History in the Hyphen

Sermon preached at Glebe-St. James United Church

Feb. 5, 2012

“History in the Hyphen”                                Mark 1: 29-39

by Rev. Dr. Christine Johnson

When you start researching history,

                you realize that dates are very important.

And when you read profiles of significant persons,

                you’re often given the year of their birth and the year of their death.

This is what we see on tombstones.

A year of birth, a hyphen and the year of death.

For example, 1918-1999

But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

No, not by a long shot.

The history of any person, in its full depth and breath, is represented by the lowly hyphen.

It’s in the hyphen where the daily ups and downs take place.

It’s in the hyphen that life is lived, decisions are made, milestones take place.

So, when it comes to history, it’s up to us to illuminate the hyphen.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

As I started to do some research for this week’s sermon,

                I began to understand why there’s a need for Black History Month.

When it comes to knowledge about the contributions of black Canadians,

it is difficult to find.

When there is a gap, and when it’s connected to ethnic origin,

it’s important to start asking questions

Why has there been so little about black Canadians in our history books?

We probably do know a lot about the transatlantic slave trade,

but do we not know about the black inventors, politicians, preachers, and other leaders

that helped to build this country.

Like Viola Desmond .

I’d never heard about her until I visited the BlackHistoryCanada website.

Born in 1914, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Viola Davis Desmond was a black Canadian who ran her
own beauty parlour and beauty college in that city. On November 8, 1946 she decided to go see a movie. She refused to sit in the balcony, which was designated exclusively for Blacks. Instead, she sat on the ground floor, which was for Whites only. She was forcibly removed and arrested. Ms. Desmond was found guilty of not paying the one-cent difference in tax on the balcony ticket. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and paid a $26 fine. The trial mainly focused on the issue of tax evasion and not on the discriminatory practices of the theatre. Dissatisfied with the verdict, the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP), with Viola’s help, took the case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. All efforts to have the conviction overturned were unsuccessful, and her lawyer eventually returned her fee. Viola Desmond later settled in New York, where she died in 1965. On April 15, 2010, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia invoked the Royal Prerogative and granted Desmond a posthumous pardon, the first such to be granted in Canada, and the government of Nova Scotia formally apologized.

And this all happened nine years before Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus.

Why have I never heard of Viola Desmond?

Why have the stories of so many black Canadians not been told?

It’s probably because for a long time, persons of any colour other than white

                were considered second-class citizens.

It wasn’t that long ago that segregation was just a part of regular life.

It wasn’t that long ago mixed marriages were frowned upon.

It wasn’t that long ago prejudice blocked black people from gaining opportunities.

And still, we struggle with difference, misunderstanding, stigma, low self-esteem.

Canada abolished slavery early,

but that didn’t put an end to racism.

Yes, it was the land of the free, but for whom?

                Not for the slaves, most of whom came from Africa.

                Not for the aboriginals, most of whom were displaced from their traditional lands.

This is part of our collective memory.

When we honour it by learning about it,

we realize the great privileges that some gained on the backs of others.

Black History Month is needed because it’s one small step

 towards honouring the contribution of black Canadians.

This is a healing process.

It is healing because when we learn about the past it helps us build the future.

Remember, what’s past is prologue.

It is healing when the space represented by the hyphen gets fleshed out.

And healing is what Christians are all about.

Healing is what Jesus is all about.

In our story today, Jesus stretches out his hand to Simon’s mother-in-law when she has a fever,

                and lifts her up.

He does the same for others who are sick or possessed.

As followers of Jesus, we, too, are healers.

For many black Canadians, it is healing to gain a true understanding of the incredible contributions

 made by their foremothers and forefathers.

It is healing because it is inspiring for young black children and youth,

 who want and need good role models,

                who are seeking inspiration in order to gain confidence in their own abilities.

It is healing for all us, whatever ethnic background,

                because it enriches our understanding of the diversity within our culture.

I also was curious to learn more the Rev. Dr. Wilbur Howard.

Yes, I knew he was the first black moderator of the United Church,

                but that’s about all. 

And as I searched, it wasn’t really all that easy to find information.

I did find out he was the first black student at Emmanual College,

                my alma mater.

Why wasn’t that fact every taught to me, as a student of the college?

I also found out Dr. Howard was the first black Canadian to be ordained in the UCC in 1941,

                another fact I didn’t know.

