"THE COST OF HEALING"

“THE COST OF HEALING – LUKE 8:26-39”

            I love this passage in Luke – I preached on it a couple of weeks ago for a sermon in Northern Ireland, at our friend Mark Gray’s Bannside Presbyterian Church in Bannbridge.  Jesus encounters a mentally ill person in the district of Gerasa in Gentile territory.  Jesus heals the man, but it is a difficult and costly healing.  Though it is an ancient story, it seems to me that it has a lot to tell us about finding life and our lives in these days of the triple scourges of racism, Coivid-19, and Trumpdemic.  I want to use it as the basis for these next two blogs.

             Jesus gets off the boat and hopes to get some R&R, but this man (whose name we never know) is naked and yells at Jesus to stop tormenting him.  Jesus had apparently told the demons who possessed the man to come out of him, but they do not obey him.  A couple of quick notes here – this resistance by the demonic powers is unusual in the Gospels.  The demons usually respond quickly to Jesus’ commands, but here they put up a significant fight.  Secondly, I am uneasy with the idea of “demonic possession.”  On one level, it seems like a primitive relic that is intruding into a story of mental illness.  I don’t believe that there are personal beings who hover in the air, waiting to possess us.  I would prefer the metaphor of mental illness, and while that more modern metaphor seems apt, I must be careful not to dismiss the insight of this story – this is not just a narrative about one individual’s illness. It is also about our collective captivity to powers beyond our individual sphere, powers like racism and sexism and homophobia and materialism and militarism.

            Jesus seeks to heal the man by asking him his name.  The man does not reply that he is Peter or Paul or Samuel – rather he says that his name is “Legion.”  He has lost his identity and now gives the name of the demons who possess him.  The author tells us that he proclaims “Legion,” because many powers have entered him.  We should also note that the word “Legion” is also the name of one of the most feared military units the Western world has ever known:  the Roman Legion.  Perhaps this man has PTSD from being abused by the Legion or has seen loved ones tortured or killed by the Legion.  Whatever his background is, he has given up his identity to this power.

            Then comes the weirdest part of a weird but profound story.  The demons negotiate with Jesus.  They recognize that Jesus has ultimate power over them, so they beg him to keep them out of the abyss, to send them into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus accepts this and sends them into the pigs – they cause the pigs to jump into the lake and are drowned.  I always felt like Jesus was pretty harsh on the pigs (Mark’s version tells us that there were 2000 pigs!), but then I remembered that Jesus is a Jew.  The pigs are unclean anyway – no big loss, but quite a financial loss!  In his great sermon on this passage, Clarence Jordan wonders why there are so many pigs near Jewish territory, and his answer is that they are likely “bootleg” pigs.  Instead of trafficking in illegal liquor, the pig owners traffic in illegal pork.

            Though it is a difficult healing, Jesus does it – he frees this man from his demonic possession.  To those of us wrestling with such possession, to those of us captured by racism and sexism and homophobia and many other powers, this passage is both good news and bad news.  The good news is that there is healing available – Jesus is coming for us. The bad news is that it is difficult and costly – no instant healing here.  It is a struggle because the captivity is so deep, and the powers are intertwined with our own identities.    So, as we travel through these difficult days of the exposure of the power of racism and the existential threat of Covid-19 and the scary days of the Trumpdemic, let us take heart that healing is possible.  Jesus is coming for us and asking us to name our demons and asking us to find healing.  It is a costly process, but we can find healing and hope.  Next time we’ll look at the second half of this story.  In the meantime, where do you find yourself in this story?  Jesus who calls us into authenticity?  The man captured by the demons?  The disciples who watch all this?  The pigherders who are stunned to lose their pigs?  The townspeople who hear the news? Think about where you are and who you are and why you are.  And, of course, give thanks for yourself!

