Advent 1

The First Monday of Advent, December 1, 2008

Isaiah 1:10-20  

I have no desire for the blood of bulls, of sheep and of he-goats.  Whenever you come to enter my presence—who asked you for this? …There is blood on your hands…  

It took me nearly six months to read Taylor Branch’s trilogy about the American civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s, Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan’s Edge.  It was a shameful time in the United States, a time when southern churches—including Episcopal churches—refused to seat African Americans in their pews.  For endless years violence against blacks who wanted to vote, eat at integrated lunch counters, and send their children to white schools was accepted, even countenanced.  Every southern black who tried to register to vote put his/her family at risk.  Those who dared to host civil rights workers put their lives and houses at risk.  Homes were bombed, cars were forced off roads and shot up; even black churches were bombed.  Angry integrationists beat blacks while police and sheriff deputies watched.  During nonviolent marches dogs were set upon men and women dressed in their Sunday best.  Fire hoses knocked marchers off their feet and skittered their helpless bodies down the streets.  Jails were full of the arrested marchers, while juries continued to declare self-proclaimed murderers innocent.  Many of the murderers were church members, as were their juries, and their neighbors did not speak out. They all worshiped with blood on their hands.  More shamefully, so did the nation.  Nearly all of us brought bloody hands to Yahweh, certain we were doing His will, certain that the price of justice was too great, that it would be better to wait, better to go slowly. 

Well, I say as I brush lint off my skirt.  That was then.  Now we are better.    

But are we?   

We who have never spit on a civil rights worker or a protesting African American, we who never burned down the home of an uppity black wanting to vote, are we spitting on and hissing epithets at someone else today?  Have we found someone else to exclude from our churches?