"PREACHING OPPORTUNITIES"

 “PREACHING OPPORTUNITIES”

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to preach the eulogy for our friend Lorri Mills at Oakhurst Presbyterian last Saturday, May 21.  Lorri died way too early for those of us fortunate enough to call her “friend,” but we were so blessed by her life of service, ministry, generosity and hard work.  If you did not get to see the service, you can link to it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baPyPZ98dnM, or go through Oakhurst Presbyterian's website.  There were powerful comments made by her friends and colleagues, so please watch those – my eulogy begins at about the 40 minute mark.  If you want a written copy of the eulogy, let me know, and I’ll send you one online or in the mail. 

Several people asked me when they could hear me preach again, so here are the next two.  I’ll be preaching at North Decatur Presbyterian Church on Sunday, June 19 at 10 AM.  Come in person, or you can view the worship online through their website.  The lectionary text is Luke 8:26-39, one of my favorite texts in all the Bible.  Join in with us!

Caroline and I will be preaching together at Oakhurst Presbyterian on Sunday, July 17, as part of Oakhurst’s 100th anniversary celebration.  We’ve been asked to reflect on the 1980’s as part of Oakhurst’s history.  We came there in 1983, so we have many stories to tell – air conditioning breaking down, changing the “white” Jesus to the “brown/black Jesus,” developing the Mission Statement, and mostly finding ways for this historic church not only to survive (the Presbytery said that it would fund us only 2 more years when we came) but also to begin to thrive.  Come in person, or check Oakhurst’s website for the livestream.

And, finally, I’ve already advertised about our friend and colleague Zeena Regis preaching this Sunday, May 29 at 10 AM at North Decatur Presbyterian, but plan to come hear a fine preacher then too – in person or online!  See you soon!

"ANNIVERSARY WEEK"

 “ANNIVERSARY WEEK”

This week marks many anniversaries, the most important of which (to me anyway) is Caroline and my 48th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.  We were married on a hot Saturday afternoon in Ed Loring’s backyard, with he and Caroline’s mentor Sandy Winter officiating.  We had dated for about 6 months, before we decided to get married.  In our courtship, I took Caroline to the Atlanta Braves game on a cool April evening, and it was the night that Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record.   

       Looking back on it , we created several waves and continued to so throughout our marriage.  When we applied for a marriage license in Dekalb County in March, 1974,  the clerk was hesitant to give us a license because neither one of us was planning to change our names when we got married.   The clerk seemed unconcerned that I was keeping my name, but she was very concerned that Caroline was keeping her name and not taking mine.  The clerk indicated that Georgia law required that Caroline change her name, and while we were pretty sure that such a law did not exist, we said that we would check it out and be back later.  Sure enough, the woman attorney we consulted scoffed and bristled at the clerk’s reaction, telling us to return and threaten a lawsuit if we were not given a marriage license.  When we returned, we engaged another clerk who did not have the same issues, and we sailed right through.

Caroline’s mom wanted her to get married in Central Church in Chattanooga, the family church where Caroline had grown up.  The Session of Central in 1972 had refused to consider Caroline’s request to be taken under care of the Session so that she could begin the process of becoming an ordained minister.  Had Caroline lived such an immoral life that she was unworthy of consideration as a minister?  No, they all agreed that she was a genuine child of the church – their issue was her gender identity:  female.  They did not believe that God could possibly call women into the ministry.  Fortunately, another Central Presbyterian Church, this one in Atlanta under Reverend Randy Taylor’s  leadership, welcomed Caroline, and she was ordained as a pastor in 1973, the 21st woman to be ordained in the former PCUS.  

    Needless to say, we were not interested in getting married in Central church in Chattanooga, and my home church in Helena, Arkansas, was far away, so we chose an outdoor wedding in Decatur, the reception being a covered dish supper, with wedding guests bringing the food.  Several of the younger people there at our wedding later told us that our wedding inspired them, and when they got married, they chose a similar “hippie” wedding.  It worked for us – not much money spent ($400 was the cost, with $200 of that for beer that a friend of ours bought for us), friends from many places and stages of our lives attending, no formal rules to follow, and the celebration lasted from the 11 AM gathering time to well into the night.  And, yes, by the time of our wedding, Caroline was already Reverend Leach, so I got married to a minister!

