Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 15, 2018, "God is ready and roaring"

B Proper 10 15 Ord BFC 2018

Amos 7:7-15

July 15, 2018

          The last week of June, Rep. Maxine Waters, legislator from California, actively called for the peaceful, inhospitable confrontation of Trump Administration officials, to push back.   She was greeted with push back of her own referencing her call for incivility as dangerous and a bad precedent, Waters receiving numerous death threats. 

The week before, Stephanie Wilkerson, owner of the Red Hen farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, had been called by the chef to tell her that President Trump’s Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, had arrived with a group of people at the restaurant.  The staff was concerned.  What should he do?  She hopped in her car and headed down to the restaurant.  It was true.  Sanders, party of eight, had taken their seats and were eating from the cheese boards.  She knew what the Trump Administration had meant to many of her employees, several of them identifying as members of the LGBTQ community.  Wilkerson quickly huddled with her staff and asked them what they would have her do.  The staff wanted to ask Sanders and her party to leave.  Wilkinson asked Sanders to step outside with her and said, “I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.  I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.’”  Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party left, with Sanders then tweeting out her displeasure. 

It was the week of July the 4^th, the day when we celebrate the values of our country, a remembrance, sometimes, of where we have grossly failed, a grand experiment in democracy we may never get fully right, and the peculiar idea of the United States as a country where e pluribus unum—“out of many, one.”  The common idea of a monolithic state where the one dictates to the many has been tried and tried and been found morally wanting.  “One person, one vote” is that sense that we are all participants in this grand experiment, our voice and our basic life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness matters, such that when others try to usurp, fabricate, or manipulate away from not only our equal protection but also the common good, something is amiss and we must engage and confront. 

So it was that on July 2^nd, middle-school teacher Kristin Mink was out for lunch with her two year-old son when she noticed the then Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Scott Pruitt, out for lunch as well.  She loaded her son on her hip, an important part of shaping her values, and headed over to Pruitt’s table.  She began

Hi.  I just wanted to urge you to resign for what you are doing to the environment in our country.  This is my son. He loves animals. He loves clean air. He loves clean water. Meanwhile, you’re slashing strong fuel standards for cars and trucks for the benefit of big corporations. You’ve been paying about 50 bucks a night to stay in a D.C. condo that’s connected to an energy lobbying firm, while approving their dirty sands pipeline. We deserve to have somebody at the EPA who actually does protect our environment, somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously for the benefit of all of us, including our children. So, I would urge you to resign before your scandals push you out.[1]

When she was finished, Scott Pruitt thanked her.[2]  Three days later, Pruitt did resign, most assuredly not from the singular confrontation of Kristin Mink, as Mink herself knew of the number of people who have called him out, but any embarrassment or shame or dishonor Pruitt experienced on that day came from a person who spoke and carried her values plainly, truthfully, forthrightly, in a confrontational, non-violent manner.  Just the week before, Kristin Mink had been arrested at the Hart Senate Office Building for protesting the separation of children from their parents at our country’s border with Mexico.[3] 

Whether it is Karen Mink with her two year-old son or Stephanie Wilkerson with her Red Hen staff, love shows a willingness to align ourselves with others and not let go, not turn away, to show up and stand up.  Justice is love with legs on, what love looks like in public.[4]

We need to get back to basics—to tunnel down to who we are in relationship to Creator, to the good earth Creator is continuing to shape and form, to each other as blessed partners in mutual care and public love for one another.  We do that, I believe, by beginning to affirm that we know what God intends for us—life, rest, love, play, and joy.  Some of us can feel that in our bones.  Others need to engage practices to get that into our bloodstream:  practices like counting our blessings, regular movements in prayer, gratitude, meditation, and the stretch and pull of our bodies sunward.  Still others have been so beaten down, hear another message so much in our lives, that we have to fake it till we make it:  teach and preach it so much that it gets into us, ask good friends and colleagues to hem us in with their love, wisdom, and warning, use our imagination, science fiction, to see the world not how it us but how God wills it, desires it, with us in it—living surrounded and embraced in love, rest, play, and joy.

          That is one of the basics.  One of the other basics is the birth story of the Jewish people, the exodus.  The Children of Israel were victims of abuse and exploitation, enslaved in bondage by the most powerful nation of the age, Egypt.  It is the mark of compassion that God identifies with them, promises to release them from bondage, and delivers them.  God would not let go, did not turn away, showed up and stood up.  In the same way, the Jewish people were held captive in exile.  The most powerful nation of the age, Babylon, razed the Jewish Temple, salted the promised land, and carted off the best and brightest to sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land.  In that foreign land, God identifies with the Jewish people in compassion, promises to return them from exile, and delivers them.  God would not let go, did not turn away, showed up and stood up.  The action of God in Israel's past history is to ground and shape Israel's own continuing action on behalf of those comparably abused and marginalized.”[5]   

The prophets were those reluctant leaders who held onto the plight of the people in one hand, asked for God’s mercy, and held the hand of God in the other, unwilling to let go of a character that demanded compassion for people in their own nation who might identify as Hebrew slaves in Egypt or Jewish exiles in Babylon in another age.[6]  Earlier in chapter 7, the prophet Amos pleads for the people, begs as an intermediary for God’s mercy.  But now a plumb line has been established, a way to say that God’s compassionate character for the economically poor and the socially outcast cannot abide by systemic evil found in Israel.  The way must be made straight.  In an ode to the Exodus story, God can no longer “pass over” this violence, injustice, and evil.  God must pass through--wreaking desolation and waste on the halls of the political power and the signs and symbols of spiritual collaboration and corruption.[7]

          Indeed.  Amos is regularly preaching at Beth-el, literally meaning, “the house of God”, that place where Jacob encountered the Divine.  The ruling priest at Bethel, Amaziah, shows just how coopted he is by the political establishment.  Rather than assert the freedom intended to provide necessary critique to the political establishment as a spiritual leader, Amaziah wants Amos to stop preaching at Bethel. In verse 13, Amaziah sends out an edict, “Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”

“With those words the religious justification of political empire is complete, and faith is reduced to patriotic cheer-leading.”[8]

Hebrew Scripture scholar, Terence Fretheim, penned an article way back in 2008, titled, “The Prophets and Social Justice:  A Conservative Agenda.”  Fretheim’s point was that social justice was not a new morality or a novel analysis.  He writes, “In promoting social justice, the prophets were religious conservatives. They built on the ancient traditions of Israel and the central promises of God to call Israel to attend to issues of justice on behalf of the oppressed.”[9]  What the prophets did do differently and creatively and new in each age, Fretheim observed,  was to figure out how to “get in the face” and “under the skin” of the rulers, public officials, and religious elite, often at great sacrifice.

Those signs of God’s creative love are breaking out everywhere and we best pay attention to recognize that the Divine is seeking ways to make love public.  It might be a Parkland, Florida, student, with stubborn, opportunistic discipline, in love for their classmates, asking an elected official to not take one more dime from the NRA as a way to move through thoughts and prayers to real action to curb gun violence.  Or it might be an organization of kayakers, in love of the earth, who will not allow an oil-drilling rig moored in Seattle to leave port to make its way up to Alaska.  It could be Native people who hold up camp in North Dakota in prayer and wisdom, for the love of water, to stop the advancement of a pipeline that turned out to be everything they said it would be.  Or it could be children and youth who, in love of their future, bring a law suit against the federal government to end the despoiling and ravaging of the earth. 

Do you feel it?  It is the love of God, bubbling up among those who know those communal values, who know words like “community” and “citizen” and “family” are defined far more widely broadly than what the domination system tells us.  We define those words in a way that is far more long-standing, in a way that is new or novel but in a way that is Biblical and ancient and religiously conservative to attend to issues of justice on behalf of the oppressed.  Amos defines God as a lioness, on the hunt, on the prowl, her feet padding out of the den to say, “Enough!  No more!  It is time to restore the ancient values on which the good earth was created.”  She roars and she is ready. 

I think, somewhere along the line, we were told that religion makes us into nice, civil people.  We are supposed to be nice.  I just don’t see it.  Not with these cantankerous prophets—tambourine players, shepherds, stutterers, and carpenters.  Not with this wild God who seems much happier in a tent than in a palace, is found changing the world more out in the desert and wilderness than in the halls of Congress, and on this day is coursing in you to bring about the transformation of this community and this country. 

Pshaw, you say.  Not happening you say.  In every time, there will be religious leaders like Amaziah who try to shut you up and tell you not to preach.  We are part of a long-standing tradition, a conservative tradition, a Biblical tradition, that will not shut up.  In the time of Christ, the religious elite tried to quiet the crowds, and Jesus knew.  He knew that God would have the very stones sing out if the crowds were quieted. 

Why are we losing hope?  God’s movement is breaking out all across our country.  All it requires is for us to enter the struggle in love.  As Christians, we are called to do this confrontation non-violently, with a discipline and wisdom that represents our freedom apart from any political party.  We seek transformative justice.   We do not confront, or get under the skin, or get in the face to do what I call “garbage can protests”—where we feel content hearing our own voices or seeing our own signs from two blocks away.  We find creative ways, opportunistic ways to confront with deeply held, Fretheim’s basic, conservative values seeking transformation.  And we also do this confrontation with an idea of what we will do next.   Then we keep practicing and practicing and practicing until what was once on the skin, gets under the skin, what was under the skin gets into the bloodstream, what was in the bloodstream gets typed on every, last red blood cell found in the body politic.  Amos defined it as letting justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  It just keeps rolling and flowing.  All we have to do is rock and roll, get in the flow. 

Basic, conservative faith tradition.  In shimmying up the flag pole to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State house, after the shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Bree Newsome, quoted Psalm 27, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?”  Indeed.  Nothing new.  Nothing novel.  You are loved.  Do not fear.  In love, God seeks the transformation of oppression, abuse, exploitation, and domination.  In the public square.  With legs on.  God is on the move.  We best walk together. Amen. 

---

[1] Kristin Mink, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLIsLLlLIA.  Kristin Mink, “Meet the Mother Who Confronted Scott Pruitt & Urged Him to Resign—Three Days Later, He Did,” Democracy Now!, July 6, 2018, https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/6/meet_the_mother_who_confronted_scott.

[2] Bonnie Fuller, “Kristin Mink:  5 Things to Know About Teacher Who Told Scott Pruitt to Resign in a Restaurant,” Hollywood Life, July 3, 2018, https://hollywoodlife.com/2018/07/03/who-is-kristin-mink-confronted-scott-pruitt-restaurant/. 

[3] Ibid.

[4]Dr. Cornel West, of course.

[5] Terence E. Fretheim, “The Prophets and Social Justice:  A Conservative Agenda, Word and World, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring 2008, p. 164

[6] Ibid, pp. 152ff.

[7] John Holbert, “Preaching from Amos? Reflections on Amos 7:7-17,” Patheos, July 7, 2013, http://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/preaching-amos-john-holbert-07-08-2013.html

[8] Daniel P. Clendenin, “Remembering Romero:  Amos the Prophet vs. Amaziah the Priest,” Journey with Jesus, 2010, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20100705JJ.shtml.

[9] Fretheim, “The Prophets,” p. 159

The Epistle to the People of the United States from the Apostle Bree

Rose Marie Berger recommended Bree Newsome's beautifully courageous and loving letter for the epistle reading to celebrate the 4th of July.  I think it is a perfect supplement to the regular readings.

Now is the time for true courage.

I realized that now is the time for true courage the morning after the Charleston Massacre shook me to the core of my being. I couldn’t sleep. I sat awake in the dead of night. All the ghosts of the past seemed to be rising.

Not long ago, I had watched the beginning of Selma, the reenactment of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and had shuddered at the horrors of history.

But this was neither a scene from a movie nor was it the past. A white man had just entered a black church and massacred people as they prayed. He had assassinated a civil rights leader. This was not a page in a textbook I was reading nor an inscription on a monument I was visiting.

This was now.

This was real.

This was—this is—still happening.

I began my activism by participating in the Moral Monday movement, fighting to restore voting rights in North Carolina after the Supreme Court struck down key protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

I traveled down to Florida where the Dream Defenders were demanding justice for Trayvon Martin, who reminded me of a modern-day Emmett Till.

I marched with the Ohio Students Association as they demanded justice for victims of police brutality.

I watched in horror as black Americans were tear-gassed in their own neighborhoods in Ferguson, MO. “Reminds me of the Klan,” my grandmother said as we watched the news together. As a young black girl in South Carolina, she had witnessed the Klan drag her neighbor from his house and brutally beat him because he was a black physician who had treated a white woman.

I visited with black residents of West Baltimore, MD who, under curfew, had to present work papers to police to enter and exit their own neighborhood. “These are my freedom papers to show the slave catchers,” my friend said with a wry smile.

And now, in the past 6 days, I’ve seen arson attacks against 5 black churches in the South, including in Charlotte, NC where I organize alongside other community members striving to create greater self-sufficiency and political empowerment in low-income neighborhoods.

For far too long, white supremacy has dominated the politics of America resulting in the creation of racist laws and cultural practices designed to subjugate non-whites. And the emblem of the confederacy, the stars and bars, in all its manifestations, has long been the most recognizable banner of this political ideology. It’s the banner of racial intimidation and fear whose popularity experiences an uptick whenever black Americans appear to be making gains economically and politically in this country.

It’s a reminder how, for centuries, the oppressive status quo has been undergirded by white supremacist violence with the tacit approval of too many political leaders.

The night of the Charleston Massacre, I had a crisis of faith. The people who gathered for Bible study in Emmanuel AME Church that night—Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson and Rev. Clementa Pinckney (rest in peace)—were only doing what Christians are called to do when anyone knocks on the door of the church: invite them into fellowship and worship.

The day after the massacre I was asked what the next step was and I said I didn’t know. We’ve been here before and here we are again: black people slain simply for being black; an attack on the black church as a place of spiritual refuge and community organization.

I refuse to be ruled by fear. How can America be free and be ruled by fear? How can anyone be?

So, earlier this week I gathered with a small group of concerned citizens, both black and white, who represented various walks of life, spiritual beliefs, gender identities and sexual orientations. Like millions of others in America and around the world, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and President Barack Obama, we felt (and still feel) that the confederate battle flag in South Carolina, hung in 1962 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, must come down. (Of course, we are not the first to demand the flag’s removal. Civil rights groups in South Carolina and nationwide have been calling for the flag’s removal since the moment it was raised, and I acknowledge their efforts in working to remove the flag over the years via the legislative process.)

We discussed it and decided to remove the flag immediately, both as an act of civil disobedience and as a demonstration of the power people have when we work together. Achieving this would require many roles, including someone who must volunteer to scale the pole and remove the flag. It was decided that this role should go to a black woman and that a white man should be the one to help her over the fence as a sign that our alliance transcended both racial and gender divides. We made this decision because for us, this is not simply about a flag, but rather it is about abolishing the spirit of hatred and oppression in all its forms.

I removed the flag not only in defiance of those who enslaved my ancestors in the southern United States, but also in defiance of the oppression that continues against black people globally in 2015, including the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the Dominican Republic. I did it in solidarity with the South African students who toppled a statue of the white supremacist, colonialist Cecil Rhodes. I did it for all the fierce black women on the front lines of the movement and for all the little black girls who are watching us. I did it because I am free.

To all those who might label me an “outside agitator,” I say to you that humanitarianism has no borders. I am a global citizen. My prayers are with the poor, the afflicted and the oppressed everywhere in the world, as Christ instructs. If this act of disobedience can also serve as a symbol to other peoples’ struggles against oppression or as a symbol of victory over fear and hate, then I know all the more that I did the right thing.

Even if there were borders to my empathy, those borders would most certainly extend into South Carolina. Several of my African ancestors entered this continent through the slave market in Charleston. Their unpaid toil brought wealth to America via Carolina plantations. I am descended from those who survived racial oppression as they built this nation: My 4thgreat grandfather, who stood on an auction block in South Carolina refusing to be sold without his wife and newborn baby; that newborn baby, my 3rd great grandmother, enslaved for 27 years on a plantation in Rembert, SC where she prayed daily for her children to see freedom; her husband, my 3rd great grandfather, an enslaved plowboy on the same plantation who founded a church on the eve of the Civil War that stands to this day; their son, my great-great grandfather, the one they called “Free Baby” because he was their first child born free, all in South Carolina.

You see, I know my history and my heritage. The Confederacy is neither the only legacy of the south nor an admirable one. The southern heritage I embrace is the legacy of a people unbowed by racial oppression. It includes towering figures of the Civil Rights Movement like Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers and Ella Baker. It includes the many people who rarely make the history books but without whom there is no movement. It includes pillars of the community like Rev. Clementa Pinckney and Emmanuel AME Church.

The history of the South is also in many ways complex and full of inconvenient truths. But in order to move into the future we must reckon with the past. That’s why I commend people like Sen. Paul Thurmond for having the courage to speak truth in this moment.

Words cannot express how deeply touched I am to see how yesterday’s action inspired so many. The artwork, poems, music and memes are simply beautiful! I am also deeply grateful to those who have generously donated to the defense fund established in my name and to those who have offered to cover my legal expenses.

As you are admiring my courage in that moment, please remember that this is not, never has been and never should be just about one woman. This action required collective courage just as this movement requires collective courage. Not everyone who participated in the strategizing for this non-violent direct action volunteered to have their names in the news so I will respect their privacy. Nonetheless, I’m honored to be counted among the many freedom fighters, both living and dead.

I see no greater moral cause than liberation, equality and justice f­­or all God’s people. What better reason to risk your own freedom than to fight for the freedom of others? That’s the moral courage demonstrated yesterday by James Ian Tyson who helped me across the fence and stood guard as I climbed. History will rightly remember him alongside the many white allies who, over the centuries, have risked their own safety in defense of black life and in the name of racial equality.

While I remain highly critical of the nature of policing itself in the United States, both the police and the jailhouse personnel I encountered on Saturday were nothing short of professional in their interactions with me. I know there was some concern from supporters on the outside that I might be harmed while in police custody, but that was not the case.

It is important to remember that our struggle doesn’t end when the flag comes down. The Confederacy is a southern thing, but white supremacy is not. Our generation has taken up the banner to fight battles many thought were won long ago. We must fight with all vigor now so that our grandchildren aren’t still fighting these battles in another 50 years. Black Lives Matter. This is non-negotiable.

I encourage everyone to understand the history, recognize the problems of the present and take action to show the world that the status quo is not acceptable. The last few days have confirmed to me that people understand the importance of action and are ready to take such action. Whether the topic is trending nationally or it’s an issue affecting our local communities, those of us who are conscious must do what is right in this moment. And we must do it without fear. New eras require new models of leadership. This is a multi-leader movement. I believe that. I stand by that. I am because we are. I am one of many.

This moment is a call to action for us all. All honor and praise to God.