"...then a Canaanite woman...started shouting"
Matthew 15:22

Don't lecture me on boundaries!
I'll pay any price
when my daughter's lost her mind.

Listen! I didn't care
he was a Jew, talked Aramaic!

It just doesn't matter
when you're desperate.

I walked past the ice in his voice
"I am sent only to Israel."

I hardened myself to his insult,
I won't give children's food to dogs"

Don't tell me I groveled!
I wrestled a blessing from him.

"Even the dogs eat the master's crumbs".
He caught his breath and touched us.

My daughter and I went home whole.
He, I am told, rose from the dead.
 So don't lecture me about boundaries!

Two Stories, One Struggle

Andy Holmes, a courageous Junior at Montgomery Blair High School, and I, a crotchety and achy 74 year old white privileged male, participated in an Anti-racism discussion for ten weeks this winter led by our interim Minister Susan Henderson. I admire Andy Holmes for being the only youth in a rather middle to older age group.  I particularly admire him for his integrity in speaking truth as he saw it. Unfortunately it earned him the distinction of sharing a two person sermon with me honoring our denominations call for a sacred conversation on race, prompted by the Jeremiah Wright publicity. Our plan is to tell our stories regarding race in America.

I grew up in Detroit Michigan in the 1940’s and early 50’s. It was a city deeply divided by race and economically and politically controlled by the three major car companies. Two black ghettos existed in Detroit, one in center city and one encircling an outer ring of suburban middle income homes. Our house was situated a quarter mile from the black ghetto circling the city. It was a nervous community particularly when the 1944 race riots required intervention by the Army to bring it under control. We were very careful about where we wandered.

White and black students in Detroit never came together in school until the 7th grade- a terrible time for blending. My blending was traumatic and I was frequently expelled for rowdy behavior, one of which entailed a life threatening racial encounter that was actually alleviated by the intervention of another black student who knew me and liked me.

My father wisely withdrew me from the public schools and sent me to a private catholic and Jesuit high school in Detroit. We had one black student in the school, good at athletics. He and I became teammates and good friends being two minorities- one protestant and the other black. Catholic education nearly converted me to the priesthood. I loved the priests and they loved me in a Platonic sort of way.

But my father, wanting grandchildren, sent me to an Eastern Prep School founded by D.L. Moody a Christian Evangelist. Amazing enough I learned Biblical criticism at that school and DL Moody is still rolling in his grave. That began my Eastern Liberal shaping which continued through Amherst College and Yale Divinity School. By 21, I was a bona fide Eastern Liberal-intellectually challenging racism and prejudice much to my father’s unhappiness.

My first church, a small congregational church and the only church in the community, was comprised of farmers being forced off their land by a burgeoning suburban population moving out from Cleveland. The exercise of eminent domain was always threatened. They were angry, red-necked, and great people. That is when Martin Luther King came on the scene. His dynamic preaching and action moved and motivated me. Then a seminary friend of mine was crushed to death beneath a bulldozer in a Cleveland de facto school demonstration. His memorial service was a moving and clarifying moment for me. I began getting involved in things I have been involved in ever since- combating poverty, extending privilege to those who do not have it, seeking a just society and a peaceful world.

And here is the rub. I have come to realize how subtly I can be seduced by white privilege. I will have to surrender white privilege if a truly just and peaceful world is to come into being. I find that extremely challenging to think about.  I like and value my privilege. The fact is this: I am privileged as a white male in America. I cannot change that. The only question is what do I do with it. Do I rigidly hold on to it and horde and protect it or do I use it to extend justice, reconciliation, peace, and well being for all?

I have never begrudged extending white privilege to all people- good housing, equal pay, and freedom to be oneself. What I have increasingly become aware of is this: Extending privilege and surrendering it are two sides of the same coin. When Jesus extended privilege beyond the Chosen people of Israel it eventually led him to the Cross and only then to Resurrection. It’s a challenge to faith!

Andy Holmes:

There’s a saying from Jim Hightower that one of my teachers likes to use when discussing the issue of privilege, especially white privilege, a privilege that the vast majority of us here today have been graced by. He says that “When you are born white and especially middle class you are born on third base. But while you maybe born on third base, don’t live your life as if you had hit a triple”.