But what really surprised me,

                was that Wilbur Howard could not be settled

                (that is, placed in his first pastoral charge)

                because no local congregation would accept a black minister.

In order to be ordained, General Council Office created a position for him.

It took 24 years, before he was called to his first pastoral charge,

                Dominion-Chalmers United Church.

From there he went on to serve Emmanual United Church until he retired in 1981.

I asked Tom Tanner, who was a congregant of Howard’s at Dominion-Chalmers

to write down a few thoughts about him. 

He writes, “Wilbur was always a humorous, gentle and acute spiritual guide. I have long considered him the wisest person I have had the privilege to know.”

“Wilbur would preach about one Sunday in three. His sermons were always direct and to the point, with gentle humour which could have a barb. I remember him referring to the Bible as "that book we trust and dust.”

Just as Rev. Stan MacKay and Rev. Sang Chul Lee also broke racial barriers,

                Black History Month reminds us there are gaps in our history books.

Why shouldn’t black children and youth, in fact all children, know about

                the great leaders of the past?

History can be a double edged sword.

It can be written in such a way that only a small segment of society gets any recognition.

Yet, history can be healing.

It can open us up to a world we didn’t even know existed.

When that happens, it’s a like a hand reaching out through space,

                a hand of love and compassion,

                a hand accompanied by words of encouragement,

                a hand that lifts us up.

This hand of Jesus pushes us to discover the history in the hyphen.

For anything that overcomes the barriers we create between people is healing.

That’s why we need to know the history in the hyphen of Rev. Dr. Wilbur Howard.

That’s why we need to know the history in the hyphen of Viola Desmond.

They were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

They were much more than just a hyphen, or a footnote in someone’s history.

They were children of God doing God’s work.

We need to tell their stories because their stories teach us so much about who we are

                and how we can continue their legacies of healing.

What's Past is Prologue

My sermon from January 29, 2012.

“What’s Past is Prologue”                             Mark 1: 21-28

by Rev. Dr. Christine Johnson

There are some days when I wish I had the power of Jesus.

When you see someone tortured with an unclean spirit,

                you just want to say  “Be silent, and come out of him.”

In Mark, we’re given the impression that this unclean spirit

                is possessing this person.

This unclean spirit, it seems, has come from outside of this person,

                and is inhabiting their body.

This is the premise of a hundred horror movies.

There are many different kinds of  possession.

Today I want to focus on persons, who seem to be possessed by an idea,

                or a mission, or something that has happened in the past.

An unclean spirit, for me, is when someone is so possessed by something,

                it destroys their sense of self, and dooms them to a diminished life.

I believe that God calls us to a life which flourishes,

                in which happiness and joy exist alongside the usual setbacks and challenges.

A life which flourishes experiences pain and sorrow

                but knows how to put it into perceptive, so that pain and sorrow don’t take over their body.

I was at a Presbytery meeting on Wednesday

 at which a brand new pastoral relations policy was being introduced.

In the middle of the presentation, one woman cried out about how she didn’t understand.

She couldn’t understand

how this policy would reduce the incredibly high workload for her committee.

She couldn’t hear what the person was saying,

                because she kept coming back to the pain, despair, fatigue, worry of her own committee.

During the whole meeting, I could hear her making snide comments.

She was possessed with her concept of reality,

                and couldn’t free herself of the old model in order to understand the new model.

I wish I could have said, “Be silent, and come out of her.”

Her unclean spirit, though not evil or demonic, blocked her from truly flourishing,

                from seeing a way out of model that’s just not working.

An unclean spirit always speaks up against authority,

                because they’re stuck.

I’ve seen this over and over again when it comes to past experiences.

In a small town everybody knows everybody’s business.

Facebook has nothing on a small town.

So, when I went to visit a certain woman I’d already heard about

                the fact that her husband had embarrassed her

                by carrying on an affair with another woman.

                He then divorced her and married this other woman.

She sat in her large, beautiful house

                and told me that she would never forgive him for what he did.

Somehow we think that holding on to our inability to forgive

                has a cosmic effect.

That is, we think that by holding on to our hurt, our resentment, our pain

                we’re somehow getting our revenge on that other person.

But where was her ex-husband?

He wasn’t in the room with her.

He was off living another life with a person he loved.

Who was being affected by the hurt, resentment and pain?

...only the person who holds on to the past, and won’t let it go.

Another woman in that small town

                had experienced incest .

