The timeless liberation story of Exodus opens with an odious ruler ruthlessly determined to eradicate the refugee community that his predecessor welcomed. This evil new pharaoh first enslaves the Hebrew people, then decrees death to every male child born to them. The cadre of sycophants and sociopaths who surround this tyrant are all too eager to carry out his hateful plan—yet they are thwarted by two remarkably courageous women who resist, performing the world’s first recorded act of civil disobedience. Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives to the Hebrew women, refuse to follow Pharaoh’s inhumane order. Risking their lives to stand up for their immigrant friends and neighbors, they safely deliver the baby boys to their mothers. As the story goes, if not for their bravery, I would not be here this evening to tell the tale.
Tonight we gather to mark the heroism—and mourn the tragic death—of Renee Nicole Good, a 37 year-old mother, trained volunteer legal observer and modern day midwife of justice, who was murdered in cold blood by ICE agents while peacefully defending her immigrant neighbors in the streets of Minneapolis. We come together to acknowledge that Ms. Good sacrificed her life resisting the brutal pharaohs of our own time, Donald Trump and the hateful minions of the MAGA-verse, who were shamelessly concocting slanderous aspersions before she was even declared dead. Even now, they are busy doing what they do: spinning lies defaming Ms. Good as a domestic terrorist and lionizing her murder as an act of self-defense. In the face of such grotesque moral inversion, such audacious perversion of justice, I cannot help but recall the words of Isaiah:
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Thankfully, as Heather Cox Richardson noted in her newsletter last night, it’s no longer working. Across our nation—including here in Idaho—people of conscience are joining Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey in calling out this bad behavior as bullshit. We are determined to Choose Love, Not ICE—taking to the streets and insisting that brutality, repression, murder and mass deportation run totally counter to our highest American values of compassion, justice, mercy, and the common dignity of all humankind.
Tonight we grieve. We lament the loss of Renee Nicole Good—a conscientious and caring person, taken so cruelly and so too young, for standing up to evil. We offer our love, our tears, our broken hearts and our deep admiration to her bereaved family. And last but not least, this evening we rededicate ourselves to the values by which she lived and for which, to echo President Lincoln, she gave the last full measure of her devotion. Let us do everything in our power to resolve, tonight, that she shall not have died in vain—that we might make fast her legacy by resisting tyranny, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and drawing upon our better angels to secure liberty, and justice and peace for all who seek to dwell peaceably in this land.
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