It has been a great trip, with bumps and struggles along the way,  but so many milestones and achievements and celebrations!  We were the first clergy couple in the former Southern Presbyterian Church, taking a church together in Norfolk (splitting one salary) and developing a mission to people in a low-income area that included many Navy families.  We applied for the Presbyterian Women Birthday Offering, and the church received it in 1978, enabling St. Columba Ministries to be established, a ministry that continues today.  We later revived Oakhurst Presbyterian Church and helped to make it a nationally known multi-racial, welcoming inclusive church in Decatur.  Having ordained a gay elder in 1978, we also moved those boundaries, which still are controversial today, depending on SCOTUS, of course.  And, our two proudest achievements are our great children David and Susan, who have continued the vision of justice and equity and welcoming that have marked our marriage.

This week also brings other anniversaries, much more famous than our anniversary, and I will explore them in other blogs.  When we got married on May 18, we did not realize that it was also the anniversary of the terrible SCOTUS decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, declaring that “separate but equal” was the law of the land.  Fortunately, SCOTUS redeemed itself in 1954 Brown v. Board decision of May 17, 1954.  The date of May 14 also marks two terrible events:  the landing of Anglo colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the removal of Palestinian people from their native lands by Israel in 1948 in the “Nakba.”  More on those later, but for now, I give thanks for Caroline Leach being in my life – minister, wife, partner, mother (of many, including two biologicals), and wise adviser.

"WHO IS MY MOTHER?"

 “WHO IS MY MOTHER?”

“Who Is My Mother?”  This is a question that Jesus asks in response to those who tell him that his mother and his siblings would like to see him – they are coming  to take him home because they think that he has lost his mind.  He then says that whoever does the will of God is his sibling and his mother.  I’ve always thought that such a response must have hurt his mother’s heart, but she raised him to be a prophet for and to the world.

This complicated approach is appropriate for our current political moment when SCOTUS seems poised to force motherhood on every woman who becomes pregnant without doing anything to enforce the “fatherhood” part.  This year’s Mother’s Day is fraught with complexity, and in that manner, I give thanks for my mother, Mary Armour Stroupe.  We had many discussions about a woman’s right to choose in regard to her body, and Mother said:  “I’m opposed to abortion, but I’m even more opposed to forcing women to have babies.”  

My mother saved my life by sticking with me and by showing me the power of love.  I give thanks for her!  Though she did not consider herself a radical, she often demonstrated radical power in her “ordinary” stands in her home of Helena, Arkansas.  One of her friends once told me that the white neighbors considered Mother a radical because she allowed a Black friend and colleague to come in to her front door when she came to visit Mother – this was in the 1990’s, not the 1940’s.

Mother also took some stronger communal stands in her work as the lead instructor at the Phillips County Community College School of Cosmetology.  Most of her students were poor, and many of them were Black.  They had heard all their lives that they were not worth much.  Mother sought to teach them not only how to do hair but also to teach them that they were children of God and American citizens.  As elections drew near, she would urge her students to register to vote.  Most of the students did not believe that voting made any difference, so most of them did not heed her advice – most of them also had heard stories of the danger in which Black people put themselves when they voted.

Mother emphasized, however, that the right to vote was fundamental and that her students should not take it lightly.   In a move that would likely not be allowed now, she told her students that if they did not vote on election day, then they would not be allowed into class that day.  If they did not wear an “I have voted” sticker on election day, then they failed the class for the day.  That got their attention, and she ended up with almost 100% voting by her students.  I give thanks to Mother for her nurturing of me and of so many others.  Though she gave birth to one child, she was a mother to hundreds.

On this Mother’s Day, I also am remembering all those people who gave me mothering love, both women and men.  Mothering love is rooted in loving and in engagement, not in biology.  One of our good friends, Lorri Mills, died on Wednesday after a long struggle with many illnesses and attacks on her body.  She did not have any biological children, and she always told us that she was not any good with little kids.  But, she gave mothering love to so many people!  We heard from cousins that she was a mentor to them, that she was one of the first women in their family line to go to college.  We heard stories of her urging her women cousins to think of themselves as human beings capable of so much more than they thought.  We witnessed her sharing  this approach with so many people at Oakhurst Presbyterian, where she was a member and elder and leader.  She was generous and loving and nurturing – she showed us what the answer to Jesus’ question “Who Is My Mother?’ looked like.

In this time of Mother’s Day, let us give thanks for our biological mothers and for all of those people who have given us patient and demanding, nurturing and ever present, visionary love.  And, let us seek to be like them.  

"WHO WILL ROLL AWAY THE STONE?"

 “WHO WILL ROLL AWAY THE STONE?”

In the Gospel of Mark, the account of the Resurrection appears in chapter 16.  It is a powerful rendering of the events that shook and transformed the Jewish group who followed Jesus of Nazareth.  There are many aspects to the story that are intriguing, including the fact that the earliest manuscripts of Mark end on a preposition.  There have been many theories posited about the meaning of such an abrupt ending to Mark’s gospel.  

