July 31, 2022
Text: Matthew 9:20-22
Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.
Let’s begin with a meditation
Close your eyes; take a deep breath.
Try to close the faucet of the endless drip of your anxious mind .
Bring yourself to presence and to the present.
Imagine the Black people in our congregation
Maybe pick a single person; hold that person's spirit in your heart
The Black people in our congregation are descendants of enslaved Africans, but that is not their whole history; each one has a special history within the system of slavery. Each one has a special family, a special history separate from slavery altogether, a special story within their own life, a special birth.
They are "uniquely unique," as Karen’s mother Olene says. Each brings special gifts to this community. But not only that; each one is also a descendant of kings and queens of Africa. Each is a few generations distant from the mother continent of the human race. Each is closely connected in history to the cradle of civilization.
Now imagine, they are Black people. They are not white people with Black skin.
They are not only Black people; each family represented here experienced challenges that no one should have to go through. Each family here overcame those challenges. Each family represented here chose to join us today
Bless them with this prayer.
There’s an African saying from the NATAL region of what is now South Africa (Isizula, Siswati languages). “SAWABONA” is a common greeting among the tribes, and it literally means “I SEE YOU,” as to say, “I respect and acknowledge you for who you are.”
In return people say “SIKBONA” which literally means “I AM HERE” as to say’, “When you see me, you bring me into existence”
I had already decided on this topic when we visited my parents in North Carolina who took us to their church Bible study one night. The topic of the Bible study was the dispute about requiring gentiles to become Christians without being circumcised. It also included a brief history of the councils who regularly make these kind of policy/theology decisions. So eventually the teacher moved the conversation to our own personal examples of church policies that had immediate meaning in our lives. The participants in the class were all white except for Karen. We talked at great length about how women were now allowed to wear pants at church, women were allowed on the council, everyone dressed more casually, so much change. What no one mentioned was changes occurring for Black people and interracial relationships. There we were, right in the room, and no one wanted to go there.
They didn’t see color. They didn’t want to upset anyone. They didn’t want to admit the truth. They saw right thru us like the crowd did in Jesus’ story. But Jesus saw the woman. He faced her and was prepared to deal with her story and the ramifications. He acknowledged her challenge. He saw the woman and no one else seemed to see her. To be overlooked and invisible undermines our self-assessment, our value in society.
Our congregation has some work to do in seeing Black people in a deeper way as well. We’re better than the North Carolina church, but we have work to do. Seeing Black people was a big part of our exercise with the separate forums recently. We wanted to elicit unbridled responses without filters from our BIPOC folks. Our intention was for everyone to be seen.
We’re a small congregation so it’s unlikely that we completely ignore people. But as a highly educated and academic church historically, I believe we marginalize. From a tradition of being Eurocentric we marginalize. Our white music marginalizes. We need to practice seeing others whose traditions and values are different from ours.
Have you ever felt invisible? Did you want to raise your hand and wave and say, “Here I am”? You may feel left out of a conversation or maybe your comments are just ignored. You may feel you’re not worthy in a situation. We have probably felt this way more often than we’d like to think. Sometimes we get attention, but it’s only negative attention. Every time we talk about our colonized land on Independence Day or our European culture, we are excluding those whose native culture was stolen. Their history becomes invisible to us. Enslaved Africans were isolated and assimilated in the worst way. Their native languages were taken. Their families were removed/stolen by white people. Their religion, history, practices, crafts, and every other human option were stymied for centuries. That is their invisibility. It is something that will never be fully recovered. That is part of their invisibility.
The woman from the crowd didn’t approach as an equal. She didn’t touch his sleeve or collar or hair. She was crawling on the ground unseen. She probably stared at the ground, but Jesus saw her. [think celestial trumpets of glory] JESUS saw her. Jesus was aware as all the others around were not. We can learn to be more aware from this story. It’s not a supernatural power; it’s one of chosen consciousness. She had been invisible. She had disappeared from view of the community. Being unclean was a situation of the disregard people had for her. We would not do that for a medical situation today. Today you are viewed as unclean if your skin is dark – Native or Black. Black and Native people take on levels of invisibility.
While we want to make sure everyone belongs, there are people we want to focus more of our attention on because they are especially marginalized. So, I’d like to take some time to share how eurocentrism marginalizes, how higher education marginalizes, how having fewer financial resources marginalizes, how having different hair marginalizes, how skin color marginalizes, how code switching marginalizes.
Before you go out and try to implement your vision of equity and justice, consider this. If you want to grab the elbow of a Black person and ask them to teach you about the Black experience, ask yourself why weren’t you interested enough to ask before this? Before you admire the beautiful hair of a Black woman and reach out to stroke it, ask yourself why is hair such a big deal in the movement for Black lives? When you feel the guilt and shame of being white, realize that being active in the struggle for Black lives is a wonderful feeling. From my experience, once I put my full effort into the learning of history that I needed to and the working to create equity and justice I became free of guilt and shame.
“I respect and acknowledge you for who you are”
“When you see me, you bring me into existence”