Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] May 30, 2021 “Remembering Tulsa” Revelation 21: 1-4 – New Revised Standard Version Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them; 4 God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Watch this short clip first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yceK9LHFSA (or one of many documentaries now available on YouTube) Tulsa was the largest but far from the only city annihilated by white mobs. Neighborhoods and towns, not just in the South, were targeted. Black prosperity was particularly egregious. But perhaps worse, it was the sight of uniformed Black veterans returning home. “Many whites feared that Black soldiers who had experienced the pride of military service would resist disenfranchisement, segregation, and second-class citizenship. In fact, in 1917, US Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi warned that, once a Black soldier could see himself as an American hero, it would be a short step to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected. Bringing Black soldiers home with the expectations of equality, he predicted, would ‘inevitably lead to disaster.’” Depending on your perspective, he was right. Many of those 380,000 Black vets had indeed been emboldened to fight back in defense of their communities against white mobs, which further infuriated them. Only months after the armistice, extreme violence in the summer of 1919 led James Weldon Johnson to call it the Red Summer, as in bloody.[1] During the Red Summer, the Equal Justice Initiative counted as many as 97 lynchings,[2] many with veterans wearing their uniforms. And instances of mob violence in at least 25 cities and towns across the country, including a three-day massacre in the small town of sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas that left 200 Black men, women, and children dead.[3] Throughout all of this, law enforcement officers either stood by and watched, offering tacit approval, or openly participated, just like the four officers who murdered or watched the murder of George Floyd one year ago on Tuesday. Much of this was news to me. I’d never heard of the Red Summer and yet I try to understand our history. I’d vaguely heard of “race riots” in places like Rosewood in Florida, but I couldn’t tell you much about it, and especially why World War 1 veterans would play such an important role.[4] Tulsa was also once referred to as a race riot, too. But calling any of these atrocities “riots” is the literal attempt to “white-wash” history, to create a false equivalency – a kind of Charlottesville good-people-on-both-sides. In the immediate aftermath, newspapers were prohibited from reporting on it, as were textbooks. In fact, outside of some attention given to it in the last few days, some of you may have never even heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Such white washing is straight from the same playbook today that tries to ban the teaching of critical race theory or objects to the 1619 project. White supremacists don’t ever want to be held accountable, which is why so many senators don’t want anyone to know the truth about the January 6th Capitol insurrection. One more story. If you think voter suppression is bad today, have you ever heard of Ocoee? Election day 1920, Ocoee in Orange County, Florida looked like the aftermath of Tulsa. Black organizations had conducted voter registration drives for a year. In response, on election day, most Black owned homes and businesses were burned to the ground. 30-35 people were killed.[5] All to prevent residents from voting and protect the “purity of the ballot box.” Only six months later, Tulsa didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the same struggle for democracy today. This was the period of the resurgence of the KKK, including in Denver with our own KKK mayor Benjamin Stapleton. But it was also the era of the NAACP, its membership rising from 9,000 before the war to more than 100,000, signaling a growing boldness that planted the seeds of the American Civil Rights Movement. And while 380,000 African Americans served in World War 1, more than 1.2 million served in World War 2. And yet, Black citizens were willing to fight wars for democracy around the world, but not without also having it at home. As A. Philip Randolph said, “We’d rather make Georgia safe.”[6] Our text from the Book of Revelation today speaks of a new heaven and a new earth; that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. That’s a lovely vision. No more tears or death. No more mourning and crying and pain. One day. On one hand, that’s like a balm in Gilead, a source of hope. On the other, that feels like a terribly unfair life-sentence for anyone suffering today. And it removes human responsibility. Jesus will make everything right in the sweet by and by, with plenty of pie in the sky when we die. But as UCC pastor Kenneth Samuel says about progressive Christianity, we’re looking for “something sound on the ground while we’re still around.” We want to know, how can we make it right? Alexia Salvatierra is a Pentecostal Christian, a professor at Fuller Seminary, who said, in line with Revelation, “we live in a broken world that is in a long process of redemption and restoration, which will not be complete until Christ comes back.” But, she said we should “use whatever power we have to achieve justice,” except that we “should not expect to achieve justice.”[7] I appreciate the realism, but why would anyone expend their power for something we shouldn’t expect? Just wait for Jesus. Rabbi Noam Marans said the Jewish concepts of the afterlife are responses to the theological challenge of rewards and punishment after death. But, of course, that’s of little comfort to those who suffer in this life. But in contrast with a messianic figure such as Christ to return to redeem the world, our responsibility as people of faith is to participate in tikkun olam – literally fixing the world through social justice and lovingkindness.