March 15, 2009 Third Sunday in Lent, Racial Justice Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 37; Luke 4:14-30; Luke 10:25-37
President Obama has a chapter on race in his book The Audacity of Hope.
He makes clear that while race is a problem on a scale as vast as the nation itself,
it is at the same time on a scale as small as a kitchen table where a young child
absorbs the attitudes of her parents.
As the musical South Pacific sings, children have to be taught to hate.
That teaching is still happening. It happens every time an adult uses a derogatory
name for a group of people, or says something that makes them seem like objects,
not quite fully human, not neighbors we should love. Children learn two things
from this—they learn to think this way about the group being put down, but they
also learn simply to think this way. They learn that this is an acceptable pattern
of thinking. If they hear it about African Americans in their home, then when
they get to high school and encounter another group that seems foreign to them,
they will apply the same thinking and same kind of actions to them.
Our Open and Affirming covenant comes from an entirely different
pattern of thinking, a pattern we have learned from our reading of the gospel of
Jesus Christ: the good news that the neighbor we need to love is not only the one
who is our friend and tribe member, but also the one who is our enemy, or the
one our society reviles and excludes. When we come across a person or group
that is being discriminated against and oppressed, that person or group becomes
our responsibility to love and take care of as the Good Samaritan took care of the
Jew.
During Lent we go into an intentional spiritual wilderness for forty days,
when we try to live a more Spirit led life by turning away from our self-will or
our false self and turning to God again and again throughout the day. Jesus’
wilderness is a model for ours. The first thing he did when he emerged was to go
out teaching people what the Holy Spirit within him was leading him to say. He
came to his home town of Nazareth and stood up to read the scripture from the
Prophet Isaiah. He chose the passage that said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me
to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the
oppressed go free…” This is the spirit that we can expect to find moving in us
when we open ourselves to be Spirit-led. We, too, are to let the oppressed go
free.
On one scale, this means that we have a responsibility to do what we can
to help change the big problems of the world. But what led us to adopt our Open
and Affirming covenant was not the large scale issues so much as the intimate
scale. It was to address the experience that many in this congregation had of
seeing the oppression of people we loved or of being oppressed ourselves.
Our stand arose especially from the experience of one young man who
grew up in this congregation. If you did not know Craig Palmer, then I’d like to
invite you to pretend that I am talking about one of the children here today. Pick
one you are particularly fond of, one you would feel particularly protective of,
and imagine I am talking about that child.
Craig grew up very involved in this church. He came to Sunday School, he
was in youth group, he even was a junior deacon when he was a teenager. At the
same time, he was being slammed up against lockers at Thetford Academy, he
was being called “fag,” he was being oppressed and abused by some of his peers.
No one at the church knew anything about it. No one knew, because he was
afraid to tell the people here. He was afraid because all he had ever heard was of
churches condemning homosexuals, calling them sinners, kicking them out. He
was terrified of that happening. So he suffered alone. Only years later, after
becoming openly gay, was he able to come back here and tell us of his loneliness
and pain, and how, without meaning to, the church had let him down.
If you have been thinking about this happening to a child here you know
and love, you can understand why we adopted our Open and Affirming covenant.
You can also understand why we dared include the sacred vow we make at the
end of it, that says, “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.” We can imagine a child we
love here being thrown up against the lockers or called a name, and that thought
causes us intense pain. Or we can imagine our own children being one of the
oppressors, calling others names, hurting others’ feelings.
We pledge to work to end oppression and discrimination whenever we
encounter them. We make that sacred promise. The question for us on this
Racial Justice Sunday is, how well are we fulfilling our pledge? How well as a
church and how well as individuals? Are we doing enough?
If you are feeling uncomfortable at those questions, you have good reason.
The gospel of Jesus Christ not only makes clear that Jesus calls us to take bold
action against the force of hate, but it also makes clear that we will become
targets of hate ourselves if we do so. That day in Nazareth in his home
synagogue, everyone was proud of Jesus, hearing him read those words of Isaiah.
They were all for the idea of justice. But all he had to do was suggest that people
they excluded and hated were included in God’s blessing, and that if Israel was
not more just it would be excluded, and they became enraged enough to kill him.
No wonder we are uncomfortable at the idea of confronting people who are
discriminating against or oppressing others.
