Hilton Head Island, SC – August 2, 2020
The Chapel Without Walls
Jeremiah 2:33-37; Jeremiah 22:13-17
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord.” – Jeremiah 22:16
Ten weeks ago, a Minneapolis policeman was accused of murdering a Black man, George Floyd. Anyone who is not aware of that ought to be abashed for being ignorant of the single most notorious event to date in the year 2020, in which there have been far too many episodes of notoriety. For nearly nine minutes, the policeman pressed his knee onto Mr. Floyd’s neck as he lay on his stomach, his hands handcuffed behind his back. Never once did the officer let up in what turned into a lethal atrocity. In a cellphone video of the incident made by a passerby, the handcuffed man gasped at the accused murderer almost thirty times that he couldn’t breathe.
The death of George Floyd prompted demonstrations all over the world, as well as many hundreds of marches and gatherings since then in this country. Hundreds of people gathered at the place where he was slain within a couple of hours. Many thousands have been arrested in many cities. There have demonstrations in Portland, Oregon virtually every night since George Floyd was suffocated. The President sent unidentified and unidentifiable federal officers into Portland to try to stop the demonstrations, which have turned violent several times in recent weeks.
A major cable television network regularly covers the protests with commentary suggesting that the demonstrators are terrorists and anarchists. Did they become terrorists because they have been terrorized, and should they be labeled anarchists simply because they protest? Without question, some of the demonstrators have been deliberately violent, and have destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of public and private property. Most if not all of them have taken advantage of the large crowds to do their vandalism. They are undermining the valid cause of the demonstrators.
For the demonstrators, however, both Black and white, pent-up fury over thousands of lynchings of American Black people over the past four centuries, plus the relatively recent deaths of hundreds of Blacks and other people of color at the hands of police, have been the spark to ignite so many demonstrations. But what, other than just that anger (which in itself is more than sufficient to explain the outbursts), do the demonstrations demonstrate?
Here are few factors to contemplate. Nearly a third of American Black young men between the ages of sixteen and thirty spend varying lengths of time in jail or prison; a third! The Economist magazine recently stated that “The sons of Black families in the top 1%of American income distribution are as likely to go to prison as white sons from the bottom third.” That is shocking! Do you personally know any white young men who have spent any time in prison? Tim Scott, the Black Republican junior United States senator from South Carolina, has reported that a few times every year he gets stopped by police when he is driving or walking in the District of Columbia, in South Carolina, or elsewhere. My unconfirmed speculation is that it doesn’t happen because he is a Republican, but because he is Black. The average white family has ten times the net worth of the average Black family: ten times! Black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at five times the rate of white Americans. Being Black in America has been a heavy burden since 1619, when the first slave ship docked at Jamestown in Virginia. The Civil War did not solve the problem, nor have the efforts of all the protesters and demonstrators erased this enormous historical stain. In New York City, Blacks are shot by police at nearly 8 times the rate as white. In Chicago, Blacks are shot by police at 27 times the rate as whites are shot by police: 27 times!
Have you ever been arrested specifically because you were white? Multitudes of Blacks have been arrested simply because they were Black. Have you ever been turned down on a real estate offer or a mortgage application because you were white? A high percentage of Blacks have, simply because they were Black. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, millions of Black Americans have either been detained or arrested by the police because they were Black, or they have to wait for hours to vote indirectly because they were Black.
Now for a very brief word study. Since George Floyd died, the words “Black” or “Blacks” are always capitalized in newspapers and magazines when referring to people whose ancestors came from Africa. It has become a universal usage in journalism. Up until late May, lower-case spelling was always used to describe black, white, and brown people. Now “Black” is always capitalized. Something is definitely occurring as a result of these demonstrations. Language is changing, and “Blacks” are now capitalized, suggesting that they have a unique and difficult position in American society. It behooves all of us always to recognize that, and the new capitalization emphasizes it.
