Scripture: Mark 8:22-26
The sermon for this morning is inspired by Black History Month, although it doesn’t have much to do with black history. It has some to do with white history, though I guess I should explain what I’m meaning by these terms.
One approach to black history and Black History Month, one very good and necessary approach, is to lift up certain people and events that for too long have been left out of our history books. So we name and celebrate African American individuals who have contributed to the common life but who have not been sufficiently recognized for those contributions, because to be black in our culture has often meant to be invisible. So for instance a few weeks ago John Baker’s theme for the children’s time was “people you probably won’t find in the SOL’s”—people you probably won’t find but probably should find. Likewise, we may draw attention to the history of African American communities, the events, institutions, and culture that has also been largely invisible to the historians who have been in charge of history. As I say all that is good and necessary.
But beginning with those things Black History Month suggests other things to me as well. It suggests, for instance, that history in general should not be conceived of as the record of the doings of people who were most prominent or powerful, most of whom have been white and male. It suggests that more attention be paid to everyone who was not a president or a general. It suggests that we need to rewrite history to include unsung heroes and heroines of every color. It suggests there’s a lot more to history than the lives of the rich and famous. And it suggests there’s a lot more to history than the white-washed version of history that has so often been standard. History needs to include the stories of African Americans. It needs to include the stories of so called ordinary people. And it needs to include the parts of our history that aren’t so attractive or pleasant to consider. That’s where the “white history” comes in. It is important that our history recognize the presence of black folks, and other people of color. It is also important that it tell parts of the history that has been carried out by white folks that are not very flattering but that will make that story more honest.
Some of you, if your minds were clicking in a certain direction this morning, may have guessed where the title of this sermon comes from. Three-fifths. That is not one of those numbers that comes up a lot in the Bible. It’s from our constitution which came up with a creative formula for deciding how many people each state had and therefore how many congressmen they were entitled to. The issue of course was the people who were enslaved. Northerners generally took the position that since those who were enslaved were in fact treated as property that therefore they should not be treated as human beings in the constitution, which would have the effect of giving more political power to the north. Southerners, who in other circumstances proved to be quite happy to consider enslaved people as property, in this case argued that they should be considered full human beings, because that would end up giving more political power to the southern states. Eventually a compromise was reached which arrived at the conclusion that an enslaved person would be considered as three-fifths of a person. A fair and sensible solution to the problem, or at least fair and sensible enough to get the constitution approved by the white folks who were doing the approving.
Needless to say neither side in this debate was occupying the moral high ground. No one on either side was suggesting that enslaved Africans be considered full human beings for real. No one was suggesting that they be allowed to run for president, or vote, or be protected by the Bill of Rights. The numbers game that was being played was simply a matter of landed white males debating who among them would have relatively more or relatively less power, and using the humanity of enslaved people as a tool in that argument. The result of course was ridiculous and embarrassing.
Or it should be. It obviously wasn’t at the time. Three-fifths made it into the constitution for all of humanity and all of posterity to see, so it must have seemed rational from within a certain frame of reference. The people playing the numbers game and abiding by its rules were not embarrassed. And looking at it from an historical perspective you can come up with all sorts of explanations of how the three-fifths idea got in the constitution so that it seems understandable, even sort of normal in the sense of that’s the way things were and the realities they were dealing with.
But of course it was not normal, no matter what the historical perspective, the situation, the reasons and rationalizations, the explanations or causes. It is not normal, but ridiculous and embarrassing and offensive and sinful that our constitution, a document that many people consider great and wise, came up with the idea—for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter—came up with the idea that a human being could be reduced to three-fifths of a person. And any situation that could produce such a thing and make it seem reasonable or defensible is a situation to be ashamed of. Of course one of our problems in general is that quite often things that ought to be seen as embarrassing and offensive and sinful come to be accepted as somehow normal, or at least as just “the way things are”, when you look at it in a certain way. When that happens we need a different place to stand. We need to see things in a different way and not be so accepting of what we see. That’s one of the things that Black History Month does for me. It not only reminds me of George Washington Carver and Benjamin Banneker. It urges me to take another look at my own history, and to be open to what is embarrassing, offensive, and sinful there, and be willing not to accept what is not acceptable.
