Profound thanks to Chris Crass, a leader and mentor in our UU movement for liberation and equity, whose 2013 essay “Expecto Patronum: Lessons from Harry Potter for Social Justice Organizing” contributed many of the ideas in this sermon.
So, I’ve got something in common with the Lovin’ Spoonful, which is that I believe in magic. My favorite definition of magic comes from Starhawk, the feminist neopagan who describes it as “the art of changing consciousness at will…choosing which state you want to be in.” What a powerful idea!
This morning I want to talk specifically about the magic in the Harry Potter series. Whether you went to midnight book publishing parties and later threatened in all seriousness to expel summer camp students if they spoiled book 7 for you, or whether you have only ever been vaguely aware of the cultural phenomenon, there are lessons all of us can take from Harry and his friends.
The prominent lessons I want to address this morning are the power of love, the importance of letting our love shine, the power of organizing for social justice, the importance of feminist leadership, and how we can work to banish the voices of domination and oppression. And when it comes to this work and these lessons, I’m no Albus Dumbledore, but I will attempt to bring you more wisdom and coherence than Cybil Trelawney. I promise to include as few references as possible that will be indecipherable if you haven’t read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies; if you’re not sure what was up with the Dumbledore- Trelawney reference, one might translate it as my being somewhere on the spectrum between Dr. House and Dr. Oz, or between Sherlock Holmes and Katie Holmes, or between Ben Franklin and Benny Hill.
To give us some more helpful context, the main conflict in Harry Potter is between the forces of compassion and inclusion, and the forces of strength and domination. On one side, you have the power of love, embodied in the way that as an infant, Harry was saved from certain death by his mother’s love. One of the most enduring images in the series is of Lily Potter, Harry’s mother, standing between Harry and Voldemort to sacrifice her own life in exchange for Harry’s. Lord Voldemort, the main protagonist, kills Harry’s mother Lily and in the instant when he turns and casts a killing curse on the infant Harry, that curse is repelled by the powerful magical effect of Harry’s mother’s love, and instead it rebounds and hits Voldemort himself. From that moment on, Harry and Voldemort are connected, and each has the ability to see into the other’s mind at certain times. Much like Luke and Vader, Frodo and Sauron, or Moses and the Pharaoh, they are from that moment on inextricably tied to one another. At times this is confusing, distressing, and overwhelming for Harry. But over years of hard work, training, and mentorship, Harry conditions himself that each time Voldemort gets in his head, Harry reminds himself of his friendships, of the loving connections in his life. He returns to them as a way of rejecting the messages of death and domination that Voldemort attempts to implant in his mind.
I have a favorite spell in the Harry Potter universe. Does anyone want to guess what it is? (Pause for guesses) It’s the spell Expecto Patronum, which is used to repel Dementors, the soul-sucking agents of darkness who glide around the magical world. It’s my favorite spell, because to cast it, the witch or wizard has to think of a joyful, uplifting memory. We all have memories, moments we want to reflect on that bring us joy and inspire us to continue the long and hard work of collective liberation, and this spell encourages us to make a practice of remembering and dwelling in the feelings they bring! We all have times when despair and hopelessness catch up with us, when the voice of Voldemort, of the culture of domination and oppression enters our head and drives us further from love and compassion for one another. And in those times, it is more important than ever to not only have the memories of those who matter to us in our lives, of the people who call us back to love and connection, but to have made a practice of remembering them and being able to bring them into our hearts when we are fearful the powers of darkness will overwhelm us.
In the Harry Potter series, there is a group of witches and wizards who gather and strategize for the purpose of defeating the dark lord, of persistently defying Lord Voldemort. That group is called the Order of the Phoenix, after the mythical creature that rises from its own ashes, much like the city of Atlanta. The Order of the Phoenix demonstrates that movements for collective liberation need entry points for new initiates, where young people can connect with a multigenerational community of experienced thinkers and activists. The movement needs groups like this so that when new folks come to consciousness about feminism, anti-racism, economic justice, disability justice, queer liberation and so on, they are adequately supported, encouraged and guided. The Order of the Phoenix was that place for Harry Potter and his friends Hermione and Ron. When they were awakening to the continued existence of the existential threat to the magical world that was Lord Voldemort, it was members of the Order of the Phoenix who helped them become the leaders they needed to be to fight the forces of darkness in their time. That’s one of the purposes I see for Unitarian Universalist congregations: that we are communities where folks who are awakening to the need for actively resisting fear and hatred in our time can come and find the spiritual and intellectual tools needed to succeed in that critical work. Northwest is such a place in the real world, providing mental, social and experiential opportunities for all of us to get better at emerging into the world with enhanced capacities for nurturing and expanding the presence of love and justice in our world. We have to remember that people will not always join the battle for collective liberation for the same reasons that we do, but that we have to be nimble in growing our movements in a way that accommodates all who seek to defy the forces of fear, hatred and division. In the lead-up to the final battle at Hogwarts, the Order of the Phoenix is joined by witches and wizards and magical creatures who had not been previously united. But in that last, final, do-or-die moment, they all come together to do what needs to be done, and our communities seeking collective liberation need to be able to do that also. We need to be able to bring in a broad coalition when the moment calls for it. Often it doesn’t happen right up until the last moment, but we have to be ready for it, have to be prepared and trained.