Barack Obama tells a story in The Audacity of Hope about a white man
named Robert who was one of his field directors in southern Illinois. Robert
grew up there in a town where about a quarter of the population was African
American. Robert was driving then Senator Obama around and they began
talking about racial attitudes. Robert told him that just the week before a few
influential people in his hometown had invited him to join them for a meal at a
small social club there. He did not know the place but respected the people and
went along. The meal had just been served and they were eating and chatting
when Robert noticed that not a single black person was present. He asked them
about it. They explained that it was a private club. That didn’t seem like an
answer to Robert. Hadn’t any blacks tried to join? The men did not answer.
Robert said, “It’s 2006, for God’s sake.” The men shrugged. It’s always been
this way, they said. No blacks allowed.
Robert dropped his napkin on his plate, said good night and left.
Obama reflects on the story, saying,
I suppose I could spend time brooding over those men in the
club, file it as evidence that white people still maintain a
simmering hostility toward those who look like me. But I don’t
want to confer on such bigotry a power it no longer possesses. I
choose to think about Robert instead, and the small but difficult
gesture he made. If a young man like Robert can make the effort
to cross the currents of habit and fear in order to do what he
knows is right, then I want to be sure that I’m there to meet him
on the other side and help him onto shore. (p. 239f)
It is difficult to rise up and take a strong stand even in a small way, even
against a small incident of oppression or discrimination. It is uncomfortable. It
requires challenging our habits and fears. So when we ask ourselves how we are
doing at our pledge, we should be prepared to have compassion on ourselves for
not doing all we could.
The truth is, though, that as a church we have done some good things
recently. We brought in Rhonda Myers, an African American woman, to serve as
pastor for ten weeks during the sabbatical time last summer. We publicized
several conversations she led about race. We made a contribution to preventing
future genocide in Rwanda last fall. We are planning another film and
conversation on April 19th. We have let people know that if they dare to cross
the currents of habit and fear to confront racism, they will find friends in this
church to meet them on the other side and help them ashore.
We are also fighting oppression and discrimination in other ways. We
have endorsed the Freedom to Marry movement so that gays and lesbians may be
able to have equal treatment under the law someday. Some in this church have
served on the Uprooting Racism task force that you see described on the insert of
the bulletin. Some have led us into other concerns, such as the oppression of the
Palestinian people. There is always more that we can do as a church, but the
important thing is that we have this pattern of thinking and speaking and acting
that we are teaching our children, and we have a culture here that will support
you if you want to rise up and lead us to do something more.
It is one thing to act as part of a group, but another to act individually. In
his famous speech on race during the campaign President Obama talked about
cringing when he heard racist remarks coming out of the mouth of his beloved
grandmother. How many of us have a friend or relative or neighbor who makes
such comments from time to time, or tells offensive jokes, or perhaps actively
discriminates in some small way? How many of us have found a way to address
that prejudice? It is extremely difficult to rebuke people in the moment that
something awful is coming out of their mouth, or to confront someone we know
about what they are doing, as Robert did when he left the club in protest.
Yet these may be the most important things we can do for the cause of
racial justice. There are homes nearby where racism or other forms of bigotry are
being handed down from generation to generation right now. There are children
in the schools in this town who are showing what they have learned at home.
There are children being hurt. There are future patterns being set, and seeds of
future acts of violence.
Last week I asked the confirmation class how they thought they could
fulfill the pledge to work to end oppression and discrimination whenever they
encountered them—a pledge they know they will be making if they are
confirmed. Listen to the wisdom of our children. They said that first they would
try to protect the victim, shelter the victim rather than attacking the attacker.
Then they would tell someone about what was happening. They would report it
to an authority. They would get support to confront it. Also, if they could, they
would be part of something like the Civil Rights movement, part of a group that
was working together to stop oppression and discrimination.
I pointed out to them that they are part of such a movement. This church
is part of a movement that goes all the way back to Christ, a movement that has
risen up strong at many moments in history. It rose up during the abolitionist
movement to free the slaves. It rose a century later in the civil rights movement.
We still are part of the same movement—it has never died, and it never will die
as long as people like us keep working in our own ways, large or small, to end
oppression and discrimination whenever we encounter them. So when we sing
“We Shall Overcome” as we will at the end of the service today, it is not an
exercise in nostalgia, it is not waving an old, worn out flag from a by gone
movement. It is a song of the ongoing struggle that we are carrying forward. It is
our movement today. It is our song.
Let us pray together in silence. During this prayer, I am going to read a
few phrases or sentences from our Open and Affirming covenant. I invite you
just to let them sink into your silent prayer the way a pebble drops into a still
pool. You don’t have to think about them. Just let them sink in. Let us pray…
“We regard all people as beloved children of God.”
“We give thanks for the many and diverse gifts of God among us.”
“We honor the worth and dignity of all people.”
“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.”
Sermon 03/15/2009