MAKE THE TOMB SECURE!

MAKE THE TOMB SECURE!

            In Matthew’s version of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the political and religious leaders gather together to plan their strategy, after Jesus is executed as a revolutionary by the Roman government.  They felt that he was a dangerous person because he was inspiring others to see themselves and see others as children of God rather than as subjects of Rome. So, in Matthew 27:65-66 the Roman governor orders guards to be put at the tomb of the executed Jesus and that a huge stone be placed at the opening of the tomb.  That 27^th chapter of Matthew closes with these words:  “they… made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.” 

            Make the tomb secure!  Make the tomb secure! It has been the call of the fallen powers since the beginning – proclaim that death and violence rule!  It is the orders of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and the governor of my home state of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson.  Make the tomb secure!  The powerful ministry of Jesus of Nazareth had political implications from the beginning.   As he helped people turn towards God, of necessity we would, sooner or later, turn away from Rome or America or racism or sexism or militarism or materialism as the center of our lives.  McConnell and Sessions and Trump and Hutchinson all understand how dangerous this stuff is – make the tomb secure!  Don’t let life and love out into the world!  Have everyone dominated by fear and death!  That’s why Arkansas wants to kill so many people in its execution chambers before the end of this month – death rules!  Make the tomb secure!

            In this Eastertide, we are asked to remember this story of death and fear and domination and to take it seriously – but, not too seriously!  In chapter 28, Matthew ridicules and makes fun of “make the tomb secure!”  It begins in comic fashion – an angel comes and pops that huge stone out of the tomb.  It is such a powerful force that it is described as a great earthquake.  And, then the angel comes forth – not a fierce, fire-breathing, sword-bearing angel of Mel Gibson movies - but rather a young man who hops up on the rock and sits on it and who speaks to Mary Magdalena and the other women who have come to anoint the dead body of Jesus.  The powerful guards are stunned – they shake all over and go into a catatonic state, petrified with fear. 

            Then the stunning news – death does not rule:  the tomb is not secure.  The power of life and love and justice has come out of the tomb, and that same power of life and love and justice bids us to follow Jesus, by no matter what name we call God, or even if we don’t believe in God.  The four horsemen of fear – McConnell, Sessions, Trump and Hutchinson- all tell us that the tomb is secure, but we know a different story in this season.   Another Magdalena – Magdalena Garcia – put it this way yesterday on her Facebook page:  “Jesus lives – how about His followers?”  We are asked to put our trust in this story of life and love and justice.  Hard to do – we are so afraid, so confused, so shaky.  Yet, it all began with people like us.  Here we go – the tomb is not secure!

ON THE ROAD TO CHATTANOOGA -- THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION

ON THE ROAD TO CHATTANOOGA – THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION

            In one of Luke’s stories about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Jesus walks several miles on the road to Emmaus with some of his followers.  During this journey, where they walk and talk together, they do not recognize the risen Jesus – the followers assume that he is just another sojourner.  Only when they offer him hospitality in their home and supply him supper, only then do they recognize him.

            I had a similar experience on the road to Chattanooga in 1975.  Caroline and I were driving up to visit her parents in Chattanooga, and I was studying for my Presbytery exam to be ordained.  This was back when the southern Presbyterian Church still existed, and there were extensive examinations on the floor of the Presbytery meeting.  Caroline and I had just accepted a call to be co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk – we would be the first official clergy couple to serve in a local church in the PCUS.  Caroline had already been ordained to be a pastor by Atlanta Presbytery in 1973 to be a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  I was going over various doctrines to prepare for the Norfolk Presbytery exam. 

            Since Caroline has been my primary theologian for many decades, I felt hopeful when I asked her on that trip on I-75 about a doctrine that was giving me trouble.  “What do you think that the meaning of the Resurrection is?  I’m having trouble figuring that one out.”  At that point, I was not sure that I believed in life after death, and if I didn’t accept that, what could I say about the Resurrection during my Presbytery examination?

            Caroline answered:  “I don’t know what it means for life after death.  I’ll leave that part up to God.  But I see the Resurrection as a way of understanding our lives now.  It has more to do with our lives than our deaths.  In the Resurrection of Jesus, God is calling us into new life now, in this life.”  I knew then that I had met the risen Jesus, that my eyes had been opened, and I now could recognize the risen Jesus.  It was an answer that changed the way I looked at the Resurrection and at the Bible itself.  I came to see that the purpose of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not to get individuals into heaven, as I had been taught to believe by the heritage of the slaveholders. The purpose of Jesus Christ is to enable us to live in the presence of God now.  Just as God rolled away the stone from the tomb of Jesus on that Easter morning, so God continues to roll away the stone from the tomb of our hearts, so that we may be released from the power of death.  Strange to say, but I came to recognize the risen Jesus on the road to Chattanooga.

