Preaching Black Lives (Matter). Gayle Fisher-Stewart
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the descendants of the enslaved. I am telling this story because it is a biblical story. As I said, history does not exactly repeat itself, but it damn sure rhymes. Those first Africans in America, my ancestors, were a people who were born on the water: the experience of being on ships for century upon century of the Atlantic slave trade. After one week or two weeks or three weeks of seeing nothing but a horizon of water, they began to forget who they were.
When they landed on these new shores, they began the process of seasoning, as it was said, of creating a new person. One who would be, in fact, docile and obedient as a slave. Like those Jews in Babylonian captivity, they sang songs that recalled their homeland, the old continent. But they also began to incorporate new elements of those songs because even though some had been Muslim and others held traditional African beliefs, they were introduced to Christianity. When these Africans heard the psalms, they heard the stories of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the stories resonated. Many incorporated Jesus’s liberating message of hope into their reality.
My people were born on the water and came into full being on these shores. They were not Americans in their founding fathers; reality. And they were not quite Africans either to a degree. They were a “new people.” Thus, we created the name African American, which developed over the centuries. They became a people not only by recognizing their existence, but also through the challenge and struggle of Native Americans, and they recognized the struggle of other people who had come to these shores or came across the borders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they became the real beacons of the true democracy that we try to bring to America.
History does not repeat itself exactly, but it does rhyme.
When Martin King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,”4 he was diving deep into the words of Isaiah and the desire for a new day. It was the hope for one who could repair the breach. We are called to live into this calling. In her poem delivered at the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton, Maya Angelou said that we cannot go back and undue the lessons of history, however, if we learn from history, we do not have to re-live the mistakes that were made.5 If we face our history honestly, openly, and lovingly, a new day can be born. Restoring relations, recognizing that all who have come to these shores and who have lived here for generations and who had lived here before anyone from Europe or Africa even arrived are called to live into a beloved community. That was the dream that Isaiah lived out. That was the dream that Isaiah called the people of Israel and Judea to live into. That was the dream of God that Jesus embodied in healing a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years.
Today, Episcopal Churches in Jamestown, other parts of Virginia, and across the United States will ring bells at 3 p.m. Eastern time to commemorate that landing at Point Comfort in Jamestown four hundred years ago. To ring the bells, as the prophet Isaiah would have rung, calling us to be something better. We are invited to be restorers of the streets we live on, to be repairers of the breach, to give hope to the afflicted, to satisfy the hungry.
This bell-ringing can be seen as a metaphor for the truth that in America, we are all aliens in a strange land, and yet we are called to sing the Lord’s song—even in a foreign land—that we might be the new people that God has called us all to be. May we live into that reality as followers of Jesus Christ.
1. This information is noted in numerous history sources. See: https://historicjamestowne.org/history/the-first-africans/ and https://www.monticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/african-slavery-british-north-america/africans-british-north-america.
2. This information is available at http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/the_spanish_and_new_world_slav.
3. John Hope Franklin, “The 1619 Project,” New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2018, 1.
4. Mychal Denzel Smith, “The Truth about ‘The Arch of the Moral Universe,’ ” HuffPost, January 18, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-obama-king_n_5a5903e0e4b04f3c55a252a4.
5. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning,” a poem written on the occasion of the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as the 42nd President of the United States, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/21/us/the-inauguration-maya-angelou-on-the-pulse-of-morning.html.
JOHN 5:1–9
In the spring of 2018, I was called to my first parish, a predominantly White parish. As I accepted the call, I wondered how I, as an African American priest, would be able to share my truth with my congregation. I wondered how I was going to authentically be who I was and preach the gospel that God had called me to preach. I realized that I could not be afraid of my own truth; to omit pieces of who I was to make others feel comfortable was not what God was calling me to do. I was being called to take all the pieces of me and gather them up so God could do a new thing. Out of that truth I found God calling me to preach the gospel with the stories of my own brokenness weaved into it. God works through scripture, people, and circumstances, and the stories that I have been called to weave into the gospel are filled with the broken pieces of racism, hate, sexism, and more. The ugly truths are countered with the stories that set the Gospels squarely into our laps and calls us to peace in our souls and to the grace that saves our lives. My sermons were birthed out of their ugly truth of hate and racism in this country, but reflected how God moves us all and calls us to be on mission while we “court holy disruption,” while we are disturbed, and as we are called to follow Jesus.
Astonishing God, you give us a vision of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, your home among mortals on earth. All people and nations will stream to your city where they will find nourishment, healing, and peace. Even now your blessing shines upon all the earth to help us see a larger vision of your loving care for all creation. And so you call us to move beyond our comfortable circles, and into unfamiliar places, as we seek to share your dream of a world made new in Christ. Amen.
The lectionary provided a choice of Gospel readings. I initially chose John 14; however, as many of you know, this past week I have been on pilgrimage in Alabama as an Ambassador of Healing and Peace in Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery. Places where many of the events of the civil rights movement occurred. Places that not only carry the history of this nation, but also carry with that history the scars of injustice and pain. And while there is pain, in these sacred places there is a deep sense of faith and hope that this world can actually be the dream God has for it.
I’ve been pulled by the Holy Spirit to preach not just on the selected Gospel but also on the alternate Gospel as well, and it reads like this:
After [Jesus healed the son of the official in Capernaum] there was a festival of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-Zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way,