"WHY BLACK HISTORY MONTH EXISTS"

 “WHY BLACK HISTORY MONTH EXISTS”

In January, 1870, the first Black person elected to the United States Senate arrived in DC to get ready to be sworn in.  His name was Hiram Rhodes Revels, arriving from the state of Mississippi, taking the seat of Senator Jefferson Davis, who had vacated in 1861 to become president of the Confederacy.  Revels’ acceptance into the Senate was no easy matter – a long debate was held in February over whether he could be admitted, with one senator indicating that Revels’ racial classification “brings into prominence, as a practical question of great interest and importance, the issue of his eligibility.”  He was finally sworn in and took his seat, but the debate echoed a fundamental question that continues to plague those classified as “white:”  Can a democracy that includes Black participation (and Brown and Native and Asian) be legitimate?

We are still answering that question raised at the arrival of a Black man to be a US Senator in 1870.  The lynch mob that attacked the Capitol this January 6 sought to overthrow a Senate soon to be presided over by a Black woman, who would also swear in the first Black person ever elected to the U.S. Senate from my state of Georgia.  For all the moaning of many of my siblings classified as “white” about “cancel culture,” it is we ourselves who have been doing that very thing to those classified as “Black,” and to all people classified as “other” in the system of race.  We have sought to cancel and to deny the humanity and the culture of all of those classified as “non-white,” especially those known as “Black.”  

This white desire to cancel Black humanity and Black culture is why Black History Week (and later Month) was created and named.  It was created to affirm the humanity, the culture, and the gifts of those classified as “Black” in the system of race, a system whose very purpose is to cancel the humanity of all those categorized as “non-white.”  Many people helped to create Black History Month, but a Black man born in Virginia, Carter Godwin Woodson, is called the “father of Black history.”  He was born in 1875 to parents who had been held in slavery in Virginia, but who saved and scrimped and bought the land where Woodson was born.  Woodson and his brothers did hard work on his parents’ tobacco farm, but he also went to a Freedman’s Bureau school.  It was there that he found his calling – as he learned to read, a whole new world opened to him, as it does to all of us who learn to read.

After the destruction of Reconstruction in the early 1880’s, there were no Black schools nearby for Woodson to attend, so he moved to Huntingdon, West Virginia, to work in the coal mines and to go to Frederick Douglass High School at age 20.  He graduated and attended Berea College in Kentucky, where he got his degree in 1904  just before the state of Kentucky forced Berea to deny entrance to Black people.  Berea appealed Kentucky’s order to SCOTUS, and in a continuing effort to cancel Black humanity and Black culture, in 1908 SCOTUS upheld the Kentucky law.  

Woodson was undaunted and went into teaching school while he earned his Master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD at Harvard (the second Black person to do so – who was the first?).  In 1915 he and four friends at the Chicago YMCA founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.  Their goal in doing this was to affirm the humanity and culture of African-Americans, at a time when the “white” culture was doing all that it could to deny those.  They also developed the Journal of Negro History to publish scholarly studies of Black life and Black history.  Both of those organizations continue to this day because they focused a bright light on the power and life of those classified as “Black.”

In 1926, Woodson and his colleagues started Negro History Week, choosing the dates of February 12-19 because they encompassed the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (2/12) and Frederick Douglass (2/14).  Woodson did not just “pronounce” this celebration – he sent out messengers to all his contacts in the field of education, and several states and the cities of Baltimore and Washington, DC, adopted it.  The idea struggled in the 1940’s but regained strength in the 1960’s, and in 1970 Kent State University changed it to “Black History” and stretched it out to a month.  In 1976 President Gerald Ford proclaimed February as “Black History Month,” and so it has continued.

