There has been a lot of conversation recently about what
to do with the battle flag of the Confederacy. It has been at the top of a
flagpole in Colombia, South Carolina for years and many people want it to come
down. This concern was sparked by the murder of the nine people in Emmanuel
Church in Charleston, South Carolina and the picture of the alleged man who did
the killing, Dylann Roof with the flag beside him. All of a sudden the nature
of the racist symbolism contained in the flag became a focus of attention.
Certainly
the flag is a symbol of the division that we had in this country from the
beginning between states that permitted slavery and those who didn’t. It is
impossible to say that the Civil War was fought for any other reason than the
abolition of slavery. When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Abraham Lincoln in
Washington, he is supposed to have said to her:
“So you are the little lady who started this terrible war.” The division
that we have had in this nation has persisted long after the war was over. North
and South have been politically and culturally divided for a very long time. The
demand to get rid of the Confederate battle flag is a rather belated cry for
unity in this country; for a time when the radical divisions that we obviously
have can be re-united and we can have a generous peace. A peace that never
happened as a result of the Civil War, or with what we savagely did as a nation
to the Southern States after the war that was called “reconstruction,” to make
the people in the rest of the country feel better. We also still haven’t seen
real peace after the civil rights arguments of the sixties. Martin Luther King
was killed because of our racial divide. We are still looking for peace. Symbols
are important.
The
story in Second Samuel about David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to
Jerusalem to be housed in the Tent of Meeting is a wonderful example of
bringing symbols together to unite a country. The Tent of Meeting was built by
Moses in the desert to be a place of worship and conversation with God. When
the Ten Commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the tablets on which
they were inscribed were placed in a great box called the Ark of the Covenant,
which was carried wherever the Hebrew people went. When the tribes came into the land of Canaan,
they brought both of these symbols with them.
Eventually, the nation split into two separate peoples: the people of
Israel, who were the ten tribes in the North, and the two tribes, Judah and
Simeon who became the people of Judah in the South. David was attempting to
unite these two groups of tribes into one solid nation by bringing all twelve
tribes together with their capital as the city of Jerusalem. That is the
significance of the bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem to be
housed in the Tent of Meeting.
It didn’t
stay that way for very long. The tribes eventually split again; even today,
East and West Jerusalem are contested places by the Jewish people and the
Palestinians. Will there ever be
unity?
Unity is
something that is greatly desired by God for all people. We are the ones who
split apart from each other because of our races, our politics or other things
that make it hard for us to talk to each other. When I was the interim rector
of St. James Episcopal Church in Charleston, West Virginia, I found myself at
the head of a great black church in the diocese; one that had been established
many years before. It was an education for me to live among those dear people
and to preach to them. I had more PhD holders in that congregation than I have
ever had since, because many of them were professors at West Virginia State
College, which had been established to be a place where African American people
could find education. I learned a lot from them about the differences that we
have as a people and what it means to be black in an essentially white
society.
How to
find some unity in the midst of all of this division is what we need to
do. We can’t do it by casting blame and
trying to punish those who are divided from us. We need instead to learn to
listen and to respond somehow to the hopes and the dreams that are cherished by
those who live apart from us. Martin Luther King said that “eleven o’clock
Sunday Morning is the most segregated moment of our week,” meaning that our
churches are the places where we are the most divided. I know that is true.
Mother Emmanuel Church is a black church in a white community.
At the
78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which concluded
this past week, we elected Michael Curry as our new presiding Bishop. Bishop
Curry has been the bishop of North Carolina. He is an African American and is a
dynamic preacher. I think that he is just what we need in this country to begin
to heal the wounds that have persisted through the Civil Rights era, and the
current division between the police and the black community. I have listened to
Bishop Curry preach and I know that what he says is what we need to hear.
Symbols were important in Jesus' time also. King Herod saw John the Baptist as a symbol of his sin. John had pointed out to him that he was guilty of adultery. Herod wanted to get rid of him. So when Salome danced her dance and was promised any reward, she asked her mother what she should ask for and Herodias told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter, which Herod reluctantly supplied. That is what we do with symbols. When I think of the Confederate battle flag and Dylann Roof, it occurs to me that this symbol is certainly not neutral, not without consequence. Getting rid of it says something about our racial priorities and we need to consider that carefully. Our hearts go out to the people of that parish in South Carolina. We want for them peace and unity. It is good that the person who did that crime is in custody. We can do more. Honoring unity by taking the symbol of the pain down from the flagpole is a necessary thing to do in this time of crisis. May God bless what we do in His name.
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