She had also been sexually abused by another adult.

In her 30s, the pain of these memories was so bad,

                she could hardly function because of back problems.

She decided to lash out at her family,

                and at the man who sexually abused her.,

When she tried to have her revenge,

                her father was so upset he hung himself.

Her “unclean” spirit couldn’t cope with those memories.

They tore her apart.

Her “unclean” spirit couldn’t find a healthy way to resolve the issues,

                which certainly needed to be dealt with.

I spoke with her until I was blue in the face,

                but she couldn’t hear the authority in my voice.

I wish that I’d been able to say,

                “Be silent, and come out of her.”

For both of these women,

                their souls were crushed.

It was like their souls were cemented in the past.

How do you move on,

                how do you let go, when you’re immobilized?

I turn again to Joan Chittister,

                who is a member of a religious order, a theologian and writer.

She wrote a wonderful book called, “Welcome to the Wisdom of the World.”

She asks,

                “How do we recover from the losses life brings along the way?”

And there will be losses.

We all lose things – great things—along the way.

Parents die, houses burn down, companies close, relationships end,

                friends move away.

Chittister writes,

                “Death happens. Sickness happens.  Change happens.  Then, it is not a matter of being able to control life that we need; it is a matter of being able to accept what can be made out of what’s left of it.”

As I read Chittister’s words,

                the phrase “What’s past is prologue” popped into my head.

This Shakespearean phrase comes from the play, The Tempest.

The two characters in the play, Antonio and Sebastian,

                are discussing the first act in their heroic drama.

Antonio tells Sebastian that whatever has happened in the past  

                is the prologue to the script which is in their hands to write.

In other words, in the Shakespearean context,

                this phrase means:

                "What's already happened merely sets the scene for the really important stuff,

which is the stuff our greatness will be made on."

For us, it could mean this:

                “What’s already happened shapes who we will become.”

The spirit of the past, in a healthy way, teaches us how to live in the present.

The spirit of the past should not possess us in such a way

                that we are like the bent-over woman, crippled by the burdens we carry.

I learned the hard way that what’s past can only hurt you if you choose to allow it.

Chittister says this so eloquently:

“When we refuse to let go of the past, when we refuse to build a new life in the place of the old, we doom ourselves to the kind of emotional death from which there is no exit.  We entomb ourselves.  We make new life, new spirit, new spiritual insights impossible.  We fail to see the God of the present as the new gift of the past.”

Jesus spoke with authority of a new way, a way that overcomes all the unclean spirits,

                a faith in God that gives us a solid foundation on which to live healthy balanced lives,

lives that flourish even in the face of challenges.

What’s past is prologue.

Chittister says, “All I need to do is to embrace the future with the knowledge faith gives us of the rightness of the past.”

Jesus always worked with the past in order to offer a vision of what the world could be.

He stood in the synagogue, surrounded by ancient scripture and the history of his people,

                so that a new word could be spoken in order to heal the world.

What’s past is prologue.

Your past is a prologue to the beauty and love that comes from God

 and is newly available to you every day.

 

Affirming All Disciples

January 22, 2012 was a historic day for Glebe-St. James United Church.  On that day, we voted to accept our Affirming Vision Statement.  This statement outlines our intention to explicitly welcome the LGBTQ community.  In the spirit of that inclusivity, we open our arms and hearts to all who truly seek the Christian way.

This is the sermon I preached on that day.

“Affirming All Disciples”                 Mark 1: 14-20

by Rev. Dr. Christine Johnson

Today, Jesus is coming to the shore of the Ottawa River

                to call disciples to the work of healing the world.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that

                when we hear this story

                we identify more with the fishers on the shore of Lake Galilee,

than we do with Jesus, who calls them to follow him.

Scholars for millennia have cautioned us

                to not read too much into this passage.

That is, there’s very little detail about the who, what, why, how and where of this situation.

We don’t really know why Jesus chooses these fishers.

We don’t know how they came to learn about him.

We don’t know who these fishers are,

                or their families, or their economic situation.

We don’t know what attracts them to this man

who asks them to give up everything in order to follow him.

But what we do know is that Jesus reaches out to members of the working class,

                who for whatever reason,

 give up their livelihoods to become students of this teacher and servants of his mission.

Today, I believe we hear ourselves being called,

                and it’s important, because we need to it hear over and over again.

For the Jesus way is not always the easiest way.

