Emily Willie – Will we whisper in new ways?
(On August 3, 2011, JustPeace intern Emily Willie delivered a sermon entitled “Will we whisper in new ways?” in the Simpson Memorial Chapel at the United Methodist Building in Washington, DC. Willie is a student at the Boston University School of Theology where she’s pursuing a dual-degree program in Divinity and Social Work. She is a graduate of Washington College and a member of Trinity United Methodist in Prince Frederick, MD)
Will we whisper in new ways?
“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Matthew 10:27
This is one of the stand-out passages for me and my first year in seminary, my first year figuring out what it means for my resume to call me a theologian before I’m ready to confidently claim that title myself…a year of forming a massive document on my computer entitled, “Words I don’t know in seminary.” Matthew 10:27 may be the only passage right now that I can recite without the Bible in front of me. As someone who has more luck with remembering general ideas over exact phrasings, I have always been hopeless at memorizing anything long-term. “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”
During New Testament I this past semester, this line leapt off of the pages of Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited and has clung to me ever since, or perhaps more accurately, I cling to it. Howard Thurman sees Jesus as being a Jew among Jews, marginalized, with his “back against the wall.”[1] He points out the connection between Jesus during his time and African Americans in America in his understanding of Jesus, the historical figure, his place in society and his message. Jesus was “a member of a minority group in the midst of a larger dominant and controlling group.”[2] Thurman responds to Matthew 10:26-32, “Jesus suggests that it is quite unreasonable to assume that God, whose creative activity is expressed even in such details as the hairs of a man’s head, would exclude from his concern the life, the vital spirit, of the man himself.”[3]
For class, I learned that this passage is central to Thurman’s scriptural argument asserting that fear has no place in the individual who places faith in God. Fear should only be attributed to where a person spends eternity rather than fear of bodily harm. Thurman proclaims that what corrupts a person’s soul is deception, hatred and fear. He stresses Jesus’ message of love, saying that love is the only vehicle by which a person’s soul can arrive at the end uncorrupted. Thurman reads Matthew 10:26-32 as, do not be afraid, speak to others Jesus’ message of hope in the dark and live in love amongst the evil of the world because love is the only way and to deny the worth of the soul is to deny God.
For me, I absorbed Thurman’s interpretation but I also felt these words speaking to the often reserved spirit in me whose decision to pursue ministry is very much a decision to speak up even though I worry that I do not know enough, even though I fear that I never paid enough attention in Sunday School in order to really know what I’m talking about, even though I fear that the darkness I know will not be received by the light. This urging does not say, tell what you hear whispered in the fanciest words you know or tell what you hear in a way that always makes sense. It says, tell what you hear whispered…tell what you hear and tell it in the light.
“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” As I made my way down here to DC for the summer to start my internship with JustPeace, my challenge with proclaiming whisperings had become less from fear and more out of weariness from the last few years. Weariness from the deep injustices I’ve witnessed and heard proclaimed, weariness from a rapid accumulation of hurts in my own journey, weariness from the challenge given by my interpretation of faithful living to communicate darkness into the light while trauma challenges the soul’s access to creative capacities, weariness from struggling with what it means to reconcile with those we have hurt and have hurt us the most and to live into newness with each other.
As I anticipated what my contextual education experience would be like, I was kind of hoping that JustPeace would have the cure all for my weariness. After all, I figured that if anyplace could have a cure-all for any aspect of life, it must be a place where people talk about justice and reconciliation and forgiveness and transformation all day! Fortunately, in the last 12 weeks, I have not found a cure-all in this center for mediation and conflict transformation.
What I have found has been a space where all of my weary questions could be held in safety while I learned. But what if some of us are tired, God? What if it’s more than fear that keeps our lips closed tightly around the truth? What if naming the whispers in the dark has left us exhausted? God, what if I’m weary?
From the time I have spent here on the hill, in this building, surrounded by all of you, I will walk away with even more questions but also with whispers toward answers. For me, those whispers have been the emergence of new questions. What seems to be the common thread through what I’ve experienced this summer is the importance of telling stories and naming harm in the journey toward reconciliation and transforming relationships. I have witnessed the deep need in people while contemplating the meaning of forgiveness and reconciliation to understand and be understood. But how do we do these things in such a way that we do not do ourselves further harm? There are stories we proclaim from the same housetop time and time again. There are truths that need telling with more than words—that need to be lived. Cynthia Cohen from Brandeis University’s Peacebuilding and the Arts program talks about how creativity nourishes the capacities of communication, imagination, vitality and trust—capacities that are diminished by extreme fear and exhaustion.
Our spirits need tending and nourishment. Our spirits deserve to be given great care as we tell our stories and name our harms. After all, even the hairs of our heads are counted. Our relationships with those with whom we are communicating also deserve great care. Do we know when to step back and ask, ‘how should I tell this truth now?’ There are a couple stories I’d like to leave with you of communities and individuals naming truths in creative ways. I still have more questions than answers. I hope that you will rest in the questions with me. As you listen, perhaps you could think with me about what happens when we seek new ways of truth telling and how these situations might have looked without the presence of a heavy dose of creativity.
Facing Homelessness
In Oak Park, Illinois, West Suburban Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS) and a private artist-run community studio called Studio Pardes came together to raise awareness about issues of homelessness. They saw a need to break down stereotypes and spread truth about who is homeless. They also saw working together as an opportunity to see how art-based social action could affect their community. Over the course of a year, they were able to get 300 people involved in creating over 100 masks of faces of their community—faces of individuals in various types of living situations. They invited the community to donate their faces as well as volunteer to make the masks. The person making the mask interviewed each person who donated his or her face. Pat Allen writes, “We envisioned an ongoing relationship of at least several sessions between the community volunteer and the PADS client. We hoped that person-to-person contact would break down stereotypes, initiate a dialogue, and possibly even yield ideas of better ways to serve the homeless members of our community.”[4]
As she describes the process, Pat Allen notes, “Many of those who donated their faces expressed how relaxing and nurturing it was to experience being touched in the process of mask making, and to receive such concentrated attention. Some of our homeless guests stayed in the drying phase for an hour or more, enjoying the meditative quality of being cared for and watched over in this gentle way. Several clergy who participated as face donors actually fell asleep and later remarked it was a rare moment of relinquishing their professional “face” and truly coming to rest. For one volunteer, the act of applying the plaster to the face of a homeless man was an extraordinary act of service. She felt touched by his trust, and by an intimacy and love that deepened her overall experience as a PADS volunteer in the shelter program.”[5] The exhibition took place in a community bank and the Village Hall gallery space. It consisted of the masks taken of and painted by the community. With each mask, there was a portion of the interview conducted with the individual, a myth or fact about homelessness and an inspirational quote by a well-known public figure such as Martin Luther King Jr. The masks were auctioned off and raised over $3,000 for the PADS program.
I can imagine how many times a day this shelter program’s participants, volunteers and staff had told the true stories of who they are. I can also imagine how many of those times their efforts were misunderstood, avoided and dismissed. This act of art-making service allowed the community to listen and speak in a new way, a way that reached to spaces words do not always get to. This act created the space for the community to truly acknowledge one another…and like it.
“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”
The Night James Brown Saved Boston
I am willing to bet that many of us in this room have been to a concert that for whatever reason was exactly what we needed at that place and time. I know I can think of several shows, two this summer, that I’ve attended and left with a peace or courage that I did not enter with. James Brown played the Boston Garden, on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. When he heard news of King’s assassination in a recording studio in New York, he immediately went on TV and the radio and called for peace. When he heard of riots throughout the country, he went to Harlem and was heartbroken by the destruction that was taking place in response to the non-violent prophet’s untimely death. Every major city in America was in an uproar. The news hit Boston with a particular heaviness. King’s assassination felt very personal, according to former City Councilman. Several thousand guards were in place on the streets of Boston and there was talk of canceling the scheduled concert. There was a worry that the current rioting in the neighborhood of Roxbury would be brought to the downtown area where the concert was to take place.
Brown’s band mate, John Starks remembers, “I think the anger, the hurt, all of it was rolling…and the retaliation was brewing.” The mayor came up with the idea to televise the concert, hoping that this would convince people to stay home. Refunds were to be offered. Yet, Brown decided to take the financial hit that this decision would bring. Many people ended up staying home, but not everyone. When James Brown took the stage, he and the mayor called for the concert to be a peaceful tribute. The concert was played twice more on TV that night. There was no significant rioting that night. The city was quieter that night than it would have been on any other night. Reverend Al Sharpton says, “There was only one man that could make America stand still and think…he was a man that knew how to express the gutterances and the screams and the feelings of a whole people. And because people say he feels like us, we’re going to least give him the benefit of the doubt and hear what he’s got to say. Because if anyone understands what we feel tonight, it’s James Brown.”
Brown’s personal manager, Charles Bobbit, asked James what it is about his music that people love so much. He remembers, “He said, feel your pulse. And I did. He said, ‘you feel the beat?’ I said ‘yes.’ He said, ‘I stay in the beat. I stay in the pulse. So if I want to get a message to people, or if I want people to dance or for people to feel good, I stay in the pulse.’”[6]
I suggest there was more than the genius of Mr. James Brown happening on a stage this night. It was more than just a distraction. There are truths that need to be told as a community. There are stories of harm that need to be told with a person or community’s entire self. A space was created where a community could start naming harms with countless witnesses and that naming transcended words—it became music. That is art. We are creatively woven people; we deserve creativity. We are capable of creativity.
“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”
I invite you to wonder with me what it can look like if we are ever seeking new ways to proclaim whispers into the light. What changes when we ask, ‘how many ways can I love the covers off of this darkness alongside the moving breath of the Holy Spirit? ‘ How does our ministry change? How do we change? Once you have wondered sufficiently, together, let’s love the covers off in new and transforming ways.
Benediction
Skill is not required. But creativity is needed. Let us proclaim from the housetops in so many ways that our darkness and our light inform one another. Let’s create a space where we can be transformed together.
[1] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1996), 11-18.
[2] Thurman, 18.
[3] Thurman, 49.
[4] Pat B. Allen, “Facing Homelessness: A Community Mask Making Project,” 59-71 Frances F. Kaplan, ed. Art Therapy and Social Action, p. 61.
[5] Allen, 63-64.
[6] The Night James Brown Saved Boston, directed by David Leaf.
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