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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
Church of the Covenant |
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February 5, 2006 |
Robert J.
Campbell, D. Min. D. D. |
On
Common Ground
An Amendment of Life
Genesis 9:18-28
Romans 12:1-21
Black History Month and I agree with actor Morgan Freedman,
If it only takes a month to tell a people’s history there isn’t much history to tell.
But there is a great history to tell and it’s necessary to telescope that history so that all of our children and children’s children might know of the importance of that history that a portion of God’s children have brought to the banquet table of life.
As a child there was a notorious bigot in my town.
His wealthy parents died leaving him well cared for.
Their caretaker, a person of color, had promised to look after the
invalid son. The whelp publicly abused the caretaker whenever he had a
chance. Eventually the young man
died and soon after so did the aged caretaker.
One day my grandmother and I were at the cemetery where she pointed to a
large plot, and there stood the headstones of that prominent family, their bigot
son, and next to him the old caretaker Tom who I knew.
The gardener was cutting the grass at the time and my wise grandmother
asked me if I noticed anything. After
pointing out the residents of the plots she said to me,
Notice the gardener cuts the grass across all of them the same.
We have chosen the title, On Common Ground, for our theme because it is from the earth we all come and to the earth we all return without distinction and as far as I can tell, God sees no difference between any of the children of God’s handiwork.
Red, yellow, black, and white are all precious in God’s sight.
But that wasn’t always the case even for followers of that God.
In the old Book of Common Prayer one is required to confront one’s sin and those sinned against through confession and in the asking for forgiveness with the intention to change one’s self, the act is called "An Amendment of (not for, but) of Life."
Psychologist Ed Freedman used to talk about the treadmill effect
Like a fly that repeatedly lands on a window despite its thousand eyes, its perseverance, and its willpower, it gets nowhere.
So it would seem with the disease called racism. In spite of well meaning efforts and generations of good intentions the evidence is clear that our national will is not a will of equality. It is a will of usury, if not through ball and chain, then through the manipulation of voting blocks, urban isolation, less than equitable education, and discriminating housing patterns. The death of Coretta Scott King marks the passing of a legacy left to languish because of the lethargy of leadership in the generations that have followed.
Last November politicians marked the death of Rosa Parks, a tiny insignificant woman whose feet were tired, but whose soul was determined. In the same Plain Dealer issue a story was told of the benign nod being given to the plight of the poor, who are mostly of color, and who were languishing in the bowels of the Super Dome, those who were victims of not only Katrina, but of a callous, if not a calculated, response by those committed to partisan privilege. Racism is a plague that beginning with its capillaries infects the heart of this land.
Yet, in the summer of 1995, 132 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 130 years after the end of the Civil War, and 27 years after the death of Martin Luther King, at the annual convention of the Southern Baptist Church there was an apology for the role that denomination had played in the justification of slavery. In fact the denomination did more than apologize in an age of the "non-apology" apology, they used the word "repentance," which meant they understood the steps outlined in the Common Book of Prayer. The Southern Baptist Church understood that so long as any human is enslaved all humans are confined by the same shackles. They were saying by their action that they were ready to begin re-stitching the multi-colored fabric of God’s original coat of life. (1) It was an important effort by one group within the family that calls itself Christian. Yet, I bring it to mind because it begs for the questions; “How can any one justify racism? How could anyone who calls himself or herself Christian see another human being as something less than human?”
The answer was and still is, “It’s easy!” I’m reminded of one of my favorite films "Amastad," in which a shipload of slaves are put on trial for freeing themselves and taking over the ship. A young lawyer enters the case by saying; "The issue here is simply where did the cargo originate?" It is on those grounds that the trial precedes. It is not an issue that human beings were the cargo, as if the bodies stacked in the hold were bales of cotton or animals on hoof, the question was simply the cargo’s port of departure. How is it we come to see people as things? What lasting effect does that have on future generations?
Genesis tells a great story. Noah is found in somewhat of a compromised state. Two kids are blessed and the third, which was the whistle blower, was condemned. Noah lived to the ripe old age of 950, which is a classic sign of God’s blessing. But what is most telling is the fact that this passage has been used throughout history as the justification for slavery. "The Bible tells us so."
During the Civil War both sides claimed that God and scripture were of no help. Ephesians tells slaves to be obedient. Neither Jesus nor Paul condemn the practice, while Moses set the people free, a favorite passage for the oppressed most thinking by the status-quo, centers around the idea that the Bible is addressing spiritual freedom regardless of physical circumstance. Paul asks Philemon to treat his slave "as a brother," which doesn’t make him any less a slave. Timothy is clearly instructed to let slaves be submissive to their masters. With such a record is it any wonder some persons of color ask, "How can anyone with integrity and intelligence that has slavery in their heritage have anything to do with such a book?"
