now, I wanted an Indian wedding and in North Carolina there was no Jain Temple at the time, but there was a Hindu one. And even though neither Troy nor I were Hindu, I asked the Hindu priest whether he would marry us. He said in his beautiful Indian accent, I love it when young people want to celebrate their heritage. And he led a beautiful service for us. But Troy also wanted a Christian wedding and Troy informed me that in order to be married he had to find a church and become a member, so he found a church he liked- it was Presbyterianand he asked the minister the same question I asked the Hindu priest- would he marry us? The answer: no. Because in 2Corinthians 6.14, it says 14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? When Troy told me this, I erupted with all my pent up anger and hatred toward Christians. I said to him, What is wrong with you Christians? You always talk about love and you have nothing but hatred toward people who are different than you. I got a Hindu priest to marry us and we aren t even Hindu! Your religion is useless.
4 Page 4 of 5 Five months before our wedding date, I met a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, Pastor Bob. He was super nice and was caring for a woman who was dying of bone cancer in the hospital I worked. Troy got his contact information and Pastor Bob told Troy he would be delighted to marry us. Troy joined the church and became the church pianist, and I, well, I wanted to hear my beloved play, so I started going to church. And that is when ordinary things that were miracles began to happen to me. Like I remember during communion, which they had every week, and sitting in the church feeling super awkward, like I don t belong, like a foreigner. Everyone would go forward to receive communion and I would stay back by myself and I felt like there was this huge sign above my head flashing saying, Doesn t belong! Not one of us! One day, Pastor Bob came up to me and asked would I like to come forward each week to receive a blessing. I was amazed. He actually wanted to include me! Of course, now I realize it was because he followed a man named Jesus who went out of his way to include the oppressed, the marginalized, the despised, and the foreign Gentiles and because of that it occurred to Pastor Bob to want to include me. Once, I got a phone call from the leader of the Women s Group. She invited me to come to their meetings. I hesitated and said, Um, you may not know this, but I am not a Christian. She paused, and said, No, we know. We want you to come. So I went. And I was amazed at what I saw. It would strike all of you as ordinary, because you regularly do it. But these ordinary acts were extraordinary to me. They prayed for each other. They would make lists of people who were sick and share updates and decide who would bring casseroles. They laughed with each other, enjoyed each other, took care of each other and began to take care of me. I was not the same race, culture or religion as they were and they treated me like family. It was all beautiful to me, and it was full of light. I remember approaching the pastor one Sunday after church and asking him how does one become a member of the Church? It was a hypothetical question to me, but he was a salt of the earth kind of man, in love with his God. He handed me a copy of Luther s Small Catechism and told Troy and me to come over to sit in his living room on Mondays and we would talk about what I read. So, I read about God. I read about the Law and the Gospel. I read about sin and salvation. And I read about Jesus. Now, I wasn t a big fan of him because, and I am being honest with you, I thought Jesus was white and I did not need a white man to save me. It rankled me. We all have our demons we have to battle, yes? Of course, it was not until I went to seminary that I learned that Jesus, a Middle Eastern man, was probably closer to my skin color rather than my husband s. But I did not know that when I first met Jesus. So I had to listen to what he did to get past what he looked like.
5 Page 5 of 5 My former faith taught me about karma and that you were responsible for your own actions. You could achieve nirvana through your own merit and deeds. But I learned about how Jesus came to this earth to break the boundaries among us and lived a life among us that was generous and kind for the sake of everyone else. I learned how he met with the sinners, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, the down trodden, the excluded, the oppressed, the reviled, the foreigners. How he called ordinary people like you to follow him and told you, You are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world. I learned how he died on the cross and when he died, the benefits of the death, namely that all the sins were erased and overcome, those benefits he did not keep for himself, as one who achieved it, but he gave it to all of us. I was floored. Jesus did the hard work, achieved nirvana and then gave it away to all of us. And I learned all of this and stand before you today as priest and messenger of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, only because throughout my parent s and my life, there were Christians like you who were doing ordinary acts of goodness and kindness and in so doing, were changing the world, and because there were Christians like you who did not discriminate against people like me because of our skin color or our ethnicity or our religion but treated us with dignity and respect and included us so we did not feel like a foreigner. So, today, from this pulpit, as a daughter of immigrants, on behalf of all immigrants, I thank you for being salt and light to us.
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