A Crooked Death

On the evening of Saturday, August 12, 1911, a man named Zachariah Walker was heading home on a country road when he saw two strangers walking towards him. Walker had been at a bar all day, enjoying a hard-earned day off, and he was just drunk enough to think that it was a good time for a little prank. He drew a gun from his pocket, held it straight up in the air, and fired it twice. The men bolted, and Walker, chuckling to himself over his little joke, continued the walk home. Unfortunately for Walker, a man named Edgar Rice, who was a security guard at a nearby business, heard the gunshots, and came out to investigate. He accosted Walker on the road and, without any authority to do so, threatened to arrest him. Walker, made aggressive by fear and drink, in his own words, “got sassy” with Rice. The sass turned into an argument, and the argument turned into a fight, and the fight quickly turned deadly serious. Rice began clubbing Walker with his nightstick, and when Walker ripped the stick out of Rice’s hand, Rice drew his pistol and lunged. Walker shot first, firing two bullets into Rice, who immediately fell, dead.

Walker knew better than to wait around for the police, for he was black, and Rice was white, and this was 1911. He ran and hid out in a barn, hoping that he could stay out harm’s way until the search was called off. But the next morning, he was spotted by a boy who was out collecting eggs for breakfast. Walker was arrested, but not before trying to kill himself by shooting himself in the temple. The shot missed, and he arrived at the jail bleeding but very much alive. He was taken to the hospital, where a doctor operated on his face, removing the bullet and repairing his jaw. In a fog of anesthesia, Walker confessed to the killing but insisted that it was an act of self-defense. By this time, word had gotten out about not only the death of Rice but also Walker’s location, and a hostile crowd began to form in the street. The sheriff came out to address the crowd, but instead of trying to calm them down, he told them that Walker had bragged about the crime, never mentioning that Walker had claimed self-defense. The crowd erupted at this information, and cries of “Shoot him! Kill him! Lynch him!” began to explode into the night air. The sheriff left, leaving the crowd to do whatever it wanted to do, and in that instant, Walker’s fate was finally and tragically sealed.

The crowd rushed into the hospital, tore Walker from his hospital bed, and carried him to a field about a half-mile away. As they dragged him along, they cursed and beat him. The mob, some three thousand strong by now, made a makeshift pyre, lighted it, and threw Walker into the flames. Not once, not twice, but three times Walker tried to crawl out of the fire, and not once, not twice, but three times this crowd of men, women, and children, forced him back in, beating him with railroad ties, throwing a rope around his neck and hauling him back like an animal. He cried out to the crowd from the flames, “For God's sake, give a man a chance! I killed Rice in self-defense. Don't give me no crooked death because I'm not white.” But the people would not give him a chance, for God’s sake or anyone else’s. They let him burn, and they let him die, and then they collected souvenirs from the ashes.*

A crowd of curious townsfolk assembled at the lynching site the next morning

Lynching is but one rotten fruit of the twisted tree of racism that has grown up in this country. From the end of the Civil War until 1950, over 4000 men, women, and children were lynched – hanged, beaten to death, burned, or drowned – solely because they were black in a society where power was white. If our nation’s national sin is slavery, then lynching is an ugly, cancerous growth born of that sin, along with the forced failure of Reconstruction, the travesty of Jim Crow, the violent reaction to the Civil Rights movement, and the modern brutality of mass incarceration.

There are clear parallels between our nation’s lynching stories and the story of the Passion. They are, in many ways, the same story – an innocent victim is condemned, beaten, and killed for no other crime than being who he is; a crowd is made wild out of fear; the authorities exercise their power by choosing not to exercise their power; and in the end a body lies hanging on a tree, a strange fruit, a crooked death. At the same time, it may seem incongruous to focus on the sin of lynching on this Good Friday. It may seem inopportune to talk about lynching now, in a place such as this. It may seem inconsistent to draw attention to the systematic oppression of one people by another on a day when we speak about being drawn together to the foot of the cross. It may seem inappropriate to pile more violence upon the violence of the Passion, where our Lord is betrayed and beaten, battered by the mob’s anger and their cries of “Crucify him, crucify him!,” and finally killed in an agonizing death, where no one gave him a chance, for God’s sake or anyone else’s.