[8] But, Vahisha Hasan, a Black Baptist pastor, asks how can we make things right “if we’re not aware of how our own economic, ethnic, and social class impacts our views?” She said, “Even when someone is aware, they can become so bound in the privilege of that identity that they take a defensive position.”[9] And that’s where we could fall silent. Silence will save us from doing or saying the wrong thing. But I’m guessing none of us think silence is the right answer to “How can we make it right?” And yet, we also may not be comfortable enough with silence to let it be long enough. For communities of color answer the question, and invite us to join alongside, or choose not to invite – if we’re too busy falling over ourselves to answer questions that have not been asked. On Friday afternoon the executive director of Re-Member came by the church to pick up a trailer-load of donations. Re-Member is our mission partner on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, just a couple of miles from Wounded Knee.[10] Like the Tulsa “riot,” Wounded Knee was once called a “battlefield.” More accurately, it was the site of a massacre of 300 mostly starving and freezing women and children. Seven groups of Park Hill youth and adults have gone to Re-Member in the past 12 years, to stand on that sacred ground and stand alongside members of the Oglala Lakota nation. I hope we can go again next summer. But for everyone who goes, one of the most challenging things is to avoid the temptation to ask “Why don’t they…” When people of privilege want to help, it’s often as people who want to fix first and listen last. Listening is not a lack of action. It can be, but listening is mandatory for anyone who wants to make things right. Sharyl Peterson is one of our regulars at Lunch and Lectionary. Thanks to Park Hill 2.0, she joins us on Zoom from Grand Junction every Thursday. She asked, “What would a “new heaven” and/or a “new earth” look like to people who have suffered? Surely, it would mean having their loved one(s) back; being able to live a life of safety and dignity under all circumstances at all times in all places, which has never been true in their lifetimes or their ancestors; being “seen” in the fullest sense of what that means, and honored as beloved children of God; never having been driven away from their homes in the first place… She asks, how on earth does one make any of that right? How do you make amends for grandmothers who were raped? How do you compensate for the torture of grandfathers? How do you reimburse a family for their children drowned in burlap bags? How do you repair homes and businesses burned to the ground 100 years ago? And restore decimated communities. Rev. Hasan says our goal should be less about fixing than about transformation. She asks, how can communities be transformed? Communities can’t be fixed, but they can be transformed through such means as reparations. 107-year-old Mother Viola Fletcher would say that’s a long overdue response in Tulsa. It’s also not the only response. It’s not an excuse, but it won’t fix the problem of 402 years. As equally important, how can you and I be transformed? We can’t be fixed either, but we can be changed. For example, what can you do with the knowledge you received today? More than filing it in the “that’s interesting” drawer, we can participate in the transformation of pain into promise and privilege into potential. Christians often want a fix we call healing. An urgency for reconciliation. We’re going to hear prayer next that says, “We cannot rush to the language of healing before understanding the fullness of the injury and the depth of the wound.” Reconciliation without recognition of the wrong is a false peace to soothe the conscience of the oppressor, not fundamentally change the conditions of the oppressed. Reconciliation without repair is empty. That means we have to stay in the discomfort of this moment long enough to listen and actually hear. To hear the sounds of a new heaven and a new earth, where there are no more tears or death. No more mourning and crying and pain. Not because Jesus has returned to fix everything, but because we and our communities are actively being transformed. Last summer was one of the most hopeful periods in our recent history. All across the globe, outraged young people of every race took to the streets to demand the transformation of law enforcement based on upholding white supremacy to a system of public safety. They may not realize they are pursuing a vision of a new earth where there are no more tears and death, no more mourning and pain, a world with no more George Floyd’s crying out to their mothers in heaven, because the earth is filled with justice. Following their lead, that’s one way we begin to make things right. [1] http://visualizingtheredsummer.com/?page_id=6 [2] https://eji.org/reports/targeting-black-veterans/ [3] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/death-hundreds-elaine-massacre-led-supreme-court-take-major-step-toward-equal-justice-african-americans-180969863/ [4] https://www.history.com/news/red-summer-1919-riots-chicago-dc-great-migration [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocoee_massacre [6] https://time.com/5450336/african-american-veterans-wwi/ [7] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22419487/religion-justice-fairness [8] Ibid https://www.ajc.org/articles/noam-marans [9] Ibid https://www.transformnetwork.org/movementinfaith [10] www.re-member.org
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