Being a White Ally: Sermon on Mark 10:17-31

Being a White Ally: Sermon on Mark 10:17-31

Many of us are grieving, and will grieve, for a very long time, the death of our brother Chuck Melchert. We love you, Anabel, and we are here to love you along this journey.

Chuck was a dear friend of mine, a mentor really. Not everyone here knows that Chuck was a brilliant scholar, both in educational ministries and in the Bible’s wisdom literature. I’ve known very few people, maybe a handful, whose lives so integrated the values they said they lived by with their hour by hour living. Chuck was that guy.

One day we were playing golf, just walking along, and Chuck said, “Greg, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk with you about.”

Uh-oh. This could not be good. Chuck almost never criticized me. In 20 years, maybe he criticized me three or four times. But I could tell something was on his mind. Chuck sat in on my classes sometimes at the seminary.

“When African Americans share from their life experiences, you often respond by trying to show that you already understand what they’re saying. That invalidates their contributions, and it makes things about you.”

Oh.

I mean, how could what Chuck said be anything other than true? It wasn’t the kind of thing he could have misunderstood. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could explain away. The only thing this could be was a good friend looking out for me, having the courage to tell me the truth about myself, trying to help me become a better person and a better teacher, trying to help the world become a better place.

This was the truth, coming from a lover and a practitioner of the truth. What else could it be?

And it was just the third hole.

Those of us who are white, who wish to join alongside our African American sisters and brothers in the work of justice, who want to be allies, we all have a long way to go.

There are many reasons to be an ally. For one thing, it’s the right thing to do – and ordinarily, we just gravitate to the right thing. It feels good to do the right thing.

For another thing, being an ally brings enormous joy, relationships that enrich our lives, challenges that offer a sense of growth and accomplishment, the sense of an emerging freedom as we free ourselves from the distortions and limitations of our racist upbringing and our race-bound society. It’s almost impossible to describe the joy of liberation that accompanies being an ally – the primary reason for doing do.

Yet, as Chuck Melchert reminded me that one day, we have a long way to go. Chances are, we’ll always have a long way to go. Like the disciples in Mark’s story. We may start off well. We will succeed here and there. We may even make the occasional heroic sacrifice. But if we think we have arrived. If we think we’ve got it…. Brothers and sisters, we have a long way to go.

That’s how it is. That’s where Jesus meets us. And that grace has to be enough.

 1

In our Gospel reading Peter wants Jesus to appreciate that he’s given up a lot to follow Jesus. “Lord, we’ve left everything to follow you!”

Peter wants assurance from Jesus. He wants praise. He wants Jesus to thank him.

Now, let us admit, Peter is telling the truth. Before we go hard on him, he’s telling the truth.

And he’s not just speaking for himself. The other disciples have left home. They’ve abandoned their families. They’ve done as Jesus commanded, prepped the crowds. They’ve even performed some healings and exorcisms. It’s no small thing what the disciples have done. Confronted with the enormity of Jesus’ challenge, they just want a little recognition.

Peter’s not just speaking for himself.

There’s a part of us, whenever we do the right thing, that just wants to be appreciated. There’s a part of us that craves recognition. It’s natural. Maybe it’s even wired into us by God to help us do what’s right.

If we see a little child alone in the grocery aisle, lost and crying and scared, and we take that child to the customer service station, and we wait to make sure the child is reunited with her or his parents, sure, it’s nice when they say thank you. Sure, that’s nice.

But let’s get real. We’ve only done what we should do. What any decent person would do. To abandon that child, to leave him or her crying and frightened and vulnerable, we’d never do that. Helping that child is our job. Helping that child is the basic thing, the human thing. Do we really need thanks?

When we step out as allies, we are only doing the human thing, nothing more. We live in a world filled with monsters. And people of color, and women, and sexual minorities face the monsters of injustice every day – we’re not being heroes as allies, and we deserve no parades.

Peter wants reassurance. “Lord, we’ve left everything!” And maybe this isn’t the time to be asking for gratitude. Maybe we don’t need extra credit for doing the right thing.

2

There’s also joy. So much joy. So much freedom. In being an ally of any kind.

In 1996 my family and I joined an Open and Affirming church for the first time. It was First Congregational in Memphis, a United Church of Christ congregation that had been all but dead just a few years earlier. They’d called a young pastor right out of seminary, told her she was welcome to do whatever it took, and she helped the congregation transition into embracing everyone – all people, no matter what their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their class, their race – everyone.

When this straight white couple joined this church it had a problem. Same problem we have here at Wisdom’s Table – running out of room! So much joy. All kinds of people so happy just to be in a church where there was no question about their presence, or anyone’s presence. So much joy. So much love.

May I say it? Such pretty flowers. And such amazing food. Well.

Jesus tells would-be allies it’ll be like this.