    Here are the words that Woodson used to describe the need for Black History Month, a need that continues today, not so much because African-Americans have internalized “inferiority,” but because white supremacy is so deeply ingrained in our national culture. (I apologize for the lack of inclusive language here, but I have left the quote as it was):

“If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

THE MAN WHO KILLED JIM CROW"

 “THE MAN WHO KILLED JIM CROW”

There were so many people involved in the fight to end Jim Crow, or neo-slavery, as I prefer to call it.  The phase of neo-slavery that built up and menaced us all from 1866 finally ended 100 years later in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Act.  We are now in a time when we are wrestling with the “new Jim Crow,” and as we seek to find our way in this Black History Month, I want to lift up one giant who has largely been forgotten, but whose life and witness shows us a path for our time.   Those who knew him and who remember him often call him “the man who killed Jim Crow.”

His name was Charles Hamilton Houston, and he was born in Washington, DC, in September, 1895, seven months after the death of Frederick Douglass, in the same year that Ida Wells got married, in the same month that Booker T. Washington gave his “surrender” speech in Atlanta, and eight months before the heinous SCOTUS decision “Plessy v. Ferguson” which gave legal status to neo-slavery.  Ouite a run of time!  His father was a lawyer in DC, and his grandfather had escaped from slavery in Kentucky and had become a conductor on the Underground Railroad.  He was an outstanding student and went to Amherst and graduated summa cum laude in 1915.

He joined his father’s law firm, but when World War I came along, Houston joined the army to fight for democracy, or so he thought.  His experience of racism and segregation in the US army deepened his commitment to ending neo-slavery.  This is what he wrote about it:  “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in me dying for a world controlled by white people.  I made up my mind that if I got through this war, I would study law and use my life fighting for people who could not strike back.”  

He did make it through the war and kept his vow.  He entered Harvard Law School in 1920 and became the first Black student elected to the Harvard Law Review.  After graduation, he joined his father’s law firm in DC and taught part-time at Howard University Law School.  In 1929, the new president of Howard, Mordecai Johnson, recruited him to become dean of the Law School, with the intent of changing life in America.  Hamilton transformed the Law School from a part-time, non-accredited institution to a powerful, accredited law school which became the centerpiece of civil rights litigation, annually producing a strong group of lawyers rigorously trained to fight for equal justice under the law.  He had three main steps to end neo-slavery:  to develop that cadre of well-trained and dedicated Black lawyers, to build a broad base of support in Black communities for this work, and to litigate against neo-slavery and segregation in courts.  

He had many powerful students, but his most famous was Thurgood Marshall.  He trained Marshall to become the giant that he became.  Marshall had this to say about Hamilton:  “He was hard-crust…He used to tell us that doctors could bury their mistakes, but lawyers couldn’t.  And he’d drive home that we would be competing not only with white lawyers but really well-trained white lawyers, so there just wasn’t any point in crying in our beers about being Negroes.”  Hamilton didn’t just teach it – he lived it.  He later joined the NAACP as special counsel and recruited Marshall to be his top assistant.  They traveled the South together to get a first-hand look at the conditions that they would be litigating.  

He had heart disease, and all the stress and work began to weaken his heart. His doctors told him to cut back or just go back to teaching, but he was dedicated to the cause.  He and Marshall joined forces to win important federal cases in Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  His heart continued to fail, and he had to step down from the NAACP work, with Marshall taking his place.  He died in 1950, four years before one of the powerful fruits of his labor would be litigated before the Supreme Court:  Brown v. Board of Education.  Though he was not with them, it was Charles Houston’s lawyers and Charles Houston’s strategy that brought them to victory in the Brown case.  It was one of the towering labors that led to the end of neo-slavery in 1965.  

At Houston’s funeral in 1950, William Hastie, the first Black man ever appointed as a federal appellate judge, had these words to say about Houston:  “He guided us through the legal wilderness of second-class citizenship.  He was truly the Moses of that journey.  He lived to see us close to the promised land of full equality under the law, closer that even he had dared hope when he set out on that journey, and so much closer than would have been possible without his genius and his leadership.”

In this Black History Month, remember this pioneer – if you’ve never heard of him, look up more about him.  If you know about him, celebrate his work.  And, in a time of the new neo-slavery, the new Jim Crow, let us find our place in that great cloud of witnesses, working with inspiration from people like Charles Hamilton Houston and Ida B. Wells, working towards a time when the idea that all people are created equal will bear fruit for all of us.