"THE PASSING OF PINES"

THE PASSING OF PINES

It stood there for many years,

Tall and strong when we arrived 30 years ago,

Western-most tree among many,

Shielding sunlight, absorbing Westwind

Sending its roots to buckle our narrow driveway,

Marker on a busy street,

Signaller of a forested lot, sloping upwards to the east.

It has seen a lot – smog-absorbing, siren-pierced,

Horns abounding, people walking, the killing garage,

Rain-washed, hawks perching, jays squawking, owls hooting,

Lightning struck, cone-dropping

Yet, it grows and grows,

     So mighty and fertile that

It split into two branches at about twenty feet,

Making it vulnerable to many perils, (so the tree-man said)

Still it grows and grows.

I think on it now, as I stand on its Pine-Soul trunk,

All that’s left of its eighty foot might,

Felled this week because it was so strong

So fertile that it invaded county sewer lines,

Powerful roots slicing through terra, terra cotta, concrete

In search of the nutrient-rich water

Cascading down from our showers, dishes washed,

Laundry done, our times on the pot

Who needs rain when you’ve got the sewer?

I think on it now in a weekend of death

Death of giants, John Lewis, CT Vivian, Connie Curry,

A good friend struggling between life and death

Death visiting so closely in coronavirus,

Death trying to take root in the Trumpdemic.

And, my own mortality, but not just that,

     Though that is enough

But, a marking, a time of transition,

The old order passing, history emerging,

From preaching to chickens to the blows of Jim Clark,

To the words of my mother:  “No N-word in this house, Mister.”

I’m sorry to see you go, old friend, but

     Here it is

Our usage both fed you and killed you,

That’s the cycle of your life and ours

May my memories be so tall as you.

July 17, 2020

LAY ON, MCDUFF...."

“LAY ON, MCDUFF….”

            This week marks the birthday of Ida B. Wells on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  Catherine Meeks and I were scheduled to go down there this year to talk about our book on Wells and to make presentations on her at the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum in Holly Springs.  The Covid-19 made us decide not to go, much to our sincere regret.  They had a smaller celebration on Saturday.  This is a good week for birthdays for African-American history:  June Jordan was born on July 9 and Nelson Mandela on July 18.

            Wells was a powerful witness for racial and gender and economic justice all of her life, even in the face of great opposition from the structures of white supremacy and often from African-Americans themselves.  There are many stories that illustrate this, but in our current volatile atmosphere, I want to share one from 1917, when she was 55 years old, soon after the USA had entered World War I.  Congress had passed the Espionage Act of 1917, basically suppressing free speech during the war.  Leading this repression was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with the assistance of his young aide, J. Edgar Hoover.

            The Black soldiers of the 24^th Infantry, 3^rd Battalion, had a long and distinguished history, beginning in the Civil War.  It would be 30 more years before segregation ended in the armed services.  In preparation for the war, the 24^th had been assigned to Texas, and here they ran smack into neo-slavery and segregation.  They refused to abide by the segregated seating in the trolleys, and on one occasion they had a fight with the police when the soldiers ripped down a “colored only” sign in a restaurant. 

            Tensions were high, and they came to a head in August, 1917, when Houston police invaded (prior to “no-knock” warrants) the home of a Black woman and mother of five, searching for black teenagers who had been gambling.  She objected to the invasion, and the police dragged her out of her home and began beating her before arresting her.  A Black soldier from the 24th came to her defense, and he was beaten, arrested and jailed.  The soldier’s provost guard came in to the police station to ascertain what had happened, and he was shot at and arrested.  Word spread back to the army base that he had been killed. 

            Tensions built in Houston and on the base.  A white mob of 1000 gathered to get ready to attack the soldiers, and under the leadership of Sergeant Vida Henry, the 24th marched into the San Felipe district to seek justice for their two comrades.  Shots were fired when the two groups met, and in the end 15 whites, including 5 police officers, were killed, along with 4 Black soldiers and 2 Black civilians.  As a result, the army held its largest court-martial ever of the soldiers of the 24^th, and 12 Black soldiers were sentenced to death.  The execution was carried out almost immediately, and the soldiers were buried in a mass grave.  The NAACP protested their immediate execution but not their punishment.  The power of the Espionage Act of 1917 was echoed in W.E.B. Dubois’ editorial in the NAACP magazine Crisis:

“We ask no mitigation of their punishment.”  Even Dubois was cowed by the Espionage Act.

