Black Battle, White Knight. Michael Battle
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identity until we can all confess the absurd. How does one confess the absurd?
When I was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, I heard a fellow seminarian preach in a maximum–security prison unit in Trenton, New Jersey, when an inmate interrupted the sermon to rebuke the inconsiderate inmates talking in the corner. “Shut up!” he growled, while staring at them with wild eyes. The others laughed while he gritted his teeth. This was the same inmate I saw earlier beating the top of his head with both hands to the beat of Blessed Assurance. A black man, ill-clad, wearing white and faded blue jeans, he lived in a different world than the rest of us and he wanted to get on with “church.” But his interruption did not seem to stop the others from talking.
With peculiar gyrations he continued his command to “shut up,” his arms flinging like a symphony conductor. This black conductor looked at the other black men, a majority of whom continued to talk, and screamed at them in the middle of my friend’s sermon, “Are you in church or where you at?” A peculiar question I thought. How could he really expect others to believe this was a real church service in the middle of a maximum–security prison unit? Sure, they had sung hymns, there were ministers in the room, there was a lectern posing as a pulpit, there were musical instruments for praising God, the chairs were lined up in the room for an assembly of people, and they even prayed to God as if God were truly there. But how could he really expect to be “at” church when an armed guard stood by the door? The rational explanation is that he does not fit in the normal world. The prisoner’s world is intentionally meant not to be a free person’s world; however, I soon discovered that the world within that prison that can make room for a “church service” can often do it better and more meaningfully than the world outside the prison walls.
Malcolm’s life facilitated my reflection on my own normality of trying to fit my vocation with my identity. I seek to do that by making peace and revealing truth and reconciliation, which for many is absurd. In a world full of elite survival and business skills, my vocation of making peace and revealing reconciliation is as unlikely to succeed as the prisoner’s church is to fit into a maximum security unit. Malcolm’s life helped me to see how the prisoner’s command to “shut up” and his question, “Are you in church or where you at?” is a challenge to analyze the nature of what absurd and bold things we are all called to be and do. Malcolm’s life also invites the reader to reflect on how one may seem to be living the contradiction between vocation and a stifling job in the “normal” world. When listening to Malcolm’s wisdom, perhaps we will only be perceived as a deranged prisoner in pursuing the living God, but that is a chance we should be willing to take.
Malcolm’s stroke of genius, akin to other exemplars like Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, is to disarm our false selves and make us pay attention to the often painful reality of authenticity. He does this through deep humor, profound social awareness, and responsible social activism.
An example of Malcolm’s sense of humor and social awareness occurred back in his twenties when he worked in Hollywood for a major advertising agency and would eat lunch at a well–known restaurant where the biggest names in the movie industry gathered. One was Ronald Reagan’s older brother, Neil, who was an ad agency executive.
Neil was gracious and helpful to Malcolm, a young guy starting out, and always greeted Malcolm publicly in a friendly way. One noon Malcolm had lunch with a man who asked him to introduce him to Neil. Malcolm said OK but cautioned that Neil did not like to be identified as Ronald’s brother. He was very fond of Ronald but wanted to stand on his own two feet and not cash in on his brother’s celebrity. Malcolm suggested that Ronald Reagan’s name not be mentioned.
Later, they stopped at Neil’s table. Malcolm smiled at Neil, then at Malcolm’s friend and said, “I’d like you to meet Ronald Reagan.” It took Malcolm a while to understand the laughter and then join in.
Malcolm’s life is appropriate for the United States as it awakes to its first black president, a reality very few saw coming—even black elders of America. There were very few clues for these elders to think that America was ready for a black president. The host of the public radio show “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” even remarked that it was like a Star Wars episode when he awoke on November 5, 2008, to the news that Barack Obama had been elected president. The host said it was like hearing the news that President Obi–Wan Kenobi was now leading the Galactic Empire. He joked that that it was just as unexpected to hear Obama’s name as the president of the United States as it would be to hear that Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars could be a king.
Indeed, the courage of America to elect a black man as president remains fragile. That fragility is illustrated by the story of Malcolm coming across a copy of Vogue magazine with a photograph of Michele Obama on the front cover. He doesn’t normally buy these magazines, but he did buy this one.
As he meditated on the cover, the epiphany came to him that this woman would normally represent the archetype of a house servant or maid rather than the First Lady of the White House. This book points to how exemplars like Malcolm helped a country find the courage to discover a new identity in an Obama age.
This book describes a life that has longed for and worked toward the realization of the previously unimaginable. Through the example of Malcolm’s life we discover how current political tensions remain archaic, if not medieval. He teaches us that if we are not spiritually vigilant, at the drop of a hat we, too, will burn people at the stake.
What went through the minds of mothers, what happened to the lives of children, what stabbed at the hearts of men when they were caught up in a sea of flame?
What was Auschwitz like, Jesus, when the crematoriums belched the stinking smoke from the burned bodies of people? When families were separated, the weak perished, the strong faced inhuman tortures of the spirit and the body. What was the concentration camp like, Jesus?
Tell us, Christ, that we, the living, are capable of the same cruelty, the same horror, if we turn our back on you, our brother, and our other sisters and brothers. Save us from ourselves; spare us the evil of our hearts’ good intentions, unbridled and mad. Turn us from our perversions of love, especially when these are perpetuated in your name.
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