"We Are the Ones: Do Not Say ‘I Am Only a Boy’"
Were not the young people of this congregation, the United Methodist
Youth Fellowship, with Holly’s guidance and the support of many
committed adults, magnificent in their concept and conduct of worship
last Sunday? Were we not made glad and hopeful? Not for the mythical
"church of tomorrow," but for the church of today? The church
of children, young people, young adults taking their strong rightful
place in the life and the work of the church as a whole?
Julie and I love to find old friends in new places. We got to the
Earl Lectures at Pacific School of Religion seminary in Berkeley Tuesday
just in time to hear Michael James, a colleague of ours then in seminary
who worked primarily with youth of our congregation on the southside of
Chicago in the late 70s. Now here he was presenting in behalf of the
"R2W," "Represent to Witness," (www.witness.org) program for
Asian-Pacific Islander young people ages 15 to 19! (We’ve got some
announcements for our Tongan young people!)
The questions the program asks young people are good questions for us
of all ages at the points of claiming both these "call
stories" of Jeremiah and Jesus today and our own sense of vocation.
God is calling the particular person each one of us is, and the peoples
to whom we belong, especially to be prophetic, to be visionary for God
in behalf of the whole of creation and all of God’s children
everywhere! "How can I best represent myself, my community,
my culture, and my principles?" [That is, to be recognized and
respected for who I am], asks the program. "How can I best witness
[give an intention, give an account, based on my hope, on my dream]
as a person of faith in prayer, worship, and action?"
"Black History" as we call it is not just for Black people.
Black History also "Represents to Witness" in behalf of all
peoples and of the earth itself. Black History is world history, perhaps
where human world history began. It is church history. There were
churches in Egypt and Ethiopia before Christian scriptures were set
down. It is deeply European-American history and the history of all the
Americas. It is a part of the history of these United States we still do
not fully face or accept. In my opinion, until we create a national
museum of slavery in this nation, and until we confess a call to
repentance and to reparations, whatever form they take, we still refuse
and resist the Black History of us all. I would be happy for us to talk
more about this together and to wonder how we as a congregation may be
called to respond.
Historian Vincent Harding (www.iliff.edu/about_iliff/faculty_vincent.htm),
who worked directly with Dr. King and the Freedom Movement in the
American South, reminded us more than once at the Earl Lectures, that
the call of Dr. King and other clergy to the founding of SCLC, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was an expression of no lesser
purpose than "to redeem the soul of America!" That same sense
of vocation led Dr. King, to the consternation of many supporters as
well as detractors, in the year before his assassination to co-found the
interfaith Clergy and Laity Concerned to stop the war in Vietnam, a war
against people also being defined by color and by class.
This year’s Black or African-American History Month (www.asalh.com) observes the Jubilee
anniversary of the "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision of
the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court found, May, 1954, "that in the
field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has
no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
So "separate" is not and never was "equal."
Economically, socially speaking we remain as "separate" in
some ways today as ever. At 9 pm this Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,
"America: Beyond the Color Line," with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
whose work we will say more about next Sunday, appears on KNPB, channel
5. The following Tuesday, February 17, 6 to 8 pm, light supper and a
panel discussion of local issues will be held at Channel 5 studios. I’m
happy to make rides available.
Our friend Michael’s "Represent to Witness" program goes
on to say of Asian Pacific Islanders, "We come from boat people,
railroad people, garment industry people, farm workers, immigrants and
more. We come from across the Pacific with roots in two worlds."
Since most all of us historically start somewhere else in the world, the
program asks more questions good for us of all colors and all cultures!
The commitment to celebrate red, brown, yellow, and black peoples frees
up the rest, the "others" of us, to claim our own colors and
cultures as well!
We begin to see what disingenuous, if not dangerous, "social
constructs" race, gender, class, nationality, language, even age
can be! These are not inherent qualities of human beings. These are
categories and labels laid on us politically, socially, economically, to
try to define us and keep us in place! The questions continue for us,
"Does my cultural heritage matter to my faith experience?
Does Jesus value the experiences and struggles of Asian-Pacific
Islander peoples? [Fill in the blank!] Do my people and our experiences bring
any special meaning to our witness as people of faith? To North
American society as a whole?"
As Langston Hughes just said in our Call to Worship, people of all
colors, all cultures, are coming from all over the world today to say,
"I, too, am America!" In fact, in the wake of 9/11, it
appeared the whole world was willing to say that. We had a chance to
rejoin the community of peoples and nations in a much more subdued and
human way. We had the chance to acknowledge we are all in this process
of world-making together. We had the chance to give up our more
self-righteous senses of being such an elite and exceptional nation,
above and beyond all others. We seem to be moving instead toward
increasing hostility toward and isolation from others. And still the
"others" keep coming.
