A Lenten Invitation

We enter today the season of Lent, forty days (not counting Sundays) of deep reflection, repentance and transformation led by the Spirit.  Typically, we tend to focus on our individual personal sins and shortcomings, but in scripture the prophets of Israel called on Israel as a society, a people and nation to repent and change their ways.  Read through any of the following books of the Bible:  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah.  You hear them addressing the community, not individuals.  Societal ills are harder to get one's arms around, none-the-less, addressing them is part of our collective spiritual calling, responsibility and journey together.  However, how one begins to change society, is by beginning with oneself.  Family system's theory suggests that if one member of a system changes its behavior, the whole system changes.

There are many sins and shortcomings one can confess and address, but the need for racial healing seems paramount!  Since I've returned from my study leave and vacation, I've attended two events sponsored by partners of the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation initiative in Kalamazoo: the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and ISAAC, and perhaps others of whom I am not yet aware.  ISAAC sponsored an event last Thursday they entitled "Healing through Exploring Racism and Housing Segregation."  Dr. Michelle Johnson, WMU professor and community historian, shared stories of our local history.  The first black family to settle in Kalamazoo in the 1830's established a successful farm on the outskirts of town, where WMU Industrial Tech Park is now located.   She introduced me to the concept of "black autonomy" pared with "white absurdity," suggesting the absurdity of the notion that white people have to be in charge or "white supremacy," and the tendency of white folks getting nervous and feeling threatened when people of color succeed in their autonomy.  She offered "black autonomy and white absurdity" as an alternative lens through which to describe our history, in place of the white supremacy rhetoric which claims overtly or subvertly that white people must be in charge, and people of color must be kept in their place, ie. dependent, needful of our charity.  Such a lens helps recognize the patronizing attitudes of good white folk like me, and highlights the deficiencies of poor black folk.  Can we see the absurdity of this?  

Matt Smith, who works at the Kalamazoo Public Library, shared archival documents of Kalamazoo land contracts, which demonstrate the local impact of federal "redlining" policy, which was in effect nationwide from the mid 1930's to 1968.  Before and after photos of these targeted neighborhoods show the impact on these neighborhoods over time.  Redlined neighborhoods were identify by race, where people of color were to live, and where white families left.  Supported by nationwide public policy, banks invested in the mortgage loans only in white designated neighborhoods, and withheld investment in redlined neighborhoods, or if they did so, at a much higher interest rate.   Real estate agencies and agents colluded with this institutionalized privilege of white persons and deprivation of people of color.  Over time redlined neighborhoods became ghettos of poverty, a direct result of disinvestment.   Public investment on the other hand followed the white flight to suburbs.  

Along these lines, Matthew Desmond, author of "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," pointed out last year when speaking at Chenery Auditorium, that the federal government in reality subsidizes white home owning families in the form of tax deductions for mortgage interest for homeowners.   This federal policy was and continues to be skewed to benefit primarily home owning white families and further hamstrings black families, who for generations were denied loans because of their race, and because of where they lived.  While at the same time funding for public housing for low income renters and primarily people of color, was criticized and cut to address the federal deficit budgets.  

Such public policies directly blocked and impeded families of color experience of the "American Dream."   They missed out on several generations of wealth accumulation experienced by white home owning families.  Through the Family Systems Theory lens, the black community became the identified patient, the problem, sick, troubled child.   Addressing the problem led to "law and order" rhetoric, culminating in the 1994 crime bill, which launched the school to prison pipeline.  This is another federal policy targeted to control people of color.  It's effects are documented in the movie "Thirteenth," referring to the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and is available on Netflix.  I recommend watching this film as a Lenten activity.  The law and order rhetoric and subsequent public policy appeased the irrational fears of white folk and resulted in a booming prison industry, and the largest incarcerated population in the world where the percentage of persons of color is far greater than their percentage of the population.  This public policy targets communities of color.  

If we are to heal as a society, we must recognize and acknowledge these truths, repent so that all have equal access to education, education and investment.  

I attended yesterday a National Day of Racial Healing Event, postponed from January 22 because of weather, celebrating how we heal.  For the past few years, the sponsoring foundations and organizations listed above, organized "healing circles", where small groups of people gathered regularly in a safe space to build relationships across race, ethnicity, and gender and to share their truths.  This event was a celebration of this work through food, music and poetry.  I have not participated in such healing circles, but plan to join this hard and long term work in the future.  I agree with the premise that racial healing comes through building relationships, through truth telling, in safe environments and encourage others to join in this work.  It resonates with the power of the gospel and the ministry of reconciliation to which the church is called.

Finally, the Old Testament lesson for the first Sunday of Lent coming up is Deuteronomy 26:1-11.  In this text is the first, or at least one of the earliest statements of faith in scripture.  "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien...The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and outstretched arm" (vs. 5, 8).  One Bible Commentary provided the following excerpt from The Atlantic Monthly article by Sojourner Truth in 1863 (Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching And Worship, Year C, Volume 2, KJK Westminster John Knox Press, 2018, p. 25).

"The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an' I go round a'testifyin', and' showin' their sins agin my people.  My name was Isabella; but when I left the house of bondage, I left everything behind.  I wa'n't goin' to keep nothin' of Egypt on me, an' so I went to the Lord an' asked him to give me a new name.  An' the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up an' down the land, showin' the people their sins, an' bein' a sign unto them.  Afterward I told the Lord I wanted another name, 'cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the Truth to the people... I journeys round to camp meetin's, an' wherever folks is, an' I sets up my banner, an' then I sings, an' then folks always come up round me, an' then I preaches to 'em.  I tells 'em about Jesus, an' I tells 'em about the sins of this people."  (Sojourner Truth, "The Lord Has Made Me a Sing," in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1863 (p. 473, 478).

As we journey together this Lent, may we find and create safe places to tell our Truth, hear and honor the Truth of others long silenced.   May we all be healed in so doing.