‘The beginning of the birth pangs’
The Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, November 14, 2021
Daniel 12:1-3 • Hebrews 10:11-25 • Mark 13:1-8
So here’s Jesus visiting the newly completed temple in Jerusalem with his disciples who are justifiably impressed. Wow! This is amazing! Look at these huge stones! Jesus pours water on their excitement. He prophesies that there will be a time when nothing will be left standing: that all will be torn down. A time that will indeed come to pass in forty years’ time, when the Romans finally tire of all the rebellions and demolish the golden city of Jerusalem.
We are surrounded by so much that seems so permanent, and there is much that is comforting in that. Life is challenging enough: there needs to be a status quo that we can rely on.
And yet, not everything that surrounds and supports us is worthy of that privileged status. Up until distressingly recently, most of us have lived our lives largely unaware of the pain and suffering of others that have allowed our prospering and comfort. While a caring people in so many ways, we have lived without curiosity about the past, content to accept the history as it has been told to us.
Our world however is slowly changing with respect to our general awareness of the truth of our past. There are some large building blocks of our society that many of us are starting to question and educate ourselves about, and some indeed that need to be torn down. And we’ve started! We’ve seen dramatic images of the removal, sometimes officially sanctioned, sometimes not, of statues of confederate leaders, slave traders, and plantation owners. Statues that have been objects of pride: enjoyed, even revered by many over the years for their magnificence and supposed righteousness. To others though, they have been daily reminders of atrocities committed against their people.
And we’ve not only been removing physical things, we’ve also been considering the power of language, particularly in how we name things. Sports teams are being renamed to lose their demeaning associations. We’re learning the stories about the names of colleges, of schools, and reconsidering past choices The latest one in our city news is the Hastings Law School. Serranus Clinton Hastings, being the first Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. All well and good, but Hastings was also known even in his time by another name, that of ‘mass murderer’ As a rancher in Mendocino County in the 1850s, he coveted the nearby land of the Yuki tribe. His solution? To pay to have the 283 men, women and children murdered.
The images we surround ourselves with and language we hear and use are powerful forces in how we are formed. They shape our context, and in their commonality, they dull our curiosity about what has been: after all, if it’s officially sanctioned, it must be good, right?
Change can be shocking. But sometimes change, even destruction can be the only way to begin the long process of righting wrongs: of beginning the process of lament, repentance, and restoration.
We might hope, expect even, that our Christian faith over the ages would have provided a moral guide for righteous behavior. Our faith, inspired by a God-filled human, born into poverty, who spent his life not striving for personal gain, but instead one based in limitless, all-giving love for all people, especially the poor and abandoned. But, alas, our church has not always aligned itself with the teachings of Jesus.
A month ago, when he was with us, Bishop Marc preached about the evils of Empire, and of how the Kingdom of God of the scriptures, perhaps more helpfully known as ‘The Beloved Community’ is what we should be striving for. We may not use the word Empire now, but we have a sense of what it means. Those large organizing, both visible and invisible, interlocking structures of society, dominated by power, committed to allowing the few to profit from, and to dominate the majority who are to be kept quiet and docile.
In the early centuries, the Christian church was a collection of small house congregations, hiding from the persecution of society. Once it was legitimized by the Emperor Constantine in the mid 4th century, it rapidly aligned itself with the power structures of the Roman Empire, and acquired all the trappings and regalia of imperial flourishing, in its buildings, its decorations, and its hierarchical structures.
And so the church has largely continued: aligning itself with power, and wielding that same power with the added weight of God’s supposed smile of approval. And it has much to answer for: playing its part in the civilizing and conversion of western Europe, reaching out to reclaim the Holy Lands in the medieval crusades, supporting the colonization of distant lands. And while some of these activities were laudable, involving the sharing of knowledge, most were not, being driven by greed, and characterized by utter disrespect, and brutality.
In the Sacred Ground curriculum that a number of us are engaging with, we are learning about the role of the Christian Church in North American, including the Anglican Church that became our Episcopal Church. Before I go any further, let me say clearly how much I love our church. I love so much about it: the Book of Common Prayer, its spirituality, its music, its aesthetic of beauty, its willingness to wrestle with scripture and ideas, and its inclusive welcome. But, it hasn’t always been such a beautiful, life-giving opportunity.
Those early, white settlers came, fired with a religious passion that God had chosen them to settle this new country and that they had an God ordained obligation to settle and Christianize it. As we all know, that is what they did with great brutality. A brutality sanctioned supposedly by God.
This developing society needed a labor force, slavery wasn’t their creation, but it was a perfect solution. They couldn’t enslave other Christians, but heathen Africans and those from the Caribbean would fit the bill. The church blessed every aspect of the global slave trade. As Frederick Douglass wrote in 1852:
‘The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressor.’
The enslavers even encouraged these slaves to attend churches: they believed the message of Christian love and obedience would keep them well-behaved. They must have been surprised that these enslaved people heard and embraced a completely different message from the scriptures: the stories of the Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt to freedom; of a Jesus urging justice and liberation for the captives.
So much of this country that we live in has been literally built by the blood, sweat and tears of unpaid and unappreciated African Americans. So many of the economic structures that we live by have been shaped by the intent to protect and improve the lot of the privileged, while denying access to those who aren’t.
And the church has shamefully stood by: resting in its position of privilege and power; refusing to challenge the status quo and disrupt the relative calm. Where was the Episcopal Church during the Civil Rights Movement? Largely silent.
The good news is that things are changing. Since the early eighties, our church has been becoming increasingly involved in working for social justice. There has been much more activism: speaking out against injustices. We have become increasingly disobedient as we have marched together, protested against, added our voices in support of the powerless. The Episcopal Public Policy Network came into being, describing itself as:
A grassroots network of Episcopalians across the country dedicated to carrying out the Baptismal Covenant call to “strive for justice and peace” through the active ministry of public policy advocacy. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/office-government-relations/eppn-sign-up/
And at the 2017 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, a long term commitment was pledged “ to have an honest reckoning with all it has been.” And indeed our Sacred Ground curriculum is one of the many direct results of this. We cannot fully lament, repent and reconcile until we understand what has been done in our name, and the monster that has been created.
I do believe there is hope. I do believe we’re at a turning point as those of us living in privilege in this country begin to learn those things that those who have never lived in privilege have always known. I pray that we have the courage and moral strength to continue the work of throwing those big stones of our society to the ground.
And as I conclude, I want to acknowledge that this is not the sort of sermon I usually preach. If I have left you feeling hungry and dissatisfied, I hope that you will tell me.
This was the sermon that asked to be written. I stand by my devotion to this church. I also stand in my certainty that, as Episcopalians, we need to fully acknowledge and lament where we have come from so that we can be part of the healing and reconciliation process going forward.