From a very early age I have been immersed in a diverse community. It’s one of the distinct advantages of kids of my generation, especially in this specific region of Montgomery County. On my street, I’m sure at least 10 -15 nationalities are represented. At my High School Montgomery Blair right up the street we boast that we have students from over 200 different nations, a diversity unrivaled in even an area as diverse as ours. However, diversity does not equal equality. Diversity is simply a title, a label. It is what is done with that diversity which dictates whether we are truly willing to pursue the challenge of racial understanding or just let our racially diverse surroundings stand as proof of our just intentions.

I am afraid to stand here and come across as a person who has already reached some state of “racial enlightenment”. I have no intention of coming across as trying to exhort this congregation into taking any decisive action. I am only addressing the world around me as I see it, maybe rightly or wrongly, placing some of my faults, limitations and fears upon the congregation as a whole so that you may better understand where I’m coming from.   

For me, my first experience of diversity started from my first hours outside my mother’s womb. Born at Columbia Women’s Hospital in D.C., my privilege was already obvious as I lay a big fat white baby in a room full of small premature black babies, my guess is that as far as position on the totem poll of life goes, not much has changed since then.

My first conscious memories of diversity were on Taylor Street in Northwest D.C. One small block that in many ways encapsulated much of this area's different stories, histories and cultures. Taylor Street had blacks, whites, Latinos, gays, straights, families, couples and singles. It was a microcosm of the whole city, compact enough for a 2 year old to comprehend. My first friend, if you could call her that, she was a few years older, more put up with me than played with me, was the granddaughter of an older black couple, the Ames’s, who lived up the street. I still have warm, pleasant, vivid memories of playing on the shag rug in their house

My family moved out of the city in 1994 to Silver Spring. When we first moved into the neighborhood, it was religiously diverse, split almost evenly Jewish and Christian. It has transformed since then and now there is almost an even split between blacks, whites and Latinos with a few Asian families.

I have been lucky since moving to the suburbs that I have always gone to diverse schools where cultural understanding was always important. In elementary school, my best friends were from all races and religions and that continues thru to today. However, once I went to middle school I began to see my groups of friends segregate along race lines due to the Gifted and Talented “GT” programs in my schools. To some extent I was able to cross the divide through sports.

In many ways sports has been the great equalizer for me. It’s the one place where my white privilege holds no weight; I have to earn my spot on my own just like anyone else. I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

Last Year the Blair Football team, a team of about 40, had five white guys and two Asians, the rest of the team was Black. Being the Minority for once was an interesting experience, and being a captain on that team was even more interesting. I was the token crazy white boy and I took immense pride in the fact that my black teammates considered me THEIR token crazy white boy. But beyond just the bravado jock racial interactions, the football team, the locker-room in particular provided a spring board for many surprisingly open and sincere conversations on race if not at times politically incorrect.

It was in the locker room where I first learned about the arrests of the Jena Six from a teammate who came in one day in an absolute rage over the continued ignorance of our nation. That week’s discussion opened my eyes in a lot of ways and impressed me how easily a candid conversation on race and racism could be for a group of guys from diverse backgrounds who all respected each other. 

It is in these smaller more causal interactions where progress can really be made. This year, one of my teachers held an open forum on the question of “Do black kids care about school?” To say the least the topic was provocative. My class, mostly middle upper class white kids, all in the Communications Arts Program, had had a similar discussion previously; however, for this week we invited the larger Blair population to join us. For about a week, in a group of about 50 kids, we debated this along with the questions of white guilt, racial stereotypes and a whole host of other topics. At the end of this we came to the conclusion that we should probably not conclude anything.

Almost 2000 years ago a man who many now feel is the Son of God asked for some water. A simple request, slightly complicated by the fact that he was asking this favor of a woman, more complicated that she was a Samaritan woman. Normally he would have no reason to interact with her, but thirst in hot climates usually crosses the rules of reason. So this man sits and talks with the woman of water and food, of worship and married life, a small conversation between two individuals on a hot day in the mountains thousands of years and thousands of miles away, but here we are today talking about it once again.

If any change is going to come, it will first come on a personal level. If we, ourselves cannot break bread or share a cup with a brother or sister of another race, religion, sexual orientation, or political orientation for that matter, what hope do we have for the world.

And as for privilege, that man sitting at the mountain well talking with the woman, well as far as privilege goes he had it pretty good. He was the Son of God. Now that’s Privilege.

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