All of us have been treated unfairly at one time in or another, but few of us have actually been persecuted. There have been occasions when all of us have felt mistreated by individuals, businesses, institutions, and even government agencies. But persecution involves systematic mistreatment.
If we look back far enough, most of our ancestors came to this country to escape persecution. My mother’s ancestors, the Savages, were Huguenots, French Protestants who were persecuted for their harsh criticisms of doctrine and worship in the Catholic Church, but I’ve been preaching for 34 years and I’ve never been persecuted for my religious convictions. I’ve had people disagree with and even take offense at things I’ve said from the pulpit, but I’ve never been “systematically mistreated” for espousing my religious convictions. My father’s ancestors, the Ott’s, were part of the large wave of German immigrants that came to America because of the persecutions they endured during the 30 Years War and the devastating impact it had on Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century. But today we’ve got reserve military units that routinely travel here to Battle Creek for training at Fort Custer and I’ve never felt threatened when I see their convoys rolling into town.
Most of our ancestors came to America to escape the systematic mistreatment they endured in their homelands where they had property confiscated by marauding bands of soldiers, endured regime changes that resulted in hostile rulers coming into power and implementing policies that deprived them of their civil rights, saw their livelihoods threatened by economies devastated by war, and had their health jeopardized by the plague of diseases that spread through the impoverished populations.
America provided the hope of a better life for our persecuted ancestors and we are the beneficiaries of that hope. We who trace our roots to the devastations of our European ancestors have inherited a life free of persecution. We all get mistreated from time to time. People say and do things to us that aren’t fair but most of us have never been subjected to systematic mistreatment here in America.
Yet, ironically, we who trace our European histories back to ancestors who came to America seeking freedom from persecution have become the persecutors. All throughout our nation’s history we have persecuted and continue to persecute African Americans. For two hundred years, we brutalized them with chattel slavery, generating wealth by compelling them to work without pay, tearing their families apart, depriving them of marriage rights, trading and selling them as property. After slavery we persecuted them with the Jim Crow laws, Klan beatings and mob lynching’s that kept them segregated, excluded, impoverish and terrified. After World War 2, we red lined them and prevented them from moving into our white neighborhoods by denying their applications for the FHA back loans that our parents and grandparents used to buy their homes with low down payments and mortgages amortized over 30 years that made housing affordable to middle class white Americans. Since the 70’s we’ve been persecuting them by declaring War on Drugs which, for all intents and purposes, has become a war on young African American men. Even though study after study indicates that people of every race use and sell illegal drugs at the same rates, three fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino.
Fifty years ago on this weekend, hundreds peaceful demonstrators were brutally attacked with Billy clubs, cattle prods, horse whips and clouds of tear gas by Alabama State police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, on that day that became known as Bloody Sunday.
Many of us are probably familiar with the story of Rev. James Reeb, a 38 year old a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston who was among hundreds of clergymen from across the country who heeded Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to come to Selma for a second march in the wake of Bloody Sunday. On March 9, 1965, Reeb, a Father of four, and two other Unitarian Universalist ministers were walking back to Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma after eating dinner at Walker’s Café when a group of four white men approached them from behind and beat them. Reeb was struck in the head with a club and died on March 11 in a Birmingham hospital. President Lyndon Johnson sent yellow roses to his hospital room, made a sympathy call to his family after he died, and referenced him as “a man of God,” in a nationally televised speech before a joint session of congress on March 15th when he introduced the Voting Rights Act.
But there were no calls from the White House to the family of the first martyr of Bloody Sunday. No national attention was given to the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson. He was a 27 year old African American who was shot and killed by an Alabama State trooper while participating in a peaceful protest march in Marion Alabama, 20 miles west of Selma. Jimmie Lee Jackson was an army veteran, father of a young daughter, deacon at St James Baptist Church who had been denied the right to vote on multiple occasions and had become active in voter registration initiatives in Perry County. On Feb 18th a group of 200 protesters were participating in a peaceful evening march when they were attacked by Marion police officers, Perry County sheriff's deputies and Alabama state troopers. Jackson and other marchers sought refuge in Mack's Cafe, along with Jackson's mother, Viola Jackson, and his 82 year old grandfather. Witnesses say troopers entered the restaurant and began beating those inside. Jackson was shot in the stomach with a shotgun at close range by an Alabama State Trooper as he tried to protect his relatives.
