Sit and Eat

The Necessary Ingredients for the Oppression of a People

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's the week of August 24.  The text is Psalm 13. 

 

On Saturday several Lydians and I attended a march on Staten Island 

to stand with the family of Eric Garner, 

who was killed as a result of an illegal chokehold used by a police officer. 

We were there for Eric Garner, 

but in being there for him and his family, 

we were there for something bigger:

a legacy in our country of violence toward African American people, 

especially young African American men, 

perpetrated in our country, espeically by law enforcement. 

 

David Paterson, former governor of New York, was one of the speakers at the rally. 

During his speech he told the story of his father, Basil Paterson,

who in 1942, at the age of 16, 

was pistol whipped by Harlem policeman for no discernible reason

in front of friends and neighbors. 

 

Paterson then went on to list the names of the men and boys in our city 

who have died as a result of police violence. 

He spoke of James Powell, 

who was shot by an officer in 1964, sparking the Harlem riots. 

 

Of Nichaloas Heyward Jr., 

the 13 year old who was shot and killed just blocks from here 

in the Gowanus houses in 1994

while playing cops and robbers with his friends in a stairwell. 

 

Of Amadou Diallo, 23, killed in 1999

when police fired 41 shots, 19 of which hit him. 

 

Of Timothy Stansbury, shot in 2004

on the roof of a housing project in Bed Stuy. 

 

Of Sean Bell, shot in 2005 the night before his wedding. 

 

Of Ramarley Graham, shot in his own bathroom, at 18 years old in 2012.

 

Of Kimani Gray, 16 years old, shot in 2014. 

 

And now Eric Garner, 

dead through the use of an illegal choke hold, 

his last words, “I can’t breathe.”

 

As Patterson listed these names, 

the protestors around me urged him on, saying,

“Name them, name them.”

 

*

 

This morning I read of a study conducted by the organization ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter 

which found that, in the 10 largest citied in the US, 

African Americans comprise a disproportionally large percentage of those killed by police.

In cities with the greatest racial disparity, the percentage of black people 

killed was at least twice that of their percentage of the city’s population. 

 

 

How long, O Lord, how long?

How long must we bear this pain in our soul?

 

 

“How long.” 

That’s one question we ask. 

 

The other one is “why?”

 

*

 

This morning I worshiped with the congregation of Cuyler Warren Street Methodist Church,

our neighbors just three block north of here. 

We’ve been connected to this church for about a year and a half, 

and  attended this morning to bring greetings, let them know that our new place is very close-by,

and to invite them to walk with us in our Vigil Walk tonight 

in solidarity with the protestors in Ferguson. 

Sitting in worship listening to the readings, I think I heard a piece of the answer to that question:

“why?”

 

The lesson from the Hebrew Bible read this morning at Cuyler Warren 

and in many churches this morning 

was taken from the first chapter of the of the book of Exodus. 

Listen, 

and see if it reminds you of anything:

 

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labour. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

 

Does anything about this story sound familiar?

 

I cannot help but think of a certain time in our country’s history 

when reading this passage.

A time when Americans, like Pharaoh, 

made the lives of enslaved Africans bitter with hard service. 

 

So what can we see in Pharaoh's stance toward the Hebrew people?

I see three familiar elements that, together, 

seem to comprise the necessary ingredients for the oppression of a people. 

First, fear: 

Pharaoh is afraid that the Hebrew people 

will grow more numerous than he. 

Second, economy: 

Pharaoh uses the Hebrew people for labor, therefore the Egyptian economy depends on them. 

Phraroah’s wealth depends on their poverty. 

And third, power: 

Pharaoh worries that the Hebrew people are more powerful than he is.  

If they were to fight against him in a war, 

it is possible that they would win. 

  

 

But the story goes on:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.’

 

Fear, economy, and power.

All threatened apparently by one thing: 

the innocent male child. 

 

Pharaoh believes that to keep the Hebrew people 

firmly under his thumb, 

he must strike at that which he fears most:

the untapped power of the young male. 

The reading resonates sickeningly with our nation’s current situation. 

Like Pharaoh, our country seems to believe we have something to fear.

We may not have commanded midwives to kill black male babies. 

Instead we have sanctioned the shooting of black boys and men. 

