What Matters is It is Done

 Song

Alvin Chea “Lift Every Voice and Sing”

Scripture passage

Galatians 3:23-29

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.  Therefore, the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Homily/Meditation

[Spoken: Roberta A. Drury]

This is an important day. It’s a Sunday, which for a lot of us, not just Christians, is a day of rest, a Sabbath, a time when we, in the best of circumstances, lean back, drink a third cup of coffee, maybe reflect a while on the previous or the coming week.

[Spoken: D. Morrison]

But it’s an important day for another reason too. June 19^th is also known as Juneteenth, the longest commemorated day in American history. While it’s only been a national holiday for a year, it’s been celebrated in various parts of the country since 1866. Today is the 156^th anniversary of that first celebration.

[Spoken: Andre Mackneil]

You might not be aware of the celebration or its origins. Here’s where it comes from. America’s Civil War, a bloody, fierce, nearly-America-ending conflict, finally came to an end April 9, 1865. That’s the day official hostilities were done. But not everyone knew. One hundred fifty years ago the world was a different place. Communication happened haphazardly in some places. The new telegraph didn’t reach everywhere, and even where newspapers were produced, not everyone could read.

[Spoken: Aaron Salter]

When the War ended, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued New Year’s Day two years before, became the law in the state’s that had rebelled. It took from the war’s end in early April until mid-June for the Union Army to reach Texas, the furthest Confederate state, and announce General Order 3 which extended to the slaves still held in Texas the freedom they had in other states. In the words of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, there was no longer slave or free. You can probably imagine the reaction folks had. Their boisterousness can still be experienced in contemporary celebrations.

[Spoken: Geraldine Talley]

The great American writer Ralph Ellison wrote a novel called Juneteenth. This is how he describes such a celebration.

“Juneteenth,” he could hear Daddy Hickman saying. “And it was a great occasion. There had been a good cotton crop and a little money was circulating among us. Folks from all over were in the mood for prayer and celebration. There must’ve been five thousand folks out there that week—not counting the real young chillun and the babies. Folks came all the way from Atlanta, Montgomery, Columbus, Charleston and Birmingham, just to be there and hear the Word. Horse teams and mule teams and spans of oxen were standing under the groves of trees around the clearing, and the wagon beds were loaded down with hay and feed for the animals and with quilts for the folks who had come in from the far sections, so they could sleep right there. All those wagons made it look as though everybody in the whole section was waiting for the Word to move on over across Jordan. Or maybe migrate West, as some later did. The feel of those days has gone out of the air now…And the shape of our minds is different from then, because time has moved on. Then we were closer to the faceless days, but we had faith. Yes, and ignorant as we knew we were, we had more self-respect. We didn’t have much but we squeezed life harder and there was a warm glow all around…But you remember how it was…In the daytime hot under the tent with the rows of benches and folding chairs; and the ladies in their summer dresses and their fans whipping up a breeze in time to the preaching and the singing. And the choirs and the old tried and tested workers in the vineyard dressed in their white uniforms. That’s right. All the solid substance of our way of doing things, of our sense of life. Everything ordered and in its place and everything and everybody a part of the ceremony and the evocation. Barrels of ice water and cold lemonade with the cakes of ice in them sitting out under the cool of the trees, and all those yellow cases of soda pop stacked off to one side. Yeah, and at night those coal-oil flares and the lanterns lighting things up like one of those county fairs…And the feasting part, you must remember that…There was all those ladies turning out fried fish and fried chicken and Mr. Double-Jointed Jackson, the barbecue king, who had come out from Atlanta and was sweating like a Georgia politician on election day…supervising sixteen cooks and presiding over the barbecue pits all by hisself…” Hickman laughed, shaking his white head; then pushing back in his chair he held up his great left hand, the fingers spread and bending supple as he counted with his right index finger. “Lord, we et up fifteen hundred loaves of sandwich bread; five hundred pounds of catfish and snapper; fifteen gallons of hot sauce, Mr. Double-Jointed Jackson’s formula; nine hundred pounds of barbecue ribs; eighty-five hams, direct from Virginia; fifty pounds of potato salad and a whole big cabbage patch of coleslaw. Yes, and enough frying-size chicken to feed the multitude! And let’s not mention the butter beans—naw! And don’t talk about the fresh young roasting-ears and the watermelons. Neither the fried pies, chocolate cakes and homemade ice cream. Lord, but that was a great occasion. A great occasion…I’m not just talking about the eating. I mean the communion, the coming together—of which the eating was only a part; an outward manifestation, a symbol, like the Blood is signified by the wine, and the Flesh by the bread…Ah yes, boy, we filled their bellies, but we were really there to fill their souls and give them reassurance—and we filled them. We moved ‘em!”

