Preaching at Trinity Today!

For David and for Janell

Sermon: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church of Manhattan
Easter 7C: Ac 16.16-34; Ps 97; Rv 22.12-14, 16-17, 20-21; Jn 17.20-26
23 May 2004
Jeremy D. Posadas


"God’s Unfinished Business"

My Sisters and Brothers: Come, let us meditate on the Word of God for all of God’s people! You may be seated.

Today is a special day in our church year, which is the way we mark time as Christians — you know, Christmas, Easter…let’s see, who can name some of the church seasons? [Answers…]. You got it. Well, today is special, because it’s the last Sunday of the Easter season — next week is Pentecost, which is like the birthday of the church (we’re even having treats!). That means next week is the start of the season of Pentecost, which is like Advent and Lent. But Pentecost is the longest season of the year. It’s just a month or so shorter than the baseball season, just two months or so longer than summer break. Imagine that, kids — two more months of summer break! Imagine that, you grown-ups out there — two more months of summer break!

Now depending on the moon, the price of gas, and the winner of American Idol, Pentecost can last up to 80 or 90 weeks in any given year. When Advent hits, you know it’s almost Christmas. Lent comes, and Easter couldn’t come sooner — especially after six weeks without chocolate or swearing or coffee — now I’m waiting for the day when Kevin gives that up! Not Pentecost; it’s like waiting for the Cubs or even (gasp!) the Red Sox to win the World Series. Those of us who are fans of either of those teams keep waiting and waiting, never doubting that it’ll happen some day. Like I said, some day even Kevin will give up coffee for Lent!

The church year — our holidays and seasons — is how Christians mark time. It’s like birthdays and school years, like paychecks and rent due-dates and cell phone bills — it’s how we know life is moving forward, and how we remember life that’s already passed us. Life and the church year have times of both finishing and endless waiting. Finishing and waiting — that’s what today is about.

Today in the church year, I want us to remember something that happened just this past week, on Monday, May 17. On that day, 50 Easters ago, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling on segregated schools — a case called…what? [Brown v. Board of Education] Let me introduce you to Linda Brown, fifth-grader of Topeka, Kansas. But I also want to introduce Harry Briggs, Jr., a junior high schooler in Clarendon County, South Carolina; Dorothy Davis and Barbara Johns, high schoolers from Prince Edward County, Virginia — Pastor Heidi has already preached about Barbara Johns. Spottswood Bolling, Shirley Bulah, and close to 200 other children and teenagers were all students in segregated school systems in 1954 whose parents fought for equality.

Throughout the country, black children were required to attend inferior schools, often lacking adequate desks and textbooks, sometimes without even electricity or running water. In all the school districts of the Supreme Court cases, there were not enough black-only schools for the number of black students, so most had to ride long bus rides to get to school, passing several neighborhood schools for white children only. Black teachers at black schools were paid less than their white counterparts. In Spottswood Bolling’s case, black students were denied admission to a brand-new junior high school, which was under capacity; instead, they could only attend a run-down and overcrowded building. In Delaware, Ethel Belton’s children had to ride a bus an hour each way to get to the black-only high school. Sarah Bulah had to drive her daughter, Shirley, to the one-room schoolhouse for black students, while a bus passed by every day with white students going to the white grammar school.

These children were denied any education comparable to white students who lived in the same town or even on the same block. Despite their parents’ best attempts to provide for them — most were poor, some were middle class, and some were rather well-off — they could not possibly hope to compete for higher-paying jobs. Beginning in kindergarten, these children were shown every day that they were inferior to white children, that they did not deserve the same schools, privileges, and opportunities as white children. Again and again, across the country, psychologists found that black children associated being black with bad and being white with good, proving to the Supreme Court that segregation harms the “hearts and minds” of children “in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Whether it’s called slavery or not, this kind of system exists only to keep one group of people in power by all opportunities for another group to advance.

In our Bible lesson today from Acts, we meet a young girl who, like Linda Brown and all the other students in segregated schools, is kept from realizing her full potential. Our Bible says this unnamed girl had a “spirit of divination”; the Greek word is actually a “spirit of the Python.” Around Jesus’ time, this wouldn’t necessarily mean the same thing as being possessed by a demon — the Python was a divinity that could lead women to foretell the future. But whatever the slave-girl’s gift was, her masters turned it into a demon, because they only valued her for the money she brought them by telling people’s fortunes.