In his seminal work The Cross and the Lynching Tree, theologian James Cone argues that for Christians in this country to confront the ravages of racism that continue to poison our society, we must begin by acknowledging the link between the cross and the lynching tree. We – particularly we white American Christians – must be willing to hold both symbols together to remind us that the justice and redemption of the cross cannot be separated from the injustice and suffering of the world. We must be willing to humble ourselves before both the lynching tree and the cross, not just because the hope of the cross transforms the lynching tree, but also because the lynching tree transforms the cross. Cone writes, “…we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death. The lynching tree frees the cross form the false pieties of well-meaning Christians.”

So while it may seem incongruous or inappropriate to talk about the lynching tree on a Good Friday in Philadelphia in 2018, it is actually imperative. It is imperative because it is this symbol of our brokenness, of power run amok, of the perversion of justice, that helps us to see the depth of the sin from which Jesus’ death saved us. The lynching tree challenges us to see that the cross is not intended simply to comfort or inspire us. It does do that, just as it has comforted and inspired the millions of black Americans who have suffered the pain of racism in this country. But the cross is not just here to comfort us. The cross is also here to provoke us. The cross is here to “provoke us to love and good deeds,” as the author of Hebrews writes. The cross is the ultimate provocation, calling us forth, calling us out to look out for the least of these, to stand up for the abused and the neglected, to give voice to those who have suffered for far too long at the hands of those in power. If the cross does not provoke us to this kind of powerful, active love, then we are missing something of this Good Friday.

On April 26 of this year, the Equal Justice Initiative, under the leadership of Bryan Stephenson, author of our Lenten book Just Mercy, will open the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the nation’s first memorial to victims of lynching, in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is made of 800 columns, one for each county in the United States where the EJI has been able to accurately document a lynching. Outside the memorial proper, there will be another 800 columns, identical to those inside. The plan is for these columns to be taken back to the counties they represent and placed at a documented lynching site as a local memorial. One of these columns will be taken to the county where Zachariah Walker was lynched, which is not some county in the deep South, but Chester County, in the city of Coatesville, right here in our own diocese.

You and I are inheritors of hundreds of years of systemic racism in this country. Right here in Philadelphia, we are inheritors of the lynching era and prejudice, whether we want to be or not. We are inheritors of the world’s ancient bigotry, which seems to be getting worse, as in these days we watch the rise of anti-Semitism and hate crimes and the cruel bullying of those who are black or Muslim or trans or queer or an ethnic minority or some other other. We are inheritors of hatred, you and I. But we are also inheritors of this cross. We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. We are heirs of this great sacrifice and the love that shaped it, and today, in the shadow of this cross, we are asked to do something with it. Today, we are called forth to love as Christ first loved us, to love like this beautiful, crooked death, to love fiercely and fully, to love bravely in the face of brutality, to love those who are oppressed and afflicted and in anguish, to love in word and in deed, to love our neighbors and our enemies, to love those who are hard to love, to love those who are hard to see, to love in the name of our Lord Jesus, to love all in the shape of this holy cross. For our sake, God let his Son die this crooked death, to give us a chance to do just this, to be loved and to love wholly and freely. Come, let us bow down before the wood of this cross. Come, let us worship. Come, let us be provoked by this great love to our own love.  

*The details of this story come from the book Coatesville and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker by Dennis B. Downey and Raymond M. Hyser

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Good Friday 2018

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Remember Me

The most recent Pixar film, “Coco” tells the story of Miguel, a young Mexican boy who dreams of becoming a musician, but whose family has come to despise musicians, ever since his great-great grandfather left the family behind in search of stardom.  The entire story takes place on el Dia de los Muertos - the Day of the Dead - and unfolds as Miguel’s family is preparing the ofrenda, the altar covered in flowers, and foods, and symbols of familiar welcome for the dead ancestors who are being honored, and, according to tradition, who are to be welcomed back among the living this one night of the year.  At the center of the ofrenda there are photos of the beloved dead whose memories are being preserved, and whose visitation is being encouraged.   Miguel’s grandmother explains, “We've put their photos on the ofrenda so their spirits can cross over. That is very important! If we don't put them up, they can't come!....  We made all this food -- set out the things they loved in life.... We don't want their spirits to get lost. We want them to come....”*

Trying to escape the strictures of his family, who want him to become a shoe-maker rather than a musician, Miguel runs off in search of a guitar, as night falls.  And through a series of twists and unexpected turns, the boy finds himself in the Land of the Dead, still very much alive.  But he soon realizes that he is in danger of getting trapped forever on the wrong side of the marigold bridge that connects the living to the dead.

The boy discovers that he has only until sunrise to win a blessing from a departed ancestor in order to gain re-entry to the land of the living.  And he enlists the help of a dead man named Hector, who himself is unable to cross over to visit with the living on this Day of the Dead.  Hector explains to Miguel why his journey from the dead to visit the living is prevented: “this place runs on memories. When you're well-remembered, people put up your photo [on the ofrenda] and you get to cross the bridge and visit the living on Día de Muertos.  Unless you're me....  No one's ever put up my picture…”

As the story advances, Miguel discovers that an even worse fate awaits those who are forgotten amongst the living.  Hector tells him,  “when there's no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from [the Land of the Dead, too.  They] call it the ‘Final Death.’”  And Hector is in immanent danger of being forgotten altogether.

The fortunes of the living boy and the doomed man become entangled, and they establish an uneasy alliance to help each other cross back over the marigold bridge to the world of the living: the boy to resume his life, and the man to visit his now aged daughter, the only living soul who might remember him, and place his photo on an ofrenda to keep his memory alive.

So far you may have been wondering why I did not preach this sermon back in November, and borrow the details of the vestigial Aztec customs of el Dia de los Muertos by way of reflection on our own commemoration of the dead - saints and sinners alike. 

The leitmotif of the film is the power of memory to preserve our familial relationships and to connect us to the past.  It’s a theme that is summed up in the recurring song that you will surely be humming when you leave the theater, “Remember me.”  Sung both as a rousing production number and as a soothing lullabye the song takes on a variety of meanings:

“Remember me.
Though I have to say good-bye,
Remember me.
Don’t let it make you cry.
For even if I’m far away
I hold you in my heart.
I sing a secret song to you
each night we are apart.

Remember me.
Though I have to travel far,
remember me.
Each time you hear a sad guitar
know that I am with you
the only way that I can be.
Until you’re in my arms again,
remember me.”**

This song, written for animated figures to sing in a movie, does, in fact, echo important themes of the Christian religion.  But not the themes of All Saints Day or All Souls Day, which coincide with el Dia de los Muertos.  No, this song rings out with the echoes of Maundy Thursday, which is the night, por excelencia, of Christian memory, since it is the night when our Lord shares bread and wine with his disciples, by way of imparting to them (and to us) the gift of his immortal living Presence, and then tells them (and us) to “Remember me.”

from Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Do you hear an echo of that last night in the Upper Room in the details of this lovely movie, and in its signature song, as I do?  If we do, the movie invites us to consider what would have become of the Christian church without this Eucharistic gift to bring day by day to the ofrenda - to the altar where our hopes and needs meet God’s grace and mercy.  What would become of the church without the gift of this living memory of Jesus?  It was the gift on which the infant church was nourished, long before there was a Bible to read, or any scriptural tradition at all.  Before Paul wrote any of his letters (as attested to in First Corinthians), before the evangelists began to transcribe their notes, there was the tradition of this memory of this night, that was given as more than just a memory.  I’m not sure anyone ever sang it, but they should have.  They could have borrowed the tune, and even the words from Pixar: “Remember me.  Though I have to say goodbye, remember me.”