When you become an ally, you might lose some family. Yes?

You might strain some relationships. Yes?

It might hurt. Yes?

But look what comes in return?

So I joined the church softball team when they asked. Nobody told me that this Southern Baptist had just joined Memphis’ gay softball league. Wanna know how I found out? I was filling out the roster, and there was a sexual orientation box…. And even though I played varsity baseball in college, for the first time in my life I was the best man on a softball team. The best man. We had lesbians better than me, maybe. One or two.

And so much love. So much joy. Such good food.

But I am being shallow. When LGBT students and friends called me into the work of sexual and gender justice advocacy, I had no idea how those relationships would set me free. I thought I was doing those students a favor, using my leverage as a faculty member and a scholar to advocate for them. I thought I was helping out.

I was arrogant. I was wrong. I was short-sighted. I had no idea how desperately I needed to be set free from my assumptions about being a man, about sex and relationships, about acting out my masculinity – about being something I’d been raised to be but nobody actually can be – not without deep injury to oneself and to other people. I had no idea I needed –

I had no idea that, straight as I was, I had no idea I needed to become queer like we all are queer. I had no idea that becoming an ally meant – in a way –

In a way --

                Coming out.

                Please be gracious to me here. This is tender territory. I do not mean to appropriate for those of us who are privileged, those who are straight, what it means to come out as a person who does not live in the privilege of the majority –

                I don’t mean that –

                I don’t know what that means –

                How could I know what that means –

                But I do mean there’s a process of going public, of going loud, of saying – I stand with people, and I need them too, and I am an ally. My friends bless my life. And don’t you dare hurt them.

So much joy. So much healing. A hundred fold. Jesus says.

3

So we allies must be humble. It’s our job to listen, to learn, to follow. It’s our job to be present, to show up, to be humble.

To be humble.

To be humble.

To be humble.

In being an ally, we learn that people of color confront racism every day. They, better than we, understand how it works, what’s at stake, where wisdom lies.

To be an ally means to show up. People of color don’t get to pick and choose when they will encounter racism, but white allies enjoy the privilege of hiding when we’re uncomfortable. Faithful allies show up.

We’ll need to do our homework, to learn how racism operates, to see that racism is more than people who say racist things and discriminate in overt ways. We’ll begin to understand that racism is at work when some schools, schools with high percentages of students of color, get less support than other schools do – and Pennsylvania is the worst – that racism is at work when white and black people get different outcomes in the criminal justice system, that racism is at work when opportunity does not come to us equally. When we do our homework, we’ll know racism not as an individual problem but as a problem basic to our society – and we’ll work to change it.

                 As allies, we’ll enjoy relationships of accountability. We’ll build relationships with other white allies, people like Chuck Melchert, who will educate us, hold us accountable, encourage us in the journey. We won’t depend on people of color to carry that burden. It’s just too exhausting.

But we will also build relationships of accountability with people of color. Not just casual, “Hi, how are you?” Not just hugs. But relationships. Travel together. Visit each other. Eat together. Share together. Learn together. Relationships that change us, that bring us to new places. Not just “I have friends,” but “I’ll stand up with you.”

I can’t tell you how many times friends of color have squared me up. Honestly, I don’t know what they think of me when they do. I can still see Kendal Brown, who used to run admissions at Lancaster Seminary. We were hiking. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but I used the word “blackmail.” Kendal turned on a dime. Did you just use that word?

And I’d never thought about it.

Or the conversations about politics or policy or how theological education should work, and colleagues like Stephen Ray in Chicago, or Margaret Aymer in Austin or Sam Tsang, whom I barely know in person, who would just say, “You know, we might know what’s at stake for us better than you do.”

Or Lancaster students who would tell me, “Maybe you’re taking this a little too casually.”

And you know the wonder of it? As far as I know, I still receive love and friendship from all of these people. Love and friendship I would trade nothing for.

As allies, we’ll learn to follow, learn to lose, learn not to need credit, learn to be wrong, learn to learn, and learn to show up,

show up,

show up.

To reliably show up.

                As allies, we have so much to learn.

 4

Jesus tells his disciples there’s so much to give up. And so much to gain. Giving up one way of life and all the things that go with it, coming to find another set of relationships and commitments and all the joys that go with it.

So very much. One hundred fold.

A funny thing, if you look at our Gospel lesson.

There are the things disciples give up: house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields.

And the things we receive in return: houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions.

The things we give up include fathers. There are no fathers among the things that come back to us. For in Jesus’ new family there are no heads of households. No one above the rest. All are one in Christ Jesus.

All are allies. If we truly want hundreds, thousands, countless mothers and sisters and brothers and children – beyond counting, all joy – if we truly want to enter the boundless community of Jesus and his followers, we must welcome the possibility that we cannot be leaders.

We can be allies. Amen.