[Spoken: Celestine Chaney]

Ellison is probably describing a Juneteenth celebration of the 30s or 40s, the period of greatest expansion of the influence of Juneteenth moving from the backroads and shanty towns to the bigger towns and cities. This is when James Wheldon Johnson’s song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which I played for you at the start, became known as the “Negro National Anthem” and twinned with Juneteenth. The song is a celebration not only of the freedom singing loudly gives people but of the ability of people to make something good out of their lives. To see beyond their individuality to community and, finally, universality.

[Spoken: Heyward Patterson]

So why should you care about Juneteenth if you aren’t Black? I mean, calling something the “Negro” or even Black National Anthem, identifying a holiday as something celebrating the freeing of a people, kind of sets it off as unique to them, doesn’t it? Makes those people separate, right? Gives others a sense of “this is our holiday, you go find your own?” It would leave them kind of segregated, wouldn’t it?

[Spoken: Katherine Massey]

I hope not. We don’t think of Martin Luther King, Jr Day as just a black people’s holiday, do we? Most of our presidents have been white men, so is President’s Day only for white men? Is Christmas and Easter only for Christians? Is Thanksgiving intended only for people who can trace their families back to the original Puritans? No, we all celebrate those to one extent or another. We all consider celebrating them a part of being an American. Ellison’s first novel, Invisible Man, isn’t a great Black American novel. It’s a great American novel, it doesn’t matter who’s reading it. Like Thanksgiving, Juneteenth is meant to be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates good food and being together with those we love.

[Spoken: Pearl Young]

Now what about these names I’ve been reeling off. Who are these people? Because of the needs of Sunday services here, I’m recording this a month before you see it. Less than a week before today, these people were the victims of a self-described fascist white supremacist at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. He drove over 200 miles from his small predominantly white town to a predominantly Black neighborhood with the intent to kill as many people as he could.

[Spoken: Ruth Whitfield]

You people in the future may not remember this incident. That’s something we do, we Americans, we tend to remember the good things, like Daddy Hawkins remembers an earlier Juneteenth, but to forget the things that are uncomfortable or damaging. The things that leave us feeling like crap. But it’s important that we do. As painful, as uncomfortable as it may be, it’s important that we remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me…[and] whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” What matters is not who is doing the good thing or who is receiving it, what matters is it is done.

Prayer

Spirit of Life, If ever there were a time for a candle in the darkness,
this would be it.
Using a spark of hope,
kindle the flame of love,
ignite the light of peace,
and feed the flame of justice. Melanie Davis

Song

Beyonce “Freedom” 

 

the strawberry of memory

That's my friend Rich's voice on the soundtrack of this video.  He died earlier this week, a 37 year old victim of heart attack.  The story of the monk and the strawberry, while it has a lot of history behind it, particularly for Buddhists, also has tremendous import for me.  Decades ago, while still taking myself seriously as a bhikku in training, I determined I'd live my life by its lessons.  It held at least equal resonance for Rich.

This is a video he produced for an arts project at the seminary we attended together and I'd seen it twice, once as he prepared it and again in a class on Zen we took.  He is--was, I have to remind myself--an odd person even among the denizens of my congregations.  He had, even by my standards, an interesting life:  born (and, I think, baptized) a Mormon, converter to Unitarian Universalism, converter to fundamental Christianity, converter to Buddhism, graduate of Liberty University.  Volunteer in the military, veteran of the Bosnian Conflict and the First Iraq War.  Chaplain in training.  World traveler.  Learner of Japanese.  His first marriage ended very badly and bitterly and it was in chewing over the bitterness and learning to accept the hot taste of it that we bonded.  His second marriage to a Japanese woman five years his senior he met at a Buddhism conference.ended with his death. They were married a month.

