Montclair Presbyterian Church

Since last fall’s Black Lives Matter protests here in Oakland I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about race. In particular, I have found those voices within the African American community, who are asking White Americans to have a conversation about race to be moving and compelling, and so, as part of an ongoing conversation about race, I’d like to offer this observation: as I follow and participate in conversations about race, I find that White Americans understand racism differently than do our African American counterparts.

Most of the White Americans I know think of racism in terms of personal animosity, such that a racist is someone who hates, fears, denigrates, mistreats is unkind to, or otherwise doesn’t like Black people because they are black. It is a fact that most White Americans are mostly past such personal animosity. Most White Americans enjoy the company of and genuinely are grateful for the people in their lives who are not White. White people–by and large–have come to appreciate the beauty of human diversity and so it’s easy for White People to think racism is a really ugly and painful part of the past.

But when African Americans write and speak about racism the focus is always on structural racism. In my experience Black Americans, like their White counterparts, appreciate the increasing interpersonal goodwill that marks America’s social landscape, but that’s really not the issue. As I follow the American conversation about race, I hear African Americans talk about societal systems and institutional inertia, and political proclivities that keep African Americans poor, educationally disadvantaged, medically underserved, and vulnerable to the whims of a perniciously dysfunctional justice system.

There is nothing new about African Americans focusing upon issues of justice rather than of personal goodwill. It’s worth remembering that the Civil Rights movement was not an audition for friendship with White Americans. It was a sometimes successful attempt to change laws. It was about things like voting rights and access to public services, and equality in public education. A lot of personal animosity also was set aside as a result of the Civil Rights movement, and that has been a wonderful ancillary benefit, but it never was the main point.

Like most White Americans, I love living in a society in which people of various races increasingly are living side by side, sharing love, friendship, and neighborly good-will. For me this is not just an abstraction: my family is biracial. I don’t just like living in an America where personal racism is a dying phenomenon, I need to live in that America. But for the sake of my non-White children I also need to follow the lead of the African American community as it talks about race. I need to work for justice on a societal level, so that all God’s children will not just get along but also will thrive.

Ben

p.s. Pastor Ben will be on vacation starting Monday, June 29th through July 16th. He will not have any electronic devices with him. Contact office with any emergencies.

The beginning of June is an interesting time of year. School is not yet out, but all the academic learning pretty much is wrapped up (at least for the children who live at my house). The apricots, peaches and nectarines look beautiful, and they’re starting to smell good, too, but they’re still hard and sour. The weather cannot decide if it’s a season of fog, or sunshine or of rain. Vacation is on the mind, but there is yet work to be done. If summer were a nap, we’d just be falling asleep, not quite awake yet, far from the deep slumber of August.

The first weeks of June are an in-between place, and such places can be unnerving because during early June the Summer is as yet only half-formed. But that which is half-formed also is half-unformed and herein lies a joyful possibility. The summer may yet be imagined into existence. Plans may yet be laid down. Hopes may become incarnate.

In June there’s still time to buy a new pair of sandals, or to discover a new author whose novel can be read on a beach we may yet arrange to visit.

And my prayer for you is this: may this early June be a time when you see past the uncertainty and into the possibility of a lovely summer. May such hope and grace be yours in every early June: those you find on your calendar and those figurative early Junes that may come along at any time of the year.

Ben

This week instead of writing something new for Contact, I’m going to publish the homily I preached at my sister’s wedding in Mendocino last Saturday. I’m doing this both because I’m still on a high from the loveliness of the day and because the homily itself is a product of our congregation’s participation in the Faith Trio, and, as such, I think it is an example of how interfaith dialogue can inform our spiritual lives as individuals as a congregation.

Before preaching the homily I read from the story of the Exodus, where Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt into the wilderness.

_____________________

Gwyneth and Sklyer, I should begin by admitting to you that the story I’ve just read to you is not particularly romantic. It’s not the kind of story anyone reads at a wedding. The story of Moses lifting his staff over the sea, causing it to split in two so that a large band of escaped slaves could pass through the water as if on dry land, is a great story about liberation and about God’s concern for the poor and downtrodden. The story was a source of hope and comfort for those freeing slavery in the American South; Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, and Desmond Tutu all looked to this passage for inspiration as they worked to make a better, more just and peaceable word for all God’s Children, which is lovely, but what does it have to do with a wedding?

To answer that question, I’m going to make another confession: and that is I’m not going to deliver a traditional Presbyterian wedding homily. When I was in seminary I learned that a proper Presbyterian sermon or homily begins by reading the Bible and then it looks for how the words contained therein might have meaning for us today, which is what I do just about every Sunday, but for your wedding I’m not really looking for meaning in this story, at least not directly. Rather, this homily’s central metaphor comes from a Jewish tradition about this story, a midrash to which a rabbi friend of mine introduced me about ten days ago. To preach from a story not found in the Bible about a story that is found in the Bible is not exactly playing according to Hoyle (at least not for a Presbyterian), but we’re a long way from Princeton Theological Seminary, and it won’t be the first time a member of our family has dealt out hands from an offbeat, somewhat heretical deck of playing cards.

Anyway, according to this tradition, when Moses stood on the shore of the Sea of Reeds and lifted up his staff, and, expecting a miracle, commanded the waters to part, nothing happened at first… which must have been a little bit awkward. But then, according to this tradition, a man by the name of Nashon ben Aminadav walked into the sea anyway, and still nothing happened. He walked deeper and deeper and the waters stayed put until the waters reached Nashon ben Aminadav’s nose. Then the waters parted.

This, it seems to me, is a good metaphor for marriage. The wedding ceremony functions a lot like a Moses holding up his staff. There are vows, and an exchange of rings; there’s a sacred kiss and a proclamation of marriage. These are symbols that mark the next leg of your journey together, but there is no miracle, and no waters part, until you take the first step, and probably it will take several steps, and you may need to go down clear up to your nose before anything happens – but if you trust the love that has brought you to this place, and if you have confidence in the grace that makes you strong, then you can walk forward out of bondage and into freedom.

And make no mistake here. By getting married you are walking into freedom. Far too many people speak of marriage as an end to freedom, and I know that for some people marriage is a form of bondage, but it doesn’t have to be. The freed slaves who followed Nashon ben Aminadav into the sea didn’t emerge straight onto the shores of the Promised Land. It took time. They had to cross though a desert, where things were scary and often quite rough, but they also feasted on manna from heaven and they drank from springs of miraculous waters; and even when they finally did reach the Promised Land there were giants living there, and hostile neighbors. Freedom, it turns out, isn’t always easy, but it is good. Despite what you may have heard, freedom is far more than just another word for nothing left to lose.

Or at least it can be. Now I’m going to go back to being a Presbyterian and point out that in the Calvinist tradition, we understand that freedom comes in two forms. There is freedom from and freedom to. By walking away from slavery in Egypt, the children of Israel were freed from bondage, but that only got them down to the beach. By following Nashon ben Aminadav into the sea, and from there on to the Promised Land, the Children of Israel got the freedom to become a nation, freedom to live lives that nurtured the soul,

And I would say that by falling in love you have freed yourselves from the loneliness and uncertainty of single life; by walking boldly into marriage you are freeing yourselves to forge a life of mutual help and companionship together. You are freeing yourselves to build loving and nurturing home for your growing family. You are freeing yourselves to enter a grand adventure together. It’s not an easy adventure, but it is good. Manna and heavenly water await you along the way, and your destination is a promised land, but to get there you must hold hands and step into the water together, and as you do you are surrounded by our prayers, by our support and, more than anything else, by our love.

Ben