Jackie Robinson Day

 4/13

Honoring Jackie

Today as we meet I am wearing a jersey in honor of the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. Since 2004, April 15th has not only been “tax day” but Jackie Robinson day as well.  In 2004, Jackie’s number was retired throughout baseball with only players like the Red Sox Mo Vaughn and the Yankees Mariano Rivera “grandfathered” permission to continue wearing  it until retirement. 

In 2009, for the first time every player in the Major Leagues for number 42 in the games of that day, a practice now institutionalized.  This year to mark the 75th anniversary, the number 42 on the back of all jerseys will be in Dodger blue.

Today’s hat is the 1947 Dodger style. The shirt, UniWatch blog’d tribute with Dodger style script and number.  So hats off to Jackie Robinson and on for the 1947 Dodgers who he played for. 

Living in cornavirusworld 149: Violence. Nonviolence. We've been here before

8/26

Convent Garden: an oasis

the Monarchs

Today I wear my Kansas City Monarchs hat. The last Negro league team Jackie Robinson played for before joining the Dodgers organization. It was also the team of Buck O’Neil, player and manager of the Monarchs from 1938 to 1955.  He even made a final  plate appearance for the Kansas City T-Bones of the Norrhern League in 2006 at age 94 years, 8 months and 5 days. And was the first African-American signed as a scout by the Chicago Cubs. It’s mainly  due to the Monarchs  (and Buck) that the Negro League Museum is in Kansas City.  In normal years, Major League baseball celebrates "Jackie Day" on April 15th, the anniversary of his debut.  But in coronavirusworld, they've moved it to August 28, the anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech. 

Buck

I also talk about my “happy hour” yesterday afternoon with former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris who I was surprised to find was still live. Harris was the Bernie before Bernie.  Hard to realize that Oklahoma actually had a democratic socialist Senator as late as 1972.  I actually was a Harris delegate at the 1976 Oklahoma Democratic caucus. Harris campaigned across the country in a Winnebago and frequently stayed at the homes of farmers and union workers. He ultimately lost to Jimmy Carter but continued to champion Native American and working people’s rights throughout his career. The talk was hosted by Jim Hightower, his former campaign manager who joked, “I made Fred what he is today, a professor at eh University of New Mexico.” He came very close to being chosen as Hubert Humphry’s running mate in 1968. Often forgotten is Humphry’s roots in the old Minnesota Farm-Labor Party. Harris reminded us of the 1917 Green Corn rebellion when wobblies, unionists, blacks and farmers came together to oppose the draft and Word War !. Senator Harris’ point was the progressive uprising we see today has roots deep in the American soil that have been buried too long. The Bernie revolution is part of a long heritage of American class struggle. Later in the conversation, Senator Harris introduced us to Teresa Leon Fernandez, whose family roots go back to the 17th century as a Nuevo Mexicana, seeking to join the progressive left caucus in congress. 

Our conversation this morning focuses on contemplation and activism but quickly moves into violence vs. non-violence, the issue of discernment . How Dietrich Bobhoeffer returned to Germany to join in a plot to kill Hitler, saying violence was wrong except when necessary. Who defines necessary? Some of us agree with a traditional reformed “Just war” theory while others are absolutists. What about Gandhi? Gandhi was reported to have said non-violence would not have stopped Hitler. I recall how Archbishop Romero came to accept violence in defense of the innocent . And Franz Fanon’s argument that violence is necessary to free the Wretched of the Earth from colonialism.  But then Robespiere…John Brown….Lenin…Mao? 

And the problematic issue of those who truly believe that abortion is murder feeling called to enter clinics with guns. 

We recall that for Martin Luther King, Jr., non-violence was a strategy that works because it drew violence for the other side and exposed its nature. I say that non-violence elicits violent response because it presents itself as morally superior to which Joel responds because non-violence is morally superior.

Gandhi believed in satyagraha, soul force. That even in the midst of violence one must hold onto the spirit of peace. 

We are constantly faced with the question so what then is possible?

What to do with Jesus’ “not peace but a sword”? Without diving immediately into self-defensive metaphor argumentation. 

Steve P speaks of Brevard Childs’ canonical criticism where the Bible is taken seriously as is, interpreting one part by the others, replacing the entire historical critical method. Sigh.

I ponder how I can occasionally look at the world of turtles, egrets, squirrels and feel that everything in creation is perfect just the way it is and at the same time see the sacredness of the everflowing stream of the people’s struggle for justice. I live with this tension, this dichotomy. 

Sam says the Gita says God and self are the same. 

