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Jesus has his back against the wall.
We call Jesus our Savior, and that is good, for surely he is our Savior, saving us, often enough, from our own smaller selves. We call him our Lord, and while some of us may bump up against the masculine word “lord,” Jesus is in a position of, well, lordship over us: he is human like us, but he also joins divine and human in one Person, rising above us in glory. But Jesus also draws alongside us, throughout the course of our lives, from our baptismal fonts to our deathbeds, and so Jesus our Friend brings God close to us, right here, right now.
So we are right to call Jesus our Lord and our Savior … and our Friend, too.
But Jesus, as I said a moment ago, has his back against the wall.
This image comes to us from Howard Thurman, a 20th-century minister, academic dean, and theologian whose students included Martin Luther King, Jr. Howard Thurman wants us to recognize that Jesus is our Lord, Savior and Friend, yes, but this same Jesus is also a poor Jewish person in a lower social caste, living in an occupied land during a time of profound discouragement, upheaval, injustice, and oppression. His back is against the wall, Thurman writes, due to his social and economic status, and therefore the message of Jesus is intended to be proclaimed most powerfully to people like him — people of all times and places (including our own) whose backs are against the wall.
I think if we are honest, here at Grace Church, we would recognize that for a great many of us, our backs are not against the wall. Though 2020 is a traumatic year for practically everyone, my back is not against the wall, and my neck is not at great risk. My neck is white, and we all know that most white necks are not in great danger. I also have diplomas and retirement accounts; I have male privilege; I have never once in my life gone without food for lack of funds. And so, while Jesus is my Savior, Lord, and Friend, his message, the witness of his life, the truth of his existence — these are Good News to me, but this Good News is announced more urgently to those whose backs are against the wall: to Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color; to women and girls and transgender persons; to those who can’t afford groceries or shelter, let alone a graduate degree; to those trapped in the prison industrial complex; to those who are far more likely than I am to find themselves pinned by the neck to a Minneapolis street.
Now, Jesus speaks to me; Jesus loves me — and yes, this I know because the bible tells me so. But Jesus speaks with even greater urgency to those whose backs are against the wall.
And, as I said, he does this because Jesus himself has his back against the wall. As an impoverished Jewish Palestinian, Jesus knows in his bones what it feels like to be pinned down by the neck, to be trapped, to be almost out of options.
In a book we will discuss later this month in our Sacred Ground groups, Howard Thurman traces the various responses people naturally and understandably choose when their backs are against the wall. They respond with fear, even terror, and they bear the cost of that fear on their weary bodies, and broken spirits. Or they respond with deception, becoming wily and skillful in their effort to escape torture, incarceration, and death; but this deception can tap out their own sense of right and wrong, and force them to betray their own beliefs about how honest people should behave. And finally, when people’s backs are against the wall, they may respond with hatred, nursing poisonous resentment of the oppressor; and that hatred can erode their spirits like acid.
But Jesus — the Jewish Palestinian, the victim of state-sponsored violence whose back is against the wall — Jesus offers a fourth response: love.
When your back is against the wall, and you still practice love, then the oppressor cannot touch your soul, even if he destroys your body. And so we find Jesus at the cross, in Luke, praying that God will forgive the violent oppressor who does not know what he is doing. We find the resurrected Jesus confronting his close friend Peter, walking back Peter’s denials one by one, and, with the power of love, turning that poor betrayer into an apostle.
We find Jesus shattering the power of the oppressor with love, not fear, not deception, not hatred.
Love is hard to practice. (Love is a practice, not a mere feeling.) Love is hard to practice when the oppressor is trying to muscle you out of God’s vineyard, and you depend on that vineyard for your livelihood, shelter, and nourishment.
Love is hard to feel. (For love is a feeling, too.) Love is hard to feel when someone is pinning you to the street, or suppressing your vote, or mocking your dignity in plain sight.
Love is hard to choose. (For love is a choice.) Love is hard to choose when you sense that this choice could cost you your life.
Today, we hear this call to love — a call to love that God extends to oppressor and victim alike — while we are surrounded by the lush vineyard of God’s creation, a planet of growth and beauty, a garden of resurrection. We recognize, with deep relief, gratitude, and delight, that God is with us, and there is reason to hope, and even the earth herself is able to heal from the wounds we have inflicted upon her.
And yet, today, in this vineyard, we can also recognize deadly serpents, forces of destruction and devastation, slithering and creeping around us, and also roiling within us.
One of these forces — perhaps the most deadly one — is white supremacy. White supremacy convinces some of us that we are better than other people whom God has placed in God’s beautiful garden. Even when we renounce it and truthfully deny any conscious complicity in it, we find that white supremacy is sneaky: it is hard, maybe almost impossible, not to participate, even just a little bit, in a rigged system that benefits some at the expense of others. I have come to recognize my own participation in white supremacy. That doesn’t automatically mean I’m a racist, and name-calling or labeling only gets us off topic. But it does mean I am culpable. I hear the words of Jesus today about the vineyard and the wicked tenants, and I must confess that I recognize myself, at least a little bit, in those tenants. I can’t truthfully deny that I have done what they do: I have claimed the land and the belongings of others as my own; I have helped myself to more than my share; I have put my own needs and concerns first in a system that seems to be rigged in my favor.
Again, God made me and Jesus loves me; God made you and Jesus loves you. Nobody’s perfect, and that includes the fact that nobody is perfectly evil or bad. But we do well to reflect on the words of Jesus, and own up to the fact that we won’t ever tend this vineyard with perfect skill and flawless love. We all get off track; we all make mistakes.
And that’s when God’s love reveals itself most powerfully. When we gather here for prayer and worship, oppressor and victim alike, side by side, all of us are nourished by God’s Word and sent back into the vineyard of this world as followers of Jesus. God’s love claims us, heals us, and empowers us to share that love with one another and with others far and near, particularly those whose backs are against the wall.
Howard Thurman tells a story about his mother, and how she embodied for him the Way of love. She was a Black woman with a Black son: her back was against the wall. But faith helped her overcome any fear or hatred she may have felt, for herself or for her vulnerable son. Here is his story, a story for all God’s children, for all who want to learn how to love. Thurman writes:
“When I was a very small boy, Halley’s comet visited our solar system. For a long time I did not see the giant in the sky because I was not permitted to remain up after sundown … One night I was awakened by my mother, who told me to dress quickly and come with her out into the backyard to see the comet. I shall never forget it if I live forever. My mother stood with me, her hand resting on my shoulder, while I, in utter, speechless awe, beheld the great spectacle with its fan of light spreading across the heavens. The silence was like that of absolute motion. Finally, after what seemed to me an interminable time interval, I found my speech. With bated breath I said, ‘What will happen to us if that comet falls out of the sky?’
“My mother’s silence was so long that I looked from the comet to her face, and there I beheld something in her countenance that I had seen only once before, when I came into her room and found her in prayer. When she spoke, she said, ‘Nothing will happen to us, Howard; God will take care of us.’
“O simplehearted mother of mine, in one glorious moment you put your heart on the ultimate affirmation of the human spirit! Many things have I seen since that night. Times without number I have learned that life is hard, as hard as crucible steel; but as the years have unfolded, the majestic power of my mother’s glowing words has come back again and again, beating out its rhythmic chant in my own spirit. Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive, to achieve, and not to yield.”
***
Preached on Sunday, October 4, 2020 (Proper 22A), at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
Photo: Halley’s Comet.