            We should note that this difficulty of recognizing the risen Jesus is a theme in the Resurrection stories in the Gospels.  As I mentioned earlier, the followers on the road to Emmaus have trouble recognizing Jesus.  In John’s Gospel, one of the primary disciples, Mary Magdalene, cannot recognize the risen Jesus, even though she is seeing him and talking with him.  He’s not a ghost – she thinks that he is the caretaker of the cemetery.   In Mark’s account, the women who come to the tomb of Jesus are so stunned by the news of the Resurrection that they don’t say anything to anybody. 

            In our reflections on Easter and the Resurrection, we should use this entry point, not as a sign that we are unfaithful but as a sign of the depth of our captivity.  We are so captured by the powers of the world, that like those first disciples, we have trouble recognizing the risen Jesus standing right in front of us.  The power of the Cross reminds us of our captivity, and the power of the Resurrection reminds us that death does not rule – not only when we die, but even more especially when we live.  The risen Jesus is out in front of us, calling us out of the tombs of death so that we, too, can have our hearts and our eyes opened to see the power of God in this life, right now.  Let us listen for those witnesses who are pointing us to the risen Jesus, so that we may find that same power that enabled those first disciples to stand up to the Roman Empire and to change the world.

RIDE ON, KING JESUS

RIDE ON, KING JESUS

            This traditional spiritual was my favorite one that the Sanctuary Mass Choir sang while I was pastor at Oakhurst.  It resonates deeply as we begin this Holy Week.  All four gospels have an account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at the time of Passover.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is Jesus’ first trip to Jerusalem.  He seems to have deliberately chosen to enter the Holy City at this festival, with its emphasis on God’s freeing the Hebrew slaves from captivity in Egypt.  His followers catch the hint – it is time!  The Roman oppressors will be overthrown, the corrupt religious leaders will be thrown out of the Temple, and Temple worship will be restored to its rightful place as a sanctuary for encountering the presence of God.  His followers shout and celebrate as they enter the Holy City – “blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!”  It is time!  Ride On, King Jesus!

            The parade for Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east side of the city from the Mount of Olives, a traditional place from which the Messiah is supposed to be coming.   On the west side of the city, there is another parade, perhaps on the same day.  It is the Roman governor of Palestine, Pontus Pilate, and his Roman soldiers entering Jerusalem during the Passover festival.  Pilate lives in Caesarea near the Mediterranean coast, the capital of the province.  Yet, at Passover, he and the Romans come into to Jerusalem to warn the Jewish residents there:  “Celebrate your Passover, but be careful – don’t get carried away with the idea of freedom and liberation from captivity.  Stay within the bounds of making Passover an event of the past, and things will go fine.  Be careful – if you go outside the bounds, we will crush you.”

            So, these two parades enter Jerusalem about the same time.  Jesus, riding on a jackass, no weapons, no army, no money, just a ragtag band of followers fired up about the reign of God coming.  Pilate and his army, trumpets blaring, drums beating, calvary armed for battle, infantry ready to fight – the reps of Rome are here!

            This drama of Holy Week will have these two systems wrestle in the hearts of the people of Jerusalem and in our own hearts too.  This drama is always contemporary because these two systems are in a mighty struggle in our individual and collective hearts.  One system tells us that the center of life is love and justice and compassion and mercy.  The other system tells us that the center of life is domination and money and redemptive violence and death.   Most of us find ourselves in the middle of this struggle all of our lives, and Holy Week reminds us that we almost always bend towards the system of domination in our hearts and in our actions.  Like those first followers of Jesus, we just can’t stay with him, when the system of domination roars at us, or whispers in the night to us.  Some of us are like Judas, so disappointed in Jesus that we betray him.  Some of us are like the male disciples who promise to follow Jesus all the way but then flee in terror when he is arrested.  Some of us are like the women disciples who watch at a distance when Jesus is lynched by Rome.  No one stays with him. 

            That’s the difficult truth of this Holy Week – it is why it is always a contemporary story.  We believe in the Tomahawk missiles.  We believe in the power of money.  We believe in redemptive violence.  And, the difficult truth is exposed to us this week – we would rather kill Jesus than be transformed by his love.  This Holy Week reminds us of our captivity and the deals that we make to rationalize that captivity.   Whatever our particular rationalization – racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, materialism, militarism (the list seems endless) – it all leads to the Cross.