True belief vs. collective belief. Facts and truth are not the same. But intriguing, even passionate conversations aside, there is no question we are collectively facing a moment of truth…..

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where Hamilton lived before he hit Broadway

Today I decide to do the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K course. Through Sugar Hill, the old ritzy part of Harlem. Convent Garden. Past Alexander Hamilton’s home, an untouched 1802 Federalist rural home in the midst of modern Harlem. I see students in line registering  for their charter schools, receiving their supplies. Along the southern edge of the City College of New York, once known as the Harvard of the working class when every citizen of New York City was guaranteed health, housing  work and education. Then back up St. Nicholas. Tim the trombone player somehow turns up at 136th street. It’s a reminder that we’ve been here before. 

Kenosha, Wisconsin is in flames in response to yet another point blank police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.  Yesterday a 17 year old self-styled member of “the militia,” inspired by his president, drove 20 miles and with an AR15 assault rifle opened fire on innocent  protestors killing two, then walked calmly past the police. 

Beginning with the Milwaukee Bucks, the NBA players, in compete despair and frustration, refuse to play their games. The WNBA, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer soon follow. They are not just athletes, entertainers, they  are adult people with consciences.  Of course the President and his ghostly son-in-law Jared mock the players. Why is so hard to see? Moment of truth….

I finish the night by watching Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman tour de force Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. Her docudrama exploration of the Rodney King savage police beating and subsequent rebellions. Yes, we’ve been here before. Far too many times. 

Living in Coronavirusworld 22 : Easter Monday

4/13

Easter Monday

Ann egg for West Park

A cold, wet, blustery day. Try to get up and go out but for the first time since March 4th I miss my walk.

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Just one week after his mother died, my friend Jim’s father died. This coronavirus is merciless. 

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Spend most of the day preparing for the West Park Bible Study, tonight Matthew’s Easter story. (Matthew 28: 1-10). I chose Matthew over John, mainly because of the weirdness of Matthew’s telling.  Elements that we often forget when we think of the combined Easter narrative we carry in our heads. What is unique in Matthew?

* Who’s there? Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.” Who? Mother of “James and Joseph” and “the sons of Zebedee.” But in 4: 21, they are “James and John.” In 13:55, when Jesus is rejected by his hometown, “Is not his mother Mary? …are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?” So is this his mother? Wouldn’t Matthew  have said so? It’s not clear. What difference does it make?  Sidenote: in classic Matthew style, note Jesus had a brother with the same name as the one who betrays him, Judas.

* Earthquakes. Only in this gospel. Nowhere else. Back in 27:50, when Jesus  dies, the “…earth shook and rocks split,” the “temple curtain is rent.”  Why? This  is the veil that hangs at the access to the ‘Most Holy Place”  or “Holy of Holies.”,(Exodus 26: 31-55).  As if to say, with Jesus' death, God is no longer hidden. Access is opened to all. 

- “Tombs were opened..” Foreshadowing the general resurrection. “Saints” are raised. “Saints” being the nominative form of the Latin “sancti,” holy, like sanctified and sanctuary. It’s the term Paul uses for all Christians (Rev. 15:26, 1 Cor.1:2)  For Paul, all believers are saints.  But coming out of graves? Nowhere else does this happen. This would seem to draw some attention. No one else mentions this.  Matthew, who has as a major agenda linking his narrative with the narrative of the children of Israel, seems to be connecting his story with the prophet Ezekiel and the story of the “dry bones.” In Ezekiel 37:12, “I will…open your graves, bring you up form your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel…I will put my spirit in you and you shall live..”  Ezekiel is addressing a spiritually dead people, in exile coming back to life. Perhaps Matthew is telling us that Jesus death will shake us back into life….

- These earthquakes give the story an apocalyptic edge, as in Revelation, Exodus and 1 Kings. 

* Heavy stuff is happening here and no one is noticing. Is heavy stuff going on around us and we are not noticing? 

* An angel come down form heaven dressed in white to roll away the stone in front of their eyes. In every other gospel, the stone is already rolled away when they get there. 

 -White like the robes of the holy in Revelation 19. 

who’s that yonder desk in white

must be the children of the Israleite

pharaoh’s army got drowned

oh Mary don’t you weep.

“ Oh Mary don ’t you weep”

- the angel says “Do not be afraid”

like God to Abram (Genesis 15:1), angel Gabriel to Mary (Luke 1:30)

* Jesus had told them that he must “..go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering..and be killed and on the 3rd day be raised…” (Matt. 16:21)

* Two women are the first witnesses.  Jesus doesn’t need the stone rolled away, he’s already out. He appears them out of nowhere. And they recognize him. Not like John where Mary mistakes him for the gardener.

