-Jay Sidebotham

From family and friends, I received a bounty of books this Christmas. I’m eager to read them all, now stacked on my bedside table, backed up like planes circling LaGuardia for a landing. As I write, I’m halfway through Jon Meacham’s book entitled His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.  

This weekend, after watching too much news about the events in Washington, I retired to continue reading Meacham’s book. Dog-eared page led me to the chapter which begins by recounting the bombing of the church in Birmingham in the midst of the civil rights movement. Four young girls died after hearing a Sunday School lesson on this subject: The Love That Forgives. As I read this account of that event which is said to have altered the course of our history, I did wonder how much had actually changed. Last week’s image of the confederate flag marched through the capitol cannot be unseen. A gallows with a noose was set up outside the Capitol. Too many searing images.

Those images and what they reveal about who we are make it hard for me to know what to say this Monday morning. So I’ll turn it over to Mr. Lewis and Dr. King to learn from the way they responded to the desecration of that holy place in Birmingham. The circumstances differ, but I sense there are lessons for us as we navigate the desecration of another kind of holy place, the U.S. Capitol. I believe that Mr. Lewis and Dr. King provide guidance, as they fought for justice and peace, refusing to back down to evil, daring greatly, getting in good trouble, risking everything, all the while guided by principles of nonviolence, by the Sermon on the Mount, by prayer to the God of the exodus, by the spirit of Jesus, by the way of love.

Mr. Meacham reports that the bombing gave the debate over nonviolence new resonance. There were questions of whether the guiding principles of non-violence could do any good. They were fighting with love and the haters were using dynamite. Mr. Lewis recalled: That was always a question during the movement. After the church bombing, after so many violent episodes, people would say, “How can nonviolence defeat violence? The Klansmen don’t go to funerals. We’re the ones who go to funerals. But we couldn’t give up. Violence was not an option for us- not if we wanted to prevail, not if we wanted the Beloved Community.”

Dr. King preached at the funeral for three of the four girls. He said: “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city…And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here, that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must not become bitter, nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. No, we must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of human personality.”

I don’t know how these men found their grace and courage. I don’t know how they found strength to hold onto faith. I’m not sure how they kept hope alive. I’m pretty sure I would have folded or fled. But they kept on. They suffered for it. We are better for it. They speak to us from one crazy decade to another, calling us to find a way to move towards beloved community.

Is there something, even a small thing, you can do this week to move toward that place? If so, just do it. If you can’t think of anything, pray for God’s spirit to show you a way, to show you the way. And echo the prayer of the psalmist: Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy.

                                                             -Jay Sidebotham

It’s been said that in the journey of faith, we don’t need to be instructed as much as reminded. Holy remembering runs as a thread through our tradition. The people of Israel are called to remember Abraham, a wandering Aramean, to remember the Exodus, to remember God’s provision in the wilderness. When we gather for eucharist, the prayer over bread and wine always includes reflections on God’s goodness expressed in the past, a section called anamnesis. Not amnesia. Not forgetting.

I often find in my own life that the best way to move forward is to check out the spiritual rearview mirror, recalling how God has acted in the past. As a community, we need to reckon with ways we have fallen short and done great wrong, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. There is holy remembering for sure.

But there is also holy forgetting. As we leave a particularly challenging year, I’m mindful of what we need to leave behind. These thoughts were triggered not only by the calendar, but by a lecture I read given by Walter Brueggemann (awesome theologian and biblical scholar and wise human being) in 2015. The talk was one in a series on memory. The title of this presentation: Nostalgia and Obligations to Forget.

He speaks of a mandate to forget old wounds, noting that most of us are masters at nourishing old wounds that we do not ever want to be blotted out. He cited a pastor named Janos Pasztor who at a gathering of clergy was given 90 minutes to tell his story, to talk about his engagement with the Hungarian Church. After his time was up, he had only gotten to 1300 AD. He required more time. Nothing had been forgotten in that church.

Brueggemann then spoke of a time he was in Macedonia with a friend who said “I wish all Albanians were dead.” When asked why, he said that in the year 938 AD, they burned his church down. Brueggemann cited the Lost Cause narrative of the Old South, a matter of remembering too much too well. He noted that we are all tempted to locate our deep hurts and to dwell there.

I visited one church which over 100 years earlier had merged two congregations, one for wealthy folks, the other for less affluent workers. Upon merger, each church had brought a processional cross, one grander than the other. 100 years later it was still the case that the grander cross from the more prosperous church always, I mean, always, came first in procession. Try to change that and trigger a big old church fight.

When my mother, now departed, was in her early 60’s, she received a letter from a friend she knew growing up. My mother hadn’t seen her in four or five decades. Out of the blue, this woman wrote a letter and said: “I want you to know I forgive you for how you hurt me when we were growing up.” My mother had no idea what she was talking about, and so had not been troubled by it. Clearly this woman had been letting this injury swirl around in her head for years. I ached for that wasted energy, the damage to her poor spirit. I wished for her release.

For me, each year brings a New Year’s Resolution to let go, to give up resentments, to practice forgiveness towards others and myself. Let’s just call it a work in progress. I resolve to embrace the wisdom of Anne Lamott who says forgiveness is giving up the hope of a better past. I need that freedom, so I often pray Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart. I can hold on to resentments with the best of them. It’s a perilous loop. I can live in the unreachable past of how I might have been a better parent, child, pastor, friend, boss, employee, citizen. I pray now for our over-heated political system as we lurch from one injury to another, animated by a partisan spirit of retribution. “We’re doing this because your party did that.” Is there a way to break the cycle?

St. Paul wrestled with his own history of persecuting the church, in an ongoing struggle. He occasionally talks about his past, his sins and successes. In one of his most helpful passages, he says that forgetting what lies behind, he presses on toward the goal of knowing Christ. He keeps his eyes on that prize.

I want to try to do that in 2021. Any interest in joining me in that adventure? Ask yourself as the new year begins: What do I need to remember? What do I need to forget?

                                                             -Jay Sidebotham