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March 15, 2015
Good morning 8th Day. We are in the season of Lent. This is a Lenten teaching, based in part on the Gospel passage that was in our lectionary for March 1st [Mark 8: 31-33], as well as Isaiah 53, which you just heard. Since our move to the Potters House took place on March 1st, my teaching got moved to today. My teaching is not going to be a pleasant, comforting one, so be forewarned. This is Lent, and the title of my sermon today is “Bearing the Cross.”
In the past few months, I have read two books which have had a profound impact on my thinking. The first is The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, who wrote about Black Liberation Theology in the 60’s and 70’s. The second is Dear White Christians by Jennifer Harvey, whose thesis is that we need to see the struggle against racism through the lens of reparations rather than reconciliation. More on that concept later.
When a mob in Valdosta, GA, in 1918, failed to find Sidney Johnson, accused of murdering his boss, Hampton Smith, they decided to lynch another black man who was known to dislike Smith. Turner’s wife, Mary, who was eight months pregnant, protested vehemently and vowed to seek justice for her husband’s lynching. The sheriff in turn, arrested her and then gave her up to the mob. In the presence of a crowd that included women and children, Mary Turner was “stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant felt on the ground and was stomped to death.” [Philip Dray in James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 120]
When I first read this passage in The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, I put the book down for several weeks. It was too horrible to think about. I wanted to forget that image. Now, I know we have to look at these horrors perpetrated by our White ancestors on the ancestors of our Black brothers and sisters. We cannot ignore this part of our past.
When Jesus was on the way to be crucified, he was compelled to carry the cross. He kept falling, so the heavy cross was given to Simon from Cyrene. In black churches, Simon, who is considered black, represents Black folks who have carried the cross of slavery and its legacy of racism for 250 plus years in America. Since this country was founded, African Americans have borne the burden of America’s Original Sin, which is slavery and White Supremacy, which permeates most of the culture and institutional structures of this country.
James Cone compares the era of lynching in this country, to the era of crucifixions in the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire, crucifixion was used to terrorize the subject population into submission. Pontius Pilate alone crucified 10,000 people during his thirty-year reign. This was a public, state-sponsored, degrading form of torture with the sole purpose of warning anyone who might speak out against oppression and stir up revolt of what the consequences would be. The cross in Jesus’ day was a form of torture calculated to inspire terror in the population and forcefully suppress dissent.
Lynchings in our country had the same intent. From approximately 1880-1940 (although there were lynchings before and still are to this day) 5000 men women and children were lynched. Although lynchings were extra-legal events, they had to have taken place with the tacit knowledge of both state and federal authorities, as they were well publicized, photographed, and reported on by the media. [I have placed a few photos on the table here for you to look at – if you can. They will turn your stomach.] For decades there were attempts to pass laws banning lynching, to no avail. Ida B. Wells, a prominent black activist in the 1890’s, who spearheaded the anti-lynching movement, was almost lynched herself because she was such a threat to this system of terror.
I chose the Isaiah 53 passage for today, because it is the “suffering servant” part of Isaiah, the part that was quoted by Gospel writers to refer to Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. As I listened to the verses, I heard distinct parallels to the suffering of Blacks on the lynching tree.
“His form, disfigured, lost all the likeness of a man” [2b] I thought of Emmett Till’s body, so disfigured, lying in an open casket, because his mother wanted people to know what happened to him. This wretched sight was the spark that kindled the Civil Rights movement.
“We despised him, we held him of no account” [3b] Isaiah says. As the cross in first-century Palestine was the ultimate form of humiliation for those despised, so was lynching in twentieth-century America.
“Yet on himself, he bore our sufferings, our torments he endured, while we counted him smitten by God, struck down by misery; but he was pierced for our transgressions, tortured for our iniquities.” As Jesus was tortured and killed because of the sin of Roman domination, so Blacks were tortured and killed because of the sin of White Supremacy.
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, like a ewe that is dumb before the shearers.” [7b] One description of a lynching called it a “barbecue.”