Many are, in the dominant perception, "darker" brothers and
sisters, which means we must learn to rethink the glib uses of
"dark" and of "black" as negative and/or pejorative
terms. What we so glibly call "America," as in "God bless
America," which is only one of the Americas anyway, is itself being
reconfigured, reconstructed, redetermined, and redesigned. In the event
we have not noticed, Langston Hughes reminds us, nobody’s going
"to eat in the kitchen" any more, just because company’s
coming. Everyone’s laughing, -- eating well, or better, at least, --
growing strong, or stronger, at least, -- and everyone knows they belong
at the table with everyone else! So that all will "see how
beautiful I am / And be ashamed," if shame may be seen as a needed
step in the process of growing to fuller awareness, fuller acceptance.
Our fears still reveal our ignorance and inexperience, not only of
so-called "others" but of our own deepest selves.
The calls of both Jeremiah and Jesus here remind us even more
forcefully that our very life and work as their followers are to be
turned upside-down (In the sense of "downward mobility?") and
inside-out (In the sense who’s "in" and who’s
"out?"). God calls us and frees us to see ourselves, to
witness and act, as transcending all lines of nation and kingdom! We are
charged with all the "both/ands," – plucking up what needs
plucking up, pulling down what needs pulling town, destroying and
building, overthrowing and planting, as any is needed. For God has been
knowing us since before we were formed in the womb. God has been
consecrating us since before we were born. Every one of us comes to this
world with all of God’s hope for all of God’s peoples and all of God’s
earth. As people of faith, much as we love "America," we do
not "belong" her. We belong to God and the earth. We belong to
Christ and the church. We belong to the world and to all of God’s
children everywhere.
For we, as God reassures Jeremiah, are "not only a boy!" As
black men, -- sons, fathers, grandfathers, -- at every age have been
called "boy" through the years, or as "girls in the
office," whatever age, whatever status, are apt to be called yet
today. We do not eat in the kitchen any more! And the God who is
"with us to deliver us" makes us no longer afraid to go to
whomever God sends us and to speak whatever God tells us. For God is
with us to rescue us. To be "saved" is less to be
"safe" than to be "salvaged," – rescued, reused,
recycled, renewed. God empowers us to live with our fears in such
outlawed and outspoken ways as are bound to get us in trouble and need
of rescue. Consider how Jesus is "saved" in this story:
"They got up, drove him out of town. . . so that they might hurl
him off the cliff! But he passed through the midst of them and went on
his way." That’s what it looks like for us to be
"saved."
We deeply relate to this story of Jesus returning to preach in his
hometown for the first time. People clearly know him by his family
there! Jesus is a "homeboy!" Yet, in their fears, in our
ignorance and inexperience, we end up rejecting and running him right
out of town on a rail, the proverbial "outside agitator" Dr.
King and every other prophet of God has been at one time or another. And
that goes for us, my sisters and brothers, -- we, too, are gifted and
called, like Jeremiah, like Jesus, to be both private and public
persons, pastoral and prophetic, personal and political, prosaic and
poetic, artists and activists, pray-ers and players, mystics and
mobilizers, healers and hell-raisers, -- all!
None of us is "too young," none of us is "too
old," – Can I get a witness? – none of us is "too
weak" or "too strong," "too base" or "too
soprano," "too rich" or "too poor," "too
gay" or "too straight," "too male" or "too
female," "too slave" or "too free," "too
Greek" or "too Jew," "too red," "too
brown," "too yellow," "too black," "too
white," "too anything else!" Rather, our God, who knows
us so long before, and so much better than, we know ourselves, -- Our
God is perfectly free, our God is perfectly willing, our God is
perfectly ready and able, to see and to hear, to think and to feel, to
speak and to act, in and through any one of us, any group of us, by the
one and the very same Spirit, -- who blesses Jesus in his baptism, who
tempts Jesus in his wilderness, who anoints Jesus in his preaching, and
who is fulfilling every last promise of God, with presence, with
passion, with power, even here, even now – Spirit of Jubilee justice
and joy for all peoples!
As the late Berkeley
"poet for the people" June Jordan has the audacity to say
in the words of South African women, risking their lives so often, as
mothers, as fathers, still do, for freedom of their children, "from
a baptismal smoke where yes / there will be fire "And the babies
cease alarm as mothers / raising arms / and heart high as the stars . .
. will join this standing up / and the ones who stood without sweet
company [even the ones who stood alone! Like Mary? Like Jeremiah’s
mother?] / will sing and sing / back into the mountains and / if
necessary / even under the sea / WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING
FOR" We are the ones we have been waiting for! We are the ones . .
. Amen.
John Auer, Pastor
