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Holy Week resources and reflections

The sermon I wish I’d heard on September 6, 2015

Guest commentary by Elesha Coffman

Following the June 17 shooting at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, America’s historically black churches called all the nation’s communities of faith to make September 6 “Confession, Repentance and Commitment to End Racism Sunday.” One of the lectionary readings for that Sunday was James 2:1-17 — a passage that directly and powerfully speaks to the topic of overcoming prejudice. Yet many churches ignored the call to confront racism last Sunday. Mine was one of them.

As I listened to a sermon about charity that could have been preached any day of the year, this is what I was thinking:

A few years ago, I was in the Chicago suburbs for a friend’s wedding. A group of us out-of-town guests went out after the reception to the Sycamore Speedway to watch the dirt-track racing. As we drove through the corn fields back to the place where we were staying, flashing lights leapt out of the darkness behind us. Turned out, our car’s taillights were malfunctioning. And the owner of the car, who was not driving at the time, had let the registration lapse. And she wasn’t carrying proof of insurance. The poor guy driving the car knew none of this, but he was in the driver’s seat, so he was on the hook. Because he lived out of state, he had to post bond to guarantee that he’d return to face charges at a later date. One last twist in this comedy of errors — the cop couldn’t run the car owner’s credit card for some reason, so I ended up posting the driver’s bond from the back seat.

It’s a funny story. It even felt funny at the time, like a sitcom episode. No one was in any danger. After some hassles, we all went our own ways, with a helpful reminder to straighten out our vehicular paperwork.

On July 10 of this year, a woman from the Chicago suburbs, Sandra Bland, was pulled over in Waller County, Texas, for a lane violation. The routine, though hardly necessary, traffic stop escalated in the trooper’s mind to “assault on a public servant,” and Bland was locked up in jail. Something happened in the days she spent waiting for friends or family to post bail, and on July 13, she was found hanged in her cell. The case is still under investigation.

Bland’s encounter with the police is not a funny story. When one thing led to another, for her the result was her death. Why did these two stories, which started so much the same, end so very differently?

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4, NRSV)

Sandra Bland wasn’t especially poor or wearing dirty clothes. She was a college graduate traveling to Texas to take a job at her alma mater. But she was black, and she refused to put out her cigarette when the trooper ordered her to do so. That was enough to set him off. He didn’t just tell her to sit at his feet. He ordered her out of the car, onto the ground and put his knee on her neck. Dashcam and bystander video caught the whole thing.

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? (James 2:5-7)

African-Americans number disproportionately among the poor in Texas, as they do in most of the United States. A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Texas-Austin found that African Americans in Texas experienced “significant decline in their economic status” between 2000 and 2010. “African Americans had the lowest overall median income among Texas’ major racial groups,” and “African Americans and Hispanics were highly overrepresented within Texas’ poor population.” In Waller County, African-Americans constitute about 24 percent of the total population but more than 35 percent of the poor.

African-Americans in Waller County also have a history of getting dragged into court. Students at Sandra Bland’s alma mater, the historically black Prairie View A&M, have been repeatedly prevented from voting. In 1992, a county prosecutor indicted 19 students for “improper” voting. After large protest marches, the charges were dismissed. Student voters were again threatened with prosecution in 2003. The mayor of the city of Prairie View told PBS “Newshour” in 2012 that Waller County “can best be described as ground zero in the long march [from] slavery to freedom here in Texas.

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:8-13)

In both of my traffic stop stories, somebody failed to uphold a part of the law. My friend, the negligent car owner, actually failed to uphold several parts of the law. The guy driving her car made no willful error but learned that, when it comes to the legal system, if you’re in for an inch, you’re in for a mile. When one violation links to another, the penalty snowballs, and woe to anyone standing nearby as it careens down the hill.

Sandra Bland may have failed to properly signal a lane change. The officer who stopped her definitely violated departmental procedures, and he was later placed on administrative duty. Bland’s jailers had not completed mandatory training on dealing with mental health issues among prisoners, despite the fact that a man committed suicide in the Waller County jail in 2012. And the Waller County sheriff had been fired from his previous job following allegations of racism and brutality. When all of these violations compounded, Sandra Bland died.

Laws are all connected. The people who make and break laws are all connected, too, as members of the same society. “If you show partiality,” James warns, “you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.”

There is no loophole in these words from James. We all show partiality. We all get more excited to see some visiting faces in our churches than others. We all want our kids to go to “good” schools, fully aware that the metrics used to assess school quality mostly measure affluence and whiteness. We all sort those who would make demands on our resources into categories of “deserving” and “undeserving” — yes to the single working mother, no the “welfare queen”; yes to the Syrian refugee, no to the “anchor baby”; yes to the father downsized from his white-collar job, no to the man seeking his first job out of prison. If any of these statements describe you, and I know some of them describe me, then you — I — commit sin and face conviction as a transgressor. You are accountable for the whole law and the crushing burden it imposes, especially on the poor and on people of color. I am accountable for the whole law and the crushing burden it imposes, especially on the poor and on people of color.

But wait, a pious little voice pipes up. Jesus died for my sins, and for the sins of the world. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light. We don’t have to carry that crushing weight anymore. We live under grace, not under the law.

Yes. But.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

So are we saved by faith, or by works, or both? Theologians have been wrestling with this question since at least the time of Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. It’s a genuine question, seeing that our Bible contains both the book of James and the book of Ephesians, which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

But that debate was not the point last Sunday — “Confession, Repentance and Commitment to End Racism Sunday.” That debate will not help our black brothers and sisters who daily fear that any encounter with the police might lead to jail time or worse. That debate will not change the culture that produced the Charleston shooter and an average of one mass shooting per day in 2015. That debate will not alter the fact that black Americans are significantly more likely than white Americans to attend failing schools, live in poverty, lack adequate medical care and fall victim to violent crime.

Whatever you believe about the theological relationship between faith and works, there is no question that our neighbors have bodily needs, and it is royal law — God’s law — that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. So when our neighbors in the black church community ask us to confess, repent and commit to end racism, we had damn well better do it. No loophole. No excuse. No looking away. No sermon as usual.

Here is one of the prayers offered by an AME Zion pastor as a resource for “Confession, Repentance and Commitment to End Racism Sunday”:

Great and awesome God of the universe, we honor and glorify Your name in all the earth. We have come to the end of ourselves, to the end of all our self-efforts to make changes in our lives and our world, and we have been found lacking. We come before Your throne in humble submission to Your Lordship and acknowledge that we have sinned against Your decrees, Your laws, and Your commands. We have failed to uphold Your Word in the world and we relaxed on Your standards among Your people. Let judgment begin at Your house of worship where we have spent more time glorifying the flesh through entertainment, profits, and programs and have ignored the cry of Your heart and the leadership of Your Holy Spirit. Lord God, our families, communities, and nations are in spiritual trouble. We admit that we cannot manifest transformation without Your divine wisdom and an encounter with Your Holy Spirit. Purify us, wash us, and make us whole. Give us the strength to speak truth to the powers of nations and call nations to repentance.

If you, like me, did not hear that sermon or pray that prayer on September 6, it’s not too late. We can still confess, repent and commit. We need to, “for judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.” Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us.

Elesha CoffmanELESHA COFFMAN is assistant professor of church history at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary.

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