February 10, 2008 First Sunday in Lent, Racial Justice Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 32; Matthew 4: 1-11
Racial justice may seem like a distant problem for a congregation in an
overwhelmingly white region, but it is as close to us as can be. We are raising
children of non-Caucasian races in this church—children who could suffer racist
words and attitudes aimed at them at school or in the community. We are the
models and teachers for children who interact with children of other races. We are
bringing children up in a society that perpetrates systemic and interpersonal racism
within its borders and at its borders and beyond its borders.
The problem of people acting unjustly toward others because of who or
what they are is not only close at hand, it is also huge. It can make us feel
overwhelmed when we think about what is happening in Darfur or Iraq or in
American prisons. But the truth is that we have a power on our side that can
overcome racial injustice. It is the power of truth—the deepest truth we each have
in us. The Mahatma Gandhi said that this soul truth is the most powerful force in
the world, the only force more powerful than the atomic bomb. Truth was the
weapon that Gandhi used to end the racial injustice of the British Empire against
the people of India.
Jesus said, “I am the truth,” and he said that he came to earth to testify to
the truth, and he said that after he left the earth the Spirit of truth would come and
guide us into all truth. Martin Smith points out in his inspired book of Lenten
readings, A Season for the Spirit, that the word we translate as truth is the Greek
word aletheia which means literally “unhiddenness.” Smith says, “Truth is not a
thing, it is rather an event. Truth happens to us when the coverings of illusion are
stripped away and what is real emerges into the open.” (p 6, 1991 edition)
Smith’s book says that Lent is about undergoing this event of unhiding the
truth within us that Jesus came to show us—the truth that God loves and forgives
us all, and that as we have been loved and forgiven by God, so we should have
compassion on all others and be willing to love and forgive them. Lent leads us
toward that truth, but along the way, like Jesus, we come up against what hides the
truth from us, what spiritual writers and psychologists alike call the false self.
The false self is a distorted view of reality plus our responses to that
distortion that we act out over and over. It develops in childhood for most of us.
The false self tells us we are not loveable as we are, that we have to prove we are
worthy of approval or affection, that we have to be perfect, successful,
accomplished, that we have to live a tightly controlled life, that we have to fight
for security. The false self is ruled by various degrees and kinds of greed or lust or
pride that drive us to act selfishly and to view the world jealously as a place full of
threats, where we have to defend our interest by judging, resenting, controlling or
even crushing others.
The Matthew passage we read today begins, “Then Jesus was led up by the
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Another way of looking at
it is that the Spirit led Jesus into a confrontation with the desires of the false self.
The devil tempts Jesus to use his power to turn stones into loaves of bread. It is
not the fault of the false self that we get hungry, but that we misuse our power,
anxious for self-gain. Similarly the devil tempted Jesus to use his relationship to
God to prove his special worthiness by leaping off the temple’s pinnacle and
letting God save him. He tempted Jesus by offering him the rule of all the nations
of the world.
These would not have been cruel temptations if Jesus had not deeply
desired them. And Jesus would not have been human if he had not been tempted
by the selfish gain that his powers could bring him.
Lent reveals these same human temptations in us, if we follow the Spirit
toward our innermost truth. But by his response to temptation Jesus shows us that
God really does love us just as we are and that God forgives us and upholds us and
all we have to do is turn to God and open ourselves to receive God’s grace.
Seeing this truth we can trust, and so we can let go of our fearful false self’s
demands that we use our powers to gain security and control and esteem. And
letting go of those demands we become able to live with other people without
seeing them as threats to our self-interest.
Once we face the truth of our own false self and the deeper truth of God
that it hides, we gain new understanding of others. We become free to have
compassion and feel one with all people, including those who could feel
threatening to us, people of competing races, cultures or creeds. This is the
journey through the wilderness that Lent offers to us. Like Jesus, we can emerge
with the soul-force of this truth, with a power that can heal the nations and lead to
justice, nonviolence and peace.
This is so important. It is important because it is the only way the realm of
God will ever be established on earth. Only by stripping away the false self’s
illusions and turning to God can we overcome the temptations that pit us against
our neighbors. That is why the world needs us to be a church not only of bold
actions for justice and peace, but of courageous struggles for the liberation of our
deepest spiritual truth.
