You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught (8/20/17)
This stained glass window represents the Theological Declaration of Barmen. This
statement of faith is part of the Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
I was nervous about preaching this past Sunday. That's not typical. I'm pretty comfortable in the pulpit. But I had to talk about the events in Charlottesville last weekend and I felt that I had to decry the false gospel of white supremacy, and do so from the pulpit. In the process, I had to acknowledge some uncomfortable family history.
Note: Sometimes I like to offer some commentary before I read one of the texts, especially if I want to congregation to hold something in mind when they hear the text and the sermon. In my text of the sermon, I call this "pre-exegesis." I thought it was necessary this week because there wan an extra reading, and also, because these texts flowed so nicely together. The reading from Matthew was my principle text on Sunday, but I thought it was important to preserve the pre-exegesis.
Pre-Exegesis
In Chapter 11 of the letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul
raises a tough question: has God rejected the Jewish people who have not
followed Jesus? Paul’s answer is unequivocal: “By no means!” Our reading this
morning only includes part of Paul’s argument, but the central premise is this:
God is always faithful; God doesn’t make a covenant and retreat from it. Paul
says that, “the gifts and the calling are irrevocable.” Paul is arguing,
forcefully, that God has not and will not give up on the promise to God’s
chosen people, or any other promise.
I don’t know that the Church has done a good job of
teaching this part of Paul’s letter to the Romans. I suspect that this piece of
Scripture was not the subject of many sermons in Germany in the 1920s and
1930s. This should serve as a reminder to all of us that bad theology can have
deadly consequences.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
I
ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite,
a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God
has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
29 for
the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just
as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of
their disobedience, 31 so they have now been
disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now[k] receive
mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in
disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
Sermon
Good morning. This is one of those weeks where every piece
of Scripture that is offered in the Lectionary speaks directly into our broken
reality. The lessons from Paul’s letter to the Romans and from the Gospel of
Matthew practically scream at us: Wake up! Pay attention! And these texts offer
some valuable insight into how we, as Christians, are called to respond to the
bigotry and hatred that was on display in Charlottesville last weekend.
To be honest with you, this is a sermon I didn’t want to
write, yet it’s a sermon I had to write! But first, I’d like to tell you a
story about my grandfather, Ted Olson—mind you, I never knew either of my
grandfathers; I only know them through family stories, my personal history.
Ted died in 1968, from a combination of heart disease and
cirrhosis; he smoked and drank, a lot. Like many men of his generation, he
dropped out of high school to work in the mills. That would have been in the
early 1920s.
Ted was a quiet man and a very smart man. He was also known
to be a very kind and generous person. Ted worked as a machinist. Eventually he
would become the head machinist at the mill in Allenport. Along the way, the
company sent him to Pitt to take calculus.
At home, my grandfather had a workshop in the basement. He
had lots of tools and machines, he also had beer fridge down there, as well as
a trunk full of stuff from before he married my grandmother.
One day, while my grandfather was at work, my dad and my
uncle decided to go through that chest. They found a Ku Klux Klan armband. It
was my grandfather’s. The way I heard the story, my grandfather went to a few
Klan meetings because they had free beer. I have no idea if that part was true,
or if it just cast my grandfather in a better light.
My dad and my uncle decided to play a joke on my
grandfather. They wrapped the armband around one of the bottles of beer in his
beer fridge. He never said anything, but the armband disappeared and was never
seen again. I don’t know if my grandfather was angry or ashamed—that wasn’t
part of the story. I imagine that it was a part of his past that he wanted to
forget, a memory to be locked in a trunk and forgotten.
Historians say that the Ku Klux Klan went through three
distinct iterations. Most of us are familiar with the version of the KKK that
emerged during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s. That version of the
Klan was most visibly active in the southern United States, fighting against
integration and voting rights for African Americans. Though we often associate
the Klan with the South, they were active all over the country.