It was Jackson's death that led civil rights leaders to call for a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Forty five years later, in 2010, former trooper James Fowler, then 77, pleaded guilty to a single charge of manslaughter in Jackson's death and served five months in prison.
This weekend, forums and workshops, appearances by celebrities and speeches by political leaders, including President Barack Obama will take place in Selma to celebrate the impact of that momentous day and to re-focus the public’s attention on the racial injustices that persist today.
50 years after the famous march, 40 percent of the population in Selma lives in poverty and the unemployment rate is twice the state average. The country club in a county that is 80 percent black still does not have any black members. Selma public schools have been effectively segregated since the early 1990’s with black students making up 99% of the students body and almost all white students attending private schools.
In 2000 a new monument was unveiled in a public park in Selma honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who later became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
As plans were being finalized for this weekend’s celebration, the Justice Department released the findings of their investigation into racial injustices Ferguson Missouri. No charges will be brought against the white officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, but the Justice Department released a 102-page report detailing systemic race discrimination and abuses of power. According to their findings, African Americans who make up 67 of Ferguson’s population, were involved in 93 percent of arrests, 85 percent of traffic stops, and received 90 percent of tickets issued by officers, from 2012 to 2014.
But in spite of the public demonstrations and in spite of the Justice Department’s report, the city’s mayor James Knowles III gave a speech on Friday indicating that he remains unconvinced that widespread problems exist.
Last week the Battle Creek Enquirer ran a front page story showing that African American students in all four of our local school districts are disciplined at a higher rate than white students. It isn’t a southern problem, or a poverty problem, it is a race problem. It isn’t something we like being reminded of, but it is true. We’ve systematically mistreated African American people ever since the days of our nation’s founding. We descendants of the persecuted have become the persecutors.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” Persecution is systematic mistreatment. Jesus was persecuted by the religious elite of his day, the Pharisees, chief priests and scribes who felt threatened by his growing popularity and by his stinging critique of their hypocrisy. They harassed him, challenged his authority, spread false rumors about him, bribed one of his followers to betray him, arrested him for heresy, beat him and turned him over him over to the Roman governor to have him crucified. The cross and the lynching tree are both symbols of persecution.
Last week we talked about the two great spiritual awakenings that underlie all religious traditions of the world. The first is the personal awakening, the claiming of our true identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters. The second is a social awakening, the realization that not just I but all people everywhere are also beloved children of God, that we have all been formed from the same sacred dust of the earth, that we are all spiritual siblings.
We said peacemakers are people who have experienced these two great spiritual awakenings in their lives. They know that they are precious in the eyes of God and they recognize every other human being as siblings. Even when people behave badly, peacemakers treat them with dignity and respect because they still recognize them God’s beloved sons and daughters.
Persecution is the opposite of peacemaking. Peacemaking requires our ability to recognize that our lives are connected, that our welfares are linked, that we share a common ancestry. Persecution requires our willingness to strip people of their humanity, to define them as other, to reject our common birthright as beloved sons and daughters of God. Sometimes it seems as though the only way we can feel good about ourselves is by having someone beneath us, someone we can look down on, someone we can feel justified in mistreating.
But remember what we said a few weeks ago when we talked about the beatitude that blessed those who, “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Righteousness isn’t conforming to an external set or rules or laws or commandments. Biblical righteousness is always relational. It is about seeking “right-us-ness.” That is our highest spiritual calling in life. Blessed are those who endure persecution seeking “right-us-ness” for everyone, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