This is so important. It is important because of Valentina, and all the
children like her in the world. Valentina is a Vermont high school student. She
has been here to Thetford to visit. And the thought that she might have gone into
Huggett’s or Thetford Academy when she was here and experienced anything
other than an outpouring of welcome breaks my heart. But the sad truth is that she
could be treated unjustly in any American community because of who and what
she is. Valentina’s skin is black. She speaks with a foreign accent. The fingers of
one hand are missing, and there are scars on her head.
You see, Valentina did not grow up here. She grew up in another beautiful
rural village on another green hill with a church on it, but this one in Africa in the
nation of Rwanda. You may have seen a Frontline documentary about her on
Public Television a few years ago. It was entitled, “Valentina’s Nightmare.”
In Rwanda Valentina’s people, the Tutsis, had lived for hundreds of years
in harmony with their neighbors, the Hutus. Then Europeans came and took over
their land. They decided to let the Tutsis rule over the Hutus, dividing them and
breeding jealousy and fear. After the Europeans left, the two peoples competed
for power and wealth. The suspicion and envy between them increased. When
Valentina was a little girl, extremist Hutus gained power and began broadcasting
over the radio propaganda of hatred towards the Tutsis. They called them cock-
roaches, disgusting sub-humans, and said they needed to be exterminated,
squashed like bugs.
The Hutus organized and armed thousands of their people and prepared
death lists of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then finally one day they unleashed
the genocide. Between April and June of 1994 they killed over seven hundred
thousand people. It was like most injustices inflicted on people because of who or
what they are, in that underneath it all was the fearful false-self desire of greed and
pride, the demand for security and control at the expense of others.
One thousand Tutsis crammed into the church on the hill in Valentina’s
village, hoping they would be safe there. It was a village about the size of
Thetford, so when the Hutus attacked, the two sides knew each other. They had
grown up together and worked together as neighbors. The Tutsis had no weapons
to fight back, and they had no place they could hide, so the Hutus took their time.
They worked eight hours a day, killing as many as they could with their machetes
and axes and clubs. It took several days to kill them all.
Valentina’s parents were killed, and Valentina was hacked on the back of
her head with a machete. She put up her hand to shield her head. That is how her
fingers were cut off. She collapsed unconscious and the Hutus left her for dead.
That night she woke up and crawled over to her mother’s body and snuggled
against it. The next day when the Hutus came in Valentina lay very still. They
poked and prodded people to see if they were still alive. Two either side of her
were killed as she lay there. But half hidden under her mother, she escaped their
notice.
Finally her Hutu neighbors left the church, believing all one thousand
Tutsis were dead. Then slowly a few children crawled out from under the bodies.
They lived there for weeks, the older and stronger ones caring for the younger and
weaker ones.
No one thought Valentina would survive her severe and badly infected
wounds. But she did, and now she is in Vermont, hoping to complete high school
and enter an American college and train to be a nurse.
Valentina will speak publicly only in churches. I hope she will come here
and speak someday. I have been told that she does not want to be seen as a victim,
that what she cares about is the future. What I expect she wants most from us is
not our sympathy, but our determined effort to prevent any injustice anywhere
from being inflicted on people just because of who or what they are. What she
wants may be simply “a just and equal sharing of the things that earth affords,” as
the hymn says. (“For the Healing of the Nations,” by Fred Kaan.)
If you feel moved by Valentina’s story, or if you have heard the stories of
our own Thetford children who have been wounded by the sharp blades of racist
tongues, there are three things you could consider doing. First and most
immediately, you could talk to Anne Frey or Helen McLam today and offer to
help them arrange for a seminarian of color to come be our pastor here for part of
the summer while I am gone. This is something practical we can do to help
prevent racial injustices in our community, providing opportunities for
consciousness-raising and for living our deepest truth.
Second, we could consider declaring the church to be intentionally
multiracial and multicultural, just as we are intentionally open and affirming of
people of all sexual orientations. That would send a message to the community
encouraging the honoring of diversity, and a message to people of other races and
cultures telling them that we would welcome and accommodate them here.
Third, and most importantly, we can resolve to use this Lent to follow the
Holy Spirit where it wants to lead us. We can open ourselves to the stripping
away of our false self programs for security and control. We can let the Spirit lead
us to the truth.
The Psalm says, “Happy are those…in whose spirit there is no deceit,” no
falseness, no betrayal born of greed or pride. Happy are those who have arrived at
the unhidden truth of the unity of all humanity and the worthiness of every child of
every race, each one a beloved child of God.
Let us pray together in silence…
Sermon 02/10/2008