- why were they the witnesses? All the men and run away. As Marsha says, the women are the ones tt take care of business. They always do. 

* They “worshipped him” 

-Like the Magi (2:2). and the disciples in the boat after he walked on water (14:33)

Maybe in corona virusworld , we need the Jesus who says to Mary, do not hold  on to me..” (John 20:17)

* He’s going ahead of you to Galilee. Why?

-predicted at Last Supper “But after I am raised I will ahead of you to Galilee…” (Matt. 26:32). Why? Marsha points out that this was the home of Jesus' ministry. For Russ, it's  away from the seat of Empire power and into the midst of the common people. The purpose is mission, to make disciples, followers to teach "what I have taught. Obey my commandments."It’s a way of life, not agreeing to a theological proposition. It is doing as Jesus, following Jesus, not believing per se. 

* ‘Lo I am with you to the end of the age” That’s the bottom line. As Marsha, says, the comfort we need.

So, to summarize, for Matthew:

1. It’s an apocalyptic event.

2. There is now open access to God

3. People are being brought back to life again

4. The purpose is mission.

And in April 2020, where are we? 

* We are still the in between time

*  Our graves have nor been opened. The stone has not bene rolled away.

*  We are being asked to celebrate what we have not yet experienced. 

We have ben asleep. The Covid 19 Virus is like the earthquake waking us up.  

Our being shut up and shut in could have the key to our going out from our exile, our graves. 

We are to follow Jesus, not dependent  on theological propositions.  How we behave in the “in between days” is critical to creating what we can be on the other side.

Lo I am with you to the end of the age.

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Leading up to Wednesday’s celebration of Jackie Robinson’s historic breaking baseball’s color line, has 1945 team, the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. 

Jackie 1945

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Second Sunday in Easter: Pondering joy

4/15

Rafael is helping me to get ready for the service. Hope arrives soon after. A couple has come to visit from outside of Buffalo. They’ve visited with us before. When when we were in residence at SPSA. Thier daughter around the corner has told them we’re back so they’ve come to check us out. Amy is back from Michigan.

This week our opening Alleluias! are Celtic. Our opening hymn is O sons and daughters let us sing... John reads the passage from Acts where ...no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (4:32)

I choose a different translation for Psalm 133: How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in harmony...Ask how many have a memory of that passage and several remember how it hangs on the banner in front of the sanctuary at SPSA. That it was the banner they hung as a sign of welcome when B’Nai Jeshurun came to live with them after their roof fell in. How that living togtether gave new life ot both congregations. And how whe we lived there for three years, we were under that banner as well . And how I prefer harmony to unity...In unity, we all sing the same note. In harmony, we have different notes that all weave together. And then we sing it in Hebrew:

Hinay ma tov umanayim, chevet achim gan yachad....

The BJ/SPSA theme song, you might say...After reading John 20: 19-31, John’s Pentecost, so to speak, we sing Breathe on me breath of God...

And then it’s time  for reflection. I ask what’s special about the weekend. Someone mentions the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. A chance to see Leo and Kate all over again, and that tear jerking, manipulative  song. Recall that my father was fascinated by that story. Collected books, stories. I can’t remember why. 

No particuar theological significance. But, I tell them, James Clifford did tell me he’s not like the Titanic, not going down that fast. 

Before the Dodgers, Jackie was a Monarch

I also remind folks that its the 45th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major leaue debut opening day at Ebbetts Field, 1947. I hold up a hat from the Kansas City Monarchs, Jackie’s last Negro League team. (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/boxscore/04151947.shtml

But my real question for today, this second Sunday in Easter, is what would it take for you to believe? That’s what I asked my class  in Newark last Monday. How do they know the Resurrection is real? We were reading James Cone, who after pages of analytic theological exposition essentially  says that we do because we do...

We’re into 50 days of Resurrection living, like the Jewish 50 days of counting the Omer,50 days from Passover to Pentecost (ie, counting 50).We count 50 days from Easter. Last week I asked about what we have to leave behind, in order to leave the grave, step into new life, resurrection. This week I’m going to flip it, ask what do we take with us? How do we know Jesus? Last week, he looked plain. Ordinary, like a gardner. (No glow, no give away halo.)Mary knew him through his voice, the way he said her name. The voice of a lover, a friend, a family member. The way no one else ever said it. The sound of intimacy. 