Intriguing to me in this season in 2022 is an earlier phrase in that same story.  As the women go to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body for a proper burial, one of their main concerns is that there is big boulder blocking the entry to the tomb, placed there so that potential graverobbers will be less likely to break in and steal any valuables left behind with the body – after all, Jesus is buried in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.  The women express their concern in a poignant phrase: “Who will roll away the stone for us?”  According to Mark, their fears are allayed when they arrive at the tomb, and the stone has already been rolled away. As they go into the tomb, full of fear, they hear from a live young man in the tomb that Jesus is no longer there but will meet them soon.

That question “Who will roll away the stone for us?” is a metaphor for all of us wandering through life, living under the power of death.  Especially in these times, the power of death seems especially close, not just because I am aging but also because the country and the world seem so fragile right now, because the powers of death seem so overwhelming and strong right now.  From the prison/industrial complex to the Russian war in Ukraine to the White South Rising, there seems to be no end to the power of death.  Many of us are struggling, like those women disciples of Jesus did, wondering “Who will roll away the stone?”

We had a fine visit over the weekend in Athens with our longtime friends John and Dee Cole Vodicka.  They had invited us up to hear a presentation by Pulitzer Prize winning poet and essayist Natasha Trethewey at UGA, and it was excellent – more on that in another blog.  While we were there, we heard of Dee and John’s efforts, through their Sunday school class at Oconee Street Methodist Church, to roll away one of the stones.  They are looking at ways of making some reparations in relation to racism and economic oppression, and they are working with the Linnentown Project in Athens.  

In 1962, with the support of the city of Athens and US Senator Richard B. Russell, he University of Georgia used a federal “urban renewal” grant (now known as “urban removal”) to demolish a Black community known as Linnentown – it was called “slum clearance” then.  As happened all over the country, Black communities were destroyed through “eminent domain,” and seized the wealth-building assets to construct UGA dormitories Brumby, Russell, and Creswell Hall.  

Over the last few years, people have begun to work on rolling away that stone of oppression and injustice in what became known as The Linnentown Project.  In February, 2021, after much research and lobbying, the unified government of Athens-Clark County unanimously adopted the “Linnentown Resolution for Recognition and Redress.” All worked closely with former Linnentown residents to draft and pass the resolution.  It is the first official call for reparations in Georgia.  And, now onto the thorny but necessary of redress and reparations.  Direct descendants of former Linnentown residents are being identified and approached about redress and reparations, and this is an ongoing project.  If you’d like to read more about this effort, here is the link to one of the sites:   https://www.redressforlinnentown.com/removal

“Who will roll away the stone?”  That is the question for all of us in our time, and in all times.  I am grateful to those involved in the Linnentown Project, including our friends, Dee and John, as they seek to find their way to rolling away the stone of white supremacy in their midst, a rolling away that includes reparations.  As I have said before in this space, those of us classified as “white,” must be about the business of rolling away the stone of white supremacy, and these are the necessary steps for use to be on that journey:  recognition, repentance, resistance, resilience, reparation, reconciliation, and recovery.  We give thanks for folks at the Linnentown Project who are showing us the way, and we are all asked to be on the journey also.

"RESURRECTION POWER - AND STILL I RISE"

 “RESURRECTION POWER – AND STILL I RISE”

My view of the Resurrection was changed in the spring of 1975 when I was talking with my spouse Caroline Leach on a trip to her hometown of Chattanooga.  I was soon to be examined for ordination as a minister, and we were discussing various theological issues.  I asked her about her understanding of the Resurrection of Jesus.  I wasn’t sure that it actually happened in the way that the stories in the Bible recount it.  She replied that the meaning of the Resurrection was not so much what happens to us when we die, but rather what happens to us when we are living.  The Resurrection is a metaphor for finding life-changing power, when we begin to find liberation from our captivities – and,  of course there are many captivities.  It became clear to me that the power of Resurrection is a call to new life, to new ways of perceiving ourselves, the world, and others around us.

The first witnesses to the Resurrection were the women disciples.  The primary witness, the only one mentioned in all 4 Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, is Mary of Magdala.  Early on, the church moved to discredit her witness by positing that she was a prostitute redeemed by Jesus, or positing that she was in love with Jesus, or that she was a sexual helpmeet for Jesus.  This tendency is seen in the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel, when the male disciples dismiss the women’s testimony, telling the women that they are only delusional. Indeed, in the earliest written account of the Resurrection in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the witness of the women is not mentioned at all – a quick dismissal.  Yet, the Gospel writers decide that they must keep the women’s testimony in the narrative, because it is all that they have.  Indeed, as some of my friends wrote in their FB posts this weekend:  “In line with the Biblical witness, the only preachers on Easter Sunday should be women.”

