Foster Child

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July 15, 2007

Guest speakers:

Lawrence Foster, Sr., Lloyd Foster,

Kenneth Foster, Sr., and Nydesha Foster

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, anyone can be happy when things are going right, when blue skies and broad horizons lay before them. But it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end.

I received a letter recently from Kenneth Foster, Jr. The tone of the letter was confident and upbeat. I received a letter from Kenneth Foster, Jr., a man who is scheduled to die of lethal injection on the 30th of August. In this letter Kenneth thanked me for my concern about his case, he told me how blessed he felt that there are those on the outside of the machinery of death who care and are responding to his cause. He also explained about the bureaucracy behind the death machine to me, ten years of experience has taught him well. He blessed me in his letter not so much by the things he said but more by the tone in which they were said. Even though I am an older man than he in years, his years of being condemned have lent him a mantle of experience and age that comes from so many dark nights of the soul – one right after the other, after the other, after the other.

Kenneth and I will meet next month when the letter from our Board of Trustees of this church reaches the Warden, and I am given clearance. The meeting will be as all those meetings are between death row inmates and visitors. Kenneth will be behind glass like some specimen that has been separated from society so as not to increase the risk of infection. We will have all the visuals of people who meet, people who meet on opposite sides of thick glass, people who are forbidden to greet each other with a touch or even a holy kiss. We will meet and when we do, Kenneth says, “I hope that we can meet, so that you can hear my testimony personally – and I don’t mean legal wise. I mean me as the person I am.”

And this kind of talk just makes me think of the old time religion in which someone from the pulpit shouts, “Can I have a witness!?”

You see the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. faces isn’t what he fears, the past ten years has been a mighty teacher – as Martin Luther wrote so many years ago “a mighty fortress is our God,” no, the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. fears is the death of recognition. He doesn’t mind going down, but he does mind going down with no one paying attention. Can I have a witness?

The bread and circuses that this country has created in its out of control consumerism – the bread and circuses that keeps us occupied, but distracted, the 150 cable channels, the I-pods, and I-phones, personal computers, the gadgetry of modernity has kept us all informed, updated, and in the grove, but ultimately hanging out with ourselves. The community of humankind has been diminished in the process of our being entertained. The community of humankind cries out for more than food and juggling. The community of humankind awaits the new awakening of the human heart, the time when as Kenneth told me in his letter; people can look each other in the eyes and see that the other is ultimately themselves. Yes, as Kenneth says this looking does weigh heavily upon the human heart, but it springs from a place of truth and as Kenneth’s Master said 2000 years ago, ye shall know the truth and that truth shall make you free.

Kenneth may be locked behind the intricacies of multiple locks, sealed hermetically behind thick glass, family and friends may not be able to physically touch him, but there are Kenneth’s eyes into which we may gaze, and entering there we come away with only one feeling. Although the state may be about to murder this man, this man knows a truth and that truth is that from within him has sprung a fountainhead – he has bread that we do not know of, he has water from the living spring, he knows the truth of the Master’s words, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.

At the beginning of this prayer I said that it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end. I would remind us all that we, too, are under such a sentence of death – the only difference between Kenneth and ourselves is that within our deaths the method and time are unknown – the certainty, however, is still there.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is precisely everything,

Amen.

Foster Child

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when they had gathered Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?” – And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified.” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified.” So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

(Matthew 27:15-17;21-26)

The Hanging of the Mouse

An allegory by Elizabeth Bishop

Early, early in the morning, even before five o’clock, the mouse was led in by two enormous brown beetles in the traditional picturesque armor of an earlier day. They came onto the square through the small black door and marched between the lines of soldiers standing at attention: straight ahead, to the right, around two sides of the hollow square, to the left, and out into the middle where the gallows stood.

Before each turn the beetle on the right glanced quickly at the beetle on the left; their traditional long, long antennae swerved sharply in the direction they were to turn and they did it to perfection. The mouse, of course, who had had no military training and who, at the moment, was crying so hard he could scarcely see where he was going, rather spoiled the precision and snap of the beetles. At each corner he fell slightly forward, and when he was jerked in the right direction his feet became tangled together. The beetles, however, without even looking at him, each time lifted him quickly into the air for a second until his feet were untangled.