The demonstrations erupted spontaneously because of police brutality and killings. But the concerns are far deeper and broader than that issue alone. The president’s handling (or mishandling) of the pandemic is a secondary cause. The pandemic put millions on the streets who had been idled by losing their jobs or by doing their jobs at home. This has been a perfect storm of social unrest which manifested itself in people assembling to express deep grievances.
The prophet Jeremiah lived in Jerusalem at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the sixth century BCE. From his viewpoint, the nation of Judah was about to be conquered, and he guessed it would be by the Egyptians. The Egyptian army came into Judah, but they kept right on marching north to Syria, where they fought a major battle. A few years later the Babylonian army came to Jerusalem, and they defeated and destroyed the Holy City. So Jeremiah was right about the coming destruction, but wrong about who the destroyers would be.
As with all the prophets, Jeremiah was particularly concerned about how the Jewish state treated its immigrants and its poorest subjects. He wrote, “On your skirts is found the lifeblood of the guiltless poor; you did not find them breaking in” (Jer. 2:34). Well, sometimes the poor, because they are hungry, do break in. But if the larger society helps to lift them out of their hunger and poverty, their lives can change. Since the emancipation of the slaves in 1863, most American Black people have remained consistently poorer than most other Americans. We blame Blacks for being poor, and then we treat them badly because they’re poor.
Later Jeremiah wrote of the fathers in the previous generation of Jerusalemites, “(They) judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it went well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord” (22:16). When we know God, we do what God wants. When we don’t, we don’t. It’s that simple --- and also that complex.
One of the primary means God uses to assess a nation is how it treats its poor and needy, and those against whom it racially discriminates. Racism now is certainly not the equivalent of Simon Legree snapping a bullwhip across the backs of defiant slaves. In the 21st century, it is more likely means either mentally or physically avoiding Black people, or refusing even to notice them and their burdens. Martin Luther King, Jr. implied that it isn’t the overtly bad white people who are the primary adversaries of racial justice. Rather it is the good white people who never truly seek to understand the concerns of downtrodden Blacks, Latinos, and other people of color. As our responsive reading this morning declared, “The needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever” (Psalm 9:18). God remembers them, even if we don’t.
If Martin Luther King or C.T. Vivian or John Lewis were still alive to organize non-violent protests, police repression would be seen for what it is. I also doubt that the vandalism of government buildings and the destruction of private businesses would have occurred were those giants still alive. As it was, the demonstrations which suddenly ignited after the George Floyd killing were entirely spontaneous, and there were no leaders to dissuade violent protesters from joining the crowds. Everyone was agitated, but the nature of the agitation was not all of one piece. The violence has been seized by reactionaries to paint all the demonstrators as anarchists and terrorists. Reactionaries have always done that when people rise up in righteous protest.
One very evident result of the demonstrations is that numerous statues have either been removed by local or state governments, or they were torn down by protesters. The former is by far the better way to correct the historical record; the latter only feeds the reactionary anger of incipient racists who want their beloved Confederate idols to remain in the public squares.
Life is considerably better for minorities in America now than when the civil rights demonstrations sprang up in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. However, progress always comes far too slowly. Demonstrations have a way of losing their steam, their focus, and their influence. After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida a couple of years ago, the uproar over guns quieted down. When Greta Thunberg spoke at the UN last year, millions demonstrated throughout the world to demand new policies because of climate change. That enthusiasm also has abated.
In the presidential campaign of 1964, Barry Goldwater famously noted that you can’t legislate morality, and he was correct. Laws cannot assuredly alter the way people think. But you can legislate ethics, and laws can change how people act. Fair housing laws changed how and where real estate is sold, although the president is now making noises about where it won’t be sold. It cannot be emphasized too much: How we vote is the main determinant for making legal progress.
Racism has always been at the surface or just beneath the surface of American public life. It has a subliminal place in the hearts and minds of all of us. I will never forget an appalling incident in my own behavior when I was a boy of thirteen or fourteen. A few boys from our Scout troop had gone on a camp-out on the property of the only Black boy in our high school. His parents had bought a few acres of land beyond the city line of Madison, Wisconsin. I suspect they did that because no one could prevent them from purchasing the land if the owner was willing to sell it, although I don’t really know if that was the case. In any event, Harry was not a Scout, but he came the next morning to say hello to us when we were cooking our breakfast.
I don’t clearly recall the exact circumstances under which this episode evolved, but I have also have never been able completely to repress it. I think we were all joking around about something. In jest I used the word one must never use in speaking to a Black, crazily imagining it somehow to be a term of friendship. Instantaneously I was mortified, and I knew that I had to have terribly offended Harry, but he never showed any anger or hurt or astonishment. I was so ashamed of what I had done that I did not have the presence of mind immediately to apologize. Because my mortification was so profound, I never summoned up the courage to express to him my deep sorrow at the thoughtless word I had used. It haunts me to this day just to resurrect the memory.
Racism exists. Tragically, for far, far too many people, it will always be allowed and even encouraged to exist. Therefore it must constantly be combated, and demonstrations of various kinds must be made to show that it must constantly be thwarted. God, the Bible, and people of good-will insist that we must all do whatever we can to create equal justice for all people of all races, colors, and creeds. We can and must change our attitudes, but we also must improve our laws. That will do more to attain liberty and justice for all, and also encourage our attitudes to change. When you vote, think. A mere “emote vote” is always a bad ballot.
It is a political tragedy that both of our major political parties and the American people ourselves have put our nation into a deadly political impasse. That was illustrated this past week in the appearance before House committees who grilled Attorney General William Barr and on the next day the CEOs of four of the largest tech companies in the country. The questions and comments from the Congress members of both parties were too often too snarky to promote respectful debate. The same disrespect is illustrated in many of the comments made by television newscasters. And thus the reasons for the demonstrations become lost in the fog of the polarization, which becomes in effect a tear gas or pepper spray all of us are forced to endure.
There are two three-word slogans that have become eternal reminders of what the demonstrations demonstrate. They are Black Lives Matter and I Can’t Breathe. An editorial in The Washington Post described them and other such rally cries as “the liturgy of the street,” claiming that the rallies have become “church” for many. The demonstrators are prophets in their own way as surely as were Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, and all the other biblical prophets.
On July 17 John Lewis died. The Georgia Congressman was one of the greatest proponents of racial justice in the history of our nation. A few weeks before he died, the Reverend Mr. Lewis wrote an editorial to young people which he asked to be printed in The New York Times on the day his funeral. Here is its opening sentence: “While my time here has come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspire me.” Later, in a phrase which will become one of the watchwords of the protracted, pervasive, and, we trust, ultimately persuasive civil rights movement, John Lewis encouraged us to engage in what he called “good trouble.”
The demonstrators and the demonstrations demonstrate Good Trouble. They cast a necessary spotlight onto the original American sin, slavery, which has resulted in the divisive and destructive sin of racism. If we go back to being the same after 2020 as we were before 2020, then we will have failed to answer God’s call to us to create equal justice for all the people of all the races. We must not waste the crisis brought on by the deaths of George Floyd and so many others, nor by the coronavirus which is now so rapidly sweeping through much of our land and through other lands. Crises can either make things much worse or much better. We have experienced a huge crisis. By the providence of God, may we utilize it to make huge progress.
Therefore, in the words of the old spiritual from the Black Church tradition, made more famous by the incomparable Mahalia Jackson, we can together to proclaim,
If I can help somebody, as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody, with a word or song,
If I can show somebody, that he’s doing wrong,
Then my living shall not be in vain.
(Chorus) My living shall not be in vain,
Then my living shall not be in vain;
If I can help somebody, as I pass along,
Then my living shall not be in vain.”