Cross Lutheran Church
February 2013
Pastor’s Corner
Dear Beloved Community,
February is National Black History Month and we recognize and lift up the accomplishments of people of African descent and also have the opportunity to raise awareness of our collective history, where we began, where we are and where we are going as people of faith.
Our theme for the month, “A Testament of Hope and A Call to Conscience,” is taken from an essay from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Our various pastors will discuss the following:
· Problems that define our prosperity
· Progress despite adversity
· Promise of solidarity
We hope you will enjoy the special focus within our services this month. Below you will find a schedule of preachers for the month and
an article by Christian columnist, Dan Clendenin, that sheds light on our theme.
Blessings,
Pastor Michelle
BLACK HISTORY PREACHING SCHEDULE
Feb. 3, 2013 Rev. Michelle Townsend de Lopez, Cross, Milwaukee
Feb. 10, 2013 Rev. Steve Jerbi, All Peoples Gathering, Milwaukee
Feb. 17, 2013 Rev. Michael Russell, Jubliee! Faith Community Church, ELCA, IL
Feb. 24, 2013 Rev. Kenneth Wheeler, Cross, Milwaukee
“From a White Colonist to a Black Councilman: Celebrating Black History Month”
The Jamestown colonist John Rolfe could claim three important firsts in American history. In April of 1614 he married Pocahontas — the first interracial marriage. He was also the first colonial planter to market tobacco. And then, in a letter of January 1620 to Sir Edwin Sandys, the treasurer of the Virginia Company back in London, Rolfe recorded the first known mention of blacks in America.
Rolfe's letter describes how in late August of 1619, a pirate ship named the "White Lion" landed at what is now Fort Monroe, about thirty miles from Jamestown. He says that the "Commander" of the ship, Captain Jope, "brought not any thing but 20 and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victuals (whereof he was in great need as he pretended) at the best and easiest rates they could." Four days later, another pirate ship called the "Treasurer" arrived with more Africans. These blacks ended up in America after being bought by Portuguese slave traders in Angola, then stolen by pirates off the coast of Mexico, which pirates later landed near Jamestown. And so began black history in America.
Fast forward two hundred years, and the government census of 1860 identified four million slaves in America. And that was only a small percentage of a global trade in human trafficking. Beginning in 1444 and lasting over four hundred years, the European slave trade bought and sold 40 million African people.
One of the most counter-intuitive facts of history is that Africans in America adopted the Christianity of their white oppressors. And the Civil War didn't end because of Christian good will, but only after armies had slaughtered 620,000 Americans — mass death on an unprecedented and unimaginable scale.
Many of the four million slaves freed after the Civil War lived into the 1940s. During the Depression, the Federal Writers Project hired people to interview and record first person narratives from these former slaves, the last first-hand resource that could document their slave experiences. Today the Library of Congress houses 2,000 such interviews, in their original "dialect" and broken English, in the simply titled Slave Narratives, portions of which are available on the one-hour film called Unchained Memories; Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003).
Long after the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment, what Abraham Lincoln called the "monstrous injustice" of slavery still cast a long shadow over American history. As Isabel Wilkerson shows in her award-winning book The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), the years of reconstruction gave way to a Jim Crow south that was characterized by a "feudal caste system" of lynchings, terror, torture and violence. This was one of the causes of the Great Migration — between 1915 and 1970, six million blacks migrated from the south to the American north and west. When the migration began, about 90% of blacks lived in the south; sixty years later only 50% of them did.
A picture's worth a thousand words, but no words can describe, let alone explain, the horrific crimes against humanity documented in Without Sanctuary; Lynching Photography in America (2000) — and not "just" the hangings, but burnings, castration, mutilation, and sadistic tortures like cutting unborn babies from their mother's womb. There was no due process of law in most of these lynchings, nor any attempt to hide the identity of the executioners. The US postal service even mailed commemorative post cards with pictures of lynchings. Trains provided free services to the spectacles. Between 1882 and 1968 more than 4,700 blacks were lynched.
But significant changes have come. The Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson explores contemporary black America in his book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010). There's no longer a single narrative that's adequate to describe America's 40 million blacks, says Robinson. Instead, black America has experienced a radical "disintegration" that is both hopeful and dispiriting. He suggests that black America has fragmented into four distinct groups that are "increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology. They have different profiles, different mind-sets, different hopes, fears, and dreams."