“Without protection, without justice, he was taken away, and who gave a thought to his fate, how he was cut off from the world of the living?” Black men, women and children were wiped out – by the thousands – without trial – with no attempt at justice – by Whites who wanted to erase them from society, nameless, without a memory.
In his book, Cone asks why the Christian Church in America has failed to see the parallel between Jesus’ crucifixion and lynching. Black churches have long identified with the crucified Jesus, as someone who suffered, was tortured and killed by hatred and the will to subjugate his people, the Jews.
However, even white theologians who developed strong “theologies of the cross” – such as Reinhold Niebuhr, who was prominent in theological and secular circles in the years of lynching – failed to connect the two, failed to walk in the shoes of African Americans, failed to understand the Black experience of oppression to the extent they could identify lynching as a modern crucifixion.
In contrast, Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the Cross as the way of sacrifice and redemption for the sin of Racism. He was willing to be martyred for the cause of liberation, just as Jesus was. He did not wish for martyrdom – but he heard the hate, the threats of death, and saw that the consequence of standing up for the rights of his oppressed people was likely to lead to death. Many African Americans before him had stood up and been crucified. The Cross was real to these fighters for freedom. In fact, the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi was triggered by the ghastly lynching of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy, in 1955, and the courageous and public protest by his mother, so that thousands saw his mutilated body at the funeral. The lynching tree was only one of the ways Blacks were tortured and deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Cone says that King “bore the two crosses of white supremacy and black leadership – one imposed and the other freely assumed…” [Cone p. 81]
I believe we White Christians need to understand more deeply the significance of the Cross to Black Christians. We need to explore the deep connection between the oppression Jesus and his people experienced and the oppression that our Black brothers and sisters in this country have experienced - and still do - at the hands of the White Supremacy power structure. If we do not get this connection, then I think we are terribly lost. I think we will be stuck in a quagmire of our own blindness about racism in this country, and we will remain bound by it.
In the chapter in Cone’s book, “The Terrible Beauty of the Cross,” he describes James Baldwin’s impatience with the silence and lack of passion of Whites regarding the oppression of Blacks and the 1963 bombing of the church in Birmingham which killed three Black children. He says,
I don’t mean to say the white people are villains or devils or anything like that but the bulk of the white…Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands, you know….I don’t suppose that…all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they’re mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself.
Cone goes on to say,
Baldwin’s condemnation of the silence of the Birmingham white majority in the face of the killing of children was similar to the speech of Rabbi Joachim Prinz (a refugee from Germany) at the March on Washington. “When I was a rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime…the most important thing I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent and most disgraceful, the most shameful, the most tragic problem is silence.” [p. 55 Cone]
In our Mark passage for today, Jesus is talking about the suffering and rejection he had to undergo. Peter, however, did not understand the concept of redemptive suffering. His Messiah was supposed to be a conquering hero – not a victim or suffering servant. When he tried to rebuke Jesus, Jesus said “Get behind me Satan! You are seeing things from a human standpoint, not as God sees.” Perhaps Jesus heard Peter’s rebuke as a temptation from Satan to swerve from his path that God had called him to – to play it safe. Jesus went to Jerusalem anyway – and was crucified. Jesus died for the sin of Roman imperialism and the stubborn blindness of the religious and educated elites of his day.
Martin Luther King was in a similar position when he was going to Memphis for the garbage workers’ strike. His people told him it was too dangerous to go. There were too many threats to his life. But he did not shy away from taking up his cross that God had called him to. He went anyway, and was killed. Martin Luther King died for the sin of entrenched White Supremacy and the stubborn blindness of the White majority of our country.
After reprimanding Peter, Jesus calls his disciples and the others around him. He needs them to know
This is not just about me. If you want to follow in my footsteps, you must deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me. For if you want to save your life, you will lose it and whoever loses their life for me and the good news will save it. [Mk.8:34-35]
As individuals, each of us has had, I’m quite sure, a cross to bear in life, has met with suffering and burdens along the journey. With God’s help we’ve carried our cross more or less gracefully.
However, the cross I am talking about today is a collective one. It is the cross of racism, which Native Americans and African Americans have collectively borne to the greatest degree in our country from its founding. My question is, “What is the cross that we whites need to bear collectively, as opposed to individually, to combat the legacy of racism?”