The first version of the Klan existed during the Reconstruction,
which lasted from the end of the Civil War until about 1877. During that time, the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were added to the
Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished slavery in the
United States. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all former
slaves, and guaranteed equal protection under the law to those persons who had
been enslaved. Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights to all
citizens, regardless of race or previous conditions of servitude—that is,
former slaves were given the right to vote. The former Confederate states could
not be readmitted to the Union until they ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
During the Reconstruction, troops from the US Army were
stationed in all of the former Confederate states. They were there to preserve
order and make certain that the rights of newly-freed African Americans were
protected. This is when the Ku Klux Klan (and other paramilitary, terrorist
groups) was first organized.
The goal of the KKK was to terrorize African Americans so
that they would not exercise their civil rights. Members of the Klan wore robes
and hoods so that they couldn’t be identified when they committed acts of
terror. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, the Klan disbanded; the robes and
the hoods came off. White men no longer needed to hide their identity if they
wanted to menace, injure, or kill an African American. Local laws were enacted
to restrict the civil rights of African Americans. These were known as Jim Crow
laws. If any black person objected, that person could be beaten, jailed, or
murdered, and no white person would be held accountable in court.
The Ku Klux Klan was reorganized in Atlanta in 1915, but it
quickly spread outside of the South and it had a new set of enemies. In the
second version of the Klan, the main enemies were immigrants: Italians, Poles,
Hungarians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Greeks, Syrians, and Russians. They were
Catholics and Jews! The second version of the Klan was organized to strike fear
into their hearts. This is certainly the version of the Klan that my
grandfather joined. This version of the Klan had at its core a notion of white,
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Christianity. It was very exclusionary. This is bad
theology! This theology is based on a lie! And our scriptures this morning
shine a light into that darkness.
Our readings from Isaiah, from the Apostle Paul, and from
the Gospel of Matthew all speak out against exclusivity. God, speaking through
the Prophet Isaiah, tells Israel to “maintain justice and do what is right,”
because God’s salvation and deliverance are also extended to foreigners who “love
the name of the Lord.” Similarly, Paul argues forcefully that God has not
forsaken the Jews, that they are still included in all of God’s covenants.
Perhaps the most interesting perspective on all of this can
be found in this morning’s Gospel lesson, when a Canaanite woman asks Jesus to
heal her daughter. But Jesus ignores her! The disciples want to send her away.
She’s a foreigner; she’s NOT a Jew. Jesus attempts to dismiss her, saying: “I
was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus is saying, you’re not my
problem. Nevertheless, the Canaanite woman persisted. She refuses to let Jesus
off the hook. Jesus sees her faith and he relents; he heals her daughter,
though neither the woman nor her daughter are from the house of Israel. Even
though they are foreigners, Jesus shows that their lives matter, too.
Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, a group of white
supremacists marched in a demonstration that was called “Unite the Right.” The
marchers included Klan members, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and the
so-called Alt-right, which is really just a rebranding and repackaging of all
those other hate groups. While they claimed that they were demonstrating in
support of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, that was really a fig
leaf. In truth, the event was a pride march; it was a chance for a bunch of
white supremacists to come out of the shadows and say, “look at us, we don’t
need to wear robes and hoods anymore.”[1] They chanted Nazi slogans
as they marched. They shouted “blood and soil,” and “Jews will not replace us.”
There were counter-protesters there, residents of
Charlottesville who stood up and said, “your message of hate is not welcome in
this town.” Predictably, the demonstration descended into violence. Some voices
in the media have tried to claim that the counter-protesters were just as
responsible for the violence that erupted. That is a false narrative.
A great many of those counter-protesters wore collars and
robes and stoles, just like I do on a Sunday morning. The clergy included
African American pastors, white pastors, and even a few rabbis. They confronted
the white supremacists and they also stood guard in front of synagogues and
African American churches. Many were attacked by the white supremacists; some
clergy were injured. Many more clergy were protected by other counter-protesters,
the so-called Antifa, or Anti-Fascists. Heather Heyer paid the ultimate price for
standing up to the white supremacists who descended upon Charlottesville.