A large praying mantis was in charge of the religious ceremonies. He hurried up on t he stage after the mouse and his escorts but once there a fit of nerves seemed to seize him. He seemed to feel ill at ease with the low characters around him: the beetles, the hangman, and the criminal mouse. At last he made a great effort to pull himself together and, approaching the mouse, said a few words in a high, incomprehensible voice. The mouse jumped from nervousness, and cried harder than ever.

A raccoon, wearing the traditional mask, was the executioner. He was very fastidious and did everything just so. One of his young sons, also wearing a black mask, waited on him with a small basin and a pitcher of water. First he washed his hands and rinsed them carefully, then he washed the rope and rinsed it. At the last minute he again washed his hands and drew on a pair of elegant black kid gloves.

With the help of some pushes and pinches from the beetles, the executioner got the mouse into position. The rope was tied exquisitely behind one of his little round ears. The mouse raised a hand and wiped his nose with it, and most of the crowd interpreted this gesture as a farewell wave and spoke of it for weeks afterwards. The hangman’s young son, at a signal from his father, sprang the trap.

“Squee-eek! Squee-eek!” went the mouse. His whiskers rowed hopelessly round and round in the air a few times and his feet flew up and curled into little balls like young fern plants.

It was all so touching that a cat, who had brought her child in her mouth, shed several large tears. They rolled down on to the child’s back and he began to squirm and shriek, so that the mother thought that the sight of the hanging had perhaps been too much for him, but an excellent moral lesson, nevertheless.

Introduction:

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel in dramatic form, The Sunset Limited he has the black man say, You want to help people that’s in trouble, you pretty much got to go where the trouble is at. You ain’t got a lot of choice.

The trouble seems to be everywhere. Pick up the newspaper, turn on the news. If it bleeds it leads. But sometimes you don’t have to go to where the trouble is at; sometimes the trouble comes to you. Such is the case today.

Consider, if you will, Kenneth Foster, Jr. who, ten years ago at the age of 19, was driving around with his friends. They were holding up people on the street and taking their handbags and wallets. There were three others in the car with Kenneth. He knew they were robbing people, but what he didn’t know was that one Mauricio Brown would exit Kenneth’s parked car walk eighty feet to talk to a woman who was seemingly flagging them down, and within a few minutes Mauricio Brown would kill the woman’s white boyfriend in what he claimed to be self-defense.

Consider now that Mauricio Brown has already been executed by the state of Texas – something the state of Texas has little trouble doing in these troubled times, but also, now consider that Kenneth Foster awaits a similar execution at the end of August.

Kenneth’s been prosecuted under the Law of Parties rule which means that Kenneth would have to have had prior knowledge that Mauricio Brown was about to commit Capital Murder when Mauricio Brown approached a woman standing by a car and even Mauricio Brown had no prior knowledge of that the woman’s boyfriend, one Michael LaHood, a prominent San Antonio lawyer’s only son, was even in the car.

Yes, it does seem like something from the Twilight Zone, a bizarre tale of medieval justice right here in 21st Century America. But it’s not a new pilot about a condemned man that continually escapes from jail, nor is it some farfetched novel about justice gone awry.

Kenneth Foster is 29 years old. He came from parents who neglected him as they both had their own drug habits to deal with. Kenneth’s father readily admitted that he was in jail when he found out that his son had been arrested for murder. Kenneth Jr.’s grandparents raised him, but Kenneth fell in with the wrong crowd. He lived outside the law, and now he is caught in the mechanism of the law itself as it inexorably keeps time on his deathwatch.

I’m not here today to convince you that Kenneth Foster is innocent of anything. For after all like 80% of those on death row Kenneth Foster, Jr. is guilty of being black. But, I’m here today to say that I’ve picked up many a hitch hiker, and I’d hate to think that I was somehow responsible for what they’d done before they got into my car. If that same misuse of the Law of Parties that was applied to Kenneth Foster was applied to us we would be responsible for whatever anyone, hitchhiker or friend, had done before they entered our cars.

