Memorial United Methodist Church

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The Sea of Separation in Jesus’ time

The second line of the Gospel this morning starts with, “When they found him (The crowd found Jesus) on the other side of the sea….” “The other side of the sea” is more than geography here. The Sea of Galilee was also a Sea of Separation. It divided the Jewish and Gentile communities. Jesus kept going back and forth, eating with people on both sides, calming the storms between these peoples, walking on the water that divided these two peoples and breaking almost every law designed to keep these people apart from each other. When Jesus brought together Jews and Gentiles or met, touched and ate with Gentiles, he was doing something very radical which changed the world and impacted the nature of emerging Christianity. Jesus especially enjoyed eating with people the national and religious leaders didn’t think he should eat with. When he ate with a marginalized person it wasn’t just two people meeting and eating -- it was two histories and cultures meeting and eating. Each of these meals, whatever they ate, was a holy meal.

The Sea of Separation in our time

In the life of the people of the United States we have our own Sea of Separation. It is a tumultuous body of water between European-American and African-American persons. Sometimes we pretend that this sea has gone away or has been bridged. Then, without warning, those of us who are White are reminded that it is still there. Black people need no reminder.
    Steve Morton is a member of our congregation, a professional photographer and a life-long resident of this part of Westchester. He has done photography you have seen – the teachers of our school in the school entry-way, pictures of some of the things the government of White Plains most want you to see, and pictures of some of New York’s most famous politicians. He has two sons, Jake and Jeremy, and his life-partner is Donna. He is in worship quite often. He and his family sit two thirds of the way back, on the aisle, on the window side of the sanctuary.
    Recently, Steve was taking photos as the Kensico Dam. A police officer stopped him and asked if he could help him. Steve suggested he could if he could handle his very expensive professional photography equipment. The officer said that his job was to protect the dam from terrorists. Steve suggested that if there were terrorists around they were probably watching the two of them with binoculars. Steve doubted that a terrorist would be taking pictures of sculptures, dressed as he was dressed, with the equipment he has and acting as he was acting.    
There is not a black man of our congregation who doesn’t know the experience of Steve. He was guilty of taking pictures while Black. He was just doing his life. People are suspicious of him, not because of his actions, but because of his being, the way God created him. People wonder daily, as they send their Black children out from their home, “Will they be treated according to the content of their character or a biased view of the color of their skin?”
    I have told Steve’s story to three white persons of our congregation and they have all said, in one way or another, “The cop was right.” “The Kensico Dam is a terror target.” “We don’t know what was in the officer’s mind.” “He was just doing his job.” I am pretty sure people are right that the officer feels he was just doing his job and that he has no personal animosity to Steve.
    We live on two sides of this Sea of Separation and some of us deny its existence. We have a president of the United States who is African on his father’s side and European on his mother’s side. He has both sides of this sea in his soul. Some would like us to believe that since he is president we are now in a post-racial America. We are not. Have you seen that TV ads and commentaries suggesting that President Obama’s health care proposals are designed to take health benefits from White people and give them to Black people (some say it is a disguised effort an reparations), that he is a racist who hates white people, and that the privileges and entitlements of White people are endangered because a Black man is president?
    They sat in a holy meal – four people, two African Americans and two European-Americans. I thought of the meals Jesus had with separated person. In my way of understanding things, Christ was there at the White House. It was a holy meal of peanuts, pretzels and beer. They were expressing what is eternal in life – relationships between persons created in the image of God. I am not trying to Christianize an event. The bread of life is not restricted to a Christian ritual or a Christian house of worship. It is tasted when life is shared and relationship is affirmed as eternal.

Denying the Sea of Separation

This White house holy meal could be just another source of denial about our deep separation. We need honesty about our history if we are to truly understand the significance of this meal.

• We need to stop denying the reality of slavery in our country. The great economic engine of capitalism in this place was built on forced free labor and stolen land. Millions of African and indigenous people lost their lives. Families were torn apart. South Africa is searching for official ways to be honest about their history, as is Australia. This is not so in the United States. We remain as a country in official denial.
• We need to stop denying that the concept of “White” was invented our colonies to provide for a coalition among differing European populations and to make sure that African slaves could be seen as the enemy, a threat to civilization.
• We need to stop denying that those of us who are White have mental scripts that say that Black men are violent, never acknowledging that most of the violence in our country is perpetrated by White men. Of course Black people have scripts also – but their scripts are not reinforced by almost all of the institutions and systems of the country.
• We need to stop denying that the proliferation of prisons in New York State helps the economy of White sections of our state and takes voting power from Black neighborhoods.
• We need to stop denying the level of violence against Black people in our country. I don’t know about New York. In Chicago the White Police have been known to pick up Black young men and drop them into the White neighborhood of Bridgeport (The neighborhood of both Mayor Daleys) to be beaten up by White gangs. Police also have been known to take Black young men to the precinct and torture them by tying them against hot radiators, and worse. It was denied but I know that I correctly said that the KKK was active in a police department of a town where I was a pastor and soon my wife was regularly hassled on the way to work by the police, fires who set in the dumpsters in the church parking lot behind our home and off-duty Black police had to guard our parsonage 24 hours a day for months.
• We need to stop denying that Black young men of Memorial UMC are unduly stopped by police in our own county. They are often viewed as violent, because of the color of their skin.
• We need to stop denying that the real power that separates us in this country is not (and has never been) in the hands of police officers. Rather this power is in the hands of those of the controllers of capital who partially gain and maintain White privilege and entitlement by keeping public focus on police and off of themselves.

The Black people of our congregation can help us understand some of what was going on with Professor Gates as he was arrested while-being-home in Cambridge. There are police officers and their families who could help us understand some of what was going on with Officer Crawley. Their meal at the White House was a holy moment – saying that there is something in life that is eternal. Relationships are eternal. When Jesus said he was offering the bread of life, the people said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” If we are going to sit down in honesty for peanuts, pretzels and beer, I say, “Give us this bread always.” If this meal becomes another way to deny our realities, I would rather skip the meal. I hope we will eat in holy honesty.