We don’t know how the long the slave-girl has been doing this work, but it must have been a while, because her masters had become quite rich. All at once, though, her fortunes change. Paul, in a bit of annoyance, casts the spirit out of her, “and it came out that very hour.” Now we also don’t know what annoyed Paul. Last week, we looked at Paul’s interaction with a group of women who were on the margins of society. Perhaps Paul is now trying to keep a lower profile in Philippi, not wanting to rock the boat too much. But the slave-girl keeps hounding him for many days, the Bible says. Maybe she has been waiting to be freed from a spirit that allows her masters to use her and to oppress her. And maybe Paul does not want to do anything too controversial - he almost sounds downright Lutheran!

Unlike the slave-girl, in 1954, the children in segregated schools had not lived long enough to have very waited long for justice. But their parents had, and their parents before them. For three and four generations after the Civil War, African Americans continued to hound the white power structure to deliver the promise of emancipation from slavery, not just in the eyes of the law, but in real life. But like the slave-girl’s masters, the most important consideration for the white power structure, North and South, was money. That meant keeping the majority of blacks — and by this time, Asians, Mexicans, and poor Europeans as well — at the bottom of society. Segregated education started nonwhite children on that path.

But justice will come - won't it? After all our waiting, just when we have reached exhaustion, justice comes all at once in a flurry of transformation - doesn't it? The slave-girl had no idea what would happen — if Paul would ever respond. But she fiercely kept after him, pushing him by loudly proclaiming the truth: “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim a way of salvation!” The slave-girl confronted Paul with his highest values, and demanded he own up to them. Just so, lawyers, ministers, parents, and everyday black folk pressed the ideals of freedom and equality before US courts, and relentlessly demanded they own up to them.

Paul finally responded to the slave-girl, and within the hour she was freed from the means of her oppression. After decades of battles inside and outside the courtroom, in less than half an hour, the Supreme Court declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. Within four years, the first black student would graduate from Little Rock’s Central High School, on May 24 — I guess that’s tomorrow! Ten years after that, civil rights laws guaranteed equal access to voting, to housing, to employment, and many other areas to all people, with no regard to skin color. Just like that, justice comes, after all our weary waiting, when we least expect it.

Justice has indeed come, the struggle for justice is finished for the slave-girl and for Linda Brown, isn’t it? 50 years after Brown v. the Board, I must borrow words from the first time I heard Heidi Neumark preach, shortly after 9/11: Yes, we are closer to equality; and No, we are not. Yes, laws that discriminate on the basis of race have been struck down. But no, we have still not fully destroyed the “separate” in “separate but equal” — and the powers in this country have continued to deny the “equal” part.

I saw this most vividly a few weeks ago, when one of my classes took a trip to the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx, part of the New York City Department of Homeless Services. We went not to gawk, but to witness — to be confronted by the truth before our eyes. Anyone who’s ever had to go through the EAU to be “processed” knows exactly how horribly dehumanizing a place it is. If you’ve never been to the EAU, you cannot imagine the experience until you see it. Get on the 2, 4, or 5 train some morning around 6AM. Ride to the 149th St / Grand Concourse station. Walk on Grand Concourse two blocks to 151st St, then proceed to the intersection of 151st and Walton, just down from McDonald’s.

For about two hours, you will see bus after bus pull up, and family after family unload, with whatever belongings they can carry. On any given day, three to six hundred people encamp in and around the building. This is the single point of entry into the city’s shelter system for any family with children under 21. 45% of homeless people in New York City are children. The point of going to the EAU is to wait, and wait, and wait — most of the time, waiting for EAU staff to disqualify your family from a shelter placement. Half of families seeking shelter for the first time will will be disqualified, and told that there is some other home they can claim, if only for that night.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. As one writer put it, “families are hoping for irrefutable proof of homelessness, something that can give them eligibility, the magic password to the shelter system.” But even if a family is eligible, they may wait anywhere from 5-10 days at the EAU before being approved for shelter; no family stays less than two days. The day for a family that is still waiting might end anywhere between 7pm and 4am; during that whole period, buses take families to temporary shelters, where they will stay for the few hours before 6am, when the buses take them back to the EAU to wait, wait, wait.

There is little else families can do at the EAU besides just wait. While in line inside the building, families are massed in a vast office room lined with cubicles for the “investigation” into eligibility - sounds more like a police station than an assistance center. It is possible to get a four-hour pass without losing one’s place in line, but there’s hardly anywhere to go, besides the bodega across the street or the MdDonald’s further down. Because every family member must be present to be deemed eligible, most children do not attend school while they are surviving the hell of EAU. 50 years after Brown, education is still separate and still unequal — just under different names and different mayors and different systems.