Yes, Kenneth Foster drove the car that was riding around robbing people. But when that shot was fired it was Kenneth who started to pull away, and it was Kenneth that had to be convinced by one of the other riders to stay and wait for Mauricio Brown.

The moratorium on the death penalty was instigated by the ruling of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled the practice of capital punishment was unconstitutional. Three men condemned to death by the states of Georgia and Texas appealed their sentences, arguing that their 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. The Court voted 5/4 to invalidate their sentences, ruling that the death penalty not only violated the 8th Amendment but the 14th as well, since it was meted out unequally to the “poor and despised.”

But that moratorium vanished when the Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Furman and executions resumed in the state of Florida in 1976 under Governor Bob Graham. Old Bloody Bob as we called him signed the death warrant for John Spenkelink. Spenkelink became the first person to be executed under the new statutes. There’s a bumper sticker that are the last words of John Spenkelink as he was strapped into the electric chair. “Capital Punishment – Those without the capital get the punishment.”

I was living in Tallahassee, Florida in 1979, and my then wife and I marched in the protest march around the state capital. I remember the end of the moratorium, and was up and awake on May 25th 1979 when they pulled the switch on Old Sparkie. That’s what they call the electric chair down Florida way – Old Sparkie. Inmates made it of Live Oak in 1923 and it belongs back in those horse and buggy times. It’s as appropriate today as carrying extra horse shoes in the trunk of your car in case you get a flat.

Cleaning up after an execution is something that’s rarely thought about. Those being electrocuted lose whatever control they had over their bodies. After Spenkelink’s execution it was revealed that guards had stuffed wads of cotton up John Spenkelink’s rectum to keep the inevitable from happening in the presence of Old Sparkie. I mean what’s more important keeping the execution chamber clean or maintaining the dignity of a condemned man”

The truth is the varying states administer the death penalty in a racially biased manner. There are a disproportionate numbers of African Americans on death row. In fact, the race of the victim provides a statistically clear indicator of whether or not a defendant receives a sentence of death or imprisonment. Thus, although nearly 50 percent of all murder victims in the

United States are nonwhite, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed for the murders of whites.

In Albert Camus’ book, Reflections on the Guillotine he boils Capital Punishment down to this. People murder other people – true. But how many murderers tell their victims exactly when they will murder them” Even after the first announced date of their murder has passed and it looks like these folks have escaped their fate, they get yet another call from the murderer advising them of a new date of death. Finally, the day arrives and the murderer is escorted to the victim’s house where no one tries to stop them, and everyone watches as they take the victim to a place where they have always committed these crimes, and there in the light of day, in full knowledge of the informed public they put their victims to death. There is only one murderer who does it this way and that is the state. The same state within which we live, move and have our being.

Albert Camus was born and raised in French Algiers. His father was French and his mother was Algerian. Shortly before the First World War there was a particularly gruesome crime in Algeria in which a man had killed a farmer and his entire family – even the children. Camus’ father was extremely upset by the killing of the children. He followed the trial and when the day of execution came, Albert Camus’ father got up extra early because the place of execution was across town. But when he arrived back home he said nothing to anyone about the execution, and went immediately to bed where he vomited. The thoughts of the murdered children had been displaced by the sight of the murderer’s quivering body as it was placed upon the killing board and slid into position on the guillotine.

Camus argues that if revulsion is the response of a good citizen at the execution of a notorious murderer, then how is this act of execution supposed to bring more peace and order into the fabric of a society that needs healing?

There does seem however to be an argument here for using this repulsive act of stately murder to repel future murderers from taking up the ax, the poison or the gun. Yet, executions are no longer public. They are now secret affairs in which you have to have an invitation. How is an act committed in privacy supposed to make an example if, in fact, this example cannot be seen? Yes, we get stories in the newspapers, and the 10 o’clock news might say someone is to be executed shortly, but what the people are really waiting for is the latest weather update for the weekend.

