The Mountain and the Stone

The Mountain and the Stone
Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday
January 16, 2000

Today, of course, we mark and celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. This holiday has become the occasion, also, in which we remember that period of time in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was present with us, a time in which this nation faced up to the difficult realities of our history, and made up its mind. The nation decided that it would not go into the future as a nation based on racial distinction, as a "white" nation served by invisible and subordinate non-white peoples. We would go into the future, we pledged, as a non-racial society, committed to the equality of all persons.

The King Era (and we call it the King era, not because he created the times, but because he has come to symbolize those times) was a heady time, filled, yes indeed, with all kinds of social tension and social conflict. It was not a time of peace and calm, but it was, as we look back, a period of great change in our history, and great creativity. We live in the world that was made in those times, for both good and ill. A dream was released during that time, and we could imagine a different kind of nation and world. At its most general, every kind of arbitrary distinction that thwarted a person's hopes would be overcome. Today we see the legacy of the King era in everything from the role of women, the ongoing transformation of the society around gay sexuality, the increased commitment to special education.

But at its most specific and particular, King's dream was the very specific hope that white people, the children of Europe, and black people, the children of Africa, would be reconciled. That, as he said, "the sons of slave owners and the sons of slaves would sit down at the table of brotherhood together." And in that moment, the nation seemed to be ready to admit what was most obvious about our history.

The early English immigrants to this continent brought Africans here as slaves, and created two different populations on one continent: whites and blacks. So powerful was this split, so powerful the antagonism, that everyone who has been born here since, or immigrated here from whatever country in the world, has been drawn into that contradiction. All of the nations of Europe became just "white". All of the nations of Africa became just "black." Two peoples on one continent, locked in a deadly history, locked in an unequal and unjust relationship, regarding each other with suspicion, fear, antipathy, attraction, resentment. Two peoples on one continent, imitating each other, influencing each other, attracting each other, repelling each other. As close as two siblings can be. As estranged as two siblings can be. As filled with murderous hate as two estranged siblings can be.

And during the era of Martin Luther King, Jr., we glimpsed a possibility that we could put this all aside and be reconciled, that this division would not dominate our children's lives as it has our parents, and ours. We imagined integrated schools, integrated neighborhoods, integrated churches, integrated cities, integrated circles of friends. It was to imagine an America completely opposite to the real America that was known. We would re-weave the torn fabric of creation. We would live out the promise of our nation's dream. The dream of racial reconciliation was the way that we envisioned the coming of the Kingdom of God, the day when the lion would lie down with the lamb, the crooked places made straight, and justice flowing down like a mighty stream, and all flesh shall see it together.

And of course, that dream did not come true.

So have made a national holiday of the birthday of the man who most seem to embody that dream, the dream that did not come true. And on that Sunday, ministers preach sermons about that dream which did not come true.

Some of us preach political sermons, describing what must be still done. Some of us preach prophetic sermons and angry jeremiads pinpointing the blame for why the dream did not come true. Some preach education sermons in which we try to teach about institutional racism.

Today I would like to be a pastor and preach a pastoral sermon. Help us know ourselves in this moment, attend to our hearts, for a moment.

I want to speak to us as white people who have generally been progressive and have tried to be unprejudiced, men and women who were moved by Dr. King, and his legacy. (I know that not everyone here falls into this category, and I invite everyone to come along for the ride, but we do have our issues to work out.)

As it became clear over the 70's, 80's and 90's that this dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. was not coming true, a great sadness settled over the land. And we have become filled with feelings of shame and rage.

We are ashamed of ourselves, holding ourselves responsible for the failure of this dream. The way that we tell the story of that time is the movement against racism failed because white liberals proved to be cowards and hypocrites. That the white liberals sold out. White liberals abandoned the field of battle. To this day, the phrase "white liberal" connotes a kind of moral weakness and is a derisive phrase. And we believe it too, and we will say the worst things about ourselves.

But shame cannot be sustained forever; eventually it turns to rage. And hence, the strong moralistic feelings that we hold to others who we see as being really at fault. We blame other whites -- it is they who are really the racists  -- those Southerners, those blue collar workers, those Republicans, and so on and so on.

And eventually, we blame the African Americans -- it is their fault, if they hadn't rioted, if they had not gotten into that "black power" thing, if they had not started rejecting our friendship, if they didn't still insist on making a big deal out everything and being so sensitive.

But where does all that kind of talk leave us, except back at the place of our own shame. Oooo "look at us, blaming everyone else, when it IS really our fault, and now we are snobs, and blaming the victims."

Ultimately, we find ourselves enraged at anyone who even mentions the subject of race anymore, because they set off this internal emotional spiral of shame and rage, that leaves us exhausted and in despair. A mountain of despair which now blocks the sun.

The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations has for the last few years been trying to commit itself to talk about race. It/We are hoping to become alert to institutionalized racism and trying to be intentional about resisting it. On the one hand, why would this be difficult? We, the most liberal church body in the nation, one that has had decades of generally positive actions against prejudice, are trying to be more consciously opposed to racism. Why would this be controversial? Yet, this effort is arousing such deep emotional responses of shame and rage that dialogue is very tense indeed.