            Ida Wells, however, was not afraid of the White supremacists, and she spoke out and sought to have a memorial service for the 12 soldiers in one of the Black churches in Chicago.  Here she encountered the power of White supremacy in a surprising place:  no Black pastors would allow the service in their churches.  She wrote a fiery article in the Chicago Defender, and she had buttons made,  memorializing the martyrs of the 24^th.  She distributed them and was soon visited by federal government officers telling her that she would need to stop distributing the buttons – if she did not, she would be charged with treason under the Act of 1917.  When she refused to give them the buttons, they backed off a bit, and I’ll conclude this story with her version from her great autobiography “Crusade for Justice”:

            “Well,” said the shorter of the two men, “the rest of your people do not agree with you.”  I said, “Maybe not.  They don’t know any better or they are afraid of losing their whole skins.  As for myself, I don’t care.  I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing, than to save my skin by taking back what I have said.  I would consider it an honor to spend whatever years are necessary in prison as the one member of the race who protested, rather than to be with all the 11,999,999 Negroes who didn’t have to go to prison because they kept their mouths shut.  Lay on , MacDuff, and damn’d be him that first cries “Hold, enough.”

            The men left but told her to get her attorney (who would be her husband and great support Ferdinand Barnett), but she never heard from them again.  This is one of many instances where Ida B. Wells ran far ahead of her contemporaries in the race for justice and equity – she was reviled, ostracized, and rejected for it.  She was nearly lost in history, but thanks to many (including her daughter Alfreda Duster, who collected her mom’s autobiography and finally talked John Hope Franklin into getting the University of Chicago to publish it in 1970), Ida Wells is not only remembered but highly prized (a Special Pulitzer this year).  Raise a cheer for her this week, and let us find our place in the path that she has set for us.

BLACK JESUS COMES TO OAKHURST

“BLACK JESUS COMES TO OAKHURST”

            Last week our daughter Susan posted on her FB page the link to an article that indicated that the Archbishop of Canterbury indicated that we perhaps should reconsider the idea that Jesus was white.  She then added these words:  "If y’all wanna see who was cool before it was cool, go check out the Black Jesus that’s been the feature of the stained glass windows at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, GA since the mid-1980s, or if you can’t physically go there, just watch Sweet Magnolias on Netflix, because the church used on the show IS Oakhurst!  Also, if Nibs Stroupe or Caroline Leach has never told you the story of how the Oakhurst Jesus came to be, please ask them to. It’s quite epic and involves an opera diva."

            With an intro like that, several people have asked to hear the story of that process, so I’ll share an abbreviated version of it now.  If you want a fuller version, see pp. 68-71 of Caroline’s and my book “O Lord, Hold Our Hands:  How a Church Thrives in a Multicultural World.”  Oakhurst Presbyterian was a dying church when we arrived in the early 1980’s.  It had been a 850 white member church in the mid-60’s, but white flight had changed the neighborhood and decimated the church over a 15 year period.  Oakhurst had strong leadership in this period, however, and the pastors, elders, members, and Presbytery helped it to survive.  That was back in the days when Presbyteries still believed in providing financial support to urban churches. 