In the narratives we have about Jesus – in the four Gospels – we have the story of a man who was conscious of the fact that the way in which he lived, moved and had his being was in direct contradiction to the Roman State. Eventually, charges were brought against him. They were fabricated, but witnesses were called and enough lying was done, sufficient at least, to get him the death penalty – crucifixion – essentially death by suffocation and a common form of capital punishment between the 6th century BC and 4th century AD.

I’m thinking now about the traditional verses in Second Isaiah that Christians say are prophecies that point to the coming death of Jesus on the cross. You’ve probably heard them a thousand times, but listen now and think not of prophesy concerning Jesus, but rather think how these lines could refer to any condemned person.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. How many people here hold Kenneth Foster Jr. in high esteem, how many people here before this morning even knew who Kenneth Foster Jr. is?

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did not esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

We must think now of the ancient practice of scapegoating. A tribe would take a goat and all the sins of that tribe would be placed upon the goat and that goat driven into the wilderness to die. This is the way ancient cultures cleansed their societies.

But are we any different from them? Ask yourself, What is the difference between what we are doing to those on death row, and especially Kenneth Foster, Jr. when we put them to death? Are we really punishing them for the wrongs that they have done, or are we using them as scapegoats for a society that is plagued with remorse, full of regret, and simply not living up to the standards that we have set ourselves?

We put other people to death so that we may keep alive the idea that we are without sin, without wrongs, without judgment ourselves. But this is the 21st Century, and surely no one would think that a goat could take away the sins of a society, so why is it that we continue with this ancient practice of scapegoating by using human beings? How can the death of Kenneth Foster, Jr. bring peace to any one? How does a democratic society, which purports to believe in the inalienable rights of all humans, believe that killing someone can even a score, heal a wound, or bring about peace?

My reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s allegory, The Hanging of the Mouse, might have disturbed some people. An allegory is a work in which the characters and events are to be understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a deeper spiritual, moral, or political meaning. I think all three are there in Bishop’s allegory.Elizabeth Bishop is using mice, insects, raccoons and cats to cast the events of capital punishment in a new and startling light.

The precision of the military beetles seems ludicrous when compared to the sniveling mouse and his entangled legs. The scene approaches comic absurdity at several points – the praying mantis, lost for words, and made uncomfortable by being with the condemned. Yet, the absurdity hits home when it’s the cat – the natural enemy of the mouse – who cries as the mouse is hung. Yes, it is ludicrous what the animals and insects are doing to the poor mouse, but no more ludicrous than what we are doing to Kenneth Foster, Jr.

I was told the story of a tribe in Africa that literally puts the condemned person in the same boat as the family of the murdered person. They row out into the middle of the lake where weights are placed on the legs of the murderer. The murderer is then pushed overboard, but as he struggles to live if one of the family of the murder victim wants to jump in and save him they can, and – they often do. Once the humanity of the murderer is witnessed thoughts of revenge are replaced with thoughts of compassion.

The following is from Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s Dissent on the death penalty. From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death – I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed – The basic question “does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants ‘deserve’ to die?” cannot be answered in the affirmative. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.

On the 21st of July – this coming Saturday – at 5PM on the front steps of the Texas State Capital there will be a rally for Kenneth Foster, Jr. and his family. Perhaps this will change nothing, but when thousands upon thousands of people show up who knows what effect this will have on the heart of Governor Rick Perry.

And now on behalf of the family of Kenneth Foster Jr., I’d like to thank you for being here, for listening with open minds and open hearts, for being the good people you are. Today you witnessed the suffering of his father, Kenneth Foster, Sr., his daughter, Nydesha Foster, his grandfather, Lawrence Foster and his great uncle, Lloyd Foster. Seeing that suffering I know that you will do what you can to alleviate it. This UU tribe is in the habit of suiting up and showing up, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Let us along with Justice Blackmun say that From this day forward, (we) no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

In one of today’s readings Pilate solved the problem of what to do with the condemned man, Jesus. He was a great believer in symbolism – Pilate. He had a basin of water brought out to the judgment seat and in front of the crowd he washed his hands. The executioner Raccoon likewise washed his hands.

There’s a washbasin and towel down front. Right there. What’s it doing there? That’s a question that you should be asking yourself. And rightfully, that’s a question that you should also be answering.