Do you know who this is?...
Dr. George Fishbeck was the weatherman for Eyewitness news back when I was a child. One way I satisfied my childhood curiosity was by watching Eyewitness News - and I especially enjoyed watching Dr. George.
Watching became a sort of daily ritual for me - my evening liturgy. It started when Jerry Dunphy said, “From the desert to the sea, and to all of southern California, good evening…”
But Dr. George was my favorite. He explained everything so well. I still remember him getting all excited one day because the temperature that day was 82, and if you flip those two numbers around, you get 28, and 82 degrees fahrenheit is 28 degrees celsius, and that’s an easy way to remember it.
My sisters still tease me about how much I liked watching Dr. George.
Do you know who this is?...
I wasn’t as interested in political news stories. I was a child, and politics was boring; just people talking about stuff I didn’t understand.
But I paid enough attention to know that the mayor of Los Angeles was a man named Tom Bradley, and I learned to recognize his face when it appeared.
Tom Bradley had been the mayor of L.A. since I was two, and he would remain the mayor until the year I graduated from college. So it seemed perfectly normal that he was the mayor of L.A., because that was all I knew. It was only ever his face that appeared on the TV screen when local politics were talked about.
I didn’t really know much about him, other than that he was the mayor of L.A. I didn’t know (for example) that his parents were sharecroppers... I didn’t know that restaurants and department stores in the city where he would one day be mayor refused to serve him... I didn’t know that, when he was elected, he was the first and only Black mayor of L.A., and only the second Black mayor of any major U.S. city...
I didn’t know any of that. All I knew was that L.A. had a Black mayor, and had always had a Black mayor (as far as I knew), and that this was perfectly normal.
It wasn’t until later, when I started to learn more about things that had been hidden from me - the things I was never taught - that I wondered about the challenges he must have had to overcome.
To be clear, the neighborhood I grew up in didn’t have a lot of Black people. My friends in school were mostly white and Mexican and Asian, but not Black.
I did have a Black algebra teacher in middle school, but again, nothing ever taught me to wonder about the challenges she probably had to overcome. In fact, I was led to believe that all those challenges and struggles were things of the past.
It wasn’t until college that I started to learn that things weren’t quite as resolved as I thought they were. And I had some friends who helped.
One, a Black student who was involved in campus ministry like I was, asked if I wanted to be his roommate our sophomore year, and I said yes. He was very patient with my ignorance.
Another friend grew up in South Central L.A., and attended All Peoples Christian Church. I really didn’t think there was that much difference between his experiences growing up, and my roommate’s experiences growing up, and my experiences growing up… Although, when my friend from South Central invited me to spend the weekend with him at his home, I admit I was a little nervous.
Then, in my junior year of college, the 1992 riots took place, and issues of race arose on campus and in the community in a new way.
When these friends started talking about their experiences - I was startled. When they talked about the racism they experienced, every day of their lives, I wondered if they were exaggerating. Suddenly, they seemed like different people to me.
But it’s not that they had become different. It’s that they felt compelled to share what life was really like for them. They were allowing me to see the truth about them and about society - a truth I hadn’t been aware of.
And having the truth revealed to you like that can be a tough pill to swallow. I mostly kept my mouth shut and listened, which was good, but inside I felt defensive. Defensive, and afraid - afraid that what they were saying about the world we live in was still true.
That fear, that defensiveness - I wonder if that’s similar to what Peter, James, and John experienced up on the mountain, when Jesus was transfigured, when they saw him in a new light, as if for the first time…
A transfiguration is a revealing, a revelation. A transfiguration is when one’s outer appearance suddenly changes to more accurately reflect one’s inner truth, who you are on the inside. Maybe it’s who you’ve always been, or maybe it’s that who you are on the inside has changed as well.
But suddenly, your outside is changed so that your inner truth is revealed.
Peter, James, and John thought they knew who Jesus was. He was a man who, they thought, was going to deliver the Jewish people from Roman oppression. He was also a person who seemed to have a great understanding of God and faith and the Jewish scriptures, so that many even called him “rabbi.”
But when his true identity was revealed to them at the transfiguration, and they realized that he was even more than they knew… their response was fear.
This was a man who was able to summon Moses and Elijah, two great prophets from times long ago, to stand beside him on a mountaintop!... to bring them from the distant past - many generations ago - to the present moment!
This was a man on whom the presence of God descended, in the form of a cloud; a man whom God’s own voice speaks to and about, declaring him to be God’s own son!
It was all too much to take in… just like the truth about what Black people in this country continue to experience was almost too much for me to take in.
Peter, James, and John were overwhelmed, and they tried to contain this truth. They tried to package it, frame it, in a way that they could accept.
That, I think, is the symbolism of Peter’s offer to erect three dwellings. He wanted to contain and control what was going on. He wanted to minimize it. He wanted to put some walls around it.
In the same way, there is a strong temptation for people like me to contain and control and manipulate the truth when truth is revealed to us. We want to make the history of our country and the history of race racism in our country more palatable, more acceptable. We want to build a dwelling in which that truth can be contained, and perhaps even hidden away.
Because if we don’t hide the truth in a dwelling of our own making, then we have to admit that the truth is that racial oppression has been a part of this country’s history from day one. Black people’s ancestors were brought to this country as slaves, and Black people’s status as less than fully human was inscribed into our constitution.
The effects of slavery and Jim Crow continue to play out in our society today. The struggles and obstacles still exist.
And we’re still trying to hide that truth in dwellings that we erect. Teachers who want to teach the truth about race in our country are being censored by white parents who accuse them of making them feel uncomfortable.
We see racism at work today in the lack of accountability for police violence directed at African-Americans, and in the stripping away of voting rights.
When schools need to close, or when freeways need to be built, or when industry needs a place to dump their pollution, these things all affect Black communities more than they affect white communities.
But, let’s not bring that up. Let’s not teach it to our children. Let’s build a tent, a dwelling, and stick the truth inside, so we don’t have to look at it.
And while we’re at it, let’s also throw into those dwellings all the stories about how indigenous people were also enslaved in this country, and how our government tried to exterminate them through acts of genocide. “Extermination” is, in fact, a word that was used frequently in the newspapers of California to describe government policies regarding the indigenous people of this state.
But let’s not bring that up. Let’s not teach it to our children. Let’s build a tent, a dwelling, and stick that ugly truth inside, so we don’t have to look at it. So that we don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
That’s the argument of the people who don’t want us teaching critical race theory to our children.
But despite their attempts to hide or deny the truth, the truth cannot be contained or hidden away.
And in Black History Month, we acknowledge the struggles, we speak the truth… and we also celebrate the accomplishments….
…of people like Tom Bradley.
…of people like my middle-school algebra teacher.
…of people like our own Bobbie Smith.
…of people like our own Disciples of Christ General Minister, Terri Hord Owens.
And so many other Black Americans, who have endured racism and oppression and who have persevered and have lived out their truth, and who have made a positive difference in our society.
I don’t think Peter, James, and John were ever the same, after that day they witnessed Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop. Not only did they now understand him in a new way, they also understood themselves in a new way. The truth had changed them.
And, if we allow it, the truth will change us as well. The truth will transform us.
And we can no longer be silent about the things we have seen, the stories we’ve heard, the truth we’ve come to know.
And when we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth, we understand that God’s kingdom is a kingdom of justice, a kingdom where Black lives do matter, a kingdom where votes of Black citizens are not suppressed, a kingdom where Black boys can walk down the street with no more fear than any other boys in their community.
And together, we will work for that kingdom, and with the Spirit’s help, we will keep on working for that kingdom, until the day it becomes a reality.
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