Not only are children effectively kept out of school, but the parents who do have jobs must choose between keeping those jobs or finding a place for their kids for a night, or fourteen nights. It is impossible for those who don’t have jobs even to look for them. If a parent or child needs a doctor appointment, again the choice is between health and housing. In short, the EAU is structured to cut people off from every form of support they might have. This is as effective as slavery or Jim Crow laws for keeping the poor people of New York City poor — and tragically it’s all constitutional! And the poor people of this country are disproportionately African Americans and Hispanic / Latino Americans.

While we were at the EAU, one of our professors, Janet Walton, wondered out loud whether there were any studies that traced the path from childhood homelessness to lack of education to prison. There is no such comprehensive study, no doubt due to "lack of funding." However, in preparing for the sermon, I did my own research on the question. I gathered about 40 pages of statistics from the half a dozen government agencies, as well as several established research groups. (Incidentally, the scariest thing about my research is that, using Google to search the Internet, it was faster to find 40 pages’ worth of articles describing the failure of the EAU — going back 13 years! I have gathered this material and provided copies at the back.)

I looked at statistics to see simply whether there is racial disproportion across a whole pathway of oppression: from residential segregation, to childhood homelessness and shelter-hopping, to educational inequality, to juvenile detention, to poverty, to unemployment, to incarceration, to the death penalty. 50 years after Brown, the news is not very good. I will not recite the depressing list of numbers. Along every step in a pathway of oppression, all the data report what we already know in our bones and our bruises. In the United States, most people of color and poor people of all colors face utterly disproportionate inequality: receiving far worse education; significantly more prone to be poor, homeless, and jobless; overwhelmingly more likely to be incarcerated both as children and adults; and vastly more likely to be sentenced to death as well as actually executed.

And here it seemed like justice was done 50 years ago! But the work has hardly even begun! Here we thought slavery and segregation and legal race-based oppression were finished — but still we must wait, wait, wait. 50 years ago was supposed to bring an Easter of justice; instead we’re stuck in the midst of a long Pentecost of continuing struggle. Or maybe it’s more like a Good Friday that repeats over and over — a Crucifixion of the opportunities of each new generation, from the first gasp of environmentally racist air until the grave in an environmentally racist cemetery. Like Jesus on the Cross, all we can cry is God, O God, why have you forsaken us? Why are you so far from helping us, from our groans of suffering? (Ps 22.1, trans. adapt.)

Sisters and brothers, today I proclaim this Gospel: that we come to this holy place to transform our despair into anger. Not burning, destructive rage that seeks to violate, dominate, and humiliate: we’ve seen quite enough of that just in the past few weeks. But rather the icy indignation that fearlessly confronts power with truth, and relentlessly demands justice. Only this anger will move us to righteous action. Only this anger will ground us in justice, instead of vengeance. Only this anger will give us the courage to talk back to Jesus on the Cross, and say, No, it is NOT finished! We are still waiting, God! Show up, God, and show us your way to justice!

And our God, the God of both Good Friday and Easter, promises to hear our cry, and join our cry with the whole Earth itself and all the heavens. We hear in today’s Psalm that even the Earth trembles and mountains melt before God. God joins our cry, and the earth quakes. And we are prisoners with Paul and Silas at the end of Acts lesson; we feel the earth shaking and the jailhouse rocking, and fear that this is the end. But it is NOT the end, it is NOT finished. The earthquake is the beginning of God’s rebuilding a home for all of God’s people, a home whose foundation is righteousness and justice.

And we, too, can join in the rebuilding — yes, folks, we here at Trinity. We keep our doors open to all, and seek new ways to serve our neighbors. We join efforts like Upper Manhattan Together and Project Momentum, and discover great strength beyond abilities alone. We will find the money and people-power to keep our ESL program going. We will give of our resources to fund our summer camp for the children of the neighborhood. We will give witness to our national church that for 30 years we have pushed ourselves to be ever more inclusive of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people.

Next week the season of Pentecost begins; Pentecost is also known as “the time of the church.” Next week, our time of waiting begins — waiting like the slave-girl, waiting like Linda Brown, waiting like the families at the EAU, waiting like Paul in the jail cell. But indeed, we know what we must do - what we WILL DO while we wait.