In a week my seminary will hold a memorial for his memory.  We are very good at memorials, fitting for people whose primary purpose, no matter what we tell ourselves, is to comfort the dying and the surviving.  I am trying not to mourn Rich's death but merely, as I think he would express it, to accept it.  He was a good man who got on my nerves at times--he talked too much at times, pressed his presence on people at times, made too much of his Buddhism at times, refused to observe his own faults at times--but do we know anyone (besides ourselves) who don't get on our nerves at times?  That, as much as dying, is a part of life.

The story of the monk and his strawberry doesn't mention anyone acknowledging the monk's death.  But like the rest of us monks need a community; a monk may live a solitary life but one isn't a monk by oneself.   That's what distinguishes her from a hermit.  Someone notices the monk's absence.  Someone has a moment of silence or a brief word for his life and death. Someone recollects the monk's life.  This reflection may be the sweet part of someone's life, the strawberry plucked, not by the monk but by the monk's survivors, enjoyed in contemplation.

If I could play the guitar or sing I would play this for Rich.  But as I can't do either I'll go to the original.

Observations driving along routes 422, 6, and 2 through Cleveland and the Erie Shore

· If I didn’t know any better I’d swear there was a smoke outlet called “Cheap Tobacco” because there seems to be at least 1 store in every town with some variation of that phrase on its signs.

· On 422 there are dozens of out-of-business car dealerships situated next to empty, unmowed lots with one paved drive in and no way out.

· There are also a lot of empty malls any one of which could be the model for the setting of “Dawn of the Dead.”

· I try to live my life so people think to themselves, “There’s a satisfied, happy guy.”

· In Warren, Ohio, there’s a fellow on the corner carrying a sign and wearing a sandwichboard with the curlicue hand-lettering of the crazy all over it. I couldn’t read any of his writing except for the phrase “XXX” but I don’t know if he was for it or against it.

· I don’t think much beats listening to the blues and driving slow and purposeful with the window down during sundown on a summer night.

mischief

I was born to listen to the blues. when I'm driving somewhere during rush hour, like friday's all-day union meeting, I put on some blues and crank it up, and you can tell which driver is me cuz my head is swinging like the polar bear at the como zoo. when traffic stops it just means I can close my eyes.

I'm a believer in the power of unions. I've been a teamster (for a very short while, long enough to walk a picket with them), a food service member (while working at a group home--it was the only union that would represent us), and for the past decade I've been with mscf (minnesota state college faculty) which I call "mischief." I'm a state delegate each year because union work is important and because there are few better ways to make an impact on my profession and other practitioners of it.

it's also like church. we gather from separate rooms and come together to hear the good word. there is a head priest, the union president, and his coterie, the board and campus representatives. we are given an order of service in the form of an agenda. there are no songs but there is a call and response (voice vote) and, as in the uu tradition, congregational dialogue (presenting questions, clarifications and challenges to individual proposals). there are rites and ritual since we operate by robert's rules of order and there is a parliamentarian who keeps track of procedure. just like in xian and muslim services there is a villain, in this case the governor, who cut $290m from higher education's request to the budget (which itself already reflected a rollback to the 2004 budget, thus cutting a number which itself hasn't changed in six years), and saviors in the form of legislators who support the needs of higher education, especially tom rukavina who chairs the higher ed committee (and whose run for governor the union supports in the next election).

we sat there from 10 o'clock to 3 o'clock, like good puritans, and in my experience this was a short meeting. but I was tired and wanted nothing more than to get home and beat traffic. I'd made plans to get together with my friend cheryl afterward and called to beg off. but she convinced me to get together for a single beer since it would force her to stop grading and out of her house. we met at sweeney's in st. paul and talked a couple hours, mostly about union stuff (she was a delegate last year but opted not to go since she was heavily involved in al franken's victorious senate run and felt politicked-out), but also about what was going on in our lives. and then she said something that made more sense to me than anything I'd heard or said all day. she said, "we need to connect with each other more often than we do. friends help friends keep it together through the bad stuff and we haven't been doing that."

I think she expected me to argue, if only because I argue with her all the time, but she was right. unions on the professional scale are necessary, but union on the personal scale is even more important. we aren't solitary, we're collective. we don't generally refer to ourselves as "peoples," emphasizing the plural and separation, but as "people," singular and connected. this is what union is in the real, unexpurgated world: people coming together for each other's benefit to share the good and bad times, to touch one another's hands and hearts and say, "you aren't alone."