National Turning Healing Inheritance of Slavery

Sermon by the Rev. Jerry Drino, Epiphany III, 25 January 2009 at the Episcopal Church in the Almaden (San Jose, CA)

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news

The themes of our readings pull us in one direction: To repent, to turn (which is what the word means in Hebrew and Greek), to have a conversion from the life that you have lived to one that you are called to live. In order to do that you need to have full ownership of what you are turning from from. Such turning, such repentance is hard work, uncomfortable work.

The week past has seen some historic turnings. As I was watching the coverage of the Inaugural ceremonies I was struck by several comments. One was from an Asian American immigrant who said, “I never thought that history could change so quickly.” Another came from a mother with tears coming down her cheeks, “Now my son can be anything he wants. He doesn’t have to be a Tiger Woods or a basketball player.” Turnings, historic turnings and will make all the difference.

We Christians are inheritors of a religious tradition that is strung together with a continuous process of turnings. It starts with Eve being turned aside by the Serpent who pointed her to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She turned, ate of its fruit, was awakened into a new level of consciousness and sought out Adam to join her. He turned, ate, awakened and this angered God the Creator who wanted to keep things just the way they were – neat and orderly and definitely no turning. God then turned and threw them out of the Garden, his beloved human experiment and thus began the long journey from mythic time down to this moment. We can not find one of our spiritual ancestors from this beginning pair whose lives are not filled with turnings be they Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses, the Prophets and most especially Jesus.

I do not mean to make this sermon a political speculation. Regardless of who was elected President the transfer of power from one Administration to another in our country is a time of turning. We should rejoice and burst with pride in the fact that the transfer of power has consistently be done peacefully through 44 Presidents, even though Abraham Lincoln had to sneak into Washington before one of his inauguration. This stands in contrast to such turnings governmental and even religious turnings in many cultures.

In December I was in Kenya and Sudan. As I drove through both countries I saw the devastation which was the price of attempted transfers of power. In Kenya whole villages and sections of towns had been burned to the ground because those people, belonging to a contesting tribe where living in the wrong place. When I entered another area similar destruction was evident. But the victims here were members of the same tribe who had burned the homes and businesses of the other tribe in another place. The transfer has not succeeded in Kenya and the old régime still will not relinquish their power and now the press is being censored.

We have much to celebrate as Americans because of the peaceful transfer of power, regardless of how we voted.

But what does this turning mean within the context of the religious perspective which our readings for this morning call us to consider?

I want to tell you about my own turning, my own repentance as it relates to the national turning which happened on Tuesday.

On my mother’s side of the family I can trace back eleven generations in this country to 1667 when my first ancestor settled in North Carolina from Virginia. Within a short period of time William Simmons possessed 300 acres. There is no reference in the scant documents as to how he cleared the land and began to farm, but it was done. I can only assume that slaves were the answer, that onerous institution that had already been established for at least a generation. By the time his grandson’s Will was recorded slaves, as personal property were being distributed to family members. Generation after generation, Will after Will numbers of slaves and then names of slaves were inherited as property in my Simmons family. The last slaves so noted in Wills were registered in 1835, nearly a century and a half since that fateful entry into North Carolina.

So what is the repentance that I needed to make, what was the turning that I needed to intentionally take in order to know that the Kingdom of God had come near? It was not until my 50s where I delved deeper into my genealogy that I found the names of Tobi and Sarah, Gilbert and Sally - property owned by my family. However, even as a child I knew that things were not right in my family and community. Relationships were strained. Pressures were put on me as to who would be my friends. Several painful separations from classmates who were of other ethnic origins became wounding markings of my growing up.

From high school on I spent my summers living and working among Native Americans and Hawaiians, kids from Harlem and the Bronx, in Latino barrios and Asian communities. I knew I was close to something important but I still didn’t “own” it. I didn’t even know that I was in the process of a conversion, a turning, a long, long turning.

