When I was growing up in a small farming community in northeast Arkansas, about 50 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, our home was situated near a right angle turn on Highway 61, which some of you may know as the Blues Highway in the segment that goes from Memphis to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
There was a large drainage ditch along side the highway over which our driveways had to cross, but our neighbors next door also had a little sidewalk-sized stone pedestrian bridge. We could almost touch the cars in the southbound lane. My two younger sisters, sometimes friends and cousins, and I spent many lazy hours there, watching the big diesel trucks round the corner and hear the shifting of their gears. When we saw one of them coming, we perched on the low walls of the bridge and moved our arms up and down, inviting them to toot their deep horns. They never failed to entertain and delight us with their compliance.
There was no interstate there those years, and all the north and south traffic along the Mississippi River had to pass right by our house. But it wasn’t only the big trucks that captured my notice. We were fascinated by the large, fancy new Cadillacs and Lincolns crammed full of black folks who passed by us on their way to more southerly destinations.
Where had they come from and where were they going? How come they were driving such big cars? Thinking back, I sense we were somewhat resentful about it, like somehow they were not supposed to be acting so high and mighty. All we saw were big cars and a bunch of folks too poor and lowly to be driving and riding in them. We felt free to make fun of people who were not good enough to drink from ‘our’ water fountains or use ‘our’ bathrooms.
I had not thought of those cars for over 50 years until this spring when someone suggested I read Isabelle Wilkerson’s prize-winning epic The Warmth of Other Suns: America’s Great Migration.[i] From 1915 to 1970 nearly 6 million Americans of African descent migrated from the oppressive Jim Crow South to find jobs and new lives in the industrialized north. As I read their stories, the image of a Cadillac full of black people traveling south on Highway 61 began to have a different impact on me. The people we saw had found jobs in the automobile factories in Michigan and were traveling to and from their relatives south of Osceola, Arkansas.
It is only after enough time had passed for grace to undo some of my enculturated racial biases that Wilkerson’s scholarship could interpret that image for me. I finally understand that there were REAL people in that car with hopes, dreams, fears, courage, dignity and sorrows. The image, now powerful and now understood, widened the channel of God’s mercy on my repentance.
There is also a powerful, repentance-generating image in today’s gospel, which judging from a little further on in Mark, the disciples were also slow to understand. It is shown to the disciples after they arrive at the house in Capernaum.
On the way there, the disciples fell silent when Jesus predicted his execution in Jerusalem. Shortly afterwards they apparently recovered and began arguing about who was the greatest among them. Jesus has noticed their fascination with who is the most deserving of his highest approval rating and their entrapment in rivalry.
After their arrival at the house, Jesus questions them about their and again they fall silent. He calls them to sit down and tells them that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Then he shows them a picture. Something that can burn in their memory and convict them every time they start to fight with each other. He takes a little child into his arms and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Now in those days children were the lowest and least important members of a household at that time, with no power, no money, no influence. No one on their way to greatness would consider spending any time with such an insignificant person, much less embrace them in a circle of important activity.
Jesus shows them a picture of who God sent him to embrace. Moreover, it is a picture of who Jesus is sending his disciples to embrace. It is the new image of greatness.
For in this image, Jesus has reversed the potential stoning circle into a circle of inclusion for the least powerful, the ones who are likely and most easily sacrificed in the name of infinite progress, manifest destinies, the laws of the markets, the survival of the fittest.
Jesus’ embrace is also a picture of being close enough to someone to hear them speak and to see the world through their eyes. He is asking us to get close enough to the cast-offs of the world to see that they are not some THING to judge or ignore, but some ONE, a person with immense dignity—with hopes, dreams, sorrows, joys, struggles, and fears just like us.
When we finally get the picture and are convicted by its meaning, it will be our choice where we stand and who we are to stand with. But it is clear that if we want to follow Jesus, it will be a downward journey to embrace those who are vulnerable to impoverishment and exploitation.
Some people have gotten the picture, they are asking us to follow Jesus and embrace the least in a variety of ways. The US Department of Justice has listed transgendered persons as some of the most frequent victims of hate crime violence. Byron Rushing, an Episcopalian and Boston legislator is co-sponsoring a bill that provides access to public accommodations for transgendered persons. We are being asked to write letters this week to state legislators in support of this bill.
In a few days, Pope Francis will be speaking to Congress and the United Nations on the urgent need to address inequality and climate change. In anticipation of the Paris Climate talks in December, he will be urging us to commit to solidarity with those affected by the changes already taking place, and in solidarity with future generations of our planet.
In October the Berkshire Human Rights series on Black Lives Matter this year will open with a talk from a U MASS professor on why we need to embrace the younger voices of the next civil rights movement. In November, the Episcopal Province I dioceses will begin to train diocesan leaders in providing much needed cultural competency and anti-racism training.
Tomorrow, the Social Justice Commission of our diocese is releasing a position paper on Christian response to immigration. In response to the recent images of refugees in Europe, our Wisdom Group began discussing how a Syrian refugee family might be supported in this area. On September 28, Steve Abdow, our Canon for Mission Resources, Donna Larson, former rector of St. George, and my husband John are meeting with a Lutheran family placement service to learn more.
We can follow Jesus into the embrace of the least of these by praying for these efforts and movements into God’s new creation.
May the image of Jesus embracing the child in his circle of disciples stir our generous, tender, protective spirit. May it awaken us to a new reverence for life. May we have the courage to follow this Jesus.
AMEN
[i] The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabelle Wilkerson (Random House, 2010)