 

*

 

I do not believe that the shooting deaths of young black men 

at the hands of police in our country 

are the result of “a few bad apples,” or of “killer cops.”

Weed the bad ones out and police violence against black people will cease. 

Nope.  I don’t think that’s it. 

I believe these deaths are the result of those three familiar elements 

that are the necessary ingredients for the oppression of a people:

fear

economy

and power. 

 

Our country operates on a convenient myth

designed to keep our economic structures firmly in place:

the myth of the young, black man 

as dangerous, criminal, and worthy of fear. 

 

And when this myth has settled in the hearts and minds 

of you or me, 

or a policeman, 

we act in ways that reflect that myth. 

We act in ways that indicate some lives are somehow worth more than others. 

 

Why?

Why the litany of names?

Why the loss of so many innocents?

This is why:

Because we have made it so. 

Because we, in this country, have been like Pharaoh,

afraid to share our power, 

afraid to loosen our hold on wealth,

keeping the people in chains. 

Those chains may no longer be forged of metal. 

They are forged instead of a lack of access:

to education, 

to jobs, 

to votes, 

to resources, 

to connections, 

to neighborhoods. 

 

And those chains are not getting any lighter. 

 

Craig Steven Wilder is the author of “A Covenant of Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn,”

a book that tells the story of the ghettoization of our own borough. 

In it, he writes,

“After all, the ghetto is not so much a place as it is a relationship -- 

the physical manifestation of a perverse imbalance of social power.

The ghetto is not the cause of social pathology,

it is its destination...

It cannot be defined by the people who occupy it

but by the struggles that place them there. 

It is not social inequality but the attempt to predetermine

the burden of social inequality.”

 

How long, Oh lord, how long?

How long will we sing this song?

How long until we can cease the litany of names?

 

It is not better cops that will get us there 

or better-policed neighborhoods. 

It is a radical shift in the scaffolding of our nation:

the structures of power and wealth, 

the patterns of haves and have-nots.

It is the dismantling of the myth 

that keep it all in place. 

 

And that means those who are in power, 

even those who have some power, some privilege:

people like me, 

letting go of those ingredients necessary for the oppression of a people:

fear

economy

and power. 

 

 

So what does that look like? 

I’m not totally sure. 

But I’ve been thinking about it a lot. 

 

Certainly, I think part of it is about holding our elected officials to task. 

Walking up to Pharaoh and saying, “Let our people go.”

 

I think part of it is about supporting the resistance of those who are oppressed and who mount a resistance. 

Supporting the Shiphrahs and Puahs -- the midwives who resist Pharoah’s instructions. 

Who follow God’s call and refuse to participate in the destruction of their people. 

 

I think part of it is about listening. 

Listening to the stories of all those who have been treated ruthlessly. 

 

But part of it, too, I think, 

is about giving something up. 

Part of it is about giving up some of what we cling so tightly to:

those three ingredience of fear, economy, and power. 

 

It could be giving up the idea that we got where we are all by ourselves, 

forgetting that some of us were helped along the way 

by the color of our skin

or the connections of our parents. 

 

It could be giving up being in charge of everything all the time

and giving another person -- someone’s whose voice is less often heard --

the chance to lead. 

 

It could be about giving up wealth, 

not for charity but for empowerment. 

Not to sustain the system but to disrupt it. 

 

If you are a person of any level of privilege --

and it's different for each person in this room --

to give up, to let go,

is a spiritual practice. 

It nurtures a humble heart. 

 

*

 

The story God tells is a story of liberation. 

A story of the Hebrew people

brought safely out of captivity and through the Red Sea. 

A story of the powerful brought down from their thrones

of the lowly lifted up. 

Of the hungry filled with good things. 

Of the proud scattered in the thoughts of their hearts. 

 

And it is perhaps our hearts that are the most important,

that need the most care and tending. 

It was Pharaoh’s heart that hardened against Moses 

when Moses implored him, “Let my people go.”

 

It is our hearts 

that can be filled with sorrow, 

or calcified against the pain of our neighbors. 

Our hearts that can be humble or proud. 

Our hearts that can grab power or wealth 

or relinquish them. 

Our hearts that can erect barriers or fear, 

or dismantle them, stone by stone. 

Our hearts that can witnesses terrible sorrow, 

but also find that they can sing. 

