Make Us Whole

Sermon | May 9, 2021 |Rev. Julie Lombard

Reading: Deborah’s Voice (please read as written to hold in place her dialect)

Preface: This reading is taken from the #1 New York Times Bestseller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack”. This 2010 book by Rebecca Skloot tells the tale of how an African-American mother changed modern medicine as we know it.  

“When people ask- and seems like people always be askin to where I can’t never get away from it- I say, Yeah, that’s right, my mother name was Henrietta Lacks, she died in 1951. John Hopkins took her cells and them cells are still livin today, still multiplyin, still growin, and spreadin if you don’t keep em frozen. Science calls her HeLa and she’s all over the world in medical facilities, in all the computers and the Internet everywhere.

When I go to the doctor for my check up I always say my mother was HeLa. They get all excited, tell me stuff like how her cells helped make my blood pressure medicines and antidepression pills and how all this important stuff in science happened because of her. But they don’t never explain more than just sayin, Yeah, your mother was on the moon, she been in nuclear bombs and made that polio vaccine. I really don’t know how she did all that, but I guess I’m glad she did, cause that means she helpin lots of people. I think she would like that.

But I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?                                            

Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was.” 

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Next week, May 16 ^th,this church will vote on whether or not to become a Welcoming Congregation and to adopt the 8 ^th Principle at the Annual Meeting- this is something to truly celebrate! We will test our polity as we live out our values. We will prove that this is a strong congregation that can have serious discussions about divisive topics.  

This is a place to display your freedom to speak your minds and vote freely. It is our promise to learn together and commit ourselves to making the world a better place. It is so cool to witness this in action, living out the foundational principles of our faith, and flexing our congregational muscles. I am grateful to minister and serve you, even if it is for only a brief time.  

But that is not what today’s sermon’s about, instead we are here to honor Mother’s Day. This is a complex holiday. We must acknowledge that although we all can say we have or had a mother, we cannot all say this day brings us joy.  

Motherhood is darn difficult, I can speak from experience. There are many who no longer have mothers, those who chose not to have children or couldn’t have children, and those who have or have had strained relationships with their mothers. All are welcome here.  

Before this day was taken hostage by the Hallmark Card Company, Unitarian Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation urging women across the world to join the cause of peace building.  

Howe was a mother of six children, yet only four survived to adulthood. She was once the parishioner of the famous Transcendentalist, Rev. Theodore Parker. Even though she preferred his preaching style above others, she left his church because she thought his sermons were unsuitable for children.  

By the 1870’s, Howe answered the call to start a peace movement crusade. She helped organize an American branch of the Woman’s International Peace Association.¹http://www.uua.org/pressroom/stories/radical-roots-mothers-day, 5/2/2021  

The words from her Mother’s Day Proclamation held a radical call to create peace that still resonates today:  

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.            It says: “Disarm! Disarm!”²Ibid  

From that platform, Howe advocated for the creation of a “Mother’s Day for Peace”. Eventually, it resulted in a campaign to have a National Mother’s Day holiday to honor the vital role of mothers.  

Her story is our heritage. We come from a long-line of faithful folks that transcend the norm by going beyond the usual limits. That’s who we are and what Unitarian Universalists did and still do.  

Now, I want to turn our attention to today’s reading: Deborah’s Voice which comes from “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack” written by Rebecca Skloot. Deborah’s Voice tells a moving tale of a daughter who struggled to bring meaning to her life and the life of her mother.  

Deborah’s mother died when she was only a young girl and events of her death were wrapped in mystery. As an adult, the story came into focus and though the layers of pain and hurt were still raw when she learned how her mother helped to change modern medicine.  

After having five children, Henrietta Lack found a lump and she went to the hospital to get it checked out. It was cervical cancer which she would later die from, but before she did, a biopsy was taken.  

Her cells were collected and studied without her knowledge or permission. Today, these cells are called HeLa cells. They have been given credit for being world travelers and for helping to formulate medical advancements such as the polio vaccine and antidepressants.  

Although there is much to celebrate from those advancements, there is also a dark side to her story. How it took Henrietta’s family many years to learn the truth. How money was being made from her cells without a cent making it back to her family. How her and her family’s privacy was violated. Do I need to even say that she was African American?

Although Henrietta died in 1951, it took the family over 20 years to learn of the story. It began in a casual conversation in a Baltimore row house kitchen. Neighbors talking when the conversation turns from where do you work? to “I’ve been working with these cells in my lab for years that came from a woman with your same last name.”³Skloot, Rebecca, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack, Crown Publishing, New York, 2010, p 179-180. Next thing you know, it’s not only the same name, but the same exact woman who was her mother-in-law.  