            When Caroline and I arrived as pastors, the church was 80 members (35% African-Americans), but whites were still firmly in control.  We had many battles to shift that, but the shift happened.  After a few years, we decided to take the big step of engaging the public art in the building.  Caroline had already been changing curriculum, coloring in materials to make them more intercultural.  Our first focus on the public art was the huge stained glass window of the Ascension of Jesus in the chancel at the front of the sanctuary, a European Jesus towering over us all, being adored by white angels and white, male disciples.  We enlisted our resident artist, Virginia Gailey , who along with her husband James (he taught OT – now Hebrew Scripture – at Columbia Seminary) were vital members, to think about it.  As usual, she came up with a fine proposal:  make Jesus the brown-skinned man that he was, darken several of the disciples, and add a woman to the disciples.  Wow – that was a great idea!  Virginia suggested that we get the company who originally put in the stained glass window in 1960 to come back and do the work on the revised one.  That should mitigate some of the criticism.  There was one HUGE obstacle though – the cost to do the work was astronomical, and the church had no money at all.  Virginia then approached her sister Frances Templin, who agreed to fund the project!

            We thought that the next obstacle would be the Session, the elders of the church, who are the decision-making body for the church.  We approached them with the proposal – fortunately, Virginia was on the Session at that time.  We had a great discussion on it – of course, our art should reflect our diverse membership.  There was, however, a great deal of anxiety over voting for it, because we had made so many changes, and in so doing, we had driven away some of the stalwart white members.  The Session did vote to make the change, but we were timid in our approach.  We did not do it in secrecy, but we also did not broadcast it to the membership.  Our approach was to make the change and then have people talk about it.  Ask forgiveness, not permission, as the old adage goes. 

            We got the company to get the panes that needed to be replaced on Monday, and they guaranteed that they could get them replaced and re-installed by Friday of the same week.   Thus, the changes would be made in between Sunday worship services. The company lived up to their timeline, but when the panes were installed, they were awful from an artistic point of view – some of our elders even wondered if the company deliberately sabotaged the project.  But, they were up on Sunday, and as we initially had thought, very few people (except Session members) noticed them that next Sunday.  We called the company, and they agreed to re-do the panes, but they couldn’t come get them until Thursday, and thus they wouldn’t have them back until after the next Sunday.  We gulped and decided to go with that.

            We had forgotten, however, that the next Sunday would bring a child of the church back to visit and sing in worship as an adult.  She was now an opera diva, having sung all over the world and several times at the Met.  As an Anglo child, she had grown up singing in various choirs in the church, and she wanted to return and do a mini-concert in Sunday worship to give thanks for all the gifts that she had received in her youth at the church.  This sounded lovely, and we had agreed, and we knew that many of the white folk who had fled the neighborhood and the church would return on this Sunday to hear her sing.  What did they see in the stained glass window of Jesus in worship?  A Jesus with holes for his head, his hands, and his feet, where the panes had been removed.  And now, EVERYBODY KNEW about it – no hiddenness any longer.  It was as if God was laughing at our timidity – “you’re afraid that people will notice and will cause an uproar?  Well now, everyone will know.”  And they did!

            The panes were returned for the next Sunday, and they were much better, but now everyone was talking about them and asking about them.  Most of the responses were positive, but there were a few long-time white members who objected to changing (defiling) the art work.  One wrote an official letter to the Session, saying that we had violated the integrity of the art by changing it.  Any guilt that we might have felt over this change was mitigated quickly when one of our longest tenured white members, Mary Reimer, spoke up in the Session meeting to let us know that the family who had donated the money for the original stained glass window had wanted to remove it and take it with them when they fled the church because they were afraid that the Black people who came would harm it somehow.   So much for artistic integrity!

            Though we did not label this new stained glass window as the “Black Jesus,” everyone else did.  And it became one of our strongest evangelistic markers.  We had many visitors, and that Black Jesus would greet them in worship – you could not escape him.  Black Jesus would ask you about your life, and at that time we had one of the few Black Jesus stained glass windows in the Metro Atlanta area.  Time Magazine noticed it and did a full page article on the church in 1995.  It reminded us then, and it reminds us now, in these days of shifts and rethinking, that Jesus was Black in so many ways.  And, it reminds us of the power of art on so many levels.  Keep Black Jesus in mind as you work on your art and your life together.