"HARRIET" Honouring Black History Month

February 16, 2020 Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

Carolyn Smith Matthews 5: 1-11

Listen to Sermon Audio (last portion of sermon missing)

Sermon: Feb 16, 2020, Honouring Black History Month, on Harriet

Illumination - Nelson Mandela suggested “May your choices reflect your
hopes, not your fears.” So we pray today that our hope is present, and our
words and images shine light and love on the path ahead.
To talk to you today about the Movie Harriet is discomforting. I’ve known about
Harriet as a hero since sitting in a grade 4 class only half an hour away from the city
where Harriet landed safely, where she is remembered today, in St. Catharines,
Ontario. I remember being in awe that just some random woman could stop
something as Mighty and unstoppable as evil Slavery.
You’ll notice I am not black, I am white, educated, the child of educated and
employed parents. I grew up in S Ontario, which is as privileged a place as the world
knows today. I’m straight and cis-gendered … I’m physically-abled, employed… and
relatively emotionally stable! I name these matters of privilege today because a
pulpit has been granted some sense of authority, and to speak to you about Black
History Month is awkward - in fact, all my labels of privilege get in the way of my
authority to speak on many issues of marginalization.
Allyson and I, along with Jenn and Harold and Jeff were digging into a good
conversation on Gender and Race and LGBT issues at the Mission Team meeting last
month and it occurred to me that I needed help today. So Allyson & I watched the
movie Harriet together. Watching movies with a friend is generally a good time, but I
am grateful to her because watching this movie together was uncomfortable.
The movie Harriet tells the story of Harriet Tubman in Maryland, born in the 1822 as
Araminta “Minty” Ross into a family enslaved by a white farming family. Enslaved.
To watch this story beside Allyson is to watch people with skin the colour of mine
beat people with skin the colour of hers. A woman like me sneering and spitting on a
woman in front of her. To call out the N word, meant to cut just as deeply as calling
them dirty pigs. I am grateful that Allyson and I could sit together and name that
discomfort. Hard to bear.
Harriet can’t bear enslavement any longer. Despite following the rules, saying yessir
and no-ma’am, and even obtaining a legal order for her Freedom, she is spat on,
beaten and insulted and sent back to work. And even worse, so are her family and
friends. Even young children. What does one do in intolerable circumstances, when
even just law is unobtainable?
She escapes - into the wild spaces, with her memory of Rev. Green’s directions: You
got to be miles away from here fore dawn. Now, I need you to remember what I tell
you. Fear is your enemy. Trust in God. The North Star will guide you. Follow that
North Star. If there are no stars, just follow the river. If you can’t see the river, listen
for it. When the river split, cross the high bridge over the rushing creek, and head
straight north. After a few days time, Delaware River be on your right.
You can imagine - it wasn’t straightforward. Her way of following the river was to
plunge into it, escaping the Slave holders encircling her, then barely surviving after
being carried lifeless in the current. Somehow she continued, following that North
Star. By the time she reached Canada, she had nearly died, resurrected by the people
of the Underground Railroad - a network funnelling escaped slaves to safety through
Philadelphia.
Canada - the promised land - we have embraced this sense of our Canadian-ness…
polite, multicultural, friendly, full of opportunity, we’re far better at handling racism
up here… but even saying that is hard, because it feels smug and blind and untrue.
Canada is only as free and promising as we struggle to keep it. There are too many
reminders in our jails and school and health care systems, or our leadership and job
stats of how racism and discrimination shows up. Efforts to balance such numbers are
met with simmering reverse-racism. Canada is only as good as we work to make it
every day. Reminders come from our newspapers, our schools, stores and
workplaces, in recognizing Black History Month, and in faithful discernment in
church, listening for God’s call to peace and justice..
And we speak of listening for God in wonderful ways - meditation, singing, or candles
and prayer, dreaming hopefully and leaning into the mystical Spirit. . Harriet was
trusted for her visions of God - it was odd, but no one doubted that something
visionary was happening. But her visions weren’t wonderful…
After her miraculous escape to Philly, Harriet is, well, ‘resurrected’ by a woman
named Marie -a black woman, free, self-employed and beautifully refined, and she
wonders to Harriet: You say that God’s voice guides you. What’s that like?
And Harriet says: Sometime it sting. Like a smack in the face. Other time it’s soft.
Like a dream. Fly off soon as you woke.
From a safe place of privilege, we, and Marie relish time to dream and ponder. For
Harriet, God’s voice smacked her in the face, at times felt worse than beatings and
her fractured skull - that hole just added clarity to God’s voice, she said.
When you’re on the margins, God’s whisper is aching longing, a reminder of how far
you are from heaven. And it’s the challenge to get there. For Harriet, it was hope and
justice, just down a long, long road that she needed to survive.
We’re God’s people, and we’re the United Church of Canada - known for wrestling,
for liberating and for equalizing…. AND it is hard work. But we are called into messy
dialogue and relationship! So… it’s time for our 2nd discussion question Now, it’s
not just a free-for-all. We are regarding each other as Beloved. We are listening to
hear, not just to respond. We are not in a hockey game of offence and defence but in a
hopeful safe place. Tell your stories with a sense of wonder - like, where is God in
this story? What am I learning about myself as I tell it?
So let’s bravely gather in your small groups - 3-5 people maybe. Remember this about
Privilege: White privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard. It means your
skin colour isn’t one of the things making it harder. So let’s get started. And if
you prefer to ponder quietly, do so surrounded by friends and the Spirit. 3-5 minutes -
Have you ever had an encounter that brought you a new awareness of the existence
of White Privilege?
Come back together - By the way, the Beatitudes that we heard today - our level
of privilege impacts how we might hear them. In my life, I’ve heard them as hope
and promise of God’s love for all, a turning of the tables. For Slaves, and for Africans
being preached at, colonized and loaded onto ships, these were preached at them as in
“Behave, be good slaves and put up with all this pain now, for someday, your reward
will be given in Heaven.” Awful. So let’s work for heaven right here on earth, shall
we?
back together…What is something you heard from someone else that will stick with
you??
Harriet can’t sit still in her freedom. Her name as the criminal who steals slaves (???)
that is posted on the Wanted sign is “Moses” - the one who brings oppressed people to
the Promised Land. The one who doesn’t wait for heaven to bless the poor in spirit!
She has discovered that heaven on earth means freedom. Her eyes and her heart are
far too open to the ones left behind. Despite her luck in finding safety, despite pleas
to stay, Harriet won’t hear of it: Don’t you tell me what I can’t do. I made it this far on
my own. God was watching, but my feet was my own. Running, bleeding, climbing,
nearly drowned, nothing to eat for days and days, but I made it! So don’t you tell me
what I can’t do. You don’t know me.
Harriet Tubman makes the journey back to the south and then north again, and again
and again, struggling at times with the numbers wanting to make it through, too many
for the hiding places, or the boats. By the time the civil war began, she had brought
70 people to freedom. She lost none - not one - to those who mercilessly hunted her.
As the civil war began, she was the first and only woman to lead a Union Army
battalion of 150 soldiers, freeing 750 slaves under her name.
The Mountains are high, the Valley is low, but so many people won’t stand for racism
any longer, or for discrimination against those on the margins. More people rise up
together, for racial justice, gender justice, LGBT and Indigenous justice, abilities and
diversity- And there are so many in need of hope and help. We need to keep at it.
We need a bigger vision, a more daring courage. We have a God who is that big, who
beckons us to freedom for all and who needs our hands. And with prayer and
solidarity, ‘we’re gonna need a bigger cart!”