I mentioned that Harry has two close friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Hermione is a brilliant, passionate, book nerd, and one of my favorite fictional characters ever. She’s a hyper-competent only child, and she falls in love with a clueless dope from a large family filled with love and humor. When my wife and I watch the movies together, it hits a little too close to home! And whereas Harry sees the fight against Voldemort as a personal quest, Hermione puts it in the context of a collective fight. She initiates meetings of Dumbledore’s Army, a covert group of students rising up against violent oppression at their school. Hers is a powerful model of feminist leadership, of building power with others, not over them. Her leadership emerges from her status as an outsider, a Muggle-born, someone of non-magical parentage. Because of her status, she is called a “Mudblood” by one of her classmates, which is the worst slur you can use against someone in their world. But she uses that outsider status to better understand how systems of oppression work, and how to oppose them. Like Hermione, we all have ways in which we are privileged and ways in which we are marginalized, and we become better at channeling love in the world when we can learn to leverage our experiences of oppression to become more compassionate and empathetic in the work of justice and equity.
Hermione is also a leader who is not afraid to be vulnerable in her quest to enlighten and empower those around her. When she and Harry tell Dumbledore’s Army that Voldemort has indeed come back and is very seriously threatening the magical world, at first their classmates don’t believe them. But Harry relates the experience of being face-to-face with Voldemort and seeing a friend of his killed, telling the others they don’t know what that’s like. Hermione says no, you’re right Harry, we don’t know what that’s like, and we need you to show us. She simultaneously opens the door for him to step up and be who the movement needs him to be, while modeling for the rest of Dumbledore’s Army that it’s OK for even someone as smart and savvy as her to not know something, and to take another leader’s word for it.
The beautiful thing about the ragtag group of misfits who comprise Dumbledore’s Army is the way it illustrates the importance of trusting your fellow leaders, even and especially, the unlikely ones. Luna Lovegood is a total weirdo, but she becomes an important source of information, insight and advice for Harry. Neville Longbottom seems nice enough, though mostly incompetent, but he is the one who keeps the battle going at its darkest moments, the one who overcame his parents death and learned that he could still survive and contribute and who was there when it mattered most. If you want to organize in a UU context you better get used to working with weirdos and mistake-makers, not because it’s a nice thing to do, but because we all have something to contribute.
Rejecting Voldemort and rejecting the way that systems of oppression get inside our heads is hard, it’s legitimately and persistently a very difficult thing to do. I caught myself hearing that voice in 2009 when, folks might remember, Henry Louis Gates Jr was arrested in Cambridge for breaking into his own home after he forgot his keys. The voice of oppression in my head asked why he couldn’t have just found another way into his house, and said he should have known what it was going to look for a black man to be forcing entry into a residence in a really nice part of the city. I found myself thinking that if one just obeys the rules well enough, everything will be fine. And then I began talking to my friends who were Jewish, or female, or people of color, or queer who affirmed that experience of mistreatment by law enforcement no matter what. And these were all Harvard folks! Obedience to a culture of white supremacy is not a solution, but the voice of Voldemort would have you think so. And what we are all called to do is to defy that voice! To defy the voice of Lord Voldemort! When you think “compliance is the only way to be safe” remember the power of collective liberation and of loving one another deeply. When the voice of internalized oppression says “that person of color or that queer person or that disabled person should have acquiesced and everything would have been all right” think “I DEFY YOU LORD VOLDEMORT AND I AFFIRM THE POWER OF LOVE AND COMPASSION AND SOLIDARITY WITH ALL YOU WOULD SEEK TO OPPRESS!” Say to yourself, “I defy you, Lord Voldemort!” Try it now, everybody say with me: “I defy you Lord Voldemort!” And again: “I defy you, Lord Voldemort!” Yes! “I defy you Lord Voldemort!” One more time! “I defy you Lord Voldemort!”
May we collectively affirm and promote the power of love and solidarity in all that we do and in who we are. Peace, salaam, shalom, and may it be so.
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
May 6, 2018
© Rev. Jonathan Rogers