By your presence.
This building has value to us because it is where we come to see friends, where we sing hymns together, even if we are not the most confident of singers.
It is the place we think of as safe.
Safe for ourselves and for our children.
Safe no matter who we love, no matter the tone of our skin, no matter the accent we have when we speak.
It is where we turn in times of trouble. Both trouble as an individual and also as a nation.
This is our place. We are safe here.
And we want this to be true that others, the stranger who comes to our door, would also feel safe.
Like every human institution though, as indeed with every human being themselves, we are not always what we hope to be.
There are some lovely aspects to our building. The windows, for example, are terrific. Look at how big they are! On glorious days they show us the natural beauty of the world around us.
Or on a day like today, they show us that gray, vaguely hazy MidWest Sky that we all know very well. The one that will be in place, save a few days here and there, until March.
And the heat loss!
But still, they are wonderful.
There are other parts of our church building that I could wax eloquently upon, but I’m sure you’ve picked up the message. Even if though a place may be sacred, its value does not guarantee that it is also perfect.
Behind my seat in the office back there, I have a quote by Alex Haley, author of Roots, among many other things. The quote says “Find the good and celebrate it!”
It’s been kind of a hard couple of weeks to think about celebrating.
There’s been so much social media attention on what’s being termed “Blue on Black Crime,” meaning crimes committed by members of the police force against people who are African American.
There have been rallies and protests across our nation in response to Grand Jury opinions and there are calls to action.
Some calls I have answered. I went downtown two weeks ago to witness to the protest of the ruling out of St. Louis. Rina was there, as was Rev. Denis and Lois.
I have scoured the news for future events where my voice might be given a chance to be heard, or more accurately, where I could witness to others’ voices who need to be heard, and keep my own voice in check.
A little while ago, I lit the first candle of Advent. Advent is the season of waiting and anticipation. Our Christian friends and neighbors are of course awaiting the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, their prophet.
While I’m not in that particular version of advent, I too am in the season of an advent. I’m waiting, anticipating the arrival of a world more fair and just.
I read an article this week, written by a reporter who attended an event put on by The Ethics Project in St. Louis, Missouri. The President of the Ethics Project, Christie Griffin wanted a different kind of discussion to take place, so she invited several African American women to the stage, and they spoke about having to have “the talk” with their sons.
By “the talk” it’s meant of course Things you need to know in order to survive in this country of ours, with our broken and unfair systems. To quote the Arabic-American woman who reported on this event “She wanted to invite mothers of other races to hear directly from black mothers the reality of raising a black son in America. She wanted them to hear the words they each had said to their own sons, in different variations over the years, but all with the same message: Stay alive. Come home alive.”
Even though I’ve known African Americans my whole life, been taught by people who were Black, worked and studied with people whose families had descended from the bonds of slavery, even though I had lived by choice in both the City of Detroit and the South Side of Chicago… even though I knew that “the talk” existed, I had never witnessed it.
These are the words of Grandmother, Marlowe Thomas-Tulloch:
She said that when she noticed her grandson was getting bigger and taller, she laid bare a truth to him: Son, if the police stop you, I need for you to be humble. But I need more than that. I need for you to be prepared to be humiliated.
If they tell you take your hands out of your pockets, take your hands out. Be ready to turn your pockets out. If they tell you to sit down, be prepared to lie down.
You only walk in the street with one boy at a time, she told him.
"What?" her grandson said. In his 17-year-old mind, he hadn't done anything wrong and nothing was going to happen to him.
"If it's three or more, you're a mob," she said. "That's how they will see you."
She started to cry.
"Listen to me," she begged. "Hear me."
Finally, she felt him feel her fear.
If they ask you who you are, name your family.
Yes, sir and no, sir. If they are in your face, even if they are wrong, humble yourself and submit yourself to the moment.
"I'm serious," she said. "Because I love you."
She told him she would rather pick him up from the police station than identify his body at a morgue.
When her grandson left to go home, she called her daughter to tell her about the conversation. Her daughter asked her what she had said, because her son came home upset, with tears in his eyes.
"I hope I said enough to save his life," Thomas-Tulloch said. "I'd rather go down giving him everything I got."
If this story was upsetting for you, if these words were very hard to hear, as they were hard for me to read, look around you.
You have heard these words in a place where you feel safe.
Imagine what it might be like to not have a place of safety.
Or perhaps you already know.
Perhaps you already know that pain of betrayal when the place you thought was safe, that should be safe, turned out not to be.
We cannot stay idly by as the our friends and neighbors continue to be hassled, arrested, abused and killed by a police force that is mis-operating in the manner that is has been in Cleveland and in many other parts of our nation.
I want to be clear about something as well. I know that police work is very difficult. It was one of the most stressful careers for someone to choose. Our police officers deserve support and credit for the job they are trying to do.
Our minister emerita, the Rev. Peggy Clason wrote to me this week, telling me that her own daughter was inspired to become a police officer because when she was a child, an officer helped when she was lost. Good people take these jobs.
But also, they must be alerted when the job they are doing terrorizes the very people they've sworn to protect.
This means that we must accept the difficult assignment of both critiquing and supporting a broken system of justice. We cannot continue to accept things as they are, nor can we complete tear down the structure that is in place. We must find a new way to engage.
We must engage with love as our guiding principle. Not some namby-pamby idea of love, but real deep love, which involves work.
We must love our neighbors, we must love our City and all the flaws that comes with loving a big bunch of people who are widely varied and different.
We can show them that a street corner can be as sacred as a cathedral.
Because what makes a space sacred is us, and the intentions we bring to the place where we meet.
And we must continue to meet and talk and work out our problems until a Grandmother like Mrs. Thomas-Tulloch no longer has to worry about her grandson.
I don’t have the answer to the larger problem, in part because I alone am too small to know all that must be known. But I have a plan, and that plan is to meet with those who are closer to the problem and offer my assistance, as meager and ineffective as it might or might not be.
I am going to show up.
And the next place I am going to show up is at the South Euclid UCC Church tomorrow. My mini-van leaves here at 6:15 in the evening, and I hope that we have so many people showing up that my car won’t hold us all.
When you called me to be your minister, one of the things you told me was that you wanted to reflect our neighborhood. In order for us to reflect that which is around us, we must go out into the world and meet people.
Please, come and join me in so doing.
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