And there is a sense in which we gather tonight to listen to Jesus sing us a love song.  He gathers us at his altar, and it is he who makes the offering that matters, as he gives himself as a sacrifice for the sake of his love for us.  Having already washed our feet out of love, he now assures us that his love will endure for ever, as will his communion with his church.  And, knowing that it will be hard for us to follow in his Way after he is gone, he gives us the gift of a sacred memory that cannot ever die, with the simple instructions to “Do this, and remember me.”  Remember me.  Each time you hear these words, know that I am with you the only way that I can be.  Until you’re in my arms again, remember me.

On el Dia de los Muertos, I suppose you’d have to say that the Mexicans who set up their ofrendas in anticipation of visits from their dead ancestors are not relying on their memories in the usual, normal way, in order to recall with fondness  their family members of old.  They bring to that night the expectation of encountering the living presence of their departed loved ones, an expectation they learned from their ancient Aztec forebears.  And I suppose I’d have to say that, while I like the movie, I have my doubts (to say the least) about the possibility that the spirits of the dead cross over a marigold bridge to visit us once a year in November.

But tonight, we are not relying on our memories in the usual, normal way, in order to recall with fondness the loving acts of our spiritual ancestor of old.  No, we bring to this night (as we do to every Mass on every day of every year) the expectation of encountering the living Presence of Jesus.  The profound difference being that Jesus is not dead.  He was dead for three days, if you count days according Jewish custom, and if you allow for the fact that he died late on the first day, and rose early on the third day.  And so the living memory of Jesus is a different kind of memory altogether, than the feeble kinds of memories that we so easily lose.

The great challenge for Miguel (in the film), is that he must return before sunrise in order to reclaim the life that is his.  And his dead ancestors can do nothing for him but send him back whence he came.  And the best that he can do for Hector, is to bring back a photo of him to the land of the living, and place it on the ofrenda, and hang on to his memory a little while longer.  But the Final Death will come for him eventually, when enough generations have past, and memory fails, and the photo is lost, and the dead “dissolve into dust.”***  Didn’t we remind ourselves at the outset of Lent that we are dust, and to dust we shall return?

The challenge that lies before us is somewhat different, since Christ is alive, and since it is his grace, his power, his life from which all of us are given grace, and power, and life.   Tonight our challenge is to hear him sing his love song to us again and again; to hear him tell us to “Remember me,” as he gives us his Body and his Blood; and to take him in our hands, and to know that he is with us in the only way that he can be, until we rest in his arms again.  

But for now, to do this, and to remember him, and to know that he is here.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Maundy Thursday 2018

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

*All quotations from “Coco” Screenplay by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich, produced by Disney Pixar, 2017

**Song by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert J. Lopez, for Walt Disney Music Company, 2017

***“Coco” screenplay, page 61

Perhaps This Is the Last Temptation

Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!

To the joyful shouts of the crowd, Jesus riding on a colt entered Jerusalem, the royal city of David. People spread their garments and tree branches before him as a sign of royal welcome. He is the messiah and the king whose coming the ancient prophets prophesied and for whom they have been waiting for many years of oppression under the Roman rule. This is the moment for which the disciples have been following him all along.

There is, however, something odd about the whole scene. Jesus is riding on a colt or on a donkey in other gospels, an animal not fit for a king. Ordinarily for a regal entrance a king would be riding on a majestic and beautifully clothed stallion, a symbol of military power and victory. This is to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah who prophesied: “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9). Donkey is a symbol of humility and peace.

This is a rather bizarre scene to imagine—Jesus riding on a colt and people shouting hosannas and laying down their garments and tree branches. But, therein is the irony and the paradox of this whole scene.

Lo and behold, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem is soon turned into a horrific journey of suffering to Calvary. The crowd’s joyful shouts of hosanna are changed to the violent cacophony of “Crucify him, crucify him.” The tree branches strewn on the road to welcome the Son of David is replaced by a humiliating crown of thorns over his head and a naked wood of the cross over his shoulder. Jesus is not the kind of the earthly messiah and king they have been expecting. How quickly things change!