The second reading today was by Thandeka, who is a professor of social ethics at Meadville-Lombard School of Theology. She is an African American. I think that she has developed some insights about why we of us who are white and progressive get so emotionally tied up about race. She has a theory about why white liberals are so trapped in a shame response, the shame and rage spiral that is our mountain of despair at this time.

She went around and asked 200 white liberal church leaders, including lots of people in Unitarian churches to describe their first awareness of the racial division of society. And what she found fit into a general pattern.

A typical story is that a child comes home with a non-white friend. At that point, the child learns that he or she is white. Now understand that it does not have to be that the parents freak out or become angry or display racial prejudice themselves. The parents' mildest discomfort, their concern, perhaps even their concern that the child may become a target of other people's prejudice still communicates the danger that it involved with crossing the racial lines. And the child becomes conscious that whiteness is a dangerous thing. If you do not handle it correctly, it can lead you to isolation, loss of the affection of your parents, even danger from other children.

So, Thandeka says, and I think that this is remarkably perceptive for one who is outside the experience, that we learn about our whiteness in an atmosphere of shame, danger and fear.

Later on in our lives, we may make a decision that we want to have friends across the racial lines, or we may make a political stance in favor of civil rights or in support of the black community in some way. At that moment, we re-live all of that danger and fear and shame, and choose that we may take whatever danger comes our way as a result. During the era of Martin Luther King, Jr. many whites made that conscious choice, some at great personal risk at the time, but all in a psychological state of anxiety.

The anxiety that whites feel about crossing the color line that comes from these early childhood experiences, is one of the reasons that white liberals have become so acutely aware of how African Americans are perceiving them, and why we need their approval so much, and why we are so angry when they don't give it to us.

For the most part we keep silent. We pretend to be uninterested in the issue of race, we pretend to be blind and not to notice. We are silent to the world, but inside, we are cycling around and around from shame to rage, from rage to fear, from fear to shame and back to rage. And because we do not feel safe expressing ourselves, we react with rage to anyone who wants to draw us out.

I know that you opened the newsletter this week, looked at the sermon topic and thought ' Uh-oh, that again! Thanks for the guilt trip, Tom, but I don't need the ride! And you hoped that I wouldn't make you sing any of the freedom songs as a hymn, because nothing, but nothing, nothing makes us feel so out of place, so stuck between the two communities, so lost and without a home, and no room at the inn, as trying to sing those freedom songs. We should pay attention to that creepy feeling of embarrassment and shame and resentment that we feel in that moment, because it is a clue.

So where do we go from here?

Well, first of all, I think we need to go beneath the cycle of shame and rage that we feel about race, and name what it is that we actually are feeling.

I would like to suggest that what we are actually feeling is grief: grief over the failure of a most noble and sublime vision to come true. Our shame and our rage are ways that we are miss-handling our grief and sorrow. We came to see a great and beautiful vision that did not come true, and we are broken-hearted. What could be more natural? It is all so terribly sad -- we dreamed a dream that we would be reunited and reconciled and rejoined -- and when we awoke to find ourselves in the world, for all that it has changed, this wound is still not healed. How do you deal with this kind of grief? Remember and weep, remember and weep. I would suggest that each one of us try to get in touch with the sorrow and sadness that we feel over the racial division of this nation continues on and on and on.

This stuff is difficult, because it is genuinely hard. We live with a consciousness of a great historic evil -- the systematic enslavement of the African people to develop the Western hemisphere, and the continuing exploitation of African Americans in our history. And while we now begin to the see the outlines of that event, and are beginning to understand the enormity of it, that sin and injustice continues to have its own momentum. We see it, we think that it is terrible, we oppose it, we would like to stop it, but yet, it seems to continue on anyway. And it is all the harder because on one summer day in Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. led us up the mountain and showed us the promised land, let us in on his dream, and we believed that it was possible that all this would pass someday. Now, we are like Paul, we say -- the evil that I do not wish to do, I find myself doing. That which I want to do, I don't do. What can save me from this body of sin? Where is the chisel that I can use to carve a small stone of hope from this mountain of despair?

I don't know. It's one of the many, many things I don't know. I just believe that we should be willing to live in this historic moment of sorrow and sadness. I know this much about grief:

Grief and sorrow bring us closer to our real and authentic selves than any other emotion.

And I know this about grieving and loss:

Grief and sorrow are emotions which bind us together while shame and rage push us apart.

And I know this, too, about sadness and sorrow: that they enlarge us and make us more capable of compassion. Please consider this: if we, as white liberals, feel such grief and sorrow at this period of setback and lack of progress, can we begin to imagine the grief and sorrow and shame and rage that African Americans must feel? Finally, sorrow finds its own way to healing, great grief somehow creates faith, that somehow even the worst can be survived, and faith creates courage, and from courage, there arises hope and joy that cometh in the Morning. Please, please, dear God, may it be so, for us and our nation.