A Non-Sermon on Race

Scripture: Isaiah 59:9-15, 58:5-9

I have been asked by the leadership of my denomination to preach today on race. Not just me. Everyone preaching in a UCC church this morning has been asked to preach on race. This is a result, as many of you know, of the recent public attacks on Jeremiah Wright and the frenzy that surrounded the YouTubing and the subsequent right-wing-tubing of a few excerpts from his sermons. The response of the United Church of Christ in part was to call for what are being referred to as “sacred conversations on race”, a concept that is intended to take place over some extended period of time and that will take different forms in different local settings but that is to be kicked off by asking all UCC preachers to preach on race on May 18, today, which just happens to be a Sunday known in some churches as Trinity Sunday (as in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and Trinity just happens to be the name of the church Jeremiah Wright pastored for several decades and that Barack Obama is a member of. I don’t know whether the choice of Trinity Sunday was intentional.

What I do know is that I welcome the call for sermons on race and I’m happy to contribute to what I trust is a much wider effort. I don’t have much of an idea how many congregations will be hearing sermons on race this morning. I have a sense that maybe there will be quite a few, but I admit that I’m basing that on a pretty small sample. I haven’t talked to that many people. But, as I say, I didn’t have trouble deciding to respond to the call. This is, of course, not something new at Sojourners, neither a sermon on race nor public discussion and open conversation about race. This will not be the last sermon I give on race at Sojourners. Nevertheless, the call for sermons and/or sacred conversations around the topic of race is something that’s always appropriate, and as you might guess, for me, it’s something I could not fail to respond to, regardless of what has happened at Sojourners in the past.

Archie Thornton and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. He said he guessed people at Sojourners already know what I think. And it’s true that I have addressed the subject of race in whole sermons and parts of sermons over the years. He went on to say, at least this is what I heard him say, that what we really need is to find a way to learn more about what we all think, to find ways of speaking and listening to each other. And I agree, emphatically and wholeheartedly. And it is also obvious that sermons are not conversations. If they are not completely bland, they may inspire an occasional conversation, both positively and negatively, and of course it is possible to intentionally build conversations around sermons, but mostly that doesn’t happen, and in themselves they are not conversations. They tend to be much more like pronouncements, if not in intention then at least in perception. And in any case a sermon is just one voice.

So it did seem to me like there was a touch of humor or irony in the fact that there was a call to have “sacred conversations” about race that would begin with a bunch of sermons. I understand that the theory is that these sermons will be just the first word in an ongoing conversation about race, but I fear the reality will be that in many cases the first word will become the last word and the so-called conversation on race will consist of one sermon given on May 18, and that will not be a conversation. I also know that the idea is that in many congregations in order for a conversation to take place at all, there needs to be a breaking of the silence about race. In many congregations race is spoken of only in generalities and platitudes, and the intent for these sermons being presumably given today is to open up some new areas where honest dialogue can take place. We’ll see. One thing I think about race is that the resistance to talking meaningfully about racial matters can be pretty strong, and so here at Sojourners I want to keep Archie’s thought on this very much in mind as we go forward. Even here at Sojourners where we are not silent on matters of race, we need to be committed to having those ongoing conversations among ourselves. Otherwise, it will not happen, and it is not the case that we don’t need them.

Having said all that, I decided to go ahead a give a sermon on race today, or rather a non-sermon in the sense of wanting to emphasize that this is intended to be not a pronouncement or a pontificating or a last word of any kind but merely a first word, as I would like to think all my sermons are. The racial justice group will need to consider what our future conversations will look like. That’s one reason I decided to go ahead and preach today. They haven’t had a chance to meet yet.

The other reason is that I’m not so sure that what Archie said is quite true, the part about people at Sojourners knowing what I think. Many of you sitting here this morning have not heard what I have said over the past eight years in sermons. Some of you haven’t heard me say much of anything. And I suspect that for everyone, even those of you who have been around for a while, if someone said “so what does your pastor think about race?” you would say “well, I’m pretty sure he’s in favor of racial justice”. “Uh huh, and what else does he think?” It probably gets more difficult at that point, but it’s the “what else” that we need to talk about.

And just one more thought in this too long introduction: One of the conversations we really need to have is with ourselves, sorting through what we each think, and feel, and believe. Not only can we not take for granted that we know what someone else thinks, we can’t take for granted that we know what we think, or what we would think if we thought about it. In that spirit, in the spirit of a non-sermon, in the spirit of words that are meant to be part of a much longer conversation, I offer the following thoughts.

First of all a thought about why the Jeremiah Wright incident has led to a call for sacred conversations on race. It was not the fact that Jeremiah Wright was under attack and Jeremiah Wright is black and pastored a predominantly black church and therefore all attacks on him are automatically and by definition racist. That is not the approach here as I see it. It is not that criticism of this prominent black minister is not allowed and that the existence of such criticism is evidence of racism and therefore we need to talk about race.

There has been, of course, a natural and understandable tendency among many in the UCC, myself included, to kind of circle the wagons and come to the defense of one of our own, a valued member of our faith community. But in the end this is not about Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama, and I hear the call for conversations on race as an attempt to say just that. If we react to these events as though Wright or Obama were the issue, we are missing the point.

This incident has been about race, but not so much because one black man has been attacked for the purpose of damaging another black man’s political ambitions. It is about race because a few people took it upon themselves to make sure that vast numbers of Americans would be exposed to an image of a black man who not only said a few things that seemed very objectionable on the surface but who seemed angry, alienated, unreasonable, and in general rather unfriendly toward mainstream American culture, and this image seemed to be somewhat startling, maybe even shocking, disturbing, upsetting, and objectionable to many white Americans who saw it. And from where I sit, it is that reaction that we need to talk about. We can talk about what Jeremiah Wright said too, if we want. He is not off limits or immune from criticism. But we also need to talk about our reactions to the images that were so purposely presented to us and the issues raised for all of us by the kinds of reactions we have seen.

Here are some things I think and feel. I think many white Americans would like to wish the issue of race out of existence as something we have to deal with in our society. I think many white Americans want to pretend that it has already in effect gone away, that it was an issue in the past but that it is not a serious issue any more, that we have made so much progress that we can now move on to other issues.

I think many white Americans would like to imagine that Black Americans in general understand and appreciate that most white Americans are people of good will, fair-minded and unprejudiced. I think many white Americans want Black Americans to remember that many white people once stood in a circle singing “We shall overcome…black and white together…” and maybe all we really need to do to overcome the remainder of our racism is to get together and sing “we shall overcome” a few more times. I think many white Americans would like to think that.

I think many white Americans would like to think that, as an example, we can dismiss the fact that the US government conducted syphilis experiments on black servicemen without their consent or knowledge, that we can hear about such a thing and think the appropriate response is a sad shake of the head or a kind of “tsk, tsk” remembering that some awful things have been done in the past and that was too bad, but surely nothing like that could ever happen now and therefore so far as such things go there are really no lasting scars we have to deal with, just a bad and distant memory that we would be better off forgetting about. I think many white Americans have the attitude that so far as such things go, to use the words of a prominent Virginian from a few years ago, we should all “just get over it.”

I think many white Americans would like to think that so far as dealing with the ongoing realities of racism in our society that we can discharge any responsibility we may have by engaging in “sacred conversations”, which many white Americans will interpret to mean polite and upbeat conversations that will reassure us that we are on the right track, and then we can put the issues aside once again. I think that many white Americans would like to think that we live in post-racial times in a post-racial society, that we have recognized the racism in our past, that we have dealt with it rather successfully, that we are continuing to make progress whatever progress we need to make, and that the introduction of anger, hostility, or accusation into any discussion involving race is unwelcome, uncalled for, inappropriate, and offensive.

And so when many white Americans are presented an image of this black minister who appears very angry, he is described as hate-filled. And when many white Americans are presented with an image of this black minister who has not bought in to the essential goodness of mainstream American culture, and who remains unimpressed by our record on race, and who remains unconvinced of how much good the good intentions of white Americans are likely to do, many white Americans are troubled and upset and maybe outraged. There is a need to isolate him, to describe him as a crazy man, a lunatic, a fanatic, an extremist. Because God forbid, we wouldn’t want to understand any of those emotions as in any way legitimate or as representing the feelings of anyone in the black community other than himself, because if we did we would acknowledge that we still have a lot of work to do in dealing with the continuing legacy of racism in this country, but if we can marginalize a man such as Jeremiah Wright successfully, then we can hold on to our positive attitude about ourselves and it will make our work much more comfortable.

