Transcript
A Gift to the City: Peace
First Baptist Richmond, December 8, 2024
The Second Sunday of Advent
Luke 3:1-6
The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…
On Monday morning of last week I went downstairs to Community Missions to do the devotional. The place was packed. People had come in off the streets to visit our food pantry, our clothes closet, to get a hot shower and a little bit of the sweet love of Jesus. Michael Lacy introduced me and I said, “This coming Sunday is the Second Sunday of Advent, and I’m going to be preaching about peace. But you know, it’s hard to have peace with someone when they’ve done you wrong. Can I get a witness?” Somebody said, “Amen!” I said, “There’s this big ugly thing between you and them and you can’t get past it. You’ve got to do something about it before you can ever have peace.” And then I said, “I’ve been watching this show called ‘Shrinking’ that I can’t really recommend to you. The language is terrible, but the story is good.”
“Part of the show is about a girl named Alice whose mother was killed by a drunk driver. She finds out that he’s been released from prison, and that he’s working at a nearby coffee shop. At first she’s just horrified that this killer is on the loose, but then she thinks it may be an opportunity to confront him, to let him know how much he has absolutely ruined her life. So, she writes him a letter, and it is so full of the “F” word that I can’t quote it to you, but you get the point. She’s angry. She’s furious. She wants him to feel her pain.
Later in the show, her friend Brian confesses that he’s met this guy and he’s not so bad. He takes Alice to his house and introduces the two of them. She sits in this man’s living room—his name is Louis—and when he asks her why she’s come she says, “I wrote you a letter.” She doesn’t have it with her but she quotes what she can remember and it’s a lot, delivered with just as much anger as she felt when she wrote it. When she’s finished he just sits there for a minute, and then he apologizes to her, and his apology is so real, so vulnerable, that she can see how truly sorry he is, as if he wishes it were him and not her mother who had died. And suddenly she blurts out, ‘I forgive you.’ And he says, ‘What?’ She says, ‘I forgive you.” He says, ‘Why?’ And she says, “It’s what my mom would have done.”
It’s a powerful moment, but what happens afterward is even more powerful. I didn’t say it this way at Community Missions but forgiveness sets this girl free. It removes that big, ugly thing that was between her and this other person. After years of struggling with the death of her mother she finds peace.
When I was reading through the lectionary texts for this Sunday I noticed that in every one of them some big, ugly thing has to be dealt with. According to Malachi, the one God is sending will purify the Sons of Levi and then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord. In Luke 1, Zechariah prophesies over his son John, saying, “And you, child, will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” The Epistle reading talks about being “pure and blameless” in the day of Christ. And in the Gospel lesson John the Baptist comes preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. All of which is to say that if there is some big, ugly sin between us and God or between us and each other, it’s difficult to have peace.
So, when we come to the title of today’s sermon—A Gift to the City: Peace—I have to ask, “What is the big, ugly sin in the City of Richmond that has to be dealt with before we can ever find peace?” And even before I finish asking the question, I know what it is. I’ve been thinking about it in the last few days and I want to see if I can articulate it without offending anyone (this might be the perfect time for you to say, “Good luck with that”).
It begins with some people in a boat, coming to the New World to see if they can start a new life. They are Europeans, whose favorable geographical location has made it possible for them to domesticate animals, to harvest and store grain, and have the leisure time necessary to experiment and invent all manner of things, including powerful weapons.i But they don’t have anything against anyone; they’re simply looking for opportunity in the New World.
When they arrive on the shores of what we now call Virginia they seem a little surprised to find other people already living there. They don’t speak their language, they don’t understand their ways, and since we fear what we don’t understand they begin to be afraid of these people. They decide that they are “savages.” They try to subdue them, to enslave them, and when that doesn’t work they look for ways to get rid of them.
Not many years later a boat arrives with a cargo of African slaves who are exchanged for food and other supplies.ii Almost immediately the colonists realize how useful these Africans are, doing the work that no one else wants to do, enduring the heat of the sun, domesticating the wild and rugged landscape of the New World and turning it into farms and fields and prosperous plantations. They’re amazing! But for the Africans, things are not so good. They find themselves in an arrangement called “chattel” slavery (“chattel” rhymes with “cattle” which is probably not a coincidence) in which not only they but their children and grandchildren are slaves for life, subject to the whims of their masters, with no way to earn money or buy their freedom.
But if you are a Christian slaveholder you might find your conscience pricked by the idea of “owning” other people. In order to justify this arrangement slaveholders begin to look to both science and religion. They hear preachers quoting verses from the Bible about the “Curse of Ham,” and how the descendants of one of Noah’s sons would always be slaves because of his sin. They assume that these Africans are those cursed descendants. And they listen to pseudo-scientists who claim that Africans are not actually people—that they fall on the evolutionary spectrum somewhere between Apes and Humans. In the same way they exploited Indigenous Americans by thinking of them as savages, these European immigrants are able to appease their consciences and exploit Africans by thinking of them as both sinful and sub-human.
