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Sermon 02/12/2006
Interrupting Racism ~
by Tom Kinder
February 12, 2006 Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
/ Racial Justice Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont,
UCC
Micah 6:6-8; Matthew 25:31-46
Helen MacLam regrets deeply that she is not able
to offer her reflection today as she had planned.
Helen has given much of her life to trying to
end racism. I am sorry we are not hearing her
speak out of her passion and experience and extensive
reading and thought on this issue. I am sorry
we are not able to take this opportunity to show
her our love and appreciation for her dedication.
But what Helen would want most from us as a sign
of our gratitude would be for us to do whatever
we can to interrupt racism whenever we encounter
it.
Helen chose the title “Interrupting Racism”
for her talk. I think it is a good title because
how many of us have been in a position where we
could have interrupted racism but we did not?
We have been in conversations with family members
or people at work, or we have overheard people
standing in line at a check-out counter—we
have heard a racially prejudiced remark come out
of someone’s mouth, and we have let it slide
by without comment. Maybe we have been too polite
or too shocked or too timid or in too big a hurry
to interrupt. For whatever reason, we have swallowed
the rebuke that crossed our mind. We have shoved
down the rising indignation that we could have
expressed. We have ignored the Holy Spirit’s
urging that we follow Christ and stand up to injustice.
We have let racism go uninterrupted.
You may have seen the article in yesterday’s
Valley News that reported on the “Reading
to End Racism” program at Thetford Academy.
The story said that Friday the middle school Academy
students “talked about the paralysis that
sometimes takes over when witnessing injustice.
What they would do when faced with an incident
of racial prejudice versus what they should do
was a moral distinction they grappled with,”
according to the article.
It is easy to feel nothing but guilt and shame
as progressive white Christians discussing our
own complicity in a racist world, but that is
not what I intend to have you feel today. In fact,
this church can be glad for what it has done.
For one thing, we have included that bold last
sentence in our Open and Affirming covenant: “We
pledge to work to end oppression and discrimination
whenever we encounter them and, guided and empowered
by the Holy Spirit, to help create the blessed
community of God’s realm.” Every member
of this congregation vows to have that intention
and try to live up to it, and that is a good beginning.
It was in part inspired by that pledge that Helen
and Eleanor and others here hosted a series of
presentations and discussions on racism two years
ago. One of those sessions introduced the “Reading
to End Racism” program, and that evening
Martha Rich, the Thetford Academy Head of School,
made her own pledge to bring the program to the
Academy. It took place not only there on Friday,
but at Thetford Elementary on Wednesday.
Because of our covenant and because of our lay
leaders who have provided opportunities to fulfill
our covenant, the children of this community are
learning that racism exists, that it is harmful,
that it needs to be interrupted, and that they
are the ones who can do it. This is something
to celebrate. I hope you can feel moved by this.
I hope you can look at the children of this congregation
and feel hope and joy at the thought that we are
teaching them to stand up for racial justice.
I hope you can look at our children of color,
our children from Asia or Central America, and
feel hope and joy at the thought that they may
escape the pain of racist comments or discrimination
as they go through our schools.
I hope you can feel some measure of this hope
and joy because if you can, then maybe you can
imagine the full breadth and depth of the hope
and joy we are working toward, and maybe those
warm feelings can inspire you to do more “to
help create the blessed community of God’s
realm,” as our covenant pledges we will do.
Imagine the day our work is complete and the societies
of earth reflect the justice and inclusivity and
love of God’s realm – the dawning of
that fulfilled hope and full joy – what a
morning that will be!
The phrase in our covenant, “blessed community
of God’s realm,” intentionally echoes
what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called
“the beloved community.” King had a
dream that he spoke about most famously in front
of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington
in August, 1963, but he wrote and talked about
it often. His dream was a vision of the Promised
Land, the realm of God established on Earth, all
creations as one beloved community. It was not
his dream, but God’s dream, and he was a
prophet of it just as Micah and Isaiah and Jesus
were prophets of its vision.
