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Sermon October 9, 2022
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, MSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
18th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23, Track 2
https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp23_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__October_9__2022
Video: https://youtu.be/ispWvbNi9Wk
He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”? 2 Kings 5:12-13
This past week, a friend from seminary, The Rev. Cathy Kerr, made a Facebook post about some of her family history she has uncovered. It turns out that these women who raised her great-grandmother just before and after the Civil War, wrote diaries about their life, especially during the war. They were living in Winchester, Virginia and staunch defenders of the Confederacy.
They also enslaved people, whose names Cathy listed. While Cathy knows these women were amazingly strong in the way they cared for their family, she also knows they were amazingly cruel and what we today would say is ignorant and horribly racist to the people they called servants, but who were seen as property and not free to go until the Union Army came along and told them it was okay to go and each gradually left for a free life.
Cathy talks about how hard it is to learn this history about her family and, especially to see in the handwriting of her ancestors, how they viewed these humans that they treated as property. Yet, she says it is important to know this history. She says:
“Regrettable as it is, this is our history - and I'm not just talking about my family here. It's important to face it, and come to terms with it. It's not enough to tell ourselves we didn't do it, so it's ok if we just move on. This is our legacy, as a family and as a society, and the shards of it still permeate our world. "He who has ears, let him hear."
Our readings today speak to us about healing. Jesus encounters people on the road, who have leprosy, which at the time was considered incurable. People with the disease were removed from the community. Leprosy is caused by a bacteria, which many people are immune to; it is only slightly contagious. Today, it is highly curable, especially when caught early.
You can imagine how hard it would be to survive if you could not be part of the community. Jesus passes by a group of people with leprosy and they call out for mercy. And what does Jesus do? He heals them. He tells them to go show themselves to the priest and as they go, they are healed. They would have needed to show themselves to the priest to get back into the community. We hear that only one returns to give gratitude to Jesus for his healing. And that one is a Samaritan, considered a foreigner. The others who “should have known better” to thank God for healing, just kept going to the priests. It is only the “foreigner” or “the other” who returns to thank Jesus.
Then there’s Naaman, a strong and mighty commander for the King of a foreign country. Yet, he had leprosy. He learns of the prophet Elisha and hears that Elisha could cure him of the leprosy. Naaman comes to Elisha, but then doesn’t really like what Elisha suggests would cure him – to wash seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman’s servants convince Naaman to try the cure and it does work. Through this, Naaman, the foreigner, comes to know the God of Israel.
Over the past two weeks, I have been confronted through workshops, videos, and circumstances about this issue of healing, mostly from the standpoint of how we heal from past events that continue to affect us today.
The Diocese offered a required workshop about repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery. This Doctrine, is effectively a number of Papal decrees or Bulls written between 1452 and 1493. These decrees gave permission for European Christians to go into other lands and take the land and enslave the people there, because they were not Christian. These decrees and this perspective provided a foundation for enslaving people from the African Continent, as well as, taking land and removing the indigenous people where we are today, which, by the way, we are on land inhabited by the Susquehannock people. The Episcopal Church repudiated this Doctrine of Discovery only in 2009!
For the past few weeks, we announced in our bulletins an event in Harrisburg on October 6, organized by The Pennsylvania Council of Churches in Harrisburg, titled Christianity in America: Sacred or Supremacist. The keynote speaker was Dr. Robert P. Jones, President and Founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). I read Dr. Jones’ 2021 book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, winner of an American Book Award.
The book is devastating, really. In it Dr. Jones reports on research done by his organization that shows that people who are White and identify as Christian, whether Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant or Evangelical, are more racist than people who are White and are not Christian. In other words, there is something about Christianity as practiced among those of us who are White in this country, at this time, that makes us more racist. I find it a horrifying finding, don’t you?
So, do we as people who are White want to be healed of this disease of racism that affects all of us and, as so many have written, will truly kill all of us?
First of all, I think, like those we read about today, we need to ask ourselves, do we really want to heal? Healing means that we may feel discomfort and even some pain. Are we willing to work through that discomfort and pain?
Secondly, we need to look critically at our history. We need to do what my friend Cathy has done just within her own family. We need to be willing to uncover and accept the truth of our history as individuals, communities and as a nation.
James Baldwin, writing in 1963 to his then 15-year-old nephew said that while his nephew was born into a nation that did not support him and even was set up to kill him, Baldwin explained to his nephew the following:
“The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.”
Are we committed to becoming free? Will we choose to stay trapped by the history we do not understand? Are we committed to finally understanding our history and its legacy of White Supremacy, which continues to raise its ugly head from generation to generation? Are we committed to ceasing to pervert the teachings of Jesus Christ?
Do we really want to be healed?
Amen
Doctrine of Discovery https://globalhealth.emory.edu/_includes/documents/unsettling-truths_chapter-1.pdf
Dr. Robert P. Jones https://www.prri.org/staff/robert-p-jones-ph-d/
A Letter to My Nephew by James Baldwin https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/