Eventually the injustice of the situation begins to weigh on the American conscience as a whole, and abolitionists in the North petition the government for an end to this unjust practice. But by this point the economy of the South is almost completely dependent on slavery—some would say the Southern way of life is dependent on it—and so the Southerners ask the Northerners to politely butt out of their business. But they don’t, and the North and South go to war against each other, and for four long years Americans line up in cornfields shooting and killing each other, sometimes brother against brother. It’s awful. But when it’s over the institution of slavery officially comes to an end and that creates a different set of problems.
I’m thinking about those kind, Christian slaveholders who would have set their slaves free with apologies, explaining that they could no longer take care of them or provide for them and that, because of the war, they couldn’t afford to hire them. But there may have been other slaveholders, not so kind or Christian, who would have set their slaves free realizing that they had mistreated them for decades and wondering how they might retaliate now that they had their freedom. Can you imagine one of them looking at his former owner and saying, “You’d better watch your back!”? Is it any wonder that the Ku Klux Klan was founded in the same year the Civil War ended, as a way to intimidate former slaves and keep them from rising up? The federal government stepped in after the war with something they called “Reconstruction,” but after twelve long years of trying to change the culture of the South they headed back to the North, leaving Southerners to work things out on their own, which they did by instituting Jim Crow laws.
The Jim Crow laws were intended to keep Black people “in their place,” but of course you couldn’t say it that way. Instead lawmakers promised that Blacks and Whites would be “separate but equal.” Well, they were separate, but they were never equal. Jim Crow reminded Black people daily through the segregation of schools, parks, restrooms, restaurants, public transportation, and even public water fountains labeled “Whites Only,” and “Colored,” that they were not the dominant caste. iii
What happened? Black people couldn’t get jobs, they couldn’t buy houses, they couldn’t begin to accumulate the generational wealth of White people living in the same city. Their civil rights weren’t guaranteed until 1964. Their right to vote not until 1965. All these years later inequities still exist. And when I am at my most charitable I say it’s because of fear: White people’s fear that if they don’t find a way to keep Black people down they will rise up. Is it any wonder that White people’s fear is matched by Black people’s resentment that after all these years things are still not equal?
But back to the story of Alice, the daughter, and Louis, the drunk driver who killed her mother. I feel like what I’ve just done is read to you the letter Alice wrote to Louis, only in this case it’s the letter Black people might write to White people. I’ve left out most of the anger and the language because, you know, this is church. But if you are a White person, you may have already begun to feel some of that fragility we are so famous for, thinking to yourself, “Well, I’ve never enslaved anyone. I’m not a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. In fact, I have a lot of black friends.” And all of that may be true, but notice, that’s not what Louis did. Instead of trying to defend himself he simply acknowledged Alice’s pain. He allowed it to break his heart. He apologized to her in the most sincere way imaginable. And somewhere in the middle of that apology Alice was able to say, “I forgive you.” When he asks her why she says, “It’s what my mom would do.”
It’s a powerful moment in the story, but there is another moment, later, that may be even more powerful. It’s when Louis, Brian, and Alice are sitting at a restaurant together. They’re eating, talking, laughing, and when I think back over the course of the show I realize that it’s one of the few times I’ve seen Alice smile. I think that’s what I’m asking for today. Instead of asking you to go around after church apologizing to each other and forgiving each other (which would be awkward), let’s assume that the White people listening to this sermon are really and truly sorry for the legacy of abuse that has been heaped upon Black people in this country over the past 400 years, and for the inequities and injustices that still exist. Let’s assume that they want to do everything they can to make things better and that they pledge from this day forward to fight for racial justice, knowing that without justice there can be no peace.
And let’s assume that all the Black people who are listening are willing to dig down deep in their hearts and find the grace to forgive them, even though they know it won’t undo the terrible damage that’s been done. I wish it could. Personally, I’m in favor of reparations. I think we ought to do everything we can to pay back 400 years of lost dignity, property, and wealth. I’m willing to try it even if it costs me my house. But in the same way Alice knew that she wouldn’t get her mother back by forgiving Louis, Black people know they won’t get everything back by forgiving White people. But let’s assume they do it anyway, if only because they know they have to find a way to let go of this big, ugly thing that stands between us, for the sake of their own peace.
And then let’s figure out a way to get to that third stage, where Black people and White people are sitting at the same table, talking, and laughing, and experiencing the kind of peace that is possible only after all that other awfulness has been dealt with. I see it sometimes in this church. And I don’t know if it means that all that other awfulness has been dealt with or only set aside for the moment, but in that moment, when I see it, it feels as if heaven has come to earth. I’d like to think we could give the gift of peace to our city by modeling that kind of reconciliation: where grievances are shared, and apologies are made, and forgiveness is offered, and peace is found, even if only for a moment.
In our lectionary readings for today there seems to be this big, ugly thing between us and God, this sin that needs to be forgiven. God doesn’t gloss it over; he doesn’t say, “Oh, it’s all right. I know you didn’t mean it.” No, he finds a way to confront our sin and deal with it, and the way he deals with it is by sending his Son. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, that the Son of God comes to us and makes his home with us. He gets to know us and finds out what it means to be human. He sees how broken we are, and how much in need of salvation. He dies on a cross to save us from our sins. It doesn’t undo what has been done, but it gives us a way to go forward. It provides us with a way to have peace with God. And if we asked Jesus why he did it I think he might say,
“It’s what my father would have done.”
—Jim Somerville © 2024