Likewise, when Michele Obama says that during this campaign she has felt for the first time in her life that she is really part of America, many white Americans respond as though she has said something horrible, as though she must be lying because surely she couldn’t really feel that way, or she shouldn’t really feel that way. If she were taken seriously when she said that, it would mean that we have been less successful at dealing with race than we would like to think. It would mean that we are not as good as we would like to imagine we are.

I chose two scriptures for this morning that in a funny sort of way have something to do with what I’m talking about. I thought Isaiah might have something appropriate, or Jeremiah, and so I opened my Bible to about where those books should be and it fell open to the 59th chapter of Isaiah and I read: “Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! There is darkness, for brightness but we walk in gloom…Our transgressions before you are many; our sins testify against us…Justice is turned back and righteousness stands at a distance and truth stumbles in the public square.” It goes on in that vein. You heard it. We don’t really know what specifically it was in ancient Israeli society that caused those words to be said, but from where I sit, they are words that could be said today, and I would have a pretty good sense of where they came from. But they are bleak words. They are not nice words. There is not much about them that is hopeful. There is not much about them that is positive in any way. There is not much about them that would present Isaiah’s society in any kind of a good light. They are not words that would have been easily heard, then or now. More likely they would have been seen then and would be seen today as negative and hate-filled, the words of a crazy man, a lunatic, certainly not anyone or anything we would need to take seriously.

The other reading, also from Isaiah, just a chapter earlier, is nicer. It has good values. It doesn’t tell us that we should just look out for ourselves, that oppression is nothing to worry about, or anything like that. Indeed it says, with a poetic flair: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free…Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house…Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…Then you shall call and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am.” These are nicer words, still challenging but nicer sounding anyway. They seem to assume that people do have good impulses and that if they act on those impulses God will be with them and everything will be ok. They are the kinds of words that good Christians would prefer to hear. I even said to myself after I read the first set of words, the harsher words, that I can’t have just that as a reading. There’s nothing positive in it, no good news. I am among those who believe that we need some positive words, some encouragement and hopefulness. But I also believe that in order to have meaningful conversations about race, and in order to address ongoing issues of race among us, we are going to have to take the harder words seriously.

All these thoughts I have been putting out there this morning—I think I mean them to add up to one basic thought. That we do not live in a post-racial society. We have not gotten past race as an issue in society. As William Faulkner is often quoted as saying: The past is not dead. The past is not even past. And nowhere is that more true than with regard to race in America. I am not going to argue that point with statistics this morning. You know, statistics about school achievement gaps or drop-out rates, people in prison, poverty, home ownership, net family wealth, college attendance, all those often interrelated things that paint a pretty dismal picture of a society that has not gotten past race as an issue.

But I’m thinking about other things that tell us we haven’t gotten past race. In theological circles the feminist movement has had a strong impact, challenging policies of exclusion, changing the make-up of the church’s leadership and the language we use in worship, offering new perspectives in the ways we think about God and study the Bible. Feminism has had a profound and positive effect on the life of the church. But early on as this influence was developing, African American women within the church who had feminist concerns found themselves feeling that their voices were not being heard so much or some of their concerns represented so much, and so they began to refer to themselves as womanists rather than feminists. Race has played a role and continues to play a role in the feminist movement within the church. I am not as familiar with the ways this plays out in the secular feminist movement, but familiar enough to enough to know that race is a factor there as well.

The green movement has often been perceived to have a strong white and middle class flavor to it, in spite of the efforts of the eco-justice movement to bring environmental and racial concerns together. The peace movement likewise has often been perceived as white and middle class in character. In Chicago I had the opportunity to work with a new church start whose mission was to be a safe place for African American gay and lesbian Christians. They had not felt welcomed or at home in predominantly white churches that were welcoming of gay and lesbian folks. They had not felt welcomed or at home in the African American churches they had grown up in. Just one example of how race is part of the picture in the movement for justice for lgbt folks, both inside and outside the church.

My point is that there are unresolved issues of race just about everywhere, including among people with good liberal or progressive values who are not bigoted and have no desire to make race an issue. But race is present as a factor nevertheless, and many values I believe in and care about are being inhibited by the reality that we have not gotten past race anywhere in our society.

I have called this a non-sermon and it is supposed to be just part of an ongoing conversation on race, so I am not going to try to find a way to wrap up or conclude. I will simply let them be for today…unconcluded…asking God’s help as we ask ourselves where we go from here. Amen.

Jim Bundy
May 18, 2008