Photographer: J.H. Kent, 24 State Street, Rochester NY |
“You are the light of the world. A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16, Common English Bible)
Addressing the founding members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, as they approached the New England coast, John Winthrop urged them “to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. . .
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” –John Winthrop, 1630.
What does it mean to let our light shine before others, to shine as a city upon a hill? How are we to conduct our lives, in relation to one another, and to the society and the land around us? One answer finds itself in the continuous striving for justice and reconciliation in American history.
Aunt Carol gave me a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe once she thought I was old enough to read it. She’d already given me ‘King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table’ by Roger Lancelyn Green (Penguin) and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain. The edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ she got for me was built to last. It survived mailing back and forth across the country better than the Mark Twain book did. And so it endures. The story is controversial now, as the old man of the title is one who survived a lifetime of bondage and chattel slavery, by enduring his condition, and while not condoning it, somehow accepting it as his life. People don’t put up with that anymore and the younger people in the story don’t always either. Remember, if only from ‘The King and I,’ the famous scene of Eliza crossing the ice of the Ohio River, to freedom in the northern states. Or more safely Canada. The reason I bring up this book at all is that it illustrates not only progress in attitudes but also the historical legacy of people who did work against the dismal institution. Sometimes slavery is called, along with the treatment of indigenous peoples, America’s original sin.
On the Fifth of July, 1852, in an address to the ‘Ladies of the "Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society,"’ of Rochester New York, Frederick Douglass called it “slavery--the great sin and shame of America!”
To him the words of the Psalmist rang true, and he took them as prophetic for his own day:
" By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." (Psalm 137:1-6a)
In 1853 in upstate New York he was speaking to a sympathetic audience, but he did not identify with their 4th of July: “the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom” - but not his own.
For, he said, Independence Day, the subject on which he was asked to speak, was not a day of freedom for the enslaved, far from it. “The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn… the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!”
(https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945)
The military struggle was yet to come, between slaveholder state and free, between the urbanized and industrial North, and the largely agricultural and rural South. We know, however, how closely intertwined these sections of the nation actually were. Each was linked to the other by chains of commerce that were not easily broken.
And the war came. And in it fought men for their freedom, or freedom not their own, or the principle of Union, or the perpetuation of that sin.
The Episcopal Church did not split like other Protestant denominations, which only in the mid-twentieth century reknit into single organizations. The Episcopal Church was episcopal in structure, each diocese making its own way, and the General Convention, then as now held every three years, simply did not meet during the conflict. Indeed it lent at least one bishop, Kirby Smith, to the Confederate cause.
(He went on to teach at the University of the South after the war.) (https://new.sewanee.edu/roberson-project/learn-more/research-summary)
In other words this denominational family, while it did not formally divorce as others did, did not evade the conflict or its causes. Today church institutions like the national cathedral in Washington, D.C., and Virginia Theological Seminary, as part of modern efforts to reconcile, are addressing their past historical involvement with slavery, and their own complicity in and gains from the system of which it was a part and the convenient doctrines that undergirded it.
Not more than a dozen years after Frederick Douglass spoke, the Civil War came to an end. Many people later gave various explanations for its cause, and its ostensible purpose. When asked what it was about, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate cavalry commander and later Alabama leader of the Ku Klux Klan, said, simply, it was about slavery.
After the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, volunteers “of African descent” were formed into regiments of the Union Army.
On April 9th 1865, the same day Lee surrendered, three brigades of U.S. Colored Troops fighting alongside other Union soldiers overcame the defenses at Fort Blakeley, Alabama, and received the surrender of some of the last soldiers still fighting for a lost cause: slavery. While other days are more commonly celebrated in connection with the Civil War or with the struggle for liberty for all, this marked the end of the war for many, and a new birth of freedom; the campaign for justice continues.
Indeed, some of the soldiers who fought in that battle served months or years longer before going home, as they worked to bring the benefits of freedom to the newly free.
Aunt Carol - who said of her own Southern forebears “they were all secesh (secessionists)” - was liberal for her day, a lifelong supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – perhaps since its institution – and subscriber to Ramparts magazine (which she would dutifully forward to us once read).
The NAACP and and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) fostered the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s; and then there followed the Black Power movements of the 1960s, not to mention the emerging theologies of Black Liberation and womanist - Black feminist - theologians. Today we strive to make progress, or regain it, in an era when the churches, including our own, hold racial reconciliation as a goal.
Some members of our congregations were delegates to the last diocesan convention, whose theme was ‘Reconciled in Christ: Becoming Beloved Community,’ with its title from Saint Paul and its subtitle from Josiah Royce and Howard Thurman - and Martin Luther King Jr.
This is Black History Month...
On January 15th 1981, on a gray day in Washington, D.C., as a gentle snow was drifting down, thirty thousand people gathered at the foot of a slope southwest of the Washington Monument. From the Park Service stage raised for the occasion, we heard political leaders like Elihu Harris speak on behalf of a new federal holiday they proposed. The chant went up, “We want a holiday – Martin Luther King Day!” And then Steve Wonder introduced a new song, sung gently in the drifting snow: “Happy Birthday, dear Martin.”
We have a long way to go, to become beloved community, and worthily shine as a city upon a hill, showing light to the world, that all people may rejoice in the gifts of our Creator, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God. We have a long way to go, but if we are reconciled in Christ, the work is well begun, and the road is before us.
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* Union troops at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, that preceded Lee’s surrender, included some 5,000 United States Colored Troops.
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https://blackhistorymonth.gov/about/
https://www.blakeleypark.com/About-Us
https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-surrender-meeting.htm
https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-battle-of-appomattox-court-house.htm
https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm
https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/gettysburgaddress.htm
Psalm 112:4 Light shines in the darkness for the upright; *
the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.
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"A City Built Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid" Giotto, Legend of St. Francis, 1297-99, detail, |
(http://edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany5a.html)
From the Diocesan Commission to End Racism. West Virginia. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/responding-to-racist-violence/pray/
1. JANUARY--For an end to slavery: (January 1, Emancipation Proclamation)
“O God of liberty and justice: we live in a nation in which the institution of human bondage was once a legal and accepted practice. We give thanks for those who worked and fought, at great personal sacrifice, to bring about an end to that cruel and oppressive system in our own land, and we pray that governments and authorities everywhere in the world might be led to make a quick end to the enslavement of any human being, throughout the Earth.” Amen.
3. MARCH-- For racial harmony
“Creator of all people, in our amazing diversity of size, shape, color, and giftedness: guide us, by your grace, to recognize the beauty and fitness of all whom you have made in your own image. Give us gifts of humility and generosity of spirit to recognize in all people, the face of our Savior, Jesus, and to practice his commandment to “love one another,” toward the end of bringing harmony and peace among persons of all colors, origins, and abilities, for the sake of your Kingdom.” Amen.
4. APRIL-- For the heroes and heroines of the struggle for civil rights (thanks and future encouragement) (April, death of Martin Luther King, Jr)
“O bountiful and merciful God: you have blessed your people with great prophets and leaders to advance the cause of equality under law in this nation and in the world. By their teaching and preaching; by their action and example; by their marching, demonstrating, and sitting in; by their organizing, praying and singing, they have made themselves and the dream of non-discrimination impossible for opponents to ignore and possible for those marginalized to dream. Give us such leaders always, Lord. Let the cry for justice always be heard in our land until, by your gracious will, your children live together in freedom, justice, and equality. Amen.