Black people in this country have borne the cross of White Racism and Supremacy for 250 plus years. What is to be done? What is our response to this terrible history of ours? I want to wrestle with the question, “How can we Whites bear our full weight of the cross of White Supremacy and Racism in order to begin the journey towards atonement for the sin of our forefathers and mothers?” I believe we must begin to look at reparations as a way forward. The paradigm of reconciliation seems to be limited in what it can accomplish. How can we be reconciled to People of Color in this country, in this community, when we have not done the work of repentance? True repentance means we must make recompense, not just show contrition.
Most of us would rather, like Peter, NOT have to look at this terrible legacy, to deny that we have a role in the travesty of our nation. We would rather just move on and get on with the work of reconciliation. However, I believe that unless we White Christians do wholeheartedly embrace our burden of guilt for White Racism in our country – and recognize the benefits we receive as a result of the sins of slavery and its legacy of racism – we will NOT be able to reach true reconciliation … and the dream of a Beloved Community will be forever elusive. If we are not willing to bear this cross, it gets put onto the backs of our brothers and sisters of color. This is a further insult added to injury.
You may argue, “But we weren’t around when our ancestors enslaved, lynched and segregated our Black brothers and sisters, so why should we pay for their sin?” My answer is that we Whites still benefit from the great wealth created by the labor of slaves from the beginning of America, and by the legal, economic and educational advantages which have been systematically available to White people and not to Black people or Native Americans. All the benefits of our great democratic society – land, education, health, homes, and freedom of choice – have been consistently scarce for people of color in this country, while Whites have reaped the benefits of these consistently. Therefore, we whites are still participating in the sin of Racism, even if, as individuals, we do not carry racist attitudes. I believe this fact compels us as Christians to take up the question of “reparations.” By reparations, I mean paying back the debt that we owe People of Color for the atrocities committed and the deprivation which continues to this day. An example of reparations is in the story of Zacchaeus when he offers to pay back four-fold those whom he cheated in collecting taxes. He recognized his part in the Roman domination system and repented for it.
Looking further in our Gospel passage for today, Jesus continues, “What good can it do you to gain the whole world at the price of your own soul? What can you offer to buy back your soul once you have lost it?” [Mk 8:36-37]
I believe White America has in a deep way forfeited its soul by proclaiming “liberty and justice for all” at its inception and denying this fundamental right and principle to people with dark skins. White Christians were part of this denial, holding slaves, committing genocide on Native Americans, founding segregated churches, persecuting innocent Black victims, making laws throughout our history to deny basic human rights to People of Color. White Christians had lynching picnics after church, bringing their children to watch the rituals. White Christians were Klansmen burning the cross to terrorize Black Christians. From our ancestors’ participation in the evil of racism, we have “gained the whole world at the price of our soul” as White Christians. What will we offer to gain back our soul?
Jesus says we must “leave self behind.” What does this mean for us Whites, who thrive on individualism? Does atonement for racism somehow bring us to what it means to live in community with those who have historically been deprived of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Does laying our life down and leaving self behind mean giving up our individualism, sharing resources, giving up power? I’m not sure of all the answers. But I think we need to be asking these questions.
I want to be clear: we are never going to be able to do enough for us to “earn” salvation; nothing we can do to provide recompense for our brothers and sisters of color will ever be enough for us to make up for the terrible devastation, torture, rape, suffering and economic and spiritual loss that was perpetrated by our ancestors on African Americans and Native Americans in this land. NOTHING can fully restore the lives lost, the spirits broken, the economic benefits that Blacks made possible from the foundation of this country and did not reap. “Equalization” of resources is an impossible dream. We need to take that in. Feel the realization of that Original Sin fully and unguardedly.
Only God’s Grace can forgive such an egregious and enormous EVIL. That is why it is the work of the Church to repent. As White Christians were intimately connected with the Sin of slavery, lynching, and racism, so we White Christians must be intimately involved with the atonement for that Sin.