Perhaps this IS the last temptation for Jesus. For anyone else, such a royal welcome would have been a huge ego booster. You can imagine what it might be like. Just as you are entering a ballroom a huge crowd of people cheering you on and giving you a red carpet welcome, like at the Oscars, what an ego-booster it would be!

All Jesus had to do was to give a go to his disciples and the revolt would have been quickly organized. Perhaps the disciples were already planning a rebellion against the Roman authority. Remember later on when they came to arrest Jesus, one of the disciples drew a sword and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers. This says that some of Jesus’ disciples were armed and ready for a fight when they gathered at Gethsemane. Perhaps they thought it was a secret meeting by night to plan the long-awaited revolt against the Romans.

But to their disappointment Jesus would have none of such violence. He stopped the violent intentions of his disciples and allowed himself to be arrested. No wonder they all immediately fled and deserted him. And no wonder the crowd’s cheers of hosannas turned into the cries for his crucifixion. They were not merely disappointed but were perhaps even angry with Jesus, for he failed their expectation. He was no messiah they had been waiting for.

So, what did they do? They put him on trial. What is so incredulous in this story is that human beings put God on trial. But then, we too often try God for things that inconvenience us and for things that are beyond our understanding and power. How often have you blamed God for things gone wrong in your life? Yet, what human beings muck up so terribly is transformed into the greatest gift of all by the sheer grace and love of God. That is the point of the Passion story—the power of God’s grace to redeem even the worst possible situation. Haven’t you had experiences where you made a mistake or did something wrong but then realized in hindsight that was precisely the moment and the occasion when God’s grace broke in and redeemed the situation? Things could not get worse for Jesus in this story. But also this is more importantly the story of God’s grace and love.

Yesterday my wife Clara and I joined the March for Our Lives at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park. In witness to the students who were killed by gun violence in Parkland FL and in witness to the thousands of children who have been killed by guns since Sandy Hook, March for Our Lives took place in many cities around the nation and around the world. This is a movement begun and organized by the youth of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and the youth of our nation. They are crying out for their lives. They are crying out enough is enough. They are crying out for sensible gun control policy that honors the dignity and sacredness of life. We must listen to their cries unless we have lost our soul. Has America lost its soul? Where is our passion for love, justice and mercy? A passion for simply to do the right thing? The tragic deaths of thousands of children due to our failure to pass common sense gun control policy has ignited a passion in our youth to stand up for moral and spiritual justice. What I saw yesterday in the streets of Philadelphia is nothing short of the Passion for life. The death of seventeen students in Parkland FL could not get worse. But, this has become the occasion for the movement of redemption for life.

The Passion of our Lord Jesus is also all about passion for life, the holiness of  life God has given to each and everyone of us. This is a story about the Son of God who is loving, liberating and life-giving. It is the greatest and the ultimate story of love. “God so loved the world he gave his only Son even to death on the cross so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” I know of no other religion that teaches that God laid down his own life so that we may have life.

The Father pours out his love on to the Son and  the Son, in turn, empties himself to the Father on the cross. This is the act of perfect selfless love. This is the story of perfect mutual love of Jesus the Son of God and God the Father. It is by this love that we are saved. It is by this love that the world will know that we are the followers of Jesus. There is no love story quite like it, friends. This is the greatest love story of all.

Love conquers all; love forgives all; Love suffers for all; Love triumphs over all evil. This is the Good News we believe in and proclaim to the world. Friends, we are in possession of the greatest love story of all.  Yet, we are timid and shy to tell this story. We are afraid to live and proclaim this great story. The world is hungry and thirsty to hear and know this powerful story. Today we begin retelling and living this story.

For Christians there is nothing holier than the Paschal mystery revealed in the Passion of Christ. The suffering of this innocent victim does not end in utter despair. It had the greater purpose of revealing the power of love.

Jesus gave it all for you and for me so that we may have new and eternal life. How much do you love Jesus in return? How far are you willing to go for Jesus? How much are you willing to give for his love? He gave it all for you and for me.

Preached by Bishop Allen Shin

25 March 2018

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia