Mark 8:31-38, Howard Thurman “A Fierce Faith”
I am grateful for the opportunity given to me this week to explore the Gospel and its impact on our forebears as pertains to the Abolitionist movement in American history. You see, it was the Congregationalists who, through their understanding of the Gospel, found the fierce faith and resolve to assist a group of African people, captured into slavery, back to freedom and restoration in Africa. I will tell that story shortly.
Before we delve into that history, I’d like you to entertain some thoughts about “compassion.” My eyes were opened at our recent clergy retreat when our speaker, Rob Voyle, addressed us on the topic of “Compassion as the Agent of Transformation.” Three aspects of compassion were illuminated: Tenderness, Fierceness and Mischievousness. Certainly I had heard of “tenderness” as an aspect of compassion. We imagine the story of the Good Samaritan. We imagine Jesus as the tender shepherd. The tender touch can assist a person to know that he or she is loved. But Voyle warns us that it is inappropriate to be tender in the face of evil. He states, “It is inappropriate to stand by and tenderly watch someone hurt another.”
He told us that when our capacity for anger is transformed from self-seeking to justice-seeking we become fierce with a single-minded, determined pursuit of our objective. This fierce quality is found in the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Said Voyle, “It was his fierceness that caused him to pursue his dream of social transformation even in the face of threats and death.”
Let us look now at the fierce teaching of Jesus in today’s scripture lesson. Jesus actually refers to Peter as “Satan.” You may recall from last week’s message that we discussed Satan as “the great confuser.” Jesus was teaching his disciples about his upcoming suffering and death. Peter had taken Jesus aside to rebuke him! Peter represents all of humanity here, because we don’t like to talk about suffering and death. But Jesus would not suffer kindly the ignorance of Peter at this juncture. Despite all of Jesus’ teachings, Peter still could not comprehend his own eternal nature. Jesus calls to the crowd that those who can transcend self-interest will lose their lives as they now know them, but they will save their own lives in the process. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
Back in the late 1830’s a slave ship containing 53 Mendians from the continent of Africa, was overtaken by the Africans on board. Through deception, the Cuban crew piloted the craft to America rather than back to Africa. After 63 days, the Africans landed on the shore of Long Island, where they were captured and arrested by US government officials. They were ultimately incarcerated in New Haven, CT, where they awaited trial. The Mendi knew no language of their own, but through the efforts of Professor Joshiah Gibbs of Yale Divinity School, a means of communication was finally established. Ask yourself this question: “Why would Gibbs go to the extreme effort to communicate with these individuals rather than simply let the wheels of justice grind on?”
Much sympathy for the captives was roused in New Haven. In a meeting in New York City, three prominent abolitionists formed the Amistad Committee to raise a defense fund for the captives. Roger Sherman Baldwin, a member of North Church and a New Haven attorney, offered his legal services to defend the Mendians. Former President John Quincy Adams joined with Baldwin in arguing the case before the Supreme Court. An escape plan was created by the Abolitionists who feared that the federal government would be unable to offend pro-slavery interests. However, the case for the slaves was won and the committee arranged for their return to Africa. During their captivity, the Mendians had been visited by students from the Divinity School, and the Africans requested that missionaries be sent back with them. Ask yourself this question, “What did the Mendians find so compelling about Christianity that they asked for missionaries to be sent back to Africa with them?”
I was fortunate enough to come across sermon excerpts from a sermon preached by Rev. Louise B. Higginbotham, senior pastor of the United Church on the Green in New Haven on the occasion of the 1997 dedication of her church’s Meetinghouse as a site on the Connecticut African-American Freedom Trail. I have adapted her statements for Wild Rose Congregational Church, for it is we who celebrate the faith of our forebears today. (Adaptation begins now.) I find it to be a matter of deep spiritual importance that those of us who gather at Wild Rose Congregational Church remember who we are. We are the heirs of the Congregationalists who freed the captives. We are the religious descendants of contentious believers like Simeon Jocelyn who founded Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church so that his African-American neighbors would not have to sit up in the balcony of a Meetinghouse, invisible and segregated from those seated below. We owe much to the activists who worked fearlessly for the freedom of the Amistad captives…It is not too hard to imagine Rev. Samuel Dutton reading scripture in a clandestine prayer circle in the church’s lamp-lit parsonage, looking into they eyes of hunted men and women and children and declaring to them God’s word of promise: “Be strong. Do not fear. Here is your God. He will come and save you.” (Adaptation ends)
Today we also celebrate the unnamed women who sewed clothes for the captives and stormed heaven for their release. Women did not argue cases in court in those days. Women did not often preach in churches in those days. And neither did slaves. We have come a long way.
As I pen this message, I think of the countless people who, over the shameful years of human slavery in our American past, found ways to quietly but fiercely give witness to their faith. I imagine them sitting around the fireplaces in their homes and kitchens, telling the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I imagine them retelling the gospel account of Jesus’ first public ministry in Nazareth, where he spoke with full authority and quoted Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” I see them rocking, sewing, cooking, singing. Perhaps they sang songs like the one Jackie sang to us just moments ago. “I will trust in the Lord till I die.”
With all due respect to those who study what we call “recorded history,” there is another history we dare not forget. It is all the countless Christians who believed Jesus on the subject of oppression and captivity. It is the women who sewed the shirts for the Mendians. It is the women who sewed the quilts for the Underground Railroad. You will notice today a quilt from our bed here in Evergreen. The pattern is called “Log Cabin.” Although the history of the use of quilts as a communication system for escaping slaves is much contested in American history, ask yourself this question, “Why would everyone wishing to confront social evil choose to do so in a courtroom?” I choose to believe that there were hundreds, nay thousands of us during that dark chapter who acted in small and almost invisible ways to guide slaves to freedom. Quilts slung over a fence or windowsill, seemingly to air, passed on necessary information to knowing slaves, states Owen Sound in a black history website. “Using the quilts, spirituals and code words, the slaves could effectively communicate nonverbally with each other and aid each other to escape.”
The third aspect of compassion shared by Dr. Voyle at our retreat was mischievousness. He shared, “Be tender in the face of pain. Be fierce in the face of injustice. Be mischievous in the face of resistance.” I thank God for the fierce Abolitionists, the tender seminary students, and the mischievous quilters who participated in the end of a sad and dark chapter of our nation’s history. Amen
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