And now we here we have Thomas. (Now I have to note that even after Jesus sightings, they’ve got the doors closed and locked. Fear is still winning here. They’re not coming out. )Today, Thomas needs something else. To touch the wounds. And that’s what I want you to see,...the wounds remain, even after resurrection...they are part of what made Jesus human,what made Jesus recognizable, what made Jesus Jesus and they are part of what make you you...We bring  our wounds with us as we step into resurrection. 

I want to be very clear here. I’m not talking about holding grudges. One wrong word at a family table echoes for years. Not that. And I’m not talking about the refusal to work at reconciliation. That is not an option. Jesus commands, demands it. And I am especially not talking about holding onto an identity of victimhood..These are things we leave back in the tomb..they are the things of death...but the hurts, the sufferings, what we have lived through... helps make us who we are...give us ways to connect with, live in solidarity with others...

That proof people want to see, it comes through a new way of living...like it says in Acts...the people were of one heart, one soul, held everything in common...There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 4:35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need... So it didn’t begin with Marx, but the Bible...that first Christian community was  truly an intentional community...

John says that this was the word of life and that God is light, and that we are to walk in the light ...why? so that we might have joy complete...

I’m thinking about that. Working on that. It’s not part of my religious cultural upbringing. When the summer camp song leader taught us slap bang here we go again, jolly  Presbyterians, our own youth leader shook her head, uh, no. That’s not who we are..And yes, I’m always suspicious of too much happiness. But I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, in Black churches, in worship led by my lgbtq friends at General Assembly gatherings. In communities of struggle. That just like hope is a theological category, so is joy. But it arises out of the  struggle. No joy without struggle. Joy rises from resistance. I’m working on it. I want to go there. Will you go with me? Can we work on it togtether? 

And that’s my sermon for today. 

And then something unexpected happens. the congregation bursts int applause. And I feel humbled. And I feel shaken. For this moment, the Holy Spirit was there. And I felt it. And it was real. 

When  we take up the offering, we sing Jesus the Light of the World, only with Easter verses. We sing a Caribbean Halle, halle, hallelujah. Make our circle. Sing our amens. Linger awhile. Not wanting to leave. 

The session meets. Reviews all our various challenges. Proposed programs. We are ready for struggle. And I walk home. Pondering joy.

Easter Monday: Easter, Luke Easter

4/25

Easter Monday.  Dressed in day after, should be a day off,   casuals. Marty looks at my cap. Asks what the M stands for. I point to the felt letters on my chest, Montreal Royals, I say, You know why? and point to the number 9 on my sleeve. Duke Snider? Roy Campanella?  he asks. No, Jackie Robinson, I reply, his last team before the Dodgers. He smiles at me. And of course, Roberto Clemente. That’s why I wear the Royals shirt.

And so we have our discussion of the Royals amazing string of International League titles. Do they still  have an International League? Marty asks.  Yes, I assure him. 

Jackie Robinsion

The Royals, the cream of the IL . The Dodgers  gave them an ultimatum, he says, give us your best players or...... 

And so we speak of Larry Doby from the Newark Eagles, the Negro League team from across the Hudson, the first  African-American in the American League; and Bobby Avila  of the Cleveland Indians, an early Latin American pioneer.

Larry Doby

So Father, he wants to know, your boys, are they as big a baseball  fans as you are?I shrug..

Do they know  what you know? Do they try and stump you?

Well, not so much I say.  

We talk colors, the Royals in Dodger blue and white. The blue, gray, white of the Toronto Blue Jays, recalling the back in the day Toronto Maple Leafs. He tells me of his old baseball card collection. Scuffed up from pitching cards on the streets. I still don't know why a Mickey Mantle ticket is worth more than a Wille Mays, he says. Mays was better. So, yesterday was Easter, right? I nod.  I got one for ya father, he says, the best baseball player for the season.

Oh yeah, who? I say. 

First baseman for the Indians, Luke Easter, he replies, and laughs. As I get ready  to go back to the church, he says, I have enjoyed out baseball talk. 

Oh, he says, remember Campanella, that great catcher? I was in the same ward as the kid who hit him with a car. They kept trying to prove  a conspiracy but it was just an accident. The kid couldn’t stop crying, kept blaming himself. 

Did he ever get better? I ask.

Don’t know, he says. I went in there as a volunteer committed. Left that way too. 

Willie Mays and Roy Campanella

Back at the church. Steve Goodman of the Video Education Center has arrived. He’s worked withTed, gone to Cuba with El Taller. We do the tour. He tells me about the Center. How they teach teenagers to use cameras. To film what’s going on in their own neighborhoods. Like right now, they’re working  on foreclosures. It’s absolutely the kind of education work we want to do. Seems like the perfect partner. So what's the next step? Get him to talk to Ted.