January 18, 2009
Rev. Ashlee Wiest-Laird
Scriptures: Psalm 139; John 1:43-51
My family of faith: I come to you today full of excitement and anticipation. It is a most wonderful time to be alive. This week in our nation, history will be made as Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States. There are many who thought the day would never come when an African American would be elected to the highest office of leadership in our land. But much to our rejoicing that day is dawning upon us. Now when a child looks up to their mother or father and says, someday I am going to be president, we know that that dream can truly become a reality.
What a different world it is today than what some of us can remember. I was born in 1966, two years after the civil rights act was signed into law and two years before Dr. Martin Luther king junior was assassinated. I grew up in a time when things were supposed to be equal but weren’t always. Busing, affirmative action and its downfall, racial profiling, economic disparity have been the issues of racism faced by my generation. Some of you, who are my seniors, may recall separate water fountains, voting discrimination or even lynchings. And you may also vividly remember Ms. Rosa Parks who wouldn’t move to the back of the bus, the first school integration, or the march on Washington. What happened in the centuries before any of us were alive is no secret. Africans were forcibly brought to this country as slaves, counted as chattel or at most three/fifths a human. They were captured and transported in a way that is too horrific for most of us to imagine. As a person of European heritage, I learned those truths from a history book. Some of you heard them as family stories. Those were your ancestors in the hold of the ship. Of course, the fact is that these are my family stories too…it’s just that ‘white folks’ have not done such a good job of passing on the ugly history in a personal way.
Racism is a pervading part of our shared heritage and culture here in the US. In one way or another, we have all been shaped by its impact. Racism, you understand, is a systemic version of prejudice. It is prejudice plus power, if you will. The ability to pre-judge another and then make that assessment into the way things are. The pre-judgment that we are talking about this morning was the assumption that people with dark or “black” skin were inferior to people with pale or “white” skin. And while that may sound ludicrous to we sophisticated 21st century folk, we cannot underestimate the effect that racism-particularly the subjugation and oppression of African-Americans, has had and continues to have on each of us individually and as a society.
It was fascinating to me, thinking on these things, to open the Bible to today’s reading. The gospel of John, chapter one. Jesus calling his disciples. Specifically, Jesus calling Philip who turns around and recruits Nathanael by saying that Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth, is the One, the Messiah, the Liberator of God’s people. Interestingly, Nathanael then lets loose a mouthful of prejudice—can anything good come out of Nazareth?, he asks. The first response Nathanael makes to Jesus is to diminish his identity. If this guy named Jesus is from Nazareth…some po-dunk village in the middle of nowhere…how can he be anybody important, much less the promised Savior? Nathanael had his mind made up. And, much to Philip’s credit he simply replies, just come and see. Here, at the outset of Jesus’ ministry, one of the first challenges he faces is to confront a man who has already questioned his worth and identity, solely based on the zip code of his hometown. And what does Jesus do? At first sight of Nathanael Jesus proclaims…”here is a true Israelite in whom there is no deceit or guile.” Honestly, between you and me, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a little sarcasm here on Jesus’ part. Kind of like if someone who had made really hateful comments about women were to walk up to me pretending to treat me with respect. In that situation I could be tempted to proclaim, oh look, here comes a real man and honest too! Now, maybe what I would do isn’t the same as what Jesus would do…maybe Jesus really meant it. And when Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under the fig tree, wouldn’t you just love to know what he was doing there??!! Regardless, I think Nathanael realized that Jesus knew him—with a knowledge not just based on his looks, his skin, his accent, but rather Jesus knew who Nathanael was, at his core, in his heart.
Parker Palmer writes that the insight most central to spiritual experience is that “we are known in detail and depth by the love that created us and sustains us, known as members of a community of creation that depends on us and on which we depend. This love knows our limits as well as our potential, our capacity for evil as well as good…yet as love, it does not seek to confine or manipulate us…but offers us the constant grace of self-knowledge and acceptance that can liberate us to live a larger love.”
If that was confusing, Psalm 139 says the same thing in this way:
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Sisters and brothers, the God who is love knows us. Inside and out. From the time of our creation to the moment of our life ends we are known. The Psalmist praises: We are fearfully and wonderfully made—God knows our goodness; the psalmist rages: don’t I hate those who hate you O God—God knows our failures; the psalmist prays: lead me in the way everlasting—God knows our desires. In fact there is nothing we can do, nowhere we can go where God is not also with us, knowing us, loving us.
Even If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you, God;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
Even in the places of our deepest fear…
What are you afraid of?
Losing your job? Being alone? Getting hurt?
Who are you afraid of?
Young black men? Palestinians or Pakistanis? Latino immigrants? White kids from Southie? Police officers? Muslims? Right-wing Christians?
Prejudice, it seems to me, is born of fear. Fear of that which is different. Fear that somehow we will lose what is familiar to that which we don’t understand. In the history of humanity and unfortunately in the history of the church we have too often let our fear rule the day. From the crusades to the witch trials in Salem, Western Christians in particular have been complicit in the domination and oppression of those who were perceived as ‘other’—those of other religions, other genders, other languages, other colors of skin. We have often neglected the Biblical advice that ‘perfect love casts out all fear’ and built up our own self-worth at the expense of others instead of claiming our inherent worth and identity as children of God. When we recognize our own true identity in this way, then we see the true identity of others as well and come to realize that we are all beloved in the eyes of God. Each person is a gift from God to the world, created in God’s image, with hopes and dreams, successes and failures, loves and losses. When our fear is gone we are able to see our common humanity and our shared need for the Divine.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr once said: I refuse to accept the view that (human)kind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and (community) can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
This week as Mr. Obama is inaugurated, let us remember the stony road that has brought us to this place. Let us not forget the past, instead let us learn from it, build on it. One writer put it this way:
Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so our children could fly.
Still, as we prepare to live in a world that will indeed be much different for our children (thank God), let us not think that we have arrived. Prejudice and racism have not gone away for good. The battle with fear has not been conclusively won. Joseph Brandt writes: “Our efforts to overcome racism must begin in our sanctuaries and continue beyond the church to create a nation and a world in which all races and cultures are included, accepted, and enabled to live together in equality and harmony.” There is still much work to be done, barriers to be broken, chasms to be crossed. And I know that together we, like Philip and Nathanael, will go on to see greater things accomplished. In the words of Christians from the ‘third world’: “Because of our faith in Jesus, we are bold enough to hope for something that fulfills and transcends all human expectations, namely the Reign of God.”
So today, let us stop and celebrate the milestone we have reached as a people. Let it be a sign that points us in the right direction. And may we trust that the God who intimately knows us all also rejoices in the progress we have made on our journey and continues to call us forward with the words of Jesus, saying “follow me.” Amen.