Yet, the African American community steeped in a faith that has both lifted them beyond circumstances and summoned courage and defiance turned to that same Bible. For people of conscience regardless of skin color, that same Bible has flamed a moral struggle within calling forth a challenge to both authority and interpretation. As persons of conscience began to struggle, it became clear that the interpretation of scripture was not as easy as it first might have seemed.
Racism is the mother of slavery and segregation is its child, but as the abolitionist movement grew and freedom prevailed the law changed. Trouble is minds didn’t and will not without the moral imagination to see racism in new ways. Like Floyd Bryant, a self-confessed 63-year-old white southerner, who wrote on the occasion of the integration of Baptist churches,
Throughout the first 60 years of my life I never questioned, but Peter’s statement in Acts, ‘God is no respecter of persons’ referred exclusively to the differences among whites. Neither did I question that segregation was Christian. (But) I was transformed. I exchanged my former views that I had absorbed from my environment for the latter views. I learned from the New Testament. I came to understand Paul’s plea; ‘Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by renewing your mind that you might prove what is acceptable to God.
No new translations, no hidden scrolls revealed– only a confrontation between a person of faith and his conscience. A re-reading with an imagination that allowed for transformation by that spirit that Paul calls, "Sharper than a two edged sword," it is the imagination a lot of people need today and it is the imagination a lot of people today within the church condemn. If not when talking about issues of race, then other forms of prejudice and exclusion in congregations regardless of their skin color.
On another occasion I was deeply moved by an account written by a parent I met who was enrolled in an "Even Start" program designed to help mothers and fathers of school children who are themselves trapped in slavery brought on by a lack of formal education. This woman had to write an essay for Black History Month in partnership with her child. She reflected on her family’s ancestry and she wrote of her imagined and unimagined past.
It all started in 1841. We’re standing in line, scared and praying that we wouldn’t be sold separately. My body is trembling; my heart is pounding; and then my worst fears; they want my son. They want to take him, but he wants to stay. We’re crying, trying to hang onto each other. “He’s my first born,” I scream. I watched as they dragged him away with chains on his feet. They didn’t care. I was just a Negro. I miss my son and wonder if I will ever see him again. I wonder what will happen the next time we’re at the front of the line, at the front of the bus, or at the front of anywhere. Maybe one day we will be free like white folk. But now the school bus comes and I am thankful that was my great grandmother’s story. Still, I wonder what kind of day my son will have. Will I see him again?”
I recount these stories because this should be a time of personal history. It is our personal history that makes us who we are or moves us to whom we can become within God’s grace.
It was at the Martin Luther King celebration at the library over on Stokes Boulevard, when we heard a brilliant young man recite a poem he had written about "The Lynching." It started with the lynchings of the not too distant past– trees, burning crosses, and white hooded strangers. But then the poem moved to modern lynchings of this young man by his peers in the form of drug pushers and drive-by shooters, where it was a condemnation of those who allow themselves to be caught in the quicksand of inadequacy with their tanks filled with miss-directed anger. It was pointed at those who use circumstance for excuse and who walk on the blood of those who have given their lives to the cause of dignity and freedom. It was a poem only that young man of color could recite for his peers.
All of these accounts are Black History and they tell me there is and there always has been evil in this world. Perhaps there always will be. Prejudice, whose parent is fear, will always be with us and there is only one solution to our mutual slavery. While I didn’t enslave that young mother’s ancestors and while I am not responsible for the modern day lynchings of that young man by his peers, the system that affords me a life of opportunity did enslave that woman’s ancestors and does contribute to the fears and anger of today. The very faith that I embrace was used to foster the chaining of families because it was, and often still is, a faith that mirrors culture rather than challenges it.
So this day and every day I am called to say with Billy Graham,
Our conscience should be stirred to repentance by how far we have fallen short of what God asks us to be as agents of reconciliation. Of all people, Christians should be the most active in reaching out to those of other races instead of accepting the status quo of division and animosity.
Of all people Christians should be the most active in reaching out to anyone labeled different. Prejudice is nothing less than a summons by our God to mend the fabric that evil seeks to rent asunder and to do that first I have to admit my sin, confront those sinned against, and then try and try again with God’s grace as my guide to be amended to life. Not because the Common Book of Prayer tells us to do so, but because it is from Common Ground we come, it is to Common Ground we will return, and it is on Common Ground we must stand!
How to amend life? In an old film Sidney Poitier and Rock Hudson–or was it Burt Lancaster? No matter, in either case they are escaped convicts. One is white, one is black, and they were chained together. They’re running through a ditch with the dogs of cruelty hot on their heels. Their only hope for freedom rests in whether they can put aside their differences and help each other out of the ditch. Only if they lift—only if we can lift one another—can we escape our past.
1) Peter Gomes
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