“Henrietta Lack is your mother-in-law?” the man asked full of excitement. “Did she die of cervical cancer?” The woman stopped smiling and snapped back, “How did you know that?”⁴Ibid, p 180. 

Pandora’s Box was opened. He told her that he ordered the cells from a supplier just like everyone else. This was soon after the Tuskegee debacle that was all over the news. The terrifying nightmares of what happen to Black people that went into the hospital were suddenly coming true and the Lack family was a part of the sad story.  

The daughter-in-law  ran home screaming to her husband, “Part of your mother is alive!”⁵Ibid, p 181. Her husband called his widowed father to ask if this made any sense.  

The father remembered seeing Henrietta’s body at the funeral. He wondered if someone dug her up. The son called the hospital and said, “I’m calling about my mother, Henrietta Lack- you got some of her alive in there.”⁶Ibid, p. 181.   Of course, the operator couldn’t find record of that patient, so he hung up not knowing who else to call.  

Years later, Mike Rogers’s 1976 Rolling Stone article hit newsstands telling the true story of Henrietta Lacks. People learned for the first time that the woman behind HeLa was African-American.  

In a time when the Black Panthers would set up free clinics for Black people in local parks -protesting what they believed to be a racist healthcare system, here comes the story of a Black woman born of slavery and sharecropping who fled north for a better life only to have her cells used by white scientists without her consent.  

It was another story of white selling black twisted into a storyline suggesting that Black cultures contaminated white ones. It was a time when the right to marry wasn’t about same-sex marriages, but about Blacks marrying Whites.  

Folks wanted to talk to Henrietta’s children. Scientists wanted to connect with them, too. Henrietta’s children were often asked to give blood, not knowing why. They thought they were being tested to see if they had the same cancer their mom had.  

Wires were often crossed, scientists assumed the kids understood, but important info was lost in translation. The reasoning for the blood tests never reached those who waited to hear if they had cancer. Can you imagine waiting for those test results? It made Deborah sick with worry.  

Yes, we can be proud to say advancements have been made, but we cannot say we have overcome. Some folks believed after the death of Treyvon Martin that the Civil Rights Movement needed to be resurrected. Three woman came together to create ‘Black Lives Matter’ as a call to action; Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.  

As Julia Ward Howe was the mother of Mother’s Day, these three women were the mothers of a New Civil Rights Movement. They wanted to create an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to society, humanity, and resilience in the face of oppression.  

With every subsequent death, the movement spread from Michael Brown to national conferences about people working for liberation, to George Floyd and an explosion of support and marches during the middle of a pandemic.    

Black Lives Matter is a response to the White Supremacy that permeates our society. It is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.  

When the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ is used, we are trying to broaden the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black [and brown] people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state.⁷http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/, 5/2/2021  

Black Lives Matter speaks to the ways in which Black lives are deprived of basic human rights and dignity;  
how Black poverty and genocide is state violence,  
how 2.8 million Black people are locked up in prisons is state violence,  
how Black women bearing the burden of a relentless assaults on their children and their families is state violence,  
how Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of them like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes them and profits from them, and that is state violence,  
how 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows,  
how Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war around the world,  
and how Black folks living with different abilities bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze them into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.⁸Ibid  

Too often Black lives find themselves at the end of the line to receive many things we take for granted- respect, education, housing, privilege, vaccinations, and a better life. We might say in Midland with a high percent of white population, we have little to offer this movement. This movement isn’t represented well here because Blacks are not interested or willing to step up. They are interested and willing.They are looking for partners like us.  

Until our prisons no longer burst at the seams with African-Americans who get longer sentences than their white counterparts, until Black mothers no longer need to worry about their children walking or driving down the street and being shot, I will Side with Love and say, “I am an ally to this movement because I believe Black Lives Matter.”     

Let us end today’s sermon in prayer; Spirit of Life and Love, we hear your call this Mother’s Day to honor those who struggle this day. May we honor our mothers, especially the ones who were brave enough to lead movements even when they were out-numbered.  

May we as faithful people continue to transcend our societal norms by reaching out in love. May every life count, especially those who are being oppressed.  

Allow us to understand how our privilege blinds us, give us vision so we may inspire this world towards fairness and a greater kindness. Let it be our mission to never shy from this responsibility, but to reach beyond our limits as we serve the wider world. Let us rejoice that in this sacred place we can have tough conversations, And by us having them, may these conversations make us whole. In all that is holy, we pray.  

Blessed be. Amen.