 

The Architecture of Death and the Shooting of Michael Brown

I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's the week of August 17, 2014.  The text is Psalm 84, which you can read here. 

 

 

This past week, while on vacation, I did something I’ve never done before. 

I packed everything I thought I might need, including a tent, into a backpack 

and set out across the Scottish highlands 

where a friend and I hiked up into the shadow of CairnGorm Mountain

(the second highest mountain in Scotland)

along a small, flowing stream into the hills. 

 

There’s a reason that nobody really lives in the highlands of Scotland. 

They look really nice from a distance -- 

with the purple heather on the hills and all that --

but when you’re actually up in them, 

the heather creates this kind of spongey surface on the ground 

that you can’t really walk on without risking one of your feet falling into a big hole 

and possibly breaking your ankle. 

The going’s pretty rough without a path, 

and our path was less of a path, and more of some rocks

that had been thrown together in a path-like-shape. 

As we climbed up through this rising valley between the peaks, 

it started to rain really hard, 

so that the path we were on turned into more of a stream, 

with deep rivers of water flowing beneath us 

and lots of places that looked solid until you stepped in them 

and found out actually they weren’t. 

 

We emerged at the top at a silent, shimmering lake,

with no one around for miles

and the wind blowing hard and cold. 

It’s not a very hospitable environment, 

yet my friend managed, during a break from the rain,

to get the tent up, and that night, with dry clothes on, 

we slept warm and dry and secure in this...dwelling place

that he had made

as the wind howled around us. 

 

*

 

How lovely is your dwelling place, Oh God.

That’s how this psalm begins.

It’s a psalm about the home -- 

or a kind of home -- 

that we find in God. 

A home that we can imagine in God’s temple, 

where there’s even a place, up high in the rafters 

for the sparrows and the swallows. 

 

But it seems as well

that this temple, this dwelling place of God

is more than the building itself, 

but as one scholar put it, 

“the community of God’s people in and with whom God is present.”

Not just a building, but a community. 

Happy are those who live in God’s house --

Happy are those who find a dwelling place with God. 

 

*

 

High in the mountains of Scotland, 

I was far from home:

far from my little apartment in Brooklyn with its warm bed 

and accompanying cat.

But strangely, I found that I felt at home in that little tent. 

I was at home wherever I was, because God was there with me. 

And being warm and dry didn’t hurt. 

 

On the mountain, I thought of those who don’t have a home.

Not a house or apartment or even a tent,

but make their homes instead in doorways or subway stations 

or on heating grates in our city. 

Even the sparrow finds a home,
   and the swallow a nest for herself,
   where she may lay her young.

 

*

 

This morning the New York Times told one piece of the story of Ms. Alyce Herndon

who moved to Ferguson, Missouri in 2003,

“because she felt it was a good community, 

safer than the...portion of the [nearby] county where [she] lived previously 

and with better schools for her children.”

 

Ms. Herndon, an African American woman, and her family 

had previously lived in Jennings, where in the mid-1970’s white neighbors 

in her primarily white neighborhood 

had stuck an afro pick in her lawn and set it on fire. 

 

We might imagine that Ms. Herndon moved to Ferguson 

because, like the swallow of Psalm 84, 

she was looking for a safe place to build a nest for her young. 

She was looking for a dwelling place, 

where she might nurture her family in peace and safely.  

 

She now lives on a multicultural block in a town that seems to offer everything -- 

shops and restaurants.  

But Ferguson, as the nation has learned this week, 

is burdened by a legacy of racial conflict and tension 

set off by the shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager 

killed by police, apparently for walking in the middle of the street. 

The Times writes of a town stricken with white flight, 

where the population is predominantly black but the power structures are still white. 

“Although about two-thirds of Ferguson residents are black,” 

writes the Times,

“its mayor and five of its six City Council members are white. 

Only three of the town’s 53 police officers are black.”

 

*

 

We’ve been talking a lot about race at St. Lydia’s over the last two or so years. 

It’s a conversation that I feel is important to our congregation’s spiritual well-being, 

and it’s a conversation that must be ongoing. 

About a year ago in Theology Circle

we read womanist scholar Delores Williams’ book, Sister’s in the Wilderness.

In it, Williams makes the case that the modern day treatment of African Americans in our country 

means that African Americans live in constant “threat of death-dealing circumstances.”