Second, we must then have a conversation about repairing the breach – about reparations. We must truly hear the stories of Blacks who have suffered for generations from the effects of slavery and racism, who have lived with the terror described in James Cone’s book, and who have fought, suffered and died for their freedom from the bondage of White Supremacy.
Third, as one member of our mission group put it, we must “DO SOMETHING” - something concrete, material and physical to make restitution and repair the brokenness of our covenant with God and with People of Color in this country and in our community. This may be the hardest part. If we keep in mind clearly the reparations paradigm, I think we will be able to put our hearts and minds and bodies to work toward reparations. I think in some ways, in fact we already are doing this. But I believe there is more to be done. And I believe that to do it “right” so to speak, we need to have these deep conversations about our history as Whites and Blacks who are part of the racist structures as oppressors and oppressed. This process may take a long time. But we must enter the journey. We cannot remain silent, passive onlookers. We must each be part of the conversation and part of the action. I believe through this the way will be shown.
I was deeply touched by a passage at the end of James Cone’s book which brings in a note of hope. He says,
Blacks and Whites are bound together in Christ by their brutal and beautiful encounter in this land. Neither blacks nor whites can be understood fully without reference to the other because of their common religious heritage as well as their joint relationship to the lynching experience. What happened to blacks also happened to whites….Whites may be bad brothers and sisters, murderers of their own black kin, but they are still our sisters and brothers. We are bound together in America by faith and tragedy. All the hatred we have expressed toward one another cannot destroy the profound mutual love and solidarity that flow deeply between us – ….We were made brothers and sisters by the blood of the lynching tree… the blood of the cross of Jesus. No gulf between blacks and whites is too great to overcome, for our beauty is more enduring than our brutality. What God joined together, no one can tear apart.
From a Black brother, who understands the depth of the evil of White Racism, I find this profoundly moving and hopeful!
I want to express my appreciation for Rev Joseph Deck’s encouragement to delve into our history via his class on this compelling book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and to carry the work of ending racism forward. To close, I would like to share a poem I wrote for his class.
To My Black Brother and Sister
We are not “all the same under the skin”
2/16/15
We are NOT all the same under the skin.
My life
My heart
Molded by White Supremacy,
America’s Original Sin –
Your life and heart,
my brother and sister from Africa,
crushed by that Oppression
I benefit from.
My ancestors were
The slave galley captains
The slave masters and their wives
The Ku Klux Klan riders with their burning crosses
The ones who held lynching picnics
after church -
Whose children danced around the fire under
tortured black bodies swaying on a rope.
You, are the ones whose ancestors
Torn from their native lands,
Were crowded into stinking slave ship holds
Whipped into submission
By those who would gain enrichment from your labor
and crush your body and spirit
(still defiant, determined to rise again)
Your ancestors hung
from the lynching tree
of America’s racism.
You yet endure the legacy
of slavery and hatred
You still bear the cross
of my country’s Original Sin.
No, we are not all the same under the skin.
My ancestors have blood
Dripping from their hands
I cannot wash them clean.
My heart is heavy with the
Enormous atrocities
Committed by my forbears
on yours
for 200 years and more,
The unpaid debt of my country
to your people.
No, we are not all the same under the skin.
The Great Chasm
White Supremacy has caused
Cannot be bridged
By platitudes: “We are all the same under the skin!”
The work of repair must be as ENORMOUS
As the atrocities perpetrated
By my ancestors
Not that anything can ever fully repay
the debt my forbears have incurred
Our hearts have to be as enormous
as our ancestors’ crimes
So large they flow with the blood
from the cross of racism.
No,
This Original Sin we whites are saddled with
Can never be fully atoned for.
Only by God’s grace
Will we find a Way opening
Through deep, painful awareness,
Through
Repenting,
Restoring what was lost
Repairing the breech.
Then I will truly see you
My brother and sister of African root
And you will see me
And we will join hands
and embrace
and dance
the great dance of Freedom
from oppression
and guilt
Truly free, you and I
To enjoy our difference
and our sameness
To know we are bound together
In a common destiny,
To know the Cross is behind us
And Heaven before.