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As Cindy mentioned in the Weekly Word, I asked to give today’s sermon. I asked several times, in fact.
There’s a joke about me in our family, going back to when we were dating. I was talking with a friend who advised me not to overwhelm Cindy with my intensity. “You’re like a dog with a bone,” she said. “You grab hold of an idea or something and you just don’t let it go.”
There’s truth there, though I might argue that an idea grabs me. Either way, it can be a little overwhelming for folks who don’t know me, or for those who prefer that ideas and insights come slowly and softly. That conversation with my friend flowed through many topics, but before we got off the phone, I asked “So, a puppy with a bone, huh?” “No,” she answered, with all the honesty of a true friend, “Puppies are cute.” So whenever I get a little too intense, someone will lovingly say: “Puppies are cute.” That’s me. And those who love me have come to love it, or at least tolerate it fairly well. And it’s why I’m standing here today, because this idea … it just wouldn’t let me go.
And here I will pause for a moment … this sermon is about racism, about white supremacy and that might make some folks in the room uncomfortable. Truthfully, it should make us all uncomfortable. Because it’s not hard to see that this is a white church – most of our membership is white, we have white walls, white music (sorry, choir), and white sermons. And however you might feel about the décor and the music, you’re probably happy that there are white sermons because you don’t want to be here all day.
And me? I’m about as white as you get – as my lineage comes from nothing further south than the Netherlands. But I believe that it’s the job of white folks to talk to other white folks about racism, and that’s why I’m here. With apologies to the people of color here today, this sermon is directed toward white folks. And for any folks of color … I get that it may be a little uncomfortable listening to someone as white as me talk about racism, so if you’d rather not, and want to go start coffee hour early, feel free. I won’t be at all offended.
I’m here to talk with you today about betrayal. It is woven throughout the scriptures, of course. Genesis alone tells of Cain killing his brother Abel, Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright, and Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery. But I want to focus on the betrayal of the disciples. And yes, the most obvious is Judas.
Matthew 26 tells us: “14 Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16 And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.” The betrayal was known to Judas, but it was also known to Jesus, who called him out at the Last Supper and later surrenders to his fate saying “Do what you are here to do.” Yes, we all know the story of Judas’ betrayal.
But have you thought about the betrayal of the other disciples? No, they did not sell Jesus out, nor turn him over to the authorities. But as he prayed over his fate that long night, they (Peter, James & John) fell asleep, again and again, leaving him to face it alone. After his arrest, they (Peter) repeatedly denied knowing him. After the resurrection, they refused to believe those who told them of the miracle, the worst, of course, being Thomas who needed to see the wounds with his own eyes. There were other betrayals before Jesus’ death, of course – the way they argued on the road to Capernaum over which one of them was the greatest. At one point, he became so frustrated with them that he called them “a faithless generation.”
Yes, these betrayals vary quite a bit in kind and severity. Perhaps “betrayal” feels too heavy and the synonyms “disloyalty” or “unfaithfulness” would feel better. But when you look at the long arc of the story, there is a full spectrum of faith – as they drop their nets and follow – and a full spectrum of betrayal. And what I’ve come to tell you today is that this full spectrum – this is also what we, as white people, have done to people of color. We have betrayed – we continue to betray – our siblings in a myriad of ways and it’s time to come clean.
Judas is easy – Judas is the white supremacy which created plantation slavery and Jim Crow, which dresses in white hoods or carries torches in Charlottesville. And Judas is all of the videos of white people calling the police because they noticed an African-American in their neighborhood, or a Latinx in a public park, or a Muslim in a store. I’m guessing that all of you have known a Judas in your lives, but I don’t think anyone in this church is a Judas. So we’re not going to focus on that … instead let’s look at the other betrayals.
Because we, as white folks, have also slept through many of the trials faced by people of color – because our lives were busy or we just didn’t realize how bad things were. How many times have we heard of African-Americans been pulled over for driving while black? And then why are we shocked to see that Black men are incarcerated at a rate 5x that of white men?
We, like Thomas, have also denied the truth of racism and doubted our siblings of color when they told us about it, unless we saw it with our own eyes. We say things like “it’s not that bad,” or “I’m sure that was an isolated incident.” Folks said that about Michael Brown, and Philando Castile, and Terrence Crutcher, and Sandra Bland, and Tamir Rice, and Alton Sterling, and Walter Scott, and Eric Garner and … so many others. And, then there’s the form of betrayal that belongs mostly to white liberals – we have competed with each other – “I’m less racist than you are,” or “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” – which only serves to make the issue about us, and not about the lived experiences of people of color. You see, when we expand the lens, when we don’t look at betrayal as an all or nothing experience – we have all participated in some form of this betrayal. We are all guilty.
But this is not a time for white guilt or white fragility. Because the Judases of the world have gained power and are implementing policy – they are teaming up with empire to destroy communities of color. Brown families separated and caged at the border. Black men imprisoned and gunned down in our streets. Innocent blood shed for hatred, for profit. And when lives are being destroyed all around us, we might want to excuse those “lesser betrayals,” but Martin Luther King didn’t. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail challenges white moderates for not stepping up, for asking the Black community to wait, to go slowly, to ask nicely. In other words, he called out the “lesser betrayals.”
Even more so, he denounced the church, writing:
So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent … sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
He wrote that in 1963. Three years before I was born.
But we don’t have to be that church. A few years ago, this church took an important step with a 6-week adult ed group studying white privilege. Folks in that group were brave, honest, open. It was a wonderful experience. But it can’t stop there. There’s more work to do …
Anti-racism teachers talk about our society as a lake or a sea of racism – it’s the water in which we all swim, and though we didn’t create it, we, as white folks, benefit from it and by our many betrayals, we perpetuate it. We don’t have to pay attention to it, or even notice it. But as long as we are content to swim and ignore the water, we continue the betrayal.
Can we wish it away? No, but we can work it away. Racism is socially constructed so it can be socially de-constructed. But that takes work. We must become aware of our whiteness – of the privilege and the power that comes with this accident of birth. We must become aware of the water around us. We must acknowledge the betrayal and the consequences of it. Where we have been asleep, we must wake up and stay awake. Where we have doubted, we must believe & offer the benefit of the doubt. Where we have denied reality, we must loudly affirm it. We must center the lived experience of people of color by de-centering ourselves. And we must be willing to be true disciples – to spread the word.
In that same letter, King honors those faith leaders who did challenge the status quo, saying “Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”
Imagine if we became that church … not just the church on Meetinghouse Hill, but the anti-racism church on Meetinghouse Hill. You see, it’s easy to reflect on King’s “I have a dream” speech this weekend, because it’s easy to dream, and even easier to listen to someone else dream. But really absorbing the challenge of anti-racism work, or learning to be true allies, that’s much harder. It’s going to demand things of us. It’s going to make us all uncomfortable.
So, why should we bother?
There are a thousand reasons. Because we live life more fully when we are open to all experiences; because we are all enriched by the diversity around us; because we want to be good disciples; because I was here last week when Cindy challenged us to change the world. But mostly because we have the opportunity in front of us to redeem our ancestors and unburden our children. Imagine that? Imagine if we could hand our children and grandchildren a world without racism…
And when I get an idea like that in my head, I don’t really care that puppies are cute.