            Ride On, King Jesus!  We have such high hopes for Jesus and God – and then the world intercedes:  violence, Donald Trump, rollback of the EPA guidelines, denial of climate change, the reinforcement of private prisons, and so much more.  We tend to shrink back, lower our gaze, tamp down our hopes, lose the vision.  Ride On, King Jesus?

            Holy Week does not permit hopes to rise – we must allow ourselves as individuals and communities to be exposed, so that we will understand the depth of our captivity to the powers.  Yet, Jesus does ride on, and we can give thanks for that.  He does ride on, not to the throne of Rome but rather to the Cross of Rome.  We must sit with that truth this week.  We know that’s not the end of the story, but we must linger here for awhile, in our own Gethsemane.   

FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO

FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO

            I was a senior in college at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) forty-nine years ago .   How can it have been so long?  Where did the time go?  Who knows where the time goes, as Sandy Denny once wrote in song.  By this time in 1968, I had crossed over a bit from my captivity to race, and I was working in the garbage workers strike.  I was part of a group of students who went to worship services at white churches and interrupted their worship services to urge them to support the garbage strike.  I’ve often wondered what I would have done if folks came in and did that at Oakhurst when I was pastor there!

            I was also involved with some of the first black students at Southwestern, some of whom were involved with the Invaders, a group of young black adults in Memphis, who were pushing for change and who felt that Martin Luther King, Jr., was not realistic about the intransigence of white power, and thus he was increasingly irrelevant.   I was in the beginning of my formation on these issues, and I felt caught intellectually.  I had admired Dr. King for his witness against the Vietnam War a year earlier, but he seemed increasingly ineffective against the white power structure.  I had a chance to go hear Dr. King’s last sermon on April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple, but to my everlasting regret, I declined because I did not think that it was worth it.

            About 6:30 PM the next night, one of my black colleagues found me as I came out of the library and told me that Dr. King had been killed.  My friend was seeking to raise money to buy guns for self-protection, but fortunately, I had no money on me.  If I had any money, I would likely have given it to him, because I, like so many others at that moment, had lost belief in the efficacy of nonviolence.  I remember the violence that broke out in Memphis and in so many other places, and I remember the tanks and half-tracks that the Army and National Guard rode through the streets of Memphis over the next few nights.

            Over the years, I’ve thought about those events a lot.  Though Dr. King was not the Civil Rights Movement, his assassination seemed to take the air out of it.  Looking back, Dr. King turns out to have been an incredibly courageous and radical-in-the-making, and though I do not believe that James Earl Ray was the only one involved in his assassination (if he was involved at all), Dr. King’s developing radicalism is undoubtedly what got him killed.  We have also sought to sanitize him and make him an American saint over the years, but we should always remember that while he remained committed to nonviolence, by the end of his life, he had come to believe that the American vision built on racism, materialism and militarism had bankrupted our individual and collective souls.  He had come to believe that we needed another American revolution.  It was that belief that made him dangerous and got him killed.  In his fine book on Dr. King and Malcolm X (“Martin and Malcolm and America”), James Cone had a fine insight on this kind of movement.  Dr. Cone indicated that Dr. King had begun with love as his guiding principle and had moved toward justice as the guiding principle.  In a similar movement, Malcolm X had begun with justice and moved towards love.

            We are in a mess in this country, and much of the reasons for this are the powers that Dr. King and Malcolm X exposed in their ministries for love and justice.  As we remember their lives and deaths and their witness, and especially Dr. King’s on this day, let us re-commit ourselves to the love and justice that drove them.  May it drive us also.   I like what my friend and colleague, the Reverend Magdalena Garcia, posted on her Facebook page today:  “Articles about what happened to MLK's shooter? Frankly, I'm not interested. I want to know what happened to the message!”  May we find and live the message.

THANKS FOR THE WITNESSES

THANKS FOR THE WITNESSES

            I have always been intrigued at the intersectionality of the season of Lent with Black History Month and Women’s History Month.  Easter comes later this year, so Lent did not begin until Black History Month was over (of course, Black History continues all through the year!)  Both of these seasons point to the heart of Lent, a time when Christians are asked to contemplate our captivity to the powers of this world.  Racism and patriarchy are right up at the top of the list of those powers. 

            As I noted in the February 28 Blog, the metaphor of the “power of the prince of the air” from Ephesians 2 is a powerful image of our captivity.  We have breathed in these ways of imaging ourselves and others, with hierarchy and domination as the chief operating principles.  That passage in Ephesians indicates that God does not leave us in the morass of captivity but is working daily to help us to move towards liberation.  One of those ways of God’s movement is to bring witnesses into our path who can engage us, challenge us, and help to transform us.

            At the end of this Women’s History Month, I’m giving thanks for those women and men who have been witnesses to me concerning my captivity to patriarchy and to the exciting possibilities of seeing the world in a different way.  There have been many of those witnesses, but I want to lift up my spouse and partner, the Reverend Caroline Leach, as the central witness.  Although I was already on the liberation road when I first met Caroline in 1972, she has been the principal witness to me about understanding women’s liberation and my own liberation.

            Caroline has been a primary witness for most of her life – she had strong women witnesses in her own life – her mother and grandmothers, the Girl Scouts, Sandy Winter, and Joyce Tucker (these two later became Presbyterian ministers in their own right).  She came to Columbia Seminary in 1969 and was one of 5 women there in the ordination track.  Male students there often quoted Bible verses to her to remind her that God did not want her to be an ordained minister.  She persevered through all this and was the 21^st woman to be ordained as a pastor in the “southern” Presbyterian Church, the PCUS, in 1973.   Because of her gender issues, no church would consider calling her as a pastor.  The Rev. Woody McKay hired her as a campus minister at Georgia Tech to work with the growing number of women who were students there.  After my graduation from Columbia in 1975, she and I were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former PCUS, as we became co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk in a low-income housing complex with 5,000 residents.  Caroline got to work quickly there, organizing summer programs for children and forcing the Navy to release income levels of their sailors in order for their families to receive food stamps.  She also was the author of our application to receive the Presbyterian Women Birthday Offering.  We received that in 1978 and established St. Columba Ministries, which is thriving today.  She also was one of the driving forces to establish the first shelter for battered women in the Norfolk area.

            She joined me as co-pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian in 1984, and she developed Christian education programs and worship approaches that helped us attract young adults and children of all classes, races and ages.  Oakhurst became such a success that our denomination asked us to write a book about it, and it was published in 2003.  At her retirement in 2012, some seventy-five of those children and youth came forward in worship to bring her flowers in appreciation of her gifts to them.  

            She learned early on that her primary definition was not property of men but rather child of God, and her adult life as a minister has been to teach this orientation to every one whom she encounters.  She has also been a powerful witness to me in those places where I remain testosterone bound.  I am grateful for her witness to me and to so many others.  Let us all take time in the next few days to remember and to give thanks for those women and men in our lives who have helped us to see our captivity to male domination and to see a new vision based not in hierarchy but rather in equity and justice.

THE CROSSROADS

THE CROSSROADS

            I was in Baltimore earlier this month, helping the Open Door Community move from Atlanta to Baltimore, and one of the great benefits of that effort for me was that I got to stay with our daughter Susan, who lives there.  The new immersive play by Submersive Productions, that she is co-directing, is called “HT Darling’s Incredible Musaeum” and will open the first weekend in April, and Caroline and I will  be back up to see it (and Susan!).  Check it out and go see it!

            Now, with that commercial out of the way, I want to note that while I was visiting with Susan earlier, I read the February/March issue of her Bust Magazine, a very intriguing read!  In it was an interview with bell hooks, one of the deans of the intersection between gender, race and class. (Thanks to Anna Smith for introducing me to Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, who is credited with the term “intersectionality.”)  bell hooks currently directs the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Kentucky. The interviewer for Bust Magazine, Lux Alptraum, was asking her about the defeat of Hilary Clinton by the ultimate white man, Donald Trump, and hooks made a strong case that it was gender that brought about Clinton’s defeat.  She also added that misogyny is a greater enemy for black women than race.  Here are some of her words from that interview:

            “It’s funny because one of my best women’s studies colleagues here at Berea would always be frustrated with me because I would tell her that I felt very strongly that sexism and misogyny actually posed a greater threat to black women and all women than racism. She just thought, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous.’ She’s black. The night of the election she called me and was like, “You’ve been right all along.” The sexism is so deeply, deeply embedded. If you think about public discourses on race in this past year, where are the big public discourses on feminism? They don’t exist.”

This is a very powerful interview, so please go read the rest of it in Bust Magazine.

            I’m reminded of the intersection between race and gender (and other powers) and how difficult the conversations often are between many of us of different categories, who seek justice and equity.  One of the most explosive forums for discussion that we ever had in my time at Oakhurst Presbyterian was over the intersection between gender, race and sexual orientation.  Was oppression of women worse than the oppression of African-American people?  Why couldn’t white women and black women talk about these issues?  Was the oppression of LGBT people equal to the oppression of African-American people?  There were so many sparks and hostilities flying around, that I felt like I must be back at that legendary crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Robert Johnson supposedly made his deal to sell his soul to the devil in order to be able to play the blues guitar so well.  While there was heat on that day, there was also light, as many people began to see the difficulties of this crossroads but also the very necessity of going to the crossroads and seeking to find our way.

            Those conversations at the crossroads are even more essential now. As the powers and principalities regain their strength, seeking to re-establish for all to see, that white men are meant to rule the world, we must strengthen our efforts on our own journeys and on our journeys together.  Our white, male history as users and abusers of power is a terrible one, but here it is:  53% of white women voted for Donald Trump for president.  I am not blaming white women, but I am noting the deep-seated belief in all of us that white men are meant to rule the world, and that we all have a lot of work to do.  We must be on our own journeys at times, as we work on our syndromes, but in order for us to find some measure of justice and equity, we must go to the crossroads sometimes and engage one another.   I am grateful for those pioneers and leaders who are showing us the way. 

THE ERA, TENNESSEE, AND ME

THE ERA, TENNESSEE, AND ME

            My birth state of Tennessee figured prominently in the history of the 19^th Amendment and in the Equal Rights Amendment.  In 1920 the issue of ratifying the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, came to the Tennessee legislature.  Thirty-five states had ratified the amendment, and only one more state ratification was needed for it to become law.  The vote looked dim in Tennessee.  It looked like the vote would be a tie, and thus the amendment would fail.  It had sailed through the state Senate but was bogged down in the state House.  On August 18, 1920, the vote was called, and Rep. Harry Burn from east Tennessee, who had worn a red rose on his lapel to indicate his opposition to the amendment, stood up and shocked everyone, likely even himself, by voting “aye” on the amendment. It passed the state House by that one vote and became federal law eight days later.  Why did he change his mind?  The stories have been embellished over the years, but the basic line is that his mother Phoebe Ensminger Burn, known as Miss Febb, had sent him a note urging him to vote in favor of the amendment.  And, he did!

            Tennessee became the 10^th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, but as many of us know, the ERA failed by 5 states – it still needs 5 more states to ratify it.  Tennessee later rescinded its ratification in 1974, but the legal status of that action is not clear.  The ERA seems dead in the water because no state has ratified it since 1973.  The text of the ERA is pretty simple:  “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

            Why not revive that campaign again?  It may seem hopeless in this political climate, but think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and Ida Wells, all of whom worked on this amendment in a political and cultural climate much harsher than the present one.  I’m going to begin thinking about this in Georgia and in Congress, and I hope that you will let your imagination take you to a place where you can begin this work again.  I know that Senator Tammy Duckworth has introduced bills in Congress on this, so there are folk working on and thinking about it – let us each find our place in this crucial work.

            I have many inspirations on this, including my partner Caroline Leach (born in Tennessee), daughter Susan (born in Tennessee), son David, mother Mary Stroupe, daughter-in-law Erin, granddaughters Emma and Zoe and many other friends and colleagues.  I will visit some of them in my weekly blogs in this Women’s History Month.  I want to visit one more person in today’s blog.   I met her in 1974 in Tennessee, and her name was Sophie Leach.  She was Caroline’s paternal grandmother, and at that time, she lived in McKenzie in west Tennessee.  She told me that she remembered coming east (not west) from Oklahoma as a girl in a covered wagon to west Tennessee.  She also told me that she did not work for the 19^th Amendment because she did not think that women should have the right to vote, but once they got the vote, she saw it as her duty to vote in every election.  And, vote she did, in every election until the cancer that took her life in 1978 made her too feeble to vote.  She was what was called a “yellow-dog Democrat,” meaning that she would vote for the Democrat in Tennessee, no matter who he or she was.  Since race has recaptured Tennessee and the rest of the South, we would now call them “red-herring Republicans,” who would vote for a person like Donald Trump for president, especially with Hilary Clinton as the opponent.  I’d like to think that Sophie would have marked Hillary’s name on her ballot.  

            One more story about Sophie Leach to emphasize her engagement and her timeliness.  Caroline and I got married in May, 1974, and during that summer we took a tour of family members and friends to introduce ourselves.  On a hot summer August afternoon in McKenzie, we gathered at Sophie’s house in order for her friends to congratulate Caroline and to meet me (to see if congratulations were really in order!)  Just after 3 PM, Sophie (age 92) announced to her friends that the party was over and that it was time now to turn on the TV to see if President Nixon would resign or be impeached – either way, she was hoping that he would go!  Her friends could stay and watch, but now the conversation would turn to the nation’s situation rather than her granddaughter’s.  As we move into the Trump presidency, I don’t know if we will get to a similar point, but his presidency makes me tremble.  All the more reason to remember witnesses like Sophie Leach and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony and Ida Wells and so many others.  We’ll need to move into their modes in these days.  Let us all find our places in this cloud of witnesses.