"TIME TO CHOOSE"

 “TIME TO CHOOSE”

As we begin Black History Month, I want to note the journey of two Southern Black people, Ellen and William Craft,  who were held in slavery in Macon, Georgia, in the 1830’s and 1840’s.  They made a stunning and historic escape from slavery.  Their story should be more widely known for many reasons, but mainly because they kept on choosing freedom when they could have chosen stability and security.  I preached on them in Black History Month in 1988, but their story has stuck with me over these 33 years.

Ellen was light-skinned because she was born from a rape of her mother by the white master.  She adored her mother and stayed close to her, but the master’s wife hated Ellen because she looked so much like her own children.  When Ellen was 11, she was given as a wedding present to the slaveholder’s daughter, who was moving to Macon.  We can only imagine the wrenching parting of Ellen and her mother, her only protector.  In Macon, however, she met William Craft, who was held as a slave but was also an accomplished carpenter.  They fell in love, but neither wanted to get married, since it was illegal for people held as slaves to be married.  In addition, William had seen his entire family – mother, father, sister, brother – sold off to other places.  He did not want to make such loving attachments again.

Their love was powerful, and they celebrated a “slave” marriage – not recognized by the state but recognized by God and by their community.  They made their choice.  William had another proposal:  freedom.  Ellen was afraid – so many tales of torture and maiming for those seeking to escape slavery.  The call of freedom prevailed, and they made another choice:  escape from slavery in December, 1848. They did not take the Underground Railroad – they took the overground railroad, literally, because they devised a bold and scary plan to escape.  They would travel as a “couple,” but Ellen would disguise as a sickly white man going north for medical care with her male slave accompanying her – that would be William.

It was bold because they would always be hidden in plain sight.  They would travel by train and boat, and they would stay in first class hotels where John C. Calhoun stayed.  They were challenged several times, and Ellen who was gentle and reticent by nature, had to learn to act like a dominant white man in control, including treating her beloved husband William, as a slave.  In his great and foundational book from 1872, “Underground Railroad,” conductor William Still has a long section about these bold refugees and their arrival in Philadelphia.  In it he writes of his amazement at these two and their bold plan.  Philly was still too close to the South, however, so they went up to Boston to live.  When Caroline and Susan and I were touring Boston in 2018, we saw the house where they lived.

They had to make several bold decisions in regard to freedom.  They had hoped to gain freedom, to be left alone and to raise a family, but they could not forget the sisters and brothers left in slavery in the South.  So, they agreed to go on Anti-Slavery tours in the North, seeking the abolition of slavery.  Northern audiences were stunned by their story, but even more they were stunned by Ellen Craft.  She was one of the first Black women in the country to speak out against slavery in a public way – at this time, Harriet Tubman was still in chains on the Eastern shore of Maryland, and Sojourner Truth was just beginning her travels.  Ellen’s skin color and her “surprising” intelligence was what astonished the white audiences – she looked and sounded just like one of them.  

Their notoriety was dangerous, and sure enough, after the passage of the heinous Fugitive Slave Act by Congress in 1850, the former “owners” sent slave-catchers to Boston to get them.  With help from Boston allies, they escaped again, this time to England to continue in the anti-slavery work,  in a country which banned slavery.  There they stayed almost 20 years, yet decided to return to the South after the Civil War had ended, facing many terrors.  They chose to leave the relatively safe confines of England and return to their home state of Georgia, to set up a school there for people formerly held as slaves.  They moved to Woodville, near Savannah, to set up their school, and the KKK attacked them again and again.  They held out for many years, until the KKK burned the school to the ground, and they moved to Charleston to continue their work.  Ellen died in 1891 and was buried back on their school ground in Woodville.

    This story is remarkable and complex, and I encourage folk to do more research on them.  Dorothy Sterling has an excellent story of their life and impact in her early book “Black Foremothers.” This month, “Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery and Abolition,” edited by Michelle Commander out of the Schomburg Research Center, will have a long section on this amazing couple, based on William Craft’s own 1860 narrative.  Whether you use these resources or google them, find out more about them.  They are the kinds of folk we need in our days of rage and struggle:  it is time to choose, as they had to do.

 “HERE HE IS – DAVID STROUPE”

About a decade ago, David and Erin and Emma and Zoe were visiting us for the Christmas holiday.  It was one of those weird Atlanta and Southern Christmas seasons when the weather was warm enough to spend lots of time outside.  In this particular holiday, David and Emma and Zoe went out in the backyard to turn over rocks and look in the vines to see what creatures they could find.  They found salamanders and snakes and many other crawling creatures, and sure enough, soon our youngest Zoe came up to me with a small snake entwined around her harm.  “Here, Grandaddy, I found a snake for you – take it and feel it!”  I don’t have a great fear of snakes, but they are not my favorite either.  Yet, I didn’t want to wimp out in front of my 5 year old granddaughter, so I took the snake and let it wrap around my arm too.  I looked over at David and nodded my head at him, as if to say: “You’re the cause of this.”

And, he was the cause of it – he is a huge snake advocate and fan.  This Sunday, January 31, marks his 41st birthday, and we give thanks for him and all his gifts to us!  I still remember that snowy night in Norfolk when I drove Caroline to the Catholic Hospital (the only one at that time that permitted birthing rooms and the Lamaze breathing method.). It took him 12 hours to make that night passage out of the womb, but here he was – our first child!  He was snorting weirdly as he came out, and the doc told me to cut the cord and walk with him to the special nursery to check out his breathing.  It turned out to be fine, and we took him home in a few days, only to discover that he never slept!  That trait later served him well, as he got his graduate degrees while working and raising a family.  

He majored in biology at Davidson College, and he came by that part naturally.  We lived on Kirk Road in his early years, with a creek running in front of the house, and here he learned to develop his love of creatures great and small.  He also worked at the Atlanta Zoo every summer for a decade, so animals were a central feature of his growing awareness of himself and the world around him.

    One of his great gifts is his gentle and compassionate heart, given to him by his genes, by his nurturing, and by his growing up at Oakhurst Presbyterian.  When he was thinking about applying to Davidson, I tried to discourage him because I had gone there for a year and had a hard time.  When I told him that it would be a bunch of conservative folks at Davidson, he replied:  “Dad – there are other folks at Davidson, and I’ll find them.  I’ve grown up at Oakhurst, so I know how to find people, and I can get along with a lot of different kinds of people.”  He got a good scholarship, and off he went.  There he met his sweetheart, Erin Graham, and they built a life together.

    When he got out of college, he began teaching in a poor middle school in Houston, where Erin was from.  His school district was poor, and as he began teaching middle school science, he discovered that there was no commitment to teaching the kids:  there was no lab equipment, nothing to help the students learn about science.  He began to rectify that, but then and there, he made a commitment to public education and to ensuring equity in public education, that all students would have significant opportunities to learn and to expand all their horizons.  In order to do that, he got a Master’s Degree in Education at University of Houston, and a doctorate at University of Washington in Seattle, all the while working, being married and raising two daughters – all that practice at not sleeping served him well!

     In 2013 he got a job in the education department of Michigan State, and when we went out to Seattle for his PHD graduation, I thanked his mentor for helping David to find a job.  He replied:  “It’s not just a job – it’s THE job. It is the best job out there this year.  You should be very proud.”  And, of course we are!  Today I looked at the MSU summary of his academic history and accomplishments, and it is over 24 pages long – wow!  Just last November, Harvard University Press published his book on preparing teachers to seek equity in STEM education – here’s the link to the book https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/preparing-science-teachers-through-practice-based#  On February 4, he will be among a panel of presenters who will give updates to new Congressional aides on the STEM program.  