I thought about this meaning of the Resurrection as I watched Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings at the end of March and then her powerful speech on April 8 in accepting her confirmation to the Supreme Court.  As a Black woman, she had endured a psychological and emotional crucifixion in the hearing, as white Republican after white Republican tried to do to her what was done to Mary of Magdala.  Unlike Jesus at the Crucifixion, she fought back with a depth of intellect and dexterity rarely seen in public life.  She quoted Maya Angelou’s incredible poem “Still I Rise:”  “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”  Her referral to Angelou’s poem stimulated me to read that fine poem again, and in many ways, it has one of the most profound understandings of the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  So in honor of those first witnesses to the Resurrection, the women disciples, and in honor of Justice Jackson and her tremendous poise and fight for the meaning and interpretation of the Resurrection, here is Maya Angelou’s portrait of the Resurrection in “Still I Rise:”

"Still I Rise"

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

"RIDE ON, KING JESUS"

 “RIDE ON, KING JESUS – HOLY WEEK IS UPON US”

            Holy Week comes into our lives where we live, as individuals and as a culture.  It reminds us of the tragedy that courses through our collective and individual histories.  The week begins in celebration of a new vision of compassion and justice and community, values that enable us to resist oppression.  Many of Jesus’ followers are shocked that Rome and Jerusalem are able to absorb this parade and even to crush its values.  The Cross reminds us that the powers are always resistant to God, are always resilient in their responses to God’s breakthroughs for justice and love, and are always threatening us with the cost of seeking justice and living lives based on love.  Holy Week is God’s final reminder to us of the cost of discipleship, a reminder that asks us to consider our lives and the meaning of our lives.

Holy Week takes both the meaning of our lives and the cost of that meaning seriously.  To live out of justice and love means that we will be in danger of being run over by the other parades of our lives – Rome, racism, Covid-19, war in Ukraine, Trumpdemic.   We know that the story does not end here on the Cross, but the story does remind us of the cost of living lives based in justice and love.  In order to get to the true meaning of our lives, we must encounter the Cross and walk with Jesus through that valley of the shadow of death. Thank God, it is not the final word, but it is a powerful word, and yes, we were there when they hung him on the tree.  

            So begins the drama of Holy Week – in excitement and high hopes.  Yet this story is also filled with resistance and struggle.  Jesus rides on into Jerusalem in this atmosphere of liberation and into a belief system that lifts up violence and domination and death.  This week encourages us to enter into that drama, entering from whatever perspective we bring and entering in with whatever agenda we have.  Some of us bring the high hopes and excitement of Palm Sunday.  Some of us bring the puzzlement and confusion of Jesus’ refusal to overthrow the Romans.  Some of us bring the struggles of life – trying to figure out why Jesus seems so intent on offering redemption and life to everyone, even the dreaded enemies.  Some of us bring the disappointment of Maundy Thursday, when Jesus has an opportunity to strike the blow for freedom – instead he yields so easily to arrest.   Ride on, King Jesus – by the way, where exactly are you going?

            The drama of Holy Week – some of us know the defeat of execution, of Good Friday.  We’ve known sorrows all our days, and this day of crucifixion touches those places of defeat and sorrow and suffering.  Were we there when they crucified our Lord?  Yes, many of us were, and we continue to be there, with our sons and parents and partners locked up in mass incarceration, with many of us trapped in a cycle of drug abuse and homelessness and domestic violence.  Yes, we know that defeat, we know that suffering.  We were there when they crucified our Lord.  Ride on, King Jesus!  Well, maybe, but are you sure that you know where you are going? 

            The drama of Holy Week is our story and God’s story.  Ride On, King Jesus!  And he does ride on, not to the throne of glory, or even to the throne of Rome.  Rather he is given the death penalty by the state, as it is revealed to him and to us, that we would rather execute Jesus than be transformed by his love.  After the cheering crowds of Palm Sunday, he ends up alone and feeling abandoned.  The Gospel accounts indicate that all the male disciples flee in terror when Jesus is arrested – only the women disciples stay with him. Although Peter tries as hard as he can to keep his promise to follow Jesus to the end, even the Rock of the church decides to flee before the end arrives.  We may not holler out “Crucify him!” but we definitely indicate that he is such a disappointment to us.  Ride on, King Jesus – or maybe just ride on out of here.

