Born a slave in 1746, Absalom Jones saw his family split up
and sold to different parts of the country in 1762. Jones had the good fortune
to be sold to a merchant in Philadelphia. That city was becoming a hotbed of
abolitionist ideas, thanks to the Quakers who founded it. There he worked in a
grocery store by day and by night attended a Quaker school where he learned to
read, the Bible being his principal textbook.
He was also converted by the preaching of the Methodists and
joined a Methodist church where he met another slave, Richard Allen. Jones also
met and married a woman named Mary King. Jones was industrious and saved enough
money to purchase his wife's freedom in 1770. The fact that he purchased his
wife's freedom before his own sounds like an act of extraordinary altruism, but
in fact was profoundly practical: If his wife was free, then their children
would be free. It took him another six years to save enough money to purchase
his own freedom.
In 1772, Jones, Allen, and other black worshipers were
forbidden from sitting on the main floor of the Methodist church they attended
and told that they would be allowed to sit only in the balcony. Understandably,
they left the church and founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid society
that later became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.
Richard Allen continued to be a Methodist and was ordained
in that denomination, although he later withdrew and founded the first
independent black denomination in the U.S. - the African Methodist Episcopal
Church.
Jones petitioned William White, the Bishop of Pennsylvania,
to be ordained and to admit his church as a parish of the diocese. White
ordained Jones a deacon in 1795, but he had to wait another nine years before
being ordained to the priesthood.
In 1793, a malaria epidemic struck Philadelphia, then the
national capital. Washington and other government leaders understandably
withdrew from the city to avoid infection, but so did many of the city's other
white leaders, including physicians and clergy. But Absalom Jones, Richard
Allen, and other blacks fearlessly served the sick and dying.
It is estimated that 20 times more blacks than whites nursed
victims of the epidemic, a fact that was crucial in gaining social acceptance
for blacks in Philadelphia.
But I don't want to give you a lecture on church history or
African American history or U.S. history. I don't want to give you a lecture on
any kind of history. In fact, I don't
want to give you a lecture at all. I want to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
I have no idea what it is like to be the object of racial
prejudice. I have never experienced it. On the contrary, I am a white, male
Southerner. So, I am likely to have been on the wrong side of racial prejudice,
and I am certain that I have benefited from my status as a white, male Southerner.
I lived in Philadelphia for four years and served a parish
there, as well as founding and leading a non-profit organization. My deacon was
an African American woman, Elyse Bradt-Ray, who was a native of Philadelphia.
At first, Elyse was a little suspicious of me. After I had been called and
before I arrived, she referred to me as a "white man from Alabama."
But we soon became friends. When both she and I preached sermons on Martin
Luther King, Jr., Day, I kidded Elyse about referring to me as a "white
man from Alabama." She responded, "Well, I meant that as a term of
affection!"
However, I do know what it is like to experience prejudice
and discrimination. A well-known Episcopal priest, someone whose name you might
recognize, the author of several books, had an opening on his staff about the
time I was ordained. Without any prompting from me a friend of mine in his
congregation asked him to consider me for the opening. "Oh, I couldn't
hire him," he said. "His lifestyle makes him unacceptable."
When the predominantly black St. Phillip's Church in
Brooklyn, New York, first petitioned the Diocese of New York to be accepted as
a parish, some members of the diocese objected to the presence of blacks in the
diocese. They said, "...we question their possession of those qualities
which would render their intercourse with members of a church convention useful
or agreeable..."
"His lifestyle makes him unacceptable..."
I only want to make two simple points my sermon today.
The first is this: Prejudice and discrimination can have no
place among us. Today's second reading is from Paul's letter to the Galatians.
Paul wrote, "For freedom Christ has set us free... do not submit again to
a yoke of slavery." There were some 5 million slaves in the Roman empire
in the first century. About 10-15 percent of the population were slaves. But
more than likely a majority of first century Christians were slaves. We know
this because the New Testament is written in Greek, which in the first century,
was the language of slaves. When Paul wrote, "For freedom Christ has set
us free," he was saying that Christian baptism had abolished the
distinction between slaves and free persons.
Elsewhere in Galatians Paul wrote, "In Christ there is neither
slave nor free, male nor female, Jew or Greek."
They were powerful words in the first century and they were
powerful in 18th and 19th c. America. They empowered former slaves such as
Absalom Jones and Richard Allen to seek and win their freedom. They inspired
abolitionists to work for the emancipation of all slaves and the abolition of
slavery itself.
They are still powerful words. They remind us that
distinctions of class, gender, and race cannot separate us, that we must look
not at the color of people's skin or the size of their salaries, but instead
peer into their hearts. Or as Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "I dream of a
day when my four little children will be judged not on the color of their skin
but on the content of their character."
The second point I want to make is this: I owe a debt of
gratitude to that priest who judged me unacceptable because of my lifestyle. I
would not for a minute say that everyone who has experienced prejudice and
discrimination should be grateful to the person or group that discriminated
against them. But being on the receiving end of prejudice and discrimination
can make us stronger, better, and wiser people. It can show us what is really
important. And it can point us in new directions and make us see the world in a
new way.
I had desperately wanted the power and status I would
acquire if I had been given a place on the staff of that priest's church. I had
badly wanted his approval and blessing. And frankly, if I had gotten what I
wanted, it might have led to success, both professional and financial. But even
though I might have gotten what I wanted, I'm not sure I would have gotten what
I really needed.
Instead of becoming an associate on the staff of a wealthy,
suburban church, I went to a small rural church 90 miles away and served there
for five years. It was often a difficult and lonely experience, but it deepened
me. It forced me to reach down into my heart and soul and develop new skills
and find new qualities in myself. As a
result of going to that small, rural parish, I had the opportunity to respond
when three small black churches in my town were mysteriously burned to the
ground. I brought together my fellow white clergy to respond to those burnings.
We raised money. We even received $50,000 from what was then the Presiding
Bishop's fund to help rebuild the churches.
Absalom Jones and Richard Allen and the black worshipers who
were ejected from St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia were forced to
go in a new direction. Absalom Jones helped found St. Thomas' African Episcopal
Church in Philadelphia, a church that has been a beacon of black empowerment
for 200 years. Richard Allen helped found the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States.
In a sermon about Absalom Jones, Canon Harold Lewis wrote
that Jones, "seeing the need for blacks to have an economic as well as a
spiritual base in the community, he founded, along with Richard Allen, the
first black insurance company, and acquired ... real estate. Jones, who earlier
had purchased his own freedom, recognized the importance of freedom for all
blacks, and through the establishment of the Free African Society, he...
effectively aided the emancipation of slaves and the protection of the rights
of free blacks."
Would Jones have achieved all that if he had continued to
worship quietly at St. George's? I don't know.
Please don't think I'm saying that prejudice and
discrimination are in any sense good things. Not at all. What I'm saying is
that God can use them, and we can see the hand of God at work even in the
disappointments, disasters, and sorrows that come our way.
One more thing about Absalom Jones: He was in many ways a
nonviolent warrior for freedom. Jones and other blacks were among the first
people to petition the U.S. government to abolish slavery, fifty years before
Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. In 1808, the year that the U.S.
Constitution outlawed the slave trade, Jones established the tradition of
preaching an annual anti-slavery sermon.
In his 1808 sermon, Jones said these words:
"The history of the world shows us that the deliverance
of the children of Israel from their bondage is not the only instance in which
it has pleased God to appear on behalf of oppressed and distressed nations as
the deliverer of the innocent, and of those who call upon his name.... The
great and blessed event that we celebrate this day is a striking proof that the
God of heaven and earth is the same yesterday, and today, and forever... He has
heard the prayers that have ascended from the hearts of his people; and as in
the case of his ancient and chosen people the Jews, come down to deliver our
suffering country-men from the hands of their oppressors.
"He came down into the United States, when they
declared in the constitution which they framed in 1788, that the trade in our
African fellow-men should cease in the year 1808. He came down into the British
Parliament, when they passed a law to put an end to the same iniquitous trade
in May 1807..."
When the brothers of the patriarch Joseph sold him into
slavery, they thought that they had seen the last of him. "We shall see
what will become of his dreams," they said. But when Joseph became the
second most important official in Egypt, there was a famine in the land of his
family and his brothers came to him seeking food and he rescued them from
starvation. Joseph said to them, "You meant it for evil against me, but
God meant it for good." (Gen. 50.20)
So let us give thanks for Absalom Jones and Richard Allen.
Let us give thanks for all those who endured oppression and remained not only
faithful but defiant. "Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute
you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice
and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you."
W.E.B. Du Bois once said that "the Episcopal Church had probably done less for black people than any other aggregation of Christians."
W.E.B. Du Bois once said that "the Episcopal Church had probably done less for black people than any other aggregation of Christians."