     We are most proud, however, of his development as a person – son, student, husband, father, teacher, professor.  He has always been well coordinated, and he was a good soccer and tennis player.  When he was in middle school, his soccer coach came to us to tell us:  “David is a fine soccer player, and he can be even greater.  But, in order to do that, I’d need to teach him to have the killer instinct, which he currently does not have.  It is a big step, so I wanted to ask you about it first.”  Our reply:  “We really appreciate your talking with us – but, no, we like him like he is.  No killer instinct, just a wide heart and a keen mind.”

    That wide heart and keen mind– even for snakes – makes him such a great son, dad, husband, teacher, mentor, friend, and human being.  So many memories, so many stories to tell, so many stories to come!  We give thanks for him being in our lives!  Happy Birthday, David!

"PERSISTENT INSISTENCE"

 “THE PERSISTENT INSISTENCE OF MLK”

Over the weekend, I had the privilege of talking with Pastor Andreas Holzbauer and member Dietrich Gerstner of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Lutheran Church in Hamburg, Germany.  We were discussing the life and witness of MLK, especially in these crazy and dangerous times.  I had met Dietrich through the Open Door Community, and they invited me to join in a conversation about King’s influence in my life and in current times.  It was a helpful reminder that Dr. King is not only a great American – he actually belongs to the world;  he influences people all the world over.

Many of you know my story of growing up in the belly of the beast of white supremacy on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River delta.  I not only grew up in it – I believed it.  I believed that those males classified as “white” were meant by God and by nature to dominate the world.  I believed it because it was taught to me by people who loved me and whom I loved:  my mother, my extended family, my church, my segregated schools.  I received this belief and appropriated it long before I knew anything about it.  it just described the way the world is – an idea and a reality like gravity.  I say this not to diminish the terror and crushing oppression of white supremacy.  I say it to emphasize why it is so difficult to eradicate in individual and communal life:  it is a core belief of people classified as “white.”

I give thanks that God was sending other voices and stories into my life to begin to offer me freedom in the midst of my captivity to white, male supremacy.  There were – and continue to be – many voices that called to me, telling me of a different world.  On this MLK Weekend, I want to remember that Dr. King was one of those voices, whom God sent to us all to help us to see a different vision, to help us dream of a different world. 

     I remember watching Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on a hot, August day in 1963.  As we approach the armed fortress of Washington, DC, for the Biden/Harris inauguration this week, I am reminded that King and his colleagues scared the white leadership to death.  In preparation for that march in 1963, some 4,000 regular US Army troops were stationed in Washington, with another 15,000 on standby in the DC suburbs.  Different motivations from this week’s events, but armed forces nevertheless.  I watched King’s speech by myself in my home.  It was the week before my senior year in high school began.  Coming into that speech, I had begun to wander from my bedrock belief in white, male supremacy.  I wanted to see for myself if he was a charlatan and a communist, as I had been told.  I also wanted to see if his followers were all fools, as I had been told.

    When I watched the speech, I was astonished by two things:  first, the size of the crowd – 250,000 – wow!  I told myself that they could not all be fools.  Second, was King’s speech itself.  That powerful voice, the soaring images that he drew from American history and from Christianity, the insistent demands that the great American ideal of equality be brought into flesh in the lives of African-Americans – all of these and more spoke to me.  I wanted to be inspired by this speech;  I wanted to let it flow into me and into those spaces captured by the hideous power of white supremacy.  I did not dare, however.  To let that happen would be to put me into direct conflict with my mother, my family, my church, my school.  Yet, something happened to me on that hot August day – the wall of race, with its hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, that wall began to crack in my heart.

    I continued to encounter Martin Luther King, Jr. over the rest of his life and continue to do so in my life.  I even had a chance to hear him speak in person in his last sermon before he was assassinated, but I chose not to go.  For more on that story, here’s a link to an article that I wrote for The Atlantic about my time in Memphis.  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/.   King’s ideas and his life created great controversy – the sanitized version that we have now of him was not the reality of his life.  The people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were desperate to deny and destroy the ideas at the heart of King’s life:  we are all children of God.  It’s a dangerous idea.

    As I think about Martin Luther King, I’m thinking  that part of his enduring is his courage and his vision.  It was based in his persistent insistence that we are each – and that we are all – children of God.  He was willing to put his life on the line to seek to weave justice and love together in such a way that we could all touch the reality of the Beloved Community.  That Beloved Community is not merely a gathering together of diverse people.  It is rather a community rooted in the power of equality and equity.  

       As we gather to begin another momentous week – celebrating the life of a great saint among us, observing and participating in the idea of democracy, in the “peaceful” transfer of power despite the efforts of a would-be-autocratic president – let us give thanks for the life and courage and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He reminded us with a persistent insistence of the power of equality in our individual and communal lives, and he invited us to join with him in seeking to make that idea a reality in this country and in so many others.

 “WOW - WHAT A WEEK!”

Last week I compared the Trumpdemic rage to that of King Herod’s rage in sending the soldiers to kill the baby boys of Bethlehem.  Though I feared the crowds that were gathering for the Day of Epiphany (and the certification of Biden/Harris), I did not imagine that they would storm the Capitol as they did.  Given the militaristic response to the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, I also assumed that there would be a comparable force stationed for the Trumpdemic crowds that gathered on January 6.  When I saw the lack of security around the Capitol as the afternoon began, I thought to myself, “Boy, if they try something, there is not enough security to hold them back.”  And there wasn’t.

Given my roots in Southern white supremacy, my first thoughts as I watched the crowds storm the Capitol was that it was similar to the fury of a lynch mob.  Trump had stoked them up, just as previous demagogues had done with white crowds about Black people in their communities.  The result was the same – chaos, destruction, and death.  I was grateful the Congress was determined to reconvene and do the original business:  to certify that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the new president and vice-president.  Now, we have to find a way to get through the last 9 days of the Trump presidency and the days of rage.  As I shared with some friends, I hope that the worst thing that Trump does in these last 9 days is to pardon himself.  

Surviving the Trump presidency will not end the Trumpdemic, however.  It will not end it because it is rooted in the systemic white supremacy and racism that have been with us since the European beginnings of the country.  The election of Barack Obama, the changing demographics of the nation, more diverse people turning out to vote – all of these are great signs of the potential for justice and equity.  Yet, they also strike at the heart of white supremacy, as noted by all the Confederate flags that the Trump crowd carried in their attack on the Capitol.  For them, Trump’s voice is one which affirms white supremacy and which calls us back to the time when no one disputed white, male rule.  Diminishing Trump’s voice does end the Trumpdemic  because this pandemic is deeply rooted in us.

Yet, it was a “wow” week also because Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won the runoffs for the Senate seats in Georgia, a big surprise to many of us.  I had predicted that Warnock and Perdue would win, so I was so delighted to be wrong on that prediction.  And, Warnock and Ossoff won by even greater margins than Biden did in Georgia.  On January 20, the Senate will move into Democratic control, though I know that Mitch McConnell is skilled enough and ruthless enough to seek to tie  things in knots until the 2022 elections.  Still, it is a powerful victory, and we give thanks to all the people who worked and organized and voted to make this possible, most especially Black women like Stacey Abrams and so many others.  It is this kind of organization and dedication that scared the Trumpdemic gathered in Washington on Wednesday.  It also is the skillful power that has frightened Georgia legislators, whose session opens today.  Many bills are forthcoming to limit voting in Georgia, and the violence at the US Capitol and the legislative energy to limit voting are a reminder of the deadly combination of these powers that stripped Black people of many rights, including voting rights, after Reconstruction.  

This week reminded us of the dynamics at work in American culture, with the powerful idea of equality always wrestling with the demonic powers of race and gender and class.  Even in the wrestling, the idea of equality continues to call out to so many people.  My good friend John Vodicka sent me a Tweet from Stacey Abrams from January 6, originally posted by The Bitter Southerner.  It reminds us of America at its best potential:  

“While today’s terrible display of terror and meanness shakes us, let us remember:  Jon Ossoff, Jewish son of an immigrant, & Reverend Warnock, first Black Senator from Georgia, will join a Catholic POTUS & the first woman, Black and Indian, VP in our nation’s capital.  God Bless America.”  

