sermon
preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bellingham, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler
Feast of
William Lloyd Garrison and Maria Stewart [Provisional], December 17, 2014
Our reading from the Book of Wisdom today presents us with the middle of
a long rhapsody on the works of Holy Wisdom throughout the Genesis stories.
Today we hear about Wisdom at work in the lives of Jacob and then his son
Joseph. Earlier in the chapter, we hear recaps of the stories of Adam, Cain,
Noah, Abraham, and Lot, and it continues from here to tell the story of Moses.
The point is that Holy Wisdom has continued to work through human beings ever
since, including you and me, granting us the wisdom we need to be courageous in
our actions.
The psalmist speaks of the kinds of actions we need to take that might
require such courage: “Save the weak and orphan; defend the humble and needy;
rescue the weak and poor; deliver them from the power of the wicked.”
Furthermore, the psalmist expresses real urgency in God’s judgment of us when
we do not act: “How long will you judge unjustly, and show favor to the
wicked?”
In my experience, the Christian life should be an epic adventure. Yet we
live in a time and place where many of us don’t have to be adventurous if we
don’t want to be. Many of us have the option to carve out a rather easy life
for ourselves and not worry about those whose situation in life won’t allow
them this privilege. I think it’s a form of entropy—meaning to develop courage,
but never actually doing it. It takes a lot of effort to resist such entropy.
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| William Lloyd Garrison image from biography.com |
Today we honor two people who definitely did not carve out an easy life
for themselves. They were heroes of the 19th-century anti-slavery
movement: a white man, William Lloyd Garrison, and a black woman, Maria
Stewart. Garrison was the founder of the anti-slavery newspaper called The
Liberator. Stewart was the first African-American woman to make public
speeches and lectures against slavery in America.
Garrison insisted that slavery should be abolished immediately, and that former
slave owners should receive absolutely no recompense for their slaves’ release.
Why should we financially compensate people, he asked, for perpetuating such deplorable
sin? The Liberator was an extremely popular paper; even the White House carried
a subscription.
One occasional contributor to The Liberator was Maria Stewart, a
free black woman who, shortly after her husband’s premature death, experienced
a religious conversion and committed herself not only to the anti-slavery
movement, but also to fighting systemic racism against free blacks in the
north. It was not enough to abolish slavery, but also to insist on the absolute
equality of all people. To relegate all free blacks to servants’ jobs was to
waste the intellectual capacities of millions of Americans. Despite her
eloquence and power, Stewart stressed that she was not well educated—that she,
too, was a victim of American racism in her lack of opportunity. She claimed
that her inspiration came not from any particular skills she had attained, but directly
from God. She herself put it this way in 1832:
Methinks there are no chains
so galling as the chains of ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind
the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific
knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would,
ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral
capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.[1]
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Maria Stewart
image from zinnedproject.org
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Maria Stewart was the first American woman to speak to a mixed audience of white and black men and women. She also worked for women’s rights. And during these years she occasionally penned essays for The Liberator. But after only three years of public speaking, she gave it up. One day in 1833, when speaking at Boston’s African Masonic Lodge, she opined that black men lacked “ambition and requisite courage.”[2] Her comment caused such an uproar of negativity that she decided to go back to teaching, a sad end to a very exciting ministry.
These
days, we have laws that are meant to prevent racism from oppressing people.
Those who espouse truly racist attitudes have to find more subtle ways to act on
them that don’t attract quite as much notice, while deniable, unexamined racism
is also a real issue. So I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine what it
must have been like to fight something as ubiquitous as slavery in America 200
years ago. It’s hard to imagine now that to be against slavery was once a
radical issue. And no doubt, many times, both Garrison and Stewart heard these
words: “Look, we understand your good intentions, but can’t you tone it down a
little? Can’t we take baby steps? Slavery is the economic backbone of the
south. Do you have any idea how much damage it would do to the economy to just
end it?”
To
Garrison, such economic worries mattered not a whit in the face of a situation
so obviously and deeply immoral. In the first issue of The Liberator,
Garrison made his agenda known in no uncertain terms, as follows:
I am aware that many object to
the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as
harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not
wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose
house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his
wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her
babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation
in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not
excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy
of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to
hasten the resurrection of the dead.[3]
Despite his
strong language, Garrison rejected violence as a means of freeing slaves.
Still, his critics viewed him as a dangerous inciter because he was so
unyielding.
In 1963, with the work of Garrison and Stewart still going on in new
ways, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote from a Birmingham jail: “Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” When criticized for causing
tension, King wrote, “There is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which
is necessary for growth.” And when it was suggested to King that fighting
racism was merely a matter of individual people’s choices, he wrote, “Lamentably,
it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges
voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their
unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be
more immoral than individuals.”[4]
King’s words still ring true today. When I imagine myself living 200
years ago, and I try to strike from the record all of our history since then, I
cannot help but wonder what I would think of Garrison and Stewart, even if I
found their views compelling. Would I not stand with those who were calling for
them to tone it down, to take it slowly, to be patient as God is patient? I’m
ashamed to say it, but I probably would. And when I think of Maria Stewart, who
had the courage to challenge those who were normally her most ardent
supporters, I’m reminded that prophets are not typically welcomed in their
hometown. Speaking God’s truth, especially when there are detractors on both
sides, can be very costly indeed.
How does all this sit with you today? When you hear a story of Jesus
healing a woman immediately—not next week, not in a few decades, but right
now—what does that stir in you? When you hear that the wisdom of God dwells in
you and enables you to do courageous things today—what are those courageous
things? What words of wisdom is God speaking into your heart today? And what
will you do about them? Amen.
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