Yesterday I felt trapped by a parishioner who was negatively surprised that I support President Obama, because “sources claim that he is Muslim”. I went into this long explanation about how I had been to Trinity UCC in Chicago and there seemed to be residual admiration from years before for the grassroots work that he and Michelle did there early in their legal careers, and that he was a good and faithful Christian by all accounts – a pillar of the church and the community. I ended up down a rabbit trail about religion and politics. Good grief!

I was in junior high school when Dr. King was assassinated, so I’ve been around for a lot of the more recent struggles that led to this moment in history when a black man is President in America. So what I really wanted to say is: I’m black and clergy, he’s the first black President of the United States of America, and he openly professes Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. Vote cast.  

In fact, the night President Obama was elected, the very first phone call I got at around 11pm was from an elderly white male who grew up in Central Pennsylvania and still lives in the same farmhouse he was born in, in what is still an overwhelmingly white neighborhood.  (I was surprised he was still awake). He called to congratulate me. He said that he could only imagine what this triumph meant to me. I’ll never forget that.

In one of his outrageous stand-up comedy routines Chris Rock goes on a tirade declaring that doctors do not cure anything [expletive]. According to Chris, “the money is in the medicine”, and we are duped into a pharmaceutical malaise that is mediated by doctors, who are, in religious terminology, “fleecing the flock” while trying to push research and drugs.  It’s a disturbing observation, but he manages to make it comical.

This led me to think of the churches that on a denominational level tout a strategic mission of “curing” racism. Their goal is to “eliminate racism”, by engaging tactics of “healing the wounds” caused by it.  How arrogant and unrealistic is this goal for the church against the Jeremiah Chapter 30 prophecy that our “wound is incurable”?  For the most part, the success of our fight against this universal human indignity is gauged by activities, such as seminars, consortiums, retreats, and conferences, fronted by the kamikaze missions of cross-racial appointments.  Similar to Chris Rock’s observations of doctors and medicine, when we gather to “deal” with racism, there is money in it for the hotels, restaurants, airlines, trains, gas stations, printers and publishers, retreat centers and monastic communities.  Meanwhile, there is no real evidence of cure. We are pursuing healing for a human condition that human beings simply cannot make happen.  Jeremiah gave us a hint that some wounds are simply incurable. Just as our faithfulness relies on and derives from God’s great faithfulness, the cure for human ills is found in Christ alone through the Holy Spirit.  Only God’s mercy can prepare our hearts to be led by the Holy Spirit to speak the truth in love as Christ would do. In and of ourselves, we will never cure or eliminate racism, not even within the church. We’re obsessed and enamored with the distractions, which is where the money is. 

In the year-end fog of Advent I recall finding a moment to read an article on a major network’s website that was very offensive to 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-career clergy.  (This includes me). The article berated the “wave” of lazy, lecherous baby boomers, who are, purportedly, flocking in droves to seminaries for MDiv degrees. The article accuses these opportunistic wanderers of irresponsibly racking up mounds of student loan debt so they can leave the stress of the corporate workplace in order to pursue cushy preacher jobs, get free housing, nominal, flexible work hours, and free vacation expense accounts masked as retreats - in other words, retire comfortably. As soon as I read most of the article, I thought of my 60-plus year-old female colleague, who, after retiring from 30 years as an administrator, forged through a grueling ordination process to earn her clergy credentials.  She confided in me that in a church of about 200 members, she had officiated 15 funerals in less than a year – essentially more than 1 per month.  Another friend who had been serving a church for less than two years shared that she had done just as many in half that time. 

The love, devotion and commitment required of a servant leader can take its toll, and it was not much different for Jesus Christ.  My colleagues and I are not quite sweating blood, but this is a cup many of us would often like to pass and let someone else take our sip.  Only a divine calling could strengthen me enough to think nothing of someone sobbing snot into my dry-clean-only clergy robe, or cry on my shoulder so uncontrollably, that I can feel their tears trickling into my inner-ear; or to go from the intensive care unit to the cancer unit after having waited an hour for someone to come back from diagnostic testing, and then heading for the dark trip alone back to the Center City parking garage.