In the summer of 1965 I and Marilyn, my fiancée, now my wife, worked in a summer tutorial program in South Central Los Angeles. On the last day of classes the Watts Riots broke out and the fires burned all around the parish church two blocks in each direction. When the embers were cooling down three gangs started coming to our youth group. The rector decided that I could wait out a year of seminary because these kids could not wait. I did that and was ordained a deacon.

Subsequently, my life has been a rich experience in living and relating with dozens and dozens of ethnic communities. I was turning in my heritage and a transformation of that heritage was taking place, or being put in its rightful place. However, something was still missing…something that required the community, and not just me as an individual, to undergo.

Last fall our Presiding Bishop called for an observance of a Day of Repentance for the Episcopal Church’s participation in Transatlantic Slavery. There were some dioceses of our Church where 80% of the clergy owned slaved. We are a society that was built on slavery and genocide and no one was exempt from the impact of this reality. The roots of all of our wealth and the very institutions of our society and link back to these painful realities.

I ask our bishop if she would send me and Gaylord Fischer to the observance in Philadelphia at the historic Church of St. Thomas.” This is the congregation founded by Absalom Jones, the first African American to be ordained as priest, and that while he was still a slave. Gaylord is a leader at St. Philip’s and was at one time the highest ranking African American to serve at Lockheed.

We went and I began to experience the collective turning that I knew needed to move to a much deeper level, not just for me but for whole communities. I took with me those names and hopefully something of the spirit those slaves that my family once owned, to ask forgiveness of all the pain and injustice. It was essential that I participate with Blacks and Whites, Latinos, Native Americans and Asians of our Church in this collective act of acknowledgement, repentance (turning) and absolution. I cried throughout most of the service beginning when I saw thirteen Black bishops among the twenty seven bishops of our Church in procession. These thirteen, the present guardians of our faith, move solemnly down the aisle in the full dignity of their office: Bishops who in their own life time have known horrendous discrimination but stand in places of authority, in dioceses that in the past would only have allowed Blacks to be servants and worse, slaves.

I was sharing in a much deeper conversion than I had known before of the whole body politic of a portion of our society.

Regardless of your political leanings, the inauguration of Barack Obama last Tuesday ushered in a tremendous turning, a necessary conversion that is required if we are truly to embrace the core values of who we are as a people. If he had been a Republican this would still have been absolutely necessary for us to move towards the realization of the potential that has been waiting for four hundred years since our founding. We are on the road to healing at a much deeper level, regardless of where the politics are. I know that healing personally and I pray for that experience for everyone who calls themselves an American. But the need for repentance goes beyond a national history and a tragic past. Probably the full potential of in depth healing will not take place until a woman; a Native American, a Latino-American and an Asian-American are elected to the highest position in our nation. That is going to take generations.
Why, as Christians, is it important for us to keep focused on a life of repentance? In the words of Jesus, what is at stake is nothing short of receiving the Kingdom of God. And the marks of receiving the Kingdom are forgiveness and love. If we don’t turn, if we don’t repent, if there is no on-going conversion then we will miss the Kingdom and we ultimately we will be drained of love. There is an old Shaker hymn that was sung to prepare believers for the Second Coming of Christ, again the coming of the Kingdom of God. The refrain goes

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right

That is what it is all about: to keep on turning, turning until we come down right as individuals, as families, as a Church, as a Nation, as a world-wide community.

John the Baptist and Jesus and then Paul were clear that if we are to greet God fresh every morning, every moment of our lives, to know the New Creation – the heart of the Good News - then we had to turn from yesterdays truths, attitudes, prejudices and assumptions to the possibilities of yet an unborn future. Amen.

Simple Gifts

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Refrain:

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
'Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
'Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we'll all live together and we'll all learn to say,

Refrain:

'Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,
'Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of "me",
And when we hear what others really think and really feel,
Then we'll all live together with a love that is real. Refrain: