First Sunday of Lent B
Text: Mark 1:9-15
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
February 21, 2021
White History Month
The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness appears in three of the Gospels; this year we get the version of St. Mark, which is to say we get the scaled-down, no-frills, economy version. No bread-for-the-masses temptation in this version; no spiriting up to the top of a tower to see all the world’s kingdoms; no Jesus and Satan dueling it out with can-you-top-this Bible verses.
Nope; in Mark all we get is two measly verses. So that little bit that Mark gives us must be the important part, the nugget of the story. Jesus is baptized by John in the river Jordan, and the very next thing is “the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness,” we are told. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts ….” So you get baptism, and then immediately what you get next, is you get wilderness, you get Satan, and you get wild beasts.
Uh-oh. You know, if you’ve got to face all that out there, I’m hoping that baptismal vaccination is at least 95% effective.
So Jesus is driven to the dangerous places; he’s the guy in the horror movie who turns the knob on that attic door; he tempts fate. Don’t go there, Jesus!; we want to say. There’s devils out there; there’s evil and there’s death. Why can’t this new ministry of yours just be religious and nice? Right off the bat – really??! –does it have to be so confrontational? Don’t go there, Jesus, we want to say, but St. Mark today tells us that right off the bat it was into the wilderness that he went; he went to be among the wild beasts. That’s always brought to my mind the Maurice Sendak kids’ book Where the Wild Things Are. It’s as if Jesus gets baptized and then says, All right, then! Let the wild rumpus begin!
But this staid old world of ours doesn’t much like a rumpus. This world doesn’t want to go there.
When the pandemic hit a year ago, we didn’t want to go there, did we? Didn’t believe it could be really happening, didn’t want to think that some of our vaunted scientific and civic institutions might not be prepared, didn’t want to accept our responsibility for what has to be done to face down that devil. And our denial, our resistance to go there and face honestly the devil that was there, that just gave the devil more power.
No; this old world of ours doesn’t much like a rumpus. Though there may be again and again a word of truth that needs to be spoken – well, this is a go-along, get-along kind of world, and the forces of this world don’t want to go there. Avoid the wilderness, leave those wild beasts alone, to do their worst. You know this world works that way if you’ve ever been called to put yourself on the line for what is right, maybe to protect someone, or maybe to speak the truth to someone who needs to hear it. Leave it alone, says this world; it’s not your place. The wilderness is not your place; don’t go there!
This is Black History Month, and that’s a great thing, but you know what I’ve always thought we’ve needed in our country? We need White History Month. That’s the history that we who are white in America need to learn about, the threatening wilderness of our civic life that we need to walk around in, the devil that we need to face down.
But we don’t want to go there, do we? Nah, we say; it’s not like that anymore, and who needs to dwell on that? Thanks be to God we live in a country now that is color-blind, and isn’t that a good thing? I’m not racist, and racism is a thing of the past that is best left in the past.
And it’s because we white people talk like that and think like that, that I’m saying we need White History Month. When the difference in life expectancy, between the wealthy white Streeterville neighborhood in the city of Chicago and the Englewood neighborhood that Don Beal preached about from this pulpit a few weeks ago is thirty years – thirty years! – well, we need to spend White History Month understanding how we got here, and the decisions we’ve made that have brought us here, if we’re ever going to get out of here. Color-blindness is not going to get us anywhere; we need to go there, if we’re going at last to get somewhere.
Want another example of what I’m talking about here? Major League Baseball loves to tell the story and to celebrate Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in the major leagues, and all that he had to overcome to do that. It’s a heart-warming story, an inspiring story, and it’s a story told often in Black History Month. It’s great.
But you know the story we need to tell for White History Month? We need to acknowledge the part of our beloved Jackie Robinson story, that is a lie. We tell that lie, and we love that lie, because living in that lie we don’t have to face the wild beasts and the devils of our own nature.
Our lie is this: It is not true that Jackie Robinson was the first Black player in the major leagues. Right after the major leagues started in 1876 there were Black players, and into the 1880’s there was Moses Fleetwood Walker, and Weldy Walker, and George Stovey, and others.
But as our nation moved in those days from the more-promising time of immediate post-Civil War Reconstruction toward re-establishing and reinforcing the Black suppression that is our American sin, that suppression was also established in the American national pastime. White players and managers began refusing to play against Black players, and finally the white owners met in 1887 and voted to ban contracts with Black players. It wasn’t just future contracts that they banned; they also threw out the guys who were already playing.
So now you know why Major League Baseball doesn’t tell that part of the story, and you can feel as you hear me tell that story why we so much prefer living in the fiction that Jackie Robinson was the first. Those wild beasts and devils that beset us are always so damn ugly, when you go out into the wilderness to take a good look at ‘em. But like so many of the stories that we white people tell about race in America, the story is not complete and we are not telling the truth, until we understand and face what it was that made Jackie Robinson necessary! We white folk have got to go there, to understand how we got here, if we are ever going to get anywhere.
White History Month. It occurs to me that when so many of our young people were out in the streets last summer protesting racial injustice, that when they were pulling down statues of Confederates they were way ahead of me with this idea of mine. All they were doing there was celebrating White History Month.
Now I know that for those of us who are white there can be a fatigue factor that sets in, when we are wrestling again with the call to move out into this particular wilderness, race in America. That fatigue factor is a luxury we white folks enjoy; our sisters and brothers of color don’t get to choose, and don’t get to get tired, of living out in that wilderness that we have built. But I have these good conversations with some of you sometimes, along the lines of, “Bob, do we really need to be talking about this so much? Do we really need to be going there, again?”
I think the answer to that question is one of the most important teachings of Christian faith. The first thing that Jesus did in his ministry, the only thing that he could do after baptism!, is he went there. He went right up to the attic door, he went to face down the devils right in their wilderness lair. Wild things?, said Jesus; all right, then: Let the wild rumpus begin.
And if you want to follow Jesus, then you’re gonna go there, too. It’s the only thing that you can do, after your baptism. And here I’m not talking only about race, of course; I’m talking about every sin, and every evil, and every devil that has ever beset your life or our community. You are a baptized follower of Jesus Christ, and that means there is no shrinking now from what is ugly or threatening. You go there; yea, even unto the most disappointing and leprous and the most unattractive human realities that you know. You go there, because Jesus did, and so it was that even by confronting the heart-breaking realities of what human beings can be, even in that act and in that very moment Jesus made clear the dignity and the worthiness of every human being, the dignity and worthiness that God ever intended for us. Yeah; you go there.
You go there, with a word of truth in every alcohol or addiction situation, or every time a kid needs to be protected, or every time sickness or death comes near; in every place where you are called to put your body on the line, you go there.
And, yeah, we will go there, to confront our racial demons every time we need to. And the nature of that particular demon means that every time we need to, is gonna be often enough. The world may tire, but we will not. You can depend on it. You can depend on it: where the hard things in this life are? We’re gonna go there. Because we, we follow Jesus. We’re gonna go there.