6/21/20
(Genesis 21:8-21; Ps. 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39)
Some of you may recognize the name John Lewis. He is a congressman from Georgia, African-American, 69 years old, currently serving in his 17thterm in the House of Representatives, he’s been there for 33 years. Lewis is a Democrat, but because of his 50-year involvement in the fight for civil rights, he is also one of the (unfortunately) very few members of Congress of either party who is revered by people on both sides of the aisle.
Lewis has long been in demand as a commencement speaker at colleges around the country, and in those speeches he often talks about what he calls “good trouble”. I’m going to read to you now some things he said about this in a magazine article two years ago:
“When I was growing up as a child in Alabama, I saw signs all around me – I saw crosses that the Klan had put up, an announcement about a Klan meeting. I saw signs that said White, colored, white men, colored men, white women, colored women. There were places where we couldn’t go. But we brought those signs down. The only place you will see those signs today will be in a book, in a museum or on a video.
“When I was growing up, the great majority of African Americans could not participate in a democratic process in the South. They could not register to vote. But we changed that. When I first came to Washington to go on the freedom rides in 1961, black people and white people couldn’t be seated together on a Greyhound bus leaving this city. When I was growing up, my mother and father and grandparents would tell me, “Don’t get in trouble. This is the way it is.”
“But then I heard Dr. King speak when I was 15. Dr. King and others inspired me to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. When you see something that’s not right or fair, you have to do something, you have to speak up, you have to get in the way. And I think we’re going to have generations for years to come that will be prepared to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. The next generation will help us to make this society less conscious of race. It’s a struggle that doesn’t last one day, one week, one month, one year. It is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe many lifetimes.”
The demonstrations that have erupted around the country the last few weeks in response to the most recent killings of black people by white people testify to the truth of what John Lewis says: that though those signs that say “White” and “Colored” may be only in museums now, we’re a long way from being done with the problem of racism. And as Christians, we have a special responsibility to be aware of and involved in this struggle.
We have that responsibility because what John Lewis calls “good trouble” is just the kind of thing Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel reading from Matthew, when he tells his disciples: “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”; and then shows how deeply that sword cuts: “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother”, and so on; as John Lewis went against his father and mother and grandparents.
This is one of those passages that falls under the heading, Things We Wish Jesus Had Never Said. (Which means we need to pay attention all the more closely.) We don’t want this Jesus. We want the Jesus of love, and joy: the resurrected Jesus who conquers death; the Jesus who tells us our sins are forgiven; and…he hasn’t come to bring peace? Didn’t we just hear this same Jesus four weeks ago telling us , Peace be with you? Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you?
Yes, we did. But that’s the peace of Christ. What Jesus is talking about today is the peace that the world gives: false peace. It’s the peace that’s really just the temporary absence of conflict: peace in which the truth, God’s truth, is silenced, or ignored; peace created by the power of this world, to maintain the illusion of its own dominance. That’s the peace that Jesus has come to put to the sword; which is – in John Lewis’ words – good trouble.
It is false peace that disguises the racism in American society. And we need to confront that racism: both in the sense of opening our eyes to it, seeing it for what it is; and in the sense of combatting it: speaking up, getting in the way: making good trouble.
Like anybody else, I am being educated about this, and I’ll share with you an episode in my experience of that ongoing process. Years ago I served a term on what’s called the Chapter, the governing board of our Episcopal cathedral in Hartford. About five years ago, during that time, I was on a telephone conference call (we didn’t have Zoom yet) with about half a dozen other Chapter members, mostly clergy, discussing the Cathedral’s response to what was then the most recent killing of an African-American by a white man which was currently occupying the national attention. (It’s both to my shame, and an indication of the nature and severity of the problem, that I can’t remember who it was.) The meeting was being led by the Dean of the Cathedral, Miguelina Howell. Lina (as she is know to her friends) is extremely articulate and very practically minded, and one of those rare people who can be, simultaneously, both gentle and forthright.
One proposal we were discussing was the placing of a banner on the iron railing which borders the cathedral, a banner on which would be repeated, for its entire length, the words “Black Lives Matter”, a phrase which at the time was still relatively new. In the discussion, a clergyperson named Michael, who happened to be white, proposed instead the words “All Lives Matter”. The conversation moved on, and I didn’t participate for about five minutes, because I was thinking about that; and then there was a pause, and somebody said, Jack, are you still there? And I answered yes, and that I had to say my inclination was to agree with Michael, that “All Lives Matter” would be better.
And Lina – gentle and forthright – responded; and mostly what I remember that she said is this: Jack, I am married to an African-American man. And every day, when he goes off to work, there is an awareness in the back of my mind that he might not come home.
And I understood instantly that she was right, that the validity of what she said was undeniable, and I apologized. Because I saw, in the terms we’re using here today, I was helping to maintain a false peace. And it’s not that all lives don’t matter; of course they do. But the plain evidence is that American society tends to treat black lives as though they matter less. This is starkly clear in the current pandemic, and its disproportionately high rates of infection and death among black and brown people. The root cause is racism. And what we need to do is identify it, describe it, and dismantle it.
As John Lewis said, this is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe many lifetimes. But it’s part of our mission as Christians. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, once wrote, “A proclamation of the gospel that does not call into judgment specific forms of hostility and exclusion is empty.” Christ is calling us, here: to join in this work; to get in good trouble: first of all, within our own souls. May we always hear, and answer, that call, and find the true peace of Christ. Thanks be to God.