Hard and difficult days ahead, but right now the democracy is holding and even shining (sort of) brightly.  The forces of white, male supremacy are never far away – that lion never sleeps tonight – but this past fall and this week tell us that it may be possible to bend that stubborn arc of history towards justice.  May we find our places in that parade of witnesses who have taken hold of that arc of justice.  

"WONDER AND RAGE"

 “ WONDER AND RAGE”

The Christmas Season in the West officially ends this Wednesday, January 6, on the Day of Epiphany, the day that the church celebrates the arrival of the Wise Leaders, the Magi.  Although the culture has left Christmas behind, and passed on to New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day, we would do well to linger a little longer with the season.  We should linger because it emphasizes both the wonderment and the rage of the Christmas season.

As Howard Thurman emphasizes so well in his fine book “The Moods of Christmas,” Christmas is a time when we are invited to consider the wonder of life and the wonder of our lives.  Whether we believe in the literal truth of the biblical stories of Christmas or not, they invite us to consider what is at the heart of life – Christmas invites us into the questions of the meaning of our lives.  The biblical stories assert that love and justice are at the heart of life, not in a sentimental way, but in a realistic way:  a teenage girl pregnant before marriage, a baby born on the streets, the holy family fleeing for their lives as immigrants and political refugees. 

     In the midst of these contemporary issues comes the wonderment of the star.  I’ve read about the Star of Bethlehem, but I usually dismissed it until this year when Jupiter and Saturn lined up so closely together in the night sky.  On a couple of nights, they looked like headlights on a car, so I can get a sense of the astrological magi watching this and seeing it as an omen.  It was cool to experience this and get an idea of what the magi saw many centuries ago. The star of wonder became just that for a few moments.  Christmas asks to reflect on this aspect of life, that it is a wonder.  Christmas asks us to think about movement towards love and justice in our lives and in the rest of the year also.  We won’t be able to sustain the “Christmas spirit,” but we can seek to keep the values of love and justice at the center.

    The Christmas story does not allow for easy sentimentality, however.  In Matthew’s gospel, the story closes out not with wonder and worship, but with genocide.  When King Herod hears about the news of the birth of Jesus from the magi, he does not respond with joy and worship but rather with rage.  He sends soldiers to kill the boys of Bethlehem.  The soldiers carry out those orders, causing Matthew’s story to end with Rachel weeping for her children.  Matthew knows how the world works, and he urges us – as the angels urged the magi – to go on another route to find home and to find ourselves.

    As the Trumpdemic rages against his election defeat, I am drawn back to this Christmas story.  I am drawn to it, not because it gives me comfort in the present age, but because it seems so precisely to understand the rage of the powers of the world in reaction to the values at the heart of the Story.  I am not comparing Biden to Jesus, but in many ways,  Biden represents the return to some sort of decency in American politics.  A return that may allow us to consider how to act with love and justice in American culture.  Biden’s and Harris’ election does not guarantee love and justice, but it at least opens the door to the discussions.

    The Trumpdemic rage, like Herod’s rage, is very dangerous and may yet prove to be even more destructive than it already has been.  The Day of Epiphany takes on more importance this year than usual.  On this day Wednesday, January 6, the Congress will be asked to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and as of now, it looks to be a big fight.  Trumpdemic does not look to have the votes in Congress, but we’ll all be glad to get by January 6 (and maybe the 7th if the debate goes long enough) and then hold our breath until January 20.  In these crazy days, may the wonder of Christmas sustain us, and may we be spared the rage of Herod.  Whatever way it goes, may we keep our eyes on the prize, as did those magi of old, who close out the Christmas season in awe and wonder.  Let love and justice center our hearts and imaginations – may that be the 2020 Christmas legacy for us.