It is crucial that we remind ourselves on Racial
Justice Sunday that we are working toward a dream,
a vision, and that it is God’s dream, it
is Christ’s vision, not just our own. It
is crucial that we not lose sight of the Promised
Land as we trudge through the wilderness of blinding
sandstorms as one news story after another fills
our eyes with the disproportionate suffering of
racial minorities whose housing, health care,
education, job availability and rate of pay, police
harrassment and prison time show systemic discrimination
in this country. It is crucial that we affirm
that we are working toward nothing short of the
establishment of God’s ways and God’s
realm in our community and nation and world. Jesus
does not just invite us to do this work, he commands
it. We need to be reminded on Racial Justice Sunday
that we cannot love God with all our heart, mind,
soul and strength, we cannot truly say we love
our neighbor as ourself, if we are not “working
to end oppression and discrimination . . . to
help create the blessed community of God’s
realm.”
To describe King’s vision of the beloved
community I could quote his “I Have a Dream”
speech with its soaring rhetoric, but he wrote
an article three years earlier for YWCA Magazine
that gives more details of what he envisioned.
If he had been writing for a women’s magazine
today he would certainly have used inclusive language,
but I will read it as he wrote it in 1960. He
said,
The dream is one of equality of opportunity, of
privilege and property widely distributed; a dream
of a land where men will not take necessities
from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream
of a land where men do not argue that the color
of a man’s skin determines the content of
his character; a dream of a place where all our
gifts and resources are held not for ourselves
alone but as instruments of service for the rest
of humanity; the dream of a country where every
man will respect the dignity and worth of all
human personality, and men will dare to live together
as brothers . . . . Whenever it is fulfilled,
we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight
of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright
and glowing daybreak of freedom and justice for
all of God’s children.
And My Lord, what a morning that will be!
So when we take the list of White Privilege in
our bulletin today and do anything to extend one
of those privileges to people of other races,
we are helping to fulfill King’s dream, we
are interrupting racism, we are helping create
the blessed community of God’s realm, and
we are spreading hope and joy.
When we have the courage to overcome our fear
and paralysis and say that we disagree with someone
who is judging the content of a person’s
character by the color of their skin, we are interrupting
racism, advancing the dream of God’s realm
on earth, and sparking hope and joy with the friction
of our intervention.
When we strive to create a society where our resources
serve the rest of humanity, where we respect the
dignity and worth of all people as equal to ourselves,
where we seek to live as brothers and sisters
with all races and religions and nationalities,
then we are living as if already in the beautiful
dream, the beloved community, the homeland that
is secure in the peace and joy of God’s realm.
Right now Christians have the opportunity to interrupt
racism by their response to the publishing of
cartoons in Europe that are offensive to Muslims.
The freedom of the press is certainly important,
and more people should be concerned about it in
this country. The condemnation of violent responses
to offenses is certainly important, and many more
people should be concerned about the violence
our own country is doing. But those issues are
distracting from the most important thing we need
to do if we are going to follow the way of Jesus
Christ and the pledge of our covenant. We need
to be voicing our brotherhood and sisterhood with
all Muslims and our compassion for their frustrations
and suffering and be boldly opposing those who
promote prejudice and hatred toward them.
Our government has decided that we are now fighting
not a War on Terror, but a War on Radical Islam,
according to the President’s State of the
Union Address. His Administration is trying to
stir up fear and hatred to support a long war
fighting this enemy. But it is not any race or
religion or nationality that is our enemy—the
real enemies are the economic and military oppression,
the racial and religious and national bigotry
that consider White Privilege and American Domination
acceptable. These are the enemies of God’s
realm.
This is the struggle that we are engaged in today,
and it is the same movement that Martin Luther
King Jr. was part of, and Jesus was part of –
the movement to let God’s will be done on
Earth for all people. Everything we do to interrupt
racism and replace it with God’s justice,
inclusivity and universal love moves us closer
to the dream, spreads hope and joy, and reduces
terrorism more effectively than any war could
ever do.
The hymn “My Lord, What a Morning” expresses
the hope and joy of the day when God’s rule
is finally established on this earth. We can sing
with that hope and joy in our hearts even now
if we believe that God’s love is powerful
enough to triumph someday. If we have that faith,
we can sing with certainty that we shall overcome,
and that the long-awaited day will surely dawn.
We can sing with joy that we in this church have
helped and are helping the morning come when we
wake to find King’s dream come true. We can
sing, “My Lord, What a Morning” today
as if it is already here.
Let us pray in silence, asking God to help us
see more clearly what we can do to create the
blessed community of God’s realm here and
throughout the world. Let us pray in silence.
. .
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