            This is the drama of Holy Week – we’re longing for love, but we’re believing in death.  That’s the truth revealed to us in Holy Week – the truth that we do not have our acts together.  The truth revealed to us is that we’re always scrambling to find that magic formula that will make us feel better, whether its guns or money or race or sex or sexual orientation or nation or control of women’s bodies – the list seems endless, but they all end up looking like and sounding like Holy Week.  We’re longing for love but believing in death.

            Ride on, King Jesus – and he does.  Not to the throne of Rome but to the death penalty.  It’s not the end of the story, but we must go through this part of the story this week.  Let us find our place in this old, familiar but oh, so relevant story.

"WRESTLING WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR"

 “WRESTLING WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.”

Today is the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, where I was a senior in college at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College).  I wrote a column for The Atlantic a few years ago about my memories of that day and that time.  Here is a link to those reflections, if you’d like to see them https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/

       I’ve lived with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his witness all of my life.  I’ve had two major conversions on his work and his ministry, and in both of those instances I had dismissed his work.  I don’t remember when I first became conscious of his public ministry.  In my years as a youth, I was so captured by a belief in white supremacy that I could not imagine that a new wave was flowing on the ocean of the civil rights movement.  The neo-slavery, in which I lived and breathed and believed, seemed to be permanent to me.  My imagination was so captured and so truncated that I could not perceive the fire that was coming, a 1950’s and 1960’s fire that was shaped and led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  I did not have eyes to see or ears to hear or a heart to receive.

When MLK came upon the public scene, I dismissed him as a charlatan who led fools.  That view began to shift when I listened to his speech at the stunning March on Washington in August, 1963, almost 60 years ago.  I was shocked at the number of people who came to that March – 250,000! – and I said to myself:  “They can’t all be fools or dupes.”   It was dawning on me that there was more to the story than I knew.  Then, came Dr. King and his powerful speech, one of the best that I had ever heard.  And, I definitely knew that there was more to the story than the white supremacy in which I had wrapped myself.  Although I wasn’t converted on that day, a window into my consciousness had been opened, and I began to look for new understandings.

Those came in my college years, and indeed by the time of my senior year in college, I had gone the other way.  I had made acquaintances with young Black students at Southwestern, and most of them viewed Dr. King with a sense of irrelevance, if not contempt, because they felt like his doctrine of non-violence would never wrest equal rights from the iron fists of white supremacy.  Though I was not yet prepared to see myself as a white supremacist, I did agree with them that Dr. King was no longer relevant.  When King came to lead a non-violent march on March 28 in 1968 in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, our group of organizers saw his presence as a negative rather than a positive.  That march ended in violence, with police attacking Black youth, and with the youth responding with violence.  For a second time in my life, I dismissed the witness of Dr. King as irrelevant and even harmful to the movement for justice and equity.

The rifle shot on April 4, 1968 that killed Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis caused another shift in me.  I’ll never believe that James Earl Ray acted alone, but whoever the cabal was, they expressed the deep and abiding power of the White South in American history.  By “White South,” I do not mean a geographical location but rather a spiritual force that believes in white, male supremacy and which seeks to enforce it by any means necessary.  That force always seems to be present in American life, and indeed in our time, it is rising back up. 

     In response to King’s assassination, I have sought to find out much more about his life and his witness, to honor it, and to seek to follow it.  Dr. King not only was spiritual and moral force on the movement for justice and equity, but he also was one of the first leaders to speak out against the war in Vietnam.  As he got more sophisticated in his understanding of the deadly forces in American culture, he understood the three intertwining forces that seek to crush life in America: militarism, materialism, and racism.   He proposed - and was organizing -The Poor Peoples’ March on Washington for the summer of 1968, in which he would emphasize these three forces and their malevolent influence in our life together.  It was likely this insight and this response that took his life 54 years ago.

    I honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on this day – let us all take a moment and pause and give thanks for him, for his witness, and for those who made it possible.  Let us also take a moment and reflect how those forces – militarism, materialism, and racism - still remain powerful in our lives.  Let us not only honor Dr. King.  Let us seek to follow him, not the “saintly” MLK who will be honored by major corporations and thus dismissed once again.  Let us seek to follow the dangerous Dr. King, who sought to bring all of us to a vision of justice and equity, a vision so dangerous that he had to be taken out.  We took his body and his life but not his spirit and his soul.  May we hear his voice and his witness, and may we find our way down that path, however haltingly and slowly, as my journey has been.