Sometimes we need to give up something

                in order to be students of this teacher and servants of his mission.

It’s a story that reminds us to set aside our distractions

so that we can re-commit ourselves to the Christian mission.

Yes, and with this call comes full participation in the life of the Christian church.

Or does it? 

Well, it certainly has been the case for many people,

but others haven’t been so welcome.

From the earliest days, women were disciples,

                but soon that discipleship was devalued by a patriarchal system

                that put restrictions on how that ministry could be expressed.  

It’s not that long ago,

                women could not hold a position in the church,

                unless it had something to do with a kitchen.

Women were not allowed to become clergy.

In 1936, women became ministers as long as you weren’t married.

Married women could not officially become ordained ministers until 1964.

Robert told me about his memory of

                watching the men take off their hats in church

                and women having to retain them,

                because their heads needed to be covered.

Who else was limited as a disciple?

Remember when bastard children were shunned,

                those children born out of wedlock.

Remember when women who conceived out of wedlock

                were shunned because of their crime.

Remember when children were to be seen and not heard

                because they weren’t as important as the adults.

Remember when churches were formed on racial lines

                and the two would never mix.

Remember when inter-racial couples were frowned upon.

Remember when inter-religious marriages were frowned upon.

Yes, we were all called to be disciples,

                or were we?

Over the last 30 years, and beyond, we’ve been asking a lot of hard questions

                about who has been excluded from the Christian community.

And that brings us to today.

For historical, theological and societal reasons,

                homosexuals have been excluded from being fully embraced as disciples of Christ.

And the same has happened to other persons, who struggle to identify their gender,

                and who feel the need to seek surgery in order to clarify that gender.

Or, for bi-sexuals, who might be attracted to both sexes.

For a long time, we believed that Jesus is calling us all,

                oh, except anyone who might not be considered normal sexually.

And who else is excluded?

Are we inclusive of all persons of all races and languages?

Are we inclusive of persons with different abilities? 

Are we inclusive of persons who have committed crimes and now want to be part of us?

As we reflect on this,

                it’s important to remember that when people feel excluded the consequences are great.

There is pain, persecution, violence, suffering, and wounds that linger forever.

The rate of suicide among young homosexual men is staggering.

Rejection, name calling and systemic injustice hurt us all.

When we feel excluded we feel despair and fear and life seems empty and meaningless.

For a long time the Christian church has excluded people who they feel are sinners,

                and who they feel are beyond the reach of God.

Well, I don’t know about you,

                but when I hear this story I don’t hear about any conditions.

And in fact, Jesus is choosing persons who are outside conventional religious circles.

He is constantly breaking down barriers, rather than building them up.

And in that tradition,

                our vote today is about whether or not we want to break down the barriers

                that stop people from feeling excluded.

As we’ve heard over and over again,

                it’s not enough to just say “all are welcome.”

Many churches can say that,

                but in reality, aren’t really all that welcoming

because on the wind are whispers of “we don’t want ‘those’ people to be part of us.”

Affirm United has been an organization on the forefront of asking the question,

                “When you say that all are welcome, do you really mean it?”

The individuals who find themselves part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgendered and Queer communities are saying, “Are we truly welcome to be a disciple of Christ?”

                “Will we be safe in this community?”

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the fact

 that the Affirm Process has too much emphasis on sexuality.

But remember this; it is the LGBTQ communities that formed this organization,

                and it is these communities that have pushed us to ask deeper questions

                about accessibility, racism, sexism and all the ‘isms that put barriers up between us.

As my friend Cheri Dinovo writes in her book, “Querying Evanglism,”

                if we can accept the “queerest of the queer”

                then we can accept anyone.

To her, we are all queer, in the sense that each one of us has individual traits and conditions

                that are different from our neighbours.

But some have been identified by society as more queer than others.

For a long time, the LGBTQ community was the queerest of the queer. (I pray this is changing.)

And so, if we believe that sexuality is a gift from God,

                and that all persons of all sexual orientations are pleasing to God,

                and if we can accept the so-called “queerest of the queer”

                we can begin to affirm that ALL persons are being called to be disciples of Christ.

I think it’s pretty clear where I stand on this issue.

I hope that we can truly be a church which is continually

                affirming ALL disciples

                and building a church where love can dwell and all can safely live.

I hope that we can build a church of hopes and dreams and visions

                where all are welcome, where all are truly welcome.