I should probably confess at this point that I am aware I have gone through half a sermon more or less talking about things that sound maybe more like a lecture about US history or about Black History Month than anything that might be properly called a sermon. I apologize for that, but not very much. Just a little. I apologize for not making clear from the outset what this all has to do with God or religion or church or faith or the spirit or any of those other words you might expect to be hearing on a Sunday morning. I apologize for not making that connection explicitly, but I don’t apologize too much because the connection is there. For one thing, everything I have been saying so far is about whether religion is essentially about each of us individually, or about us together. Is it about how we personally find salvation, wholeness, healing, peace, forgiveness, holiness, purpose, meaning in the midst of a world gone mad? Is it about only that or is it about a quest for wholeness in which our wholeness depends on everyone else’s? If it is the latter then everything I’ve been saying has a religious tone to it, though we don’t hear it that way because we are accustomed to thinking of religion as this thing between me and God, or some inner world where we seek holiness apart from the profanity of the world.
The three-fifths clause in the constitution has been in my mind because Ava gave me a book for Christmas that focused on this part of our history. In fact it focused on the fact that Thomas Jefferson would never have been elected president without this twisted notion of some people being three-fifths of a person. Thomas Jefferson was a product of the system and the society that produced this idea and made it “necessary”. He supported it and benefited from it. And as I was reading this rather devastating account, I developed the unmistakable feeling that for all of Jefferson’s intellect and genius, which has often made him seem larger than life (especially when you live around Charlottesville), for all of that he seemed as I was reading not larger than life but somehow smaller, not quite a whole person, maybe something like…three-fifths of a person.
I don’t mean this meanly. And I don’t mean to make Jefferson the issue. Because for me the issue is whether we somehow imagine that we can achieve wholeness by ourselves, or whether our wholeness depends on the wholeness of others, and if it does, then when enslaved people were designated to be counted as three-fifths of a person then the people doing the designating became fractional people too. Oppression oppresses the oppressors as much as it does the oppressed. In different ways of course, in less painful or obvious ways, but in ways every bit as serious.
So there I was feeling sad for Jefferson and for the society that produced the three-fifths clause in the constitution, feeling sad for their shrunken humanity, and feeling sad for myself and my shrunken humanity. I didn’t produce the clause in the constitution, but I have benefited from living in the society that did. And I still live in that society because it hasn’t changed enough for me to think of it as some foreign place that is just over there or back there and has nothing to do with me. I’m feeling myself to be a three-fifths person too.
I’m feeling sad, but I’m asking questions too, when I allow myself to encounter this part of my history or so many other parts. The questions are there, not just when you read a book about something. They are woven into my life, in and out of my waking and sleeping, in between the e-mails on the screen, while I wait to meet someone at C’ville Coffee, stand at the gas pump, read the newspaper, watch a basketball game. And if I’m not always asking the questions consciously, they’re still there. Questions like: How are we going to redeem this history? What would it mean for me to repent? What has to happen in order for there to be forgiveness? What is God looking to see from me, hoping for from me with all her heart? If those aren’t religious questions, I don’t know what religious questions are. And questions like those whisper loudly in the air any time we encounter anything like the three-fifths provision of the constitution, anytime we encounter one of the unwelcome parts of our white history.
Of course we are all fractional people and for all sorts of reasons. I don’t know anyone who would claim to be the whole person, the complete person, the five-fifths person that we might be, that God imagined that we might be. I have always been attracted to the scripture reading for this morning. It’s not a particularly well known passage. It doesn’t even make it into the lectionary readings. But in the middle of the passage Jesus, who has just put his hands on a blind man’s eyes, asks him if he now can see anything. The man says, well, yes I can see people but they look like trees walking. Jesus goes on to complete the healing. He lays his hands on the man again and the story says that then he could see clearly, which suggests, I guess, that before when he saw people who looked like trees walking that he was just seeing sort of half way, that his eyes were just beginning to see and so all they could make out were shadows.
I read it a little differently. It has always seemed to me that the man saw clearly the first time. He saw people who appeared like trees walking because he saw people as we are, partly human but not fully human, sort of half alive, or three-fifths. As I have read this story, the problem is not with the man’s sight but with us. From a certain standpoint we are like trees walking, shadows of the selves we might be, only partly alive, something less than fully human.
The three-fifths business in the constitution suggested that to me too. It suggested to me that there are all sorts of ways we fall short of being whole. We are all fractional people, and we are that for all sorts of reasons. One of them is race. We dare not, in our society we dare not leave race out of the equation. Because until we have redeemed this painful history of ours, this painful history that continues, until we have redeemed that history there is no wholeness for any of us. But in addition there are things for each of us that stand in the way of wholeness, things that are peculiar to each of us, and that perhaps only we know. But may God at least help us to know them, and help us to move, inch by inch, toward the wholeness I believe Christ helps us to see and that God intends for all God’s people. Amen.
Jim Bundy
February 22, 2004