On Power and Control
“But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There
are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured,
and not on the sabbath day.’”[1]
I have to confess; this sermon has been
all over the place. Originally, I thought the emphasis would be that Jesus had broken
the law of Moses. As the local rabbi had said, “Hey, the sabbath is about
resting, not about doing magic tricks!” And, the punishment for working on the
Sabbath was pretty severe, Exodus
states, “Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.”[2]
Apparently, there is a controversy about
whether healing was considered working back then, but any kind of punishment
for relieving someone’s suffering seems a bit draconian. It’s almost as bad as
punishing someone for leaving food and water in the desert for migrants seeking
a better life or extending the period children can be locked up in cages
without a hearing. Also, Jesus and his disciples had performed all kinds of
work on Sabbath days, but he always justified it, maintaining that “the Sabbath
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”[3]
So, today’s sermon was going to be about
how it is our responsibility to violate the law when the law is being used to
oppress people. To justify, even to mandate going to jail, as some of us have
done, to resist injustice.
But that’s not how it ended up. And all
the attorneys in the congregation breathe a sigh of relief.
In his sample sermon for today, the Rev.
Ken Kesselus of Bastrop, Texas, cited Harvard Professor Hugh O’Doherty in
saying that all conflict is about power and control. According to Rev.
Kesselus, the motivation of the leader of the synagogue was not to enforce the
law of Moses, but to discredit Jesus. He felt that Jesus was a threat to his
control of the congregation, which revealed “the tendency of humans to resort
to methods of power and control to achieve what they want or feel they need.”[4]
Which leads me to my ancestors. Sometime
around 1639 my seventh great-grandfather, John England, set sail from Dorset,
England, to Goochland County, Virginia. Twenty years earlier, in August 1619 a Portuguese
ship, the Sao Joao Bautista, had arrived in Virginia with a load of 20-30
Africans from Angola. Unlike John England, they had not come to the new world
voluntarily. They were dragged from their homes, chained into the hold of a
ship, sailed across the Atlantic, and sold to English settlers as chattel. As
slaves, to control, with the power of life or death. [5]
The institution of slavery in America was
not originally about race. English immigrants would often indenture themselves
for a period of time to pay for their passage to the new world and for training
in a trade. But once their indenture was served they moved on. However, the
need for cheap labor was constant and critical in the West Indies with its
sugar plantations and in the Southern colonies with their tobacco and later
cotton crops. Early settlers experimented with enslaving native Americans, but
European diseases wiped out as much as 90% of the Indian population, and the
remainder could easily escape back to their people. The answer was African
slaves, who were more tolerant of European diseases, who were used to a hot climate,
and who had no convenient escape avenues.
I have found no evidence that my ancestors
participated in the institution of slavery, but I can’t seriously believe that
somewhere along my lineage there were no slave owners. The institution was
foundational in our economy as my ancestors moved west into Kentucky and then
into Arkansas. and it was foundational in our national consciousness.
Slavery worked its way into our institutions
and even into our founding documents. The author of the words, “All men are
created equal” was a slave owner, as were most of our first presidents. The
Constitution allowed for three fifths of the number of slaves held to be
counted in in a state’s representation in Congress, to ensure slave states were
not outvoted by the more populous free states. Two recent presidents have been
elected with less than a majority of the popular votes cast because of the
Electoral College. How has that worked out for you?
The need for power and control over a
population caused one race of people to assert superiority over another. Our
forebearers were devout Christians, so there had to be a Biblical justification
for slavery. So we found one, and racism worked its way into our theology, in
our relationship to each other and to our God.
After the carnage of the Civil War ended
the legal institution of slavery, power and control had to be reasserted over
this newly freed population. Thus with the end of reconstruction came the birth
of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and segregation, not only in the south, but
throughout the nation. As new immigrant populations threatened the rule of
Anglo-Saxon Protestants, new laws were enacted to place quotas on the numbers
of people allowed into our country who didn’t look like us. We were encouraged
to put “America First.”
But enough. What I have been describing is
the power of an original sin to spread throughout a society, but slavery wasn’t
even our original sin. The nation was built on the eradication of those who
were already dwelling here.
While the Church was often complicit in
the sin of slavery and racism, it often fought them as well, and helped destroy
the institution, if not all of its remnants.
Michael Curry, our Presiding Bishop, has
called on all Episcopal Churches to acknowledge that first landing of Africans
on American shores, 400 years ago by ringing their church bells at 2:00pm this afternoon.
I encourage you to help us ring St. Pauls’.
In today’s gospel reading, the leader of
the congregation was concerned about maintaining his power and control. Jesus
was concerned about healing. “You hypocrites,” he said, then he pointed out
they would be more concerned about an ox or a donkey in need of water than they
were about a daughter of Abraham who had been suffering for 18 years.
Anytime we seek power or control over
another human, we are not following in the footsteps of Jesus. Jesus was about
healing, about reconciliation.
Susan Goff, the bishop suffragan of the Episcopal
Diocese of Virginia stated, "The first African people
were brought to this continent in harrowing and dehumanizing circumstances. As
we remember the 400th anniversary of their arrival, I pray that we will do the
hard work of reconciliation that God longs for us to do. God forgive us. God
give us courage and resolve. And God bless us."
[1]
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
[2]
Exodus 35:2.
[3]
Mark 2:23-27.
[4] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/power-and-control-pentecost-11-c-august-25-2019
[5] The
New York Times, 18 August 2019, “The 1619 Project,” page 4.
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