Lord, speak to us that we may speak in living echoes of your tone; As you have sought, so let us seek your erring children lost and lone. Give us the strength to n'ere retreat and greater still healing grace to speak. Amen.
How far we have come in the journey of civil rights during my lifetime; and not nearly far enough. I was born in 1953. Within a eight years of my birth WW2 ended in August of 1945. At the start of WW2 blacks and whites served in segregated units and companies. In 1948 Harry Truman issued orders eliminating any remaining segregation within the armed forces. In 1947 Branch Rickey brought up Jackie Robinson from the minor league team in Montreal to become the first black to play in major League Baseball.
Last evening I watched "42" the most recent telling of the story of Jackie Robinson and that summer of 1947. It is a story of courage, pain, suffering and struggles and realities of the changing world into which I was born. It is the story of one man with a vision and one man with a tremendous heart and a nation that was watching often with fear and anger and shock. It, literally, hurt to watch the representation of the treatment of Robinson. More yet I pitied and felt sick for those who inflicted that pain and felt free and self-justified in doing so.
It was years before I realized how close these events were to my birth and my childhood. I grew up in a family in Connecticut that was incredibly color blind. I cannot remember my mother or my father or either of my sets of grandparents ever, ever saying anything disparaging of a person of color. My father and then my brothers and I went to the same unintentionally integrated grade school from kindergarten through 6th grade. It was a school we never thought of as integrated. It was just our neighborhood school. My playmates were black and white and I can't say I ever really noticed. We were all just kids playing, living and studying together.
I remember as an older teen learning about experiences my black friends or their families had gone through. I never knew. It was something that had never been spoken.
The civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s was the next major step forward in the struggle of race relations in my world. In my naiveté the kids from my grade school were only my friends, "just like me," but that I discovered was a lie because of the hate some people directed towards them. The verbal and sometimes physical attacks they had on occasion endured were surreal to my ears.
I remember the evening news with hoses turned on the marchers in in Alabama. I remember the violence aimed at people simply standing and walking, blacks and whites arms linked together. I remember the stories of churches being bombed and children being killed. I remember the soaring rhetoric of speakers encouraging faithfulness to Christ. And I remember being stunned when I realized that people for and against segregation both used the Bible to justify their positions. I remember being confused and angry that people like my friends had to be afraid for their lives in my country and that others justified that in the name of Christ. I am sure all of this led to my sense of call and desire to speak eloquently exhorting and encouraging people forward in the kingdom of God where every person is someone important enough that Christ died for him or her.
Thanks be to God, I can still be naive even as cynicism has grown in me with the passing decades. I thought we had left all those days behind us. I wanted to believe that we had come as a majority in our country to believe people should be treated justly and have equal opportunities to succeed.
I now live in a world that increasingly angers me day by day. I see people retreating from those beliefs of justice, freedom, and opportunity for all because life is at the moment very hard for so many. I see people filled with cynicism to the point of hopelessness, fear, and anger.
Apparently the Supreme Court of the United States is, also, naive believing that protections like the Voting Rights Act are no longer necessary. For decades and more people trying to expand the opportunities of U S citizens to vote have been attacked with each passing election. Even groups like the League of Women Voters find themselves unable to meet new stringent registration rules. Numerous politicians and supporters have sought to deny as many as possible "minorities" from voting. These attacks are every bit as heinous as the poll taxes of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Less than two months following the majority opinion of SCOTUS saying parts of the Voting Rights Act were no longer needed bills have been forwarded and passed almost overnight in North Carolina and Texas. Oh, yes, they are naive or worse.
As we become a more diverse nation every day there are many who feel their power slipping away from them. They see black and Hispanic voters as a threat to "their" vision of America and the opportunities for "their" children and grandchildren to enjoy the success they had as our economy struggles. In fear they desire to remain an artificial majority by controlling who votes and to insure that that voting pool looks and thinks like them. If your ideas can't win, change who gets to vote. It is a self-centered narcissistic view of politics and the world. It is sin. It is evil, plain and simple.
I know what to do with sin. I have been trained and blessed with knowledge of how to deal with sin. First, one speaks about it honestly. One speaks, honestly, revealing it for what it is. It is disobedience to God's will. This fear and anger is rejecting God's way. And once we have exposed the sin we excise it by bringing God's grace to bear on it. We speak God's Word and Spirit into the situation. We remember those who have had to speak in the face of evil before us. and who needed to proclaim hope in God's favor.
Isaiah 61:
1 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Jackie Robinson had amazing strength to refusing to yield to hate, maybe stronger than we can imagine carrying himself with grace as the world changed.
How far we have come in the journey of civil rights during my lifetime; and not nearly far enough. I was born in 1953. Within a eight years of my birth WW2 ended in August of 1945. At the start of WW2 blacks and whites served in segregated units and companies. In 1948 Harry Truman issued orders eliminating any remaining segregation within the armed forces. In 1947 Branch Rickey brought up Jackie Robinson from the minor league team in Montreal to become the first black to play in major League Baseball.
Last evening I watched "42" the most recent telling of the story of Jackie Robinson and that summer of 1947. It is a story of courage, pain, suffering and struggles and realities of the changing world into which I was born. It is the story of one man with a vision and one man with a tremendous heart and a nation that was watching often with fear and anger and shock. It, literally, hurt to watch the representation of the treatment of Robinson. More yet I pitied and felt sick for those who inflicted that pain and felt free and self-justified in doing so.
It was years before I realized how close these events were to my birth and my childhood. I grew up in a family in Connecticut that was incredibly color blind. I cannot remember my mother or my father or either of my sets of grandparents ever, ever saying anything disparaging of a person of color. My father and then my brothers and I went to the same unintentionally integrated grade school from kindergarten through 6th grade. It was a school we never thought of as integrated. It was just our neighborhood school. My playmates were black and white and I can't say I ever really noticed. We were all just kids playing, living and studying together.
I remember as an older teen learning about experiences my black friends or their families had gone through. I never knew. It was something that had never been spoken.
The civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s was the next major step forward in the struggle of race relations in my world. In my naiveté the kids from my grade school were only my friends, "just like me," but that I discovered was a lie because of the hate some people directed towards them. The verbal and sometimes physical attacks they had on occasion endured were surreal to my ears.
I remember the evening news with hoses turned on the marchers in in Alabama. I remember the violence aimed at people simply standing and walking, blacks and whites arms linked together. I remember the stories of churches being bombed and children being killed. I remember the soaring rhetoric of speakers encouraging faithfulness to Christ. And I remember being stunned when I realized that people for and against segregation both used the Bible to justify their positions. I remember being confused and angry that people like my friends had to be afraid for their lives in my country and that others justified that in the name of Christ. I am sure all of this led to my sense of call and desire to speak eloquently exhorting and encouraging people forward in the kingdom of God where every person is someone important enough that Christ died for him or her.
Thanks be to God, I can still be naive even as cynicism has grown in me with the passing decades. I thought we had left all those days behind us. I wanted to believe that we had come as a majority in our country to believe people should be treated justly and have equal opportunities to succeed.
I now live in a world that increasingly angers me day by day. I see people retreating from those beliefs of justice, freedom, and opportunity for all because life is at the moment very hard for so many. I see people filled with cynicism to the point of hopelessness, fear, and anger.
Apparently the Supreme Court of the United States is, also, naive believing that protections like the Voting Rights Act are no longer necessary. For decades and more people trying to expand the opportunities of U S citizens to vote have been attacked with each passing election. Even groups like the League of Women Voters find themselves unable to meet new stringent registration rules. Numerous politicians and supporters have sought to deny as many as possible "minorities" from voting. These attacks are every bit as heinous as the poll taxes of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Less than two months following the majority opinion of SCOTUS saying parts of the Voting Rights Act were no longer needed bills have been forwarded and passed almost overnight in North Carolina and Texas. Oh, yes, they are naive or worse.
As we become a more diverse nation every day there are many who feel their power slipping away from them. They see black and Hispanic voters as a threat to "their" vision of America and the opportunities for "their" children and grandchildren to enjoy the success they had as our economy struggles. In fear they desire to remain an artificial majority by controlling who votes and to insure that that voting pool looks and thinks like them. If your ideas can't win, change who gets to vote. It is a self-centered narcissistic view of politics and the world. It is sin. It is evil, plain and simple.
I know what to do with sin. I have been trained and blessed with knowledge of how to deal with sin. First, one speaks about it honestly. One speaks, honestly, revealing it for what it is. It is disobedience to God's will. This fear and anger is rejecting God's way. And once we have exposed the sin we excise it by bringing God's grace to bear on it. We speak God's Word and Spirit into the situation. We remember those who have had to speak in the face of evil before us. and who needed to proclaim hope in God's favor.
Isaiah 61:
1 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Jackie Robinson had amazing strength to refusing to yield to hate, maybe stronger than we can imagine carrying himself with grace as the world changed.
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