"BLACK HISTORY AND LENT"

“BLACK HISTORY AND LENT”

            The season of Lent began on Valentine’s Day – a strange combination of love and ashes, the ashes made all too relevant by the killing floor of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  As I said in this blog space before, we have turned ourselves over the gun-god Molech (Leviticus 20:1-5), and he requires that we sacrifice our children to him, which we are continuing to do.  Perhaps this mass shooting will make a difference, but I’ll be really (and pleasantly) surprised if it does.  The next hope on the horizon are the 2018 elections, so register to vote, and question your friends and colleagues to make sure that they are.

            This intersectionality reminds me that Black History Month and Lent almost always overlap on the calendar, and that is appropriate, for the racism that called forth the need for Black History Month is America’s original sin.  We saw the movie “MudBound” the other night, and it was powerful.  It did end on a redemptive note, but set in the Mississippi mud of the Delta right after World War II, it did remind me of my growing up in Arkansas as the next generation after this one. The mud, the racism, the struggles – all these spoke to me of my captivity to the power of race.  I had a restless sleep the night after I watched it.

            The movie focused on the return of two men from World War II – one was African-American, and one was Anglo.  Though they did not know one another prior to the war, they bonded over their shared experiences.   The African-American character, Ronsel Jackson, displayed the attitude that many black soldiers exhibited when they returned from World War II – they would no longer accept the “neo-slavery” that continued to prevail in the South.  They had fought for freedom and equality in the war, and they would not accept the inequality that continued in this country when they returned.  These veterans formed the foundation for the civil rights movement that burst out in the 1950’s.  Their leadership and courage and determination made the civil rights movement possible.

            One such veteran was Amzie Moore of Cleveland, Mississippi.  His grandfather had been held in slavery, and Amzie Moore had thought that white folks held the power because they were supposed to have it.  World War II taught him that people of different racial categories were all human beings.  He returned from the war determined to help change things in Mississippi and the South. He was a federal postal worker, and that gave him some job security as he began the work of equality and equity.

            He joined Medgar Evers in the state NAACP chapter, and he helped to recruit people in the Delta, including Fannie Lou Hamer.  It was dangerous work, and Bayard Rustin, who would later organize the 1963 March on Washington, told Moore that he was either very brave or very stupid.  Moore replied that he didn’t think that he was either one, but he was determined to work for justice.  He met the legendary Bob Moses in a meeting in Atlanta in 1960, and he encouraged Moses to bring the SNCC organizers and students to Mississippi, which Moses and others eventually did, leading to the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.  Moore and other veterans formed the basis for the logistics of this campaign and many others, and his home in Cleveland became a “safe” house.  Those who stayed with him formed a “who’s who” of the movement:  Bob Moses, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, Stokely Carmichael, Andy Young, Jesse Jackson, and many others.  Look him up and celebrate his life and witness!

            “MudBound” called out Amzie Moore for me, but it also called me out on another level.  As I saw the movie unfold before me, I thought to myself:  “In those days, I did not believe that African-Americans had an interior life, that they were not human beings like me.”  Though I gave up that way of thinking many years ago, “MudBound” brought back my captivity to me in stark fashion.  The movie did a fine job of portraying two families, one black and one white, intertwined with the complexity of a changing racial landscape.  It is these kinds of things and attitudes that we are asked to examine in the season of Lent – why we choose racism (and so many other powers) over the love of God, why we had rather execute Jesus than be transformed by his love.  Let’s look in those scary places in Lent.