Let me be clear: there are not many sides to this issue. There
was a group of people who marched under the banner of white supremacy; who
proclaimed the false gospel of white supremacy. They came armed. Some wore
helmets, others carried homemade shields. They were looking to start a fight
and they would have found a fight even if there had been no counter-protesters.
They wanted to pretend to be martyrs if anyone fought back.
Now I know that none of you were there. I know that none of
you participated in the “Unite the Right” rally. I know that. But I also know
that these awful incidents aren’t going away. I know that some people will
continue to advance the false gospel of white supremacy. That’s why I began
with the story about my grandfather. We want to say, “it isn’t me!” We want to say
that the problem is with somebody else. But it’s not. As much as we want to
deny it, we are connected to the awfulness and the hatred. And even if we try
to hide from the past, unpleasant history doesn’t stay locked in a chest. It
always gets out. The question becomes, how are we to relate to our troubled
past?
Jesus speaks to this, too. Jesus tells the disciples that
they will not be defiled if they eat foods that are unclean or impure; ritual purity
is not what matters to God. Righteousness is what matters to God—loving God and
loving neighbors—this is what matters:
But what comes out of
the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the
heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false
witness, slander. These are what defile a person. (15:18-20)
However, if we believe that
true righteousness consists solely of not saying evil things, by not defiling
ourselves, then we are missing the grace in this Gospel lesson, the grace that
Jesus extends to the Canaanite woman.
The Canaanite woman was on the margins; she was not one of
God’s chosen people, but ultimately, Jesus affirmed her dignity and her value.
Jesus moved from the center of the Jewish faith out to the margins and healed
someone who didn’t seem to be worthy of Jesus’ ministry, because she came from
the wrong ethnic group and the wrong religion.
We are called to participate in Jesus’ work of
reconciliation. This means that we have to go out to the margins as Jesus did.
But if we go out there and tell other people that they need to change, we’re not going to move very far toward
reconciliation. Instead, we need to go to the margins and listen; some of the
stories we hear will be uncomfortable.
Speaking of uncomfortable, how many of you bristle when you
hear the phrase, “black lives matter?” I bet some of you feel the urge to
shout, “all lives matter!” But when we do that, we’re kinda saying, “well,
sure, but no more than anybody else!” And when we say that, we’re NOT
listening. Even though we are called to listen.
When Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel,” I hear something along the lines of “all lives matter.” Jesus
is telling her that she’s not his problem—even if all lives matter, her life
matters a little bit less—he’s not listening. But Jesus turns away from that
line of thinking and he listens to her. He stops debating her and he simply
listens. And by his act of listening, he hears how great her faith is and he
restores her daughter to health and wholeness.
Beloved, I know that you are not Nazis or Klansmen. I know
that you weren’t in Charlottesville shouting Nazi slogans or anti-Semitic
chants or racist taunts. It is no longer enough for us to hold our tongues.
Though we mustn’t defile ourselves by speaking evil, we must do more. We have
to admit that we are connected to one another, at the same time, we have to
admit that we’re all connected to the ugly parts of our own history, and we
must, as the Church, speak into this brokenness in our society.
If we are to make a theological claim that all lives
matter, then we must live into that by demonstrating that the lives of people
on the margins of our society matter to us. We must listen to and acknowledge
their pain. We must eliminate the obstacles that prevent us from truly hearing
their stories. And we must stand up and denounce the false gospel of white
supremacy. We cannot fully participate in Jesus’ work of reconciliation if we,
as the Church, do not take this stand. The Church must not be silent. Thanks be
to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. Go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and reconciliation. Do
not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God,
and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and
be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ,
our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
Matt Thompson, “The Hoods Are Off,” The
Atlantic, August 12, 2017, retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2017/08/the-hoods-are-off/536694/
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