Serving in a cross-racial or cross-cultural appointment is an added layer of confluence that should be the least of our issues, but unfortunately, it’s not.  There are often some triumphs and victories that propel us forward through the work of the Holy Spirit. I recall my Korean colleague who could not get a dying black parishioner to look at her during a hospital visit, but melted into a smile when she began to sing. And I have learned that an elderly parishioner, who has made racist comments, could care less how dark or kinky-haired I am when I am standing by their hospital bed on Christmas Eve night reading Luke 2.  I’ve learned that the parishioner who describes me as the “colored” pastor is quick to request that I sing an a cappella spiritual at the graveside when they die. 

Suffering and mourning are no better relieved when the skin of hands that are joined in prayer or the cheeks that touch in comfort, are the same color.  And no baby boomers in their right (or wrong) minds would voluntarily spend the latter of their natural days suffering and mourning on a regular and unpredictable basis with, for the most part, social and cultural strangers.  It’s hardly a prudent or desirable retirement plan.  It’s a high calling for a peculiar people.  

A Church Food Revelation

 “After 4 days of white people food, man, your cookin’ was slammin!” I stared at this text that I wrote to my son-in-law, but could not get myself to hit “send.”  Something seemed wrong about it.  Was I saying that “white people’s food” was nasty? Tasteless?  Unpalatable?  No, because most of the food that had been served or given to me to take home over the holidays was quite good.  It’s just that I have an ingrained perception of the differences between “white people food” and the food with which my palate is most familiar and often craves, called, “soul food.”  I chickened out and changed my text to say, “After 4 days of ‘church people’ food…”  Yet, I knew that my son-in-law, knowing what my world was like, would crack the code that I really meant “white people food”.  

The truth is that there is a difference in our approaches to food and fellowship.  (Yet another hurdle for us to overcome on our journey to the fully racially-integrated church).   We have to acknowledge and admit these differences, and we should confess that there are kitchen counter whisperings that express how we really feel about each other’s foods.  Some white person right now is declaring, “I love collard greens!” or “I grew up on hoppin’ john”, and some black person is bragging, “I’ve never eaten chit’lins”!  Despite the endless TV food shows, we are still sometimes worlds apart when it comes to food, and hence, fellowship.

In the home I grew up in we ate pig’s feet often.  At first when I left home, in my yuppie life, the thought of ever having eaten straight-up fat, especially from a pig, repulsed me.  (I’m still amazed that my Dad lived into his seventies).  A stark reality was evoked at my son-in-law’s Christmas Eve party, where there was a full roast pig, golden-brown and stretched out on the kitchen counter from head-to-toe – hairy face, ears and tail intact. I was fully sober, but somehow drawn to the pig’s feet. I kept staring at them thinking that if I were in a less sophisticated setting, I would snap those feet off, douse them in vinegar and hot sauce, and eat every bit of the fat and lean meat and suck the toes. 

I imagined appropriate side servings of greasy, cheesy macaroni and cheese, slippery collard greens soaked in smoked ham hock grease, sweet potato slices swimming in syrup and real butter (and aptly called “candied” yams), and fried chicken that squirts juice (and grease) when you bite into it, and of course, boiled-egg-laden potato salad, and salty, chicken-y flavored “church rice”. These are the standard comfort foods of my Baptist heritage, always, always served and expected at church events, fellowship and funerals.  I admit that I miss these culinary staples rarely served at the gatherings of white churches in the North.   

The revelation is that in our quest to ultimately bring us together, some things will remain unshaken.  I realize that rice is the only commonality between dirty rice, stuffed grape leaves and spring rolls, but given the choice, I’m probably gonna choose dirty rice every time and twice on Sunday.  

I have a feeling there will never be such a thing as “church people food,” because at least in Pennsylvania, it would have to range from pot pie to borscht.  But I did learn how easy it is, even for us clergy people, to craft cross-over terminology to mask our simplest prejudices. 

Guilty, as revealed.