This “discouraging of black progress,” adds up to something 

that some, she tells us, are labeling genocide. 

 

She writes, 

“Recently I heard a Harlem, New York, woman describe what she called 'genocide, American style.'  She said,

'You close off opportunities for people through inadequate and inappropriate education, which therefore renders them unemployable.  You take away their housing and they become beggars on the street.  You give them a historical memory of organized white violence breaking into their communities and killing them at will, and the courts not prosecuting white violence against black people.  You constantly harass them through police brutality...You make sure the people in the community cannot accumulate wealth because you shut off their access to financing and to borrowing power from banks.  You introduce a system of welfare that breaks up the home and devalues black fatherhood.  You control the media so that black people are projected as criminals and the general public gets the idea that black people are morally depraved...American power structures can then say, ‘black people did it to themselves; they committed suicide.’ Therefore, the charge of genocide is not made against the State, even though the State has been one of the chief architects of black hopelessness and death.'”

 

The chief architects of black hopelessness and death. 

 

I know that not one of us in this room

actively seeks to be an architect of hopelessness or death. 

But I also know with just as much certainty, 

that the house in which we all live, every one of us, 

is constructed by those powers --

built by the architect of hopelessness and death. 

Constructed with the matierials of violence and oppression toward black people. 

 

All of us in this country live within the lines of the same blueprint. 

The difference is that living in this house --

in this dwelling place --

is much more death-dealing for some people than for others. 

And those death-dealing experiences are doled out based on skin color. 

 

I did not move to Ferguson in 2003 to make a home for my family like Alyce Herndon did. 

But if I did, I can assure you, that neither I, 

nor any son of mine with light skin like mine, 

would be murdered in the manner Michael Brown was. 

 

It is not one cop. 

It is not one town. 

It is the architecture of our nation. 

It is the dwelling place

that offers no place -- 

no beams or rafters or security 

for our children of darker hue

to be at home

to build a nest, 

to live in safety. 

 

*

 

I know that it can feel hopeless 

to face the reality of the blueprint we’ve all inherited. 

To see the truth of this house we all live in together. 

For those of us who are not people of color, it can be tempting to turn away. 

There are others who do not have such a choice. 

In the midst of this, it feels to me, so often, like anything I might have to offer is very, very small.  

 

Community organizer Saul Alinsky acknowledges this feeling, 

writing that our pursuit of justice is like climbing a mountain -- 

but the climb never ends.*

You never arrive -- you just have to be sure to get enough rest along the way. 

So bring a good strong tent. 

And make yourself a dwelling place, right there on the side of the mountain. 

 

*

 

The Psalmist writes that she would rather stand in the threshold of God’s house

than live in the tents of wickedness. 

And I think that quite often 

standing at the threshold is the closest we ever get, 

at least in this world.

We may never make it into God’s house -- 

we’ve inherited so much from a very different kind of architect -- 

but just because a step is small

doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. 

 

The Psalmist talks about walking “upright,”

or some translations say, “with integrity.” 

The word in Hebrew, tamim, means 

“whole, entire, complete.”

Though the architecture we live in may be death-dealing,  

I believe that we can learn to walk in ways that are life-giving. 

 

We can walk in ways that are whole. 

Ways that are full. 

Walk in ways that give life rather than take it away. 

 

*

 

So tonight we’re walking. 

After tonight’s service I am going to light a vigil candle 

and invite anyone who would like to to walk with me -- 

to walk around our neighborhood 

in witness to the injustice of the architecture

which is just a present here in Brooklyn New York 

as it is in Ferguson, Missouri.  

 

We walk knowing that we’re not whole yet, 

we’re not complete yet, 

we don’t have all the answers, 

but God is in the midst of moving us there. 

 

We walk knowing that in doing so we will not fix the architecture, 

but will at least draw attention to the fact that it is broken. 

 

We walk to practice remembering that justice and mercy come first. 

We walk to witness to our neighborhood that we remember

that justice and mercy come first. 

 

We’re not walking far, and we’re not walking long, 

but at least we’re taking some steps toward the dwelling place of God. 

Toward building a nation where black teenagers  

can make a visit to the corner store 

and not be treated as criminals. 

We’re taking steps -- just a few --

through the threshold 

and gazing into the house of God. 

 

 

 

*Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, 1971