There's an enormous black middle class that has entered America's mainstream. Robinson calls this a "miracle." In 1967, only 25% of black households had a median income of more than $35,000; by 2005, that figure had nearly doubled to 45.3%. The percentage of black households earning more than $75,000 increased from 3.4% to 15.7%. In education, during the same period, high school graduation rates for blacks increased from 29.5% to 83%, effectively achieving parity with white graduation rates of 87%.
Then there's a black elite that Robinson calls "transcendents," like Oprah, Obama, Condi Rice and Colin Powell. There have always been isolated, individual black elites, but now there are enough of them to comprise a "critical mass" that wields influence in every sector of society. Third, there are "emergents," made up of two distinct groups — immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, and then blacks in biracial marriages (which only became legal in all states in 1967). Finally, there are the "abandoned," symbolized in the events of Hurricane Katrina. The abandoned are "profoundly isolated," and because of this have created their own "cultural ecosystems." They need nothing less than an aggressive "domestic Marshall Plan."
Friday, Feb. 1, marks the beginning of Black History Month. Despite our dark history, there's much to celebrate — like the recent story of Michael Tubbs. Michael was born to a teenage mother and an incarcerated father in Stockton, California. With 300,000 people, Stockton was the largest city in America to declare bankruptcy in June 2012. Last spring Tubbs graduated from Stanford, where he won the Dinkelspiel Award for the university's highest distinction. In November, at the age of 22, he won election to Stockton's city council. It's always easy to curse the darkness; Michael Tubbs is shining a light. (Author - Dan Clendenin)
Bread of Healing Empowerment Ministry
from the Director
“Not only must we feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless but we must do something about those things that contribute to those maladies.”
During the last few months, I’ve had a lot of time to think about the Bread of Healing Empowerment arm of Cross’ ministry equally. I’ve had a lot of time to talk with more of our guests on a deeper level and to sit in groups and listen on a much deeper level. And as I have done that, it has become clearer to me that if we are going to address poverty in a way that will make a significant difference, then we need to make a serious shift in terms of the way in which we have been doing things. That is not to say that what we have been doing has not been important, it has.
But when I think about the word empowerment, which is a part of our name, it is a call to really begin to live into what that means. Prior to Christmas, Bill Krugler, Michael Adams, Lauren Adams, Cloria and I had an opportunity to travel to Cincinnati to meet with the founder and staff of a very successful program called Cincinnati Works. We all came away very impressed by what we saw and heard in the day that we were there.
Dave Phillips, the visionary for this program, was guided by the idea that they wanted to begin something that would put a serious dent in poverty and unemployment in the Cincinnati area. Their jobs readiness program is not simply about getting people a job, but it’s about building confidence in individuals, restoring self-worth, equipping people with skills to get, keep and be successful in the job. The best anti-poverty program in the world is employment.
I’ve written previously about our Jobs Specialist Michael Adams and Lauren Adams, his very capable partner. We have been blessed to have them. They have kicked our jobs ministry up to a higher level. They both come with the perspective that the quickest way to achieve empowerment is through employment.
I am hardened by the statistics of unemployment that continue to plague and cripple us. I am uncomfortable with the numbers that I cite here for you to see. There are 100,000 chronically unemployed individuals between ages 18-64. There are another 30-35,000 who are the working poor and within those families there are 180,000 children living in poverty with only 15 percent of them who will manage to escape.
I believe that we can help turn those numbers around. We must be committed to being engaged in a work that can make a paradigm shift from charity to empowerment. We must find ways to assist those who want to work and who are motivated to work find work and find employers who are willing to give responsible individuals an opportunity.
This ministry is about empowerment focused on those who are caught in the throes of generational poverty where they have not just suffered economic devastation, but damage to their spirits and their souls. Poverty is the enemy, not the people who have been victimized by it. The guests who enter our doors do not need one more place to judge them or to look down upon them or to put up roadblocks. They’ve had a lifetime of that and, as a result, they have come to believe that they are not worthy. The Bread of Healing Empowerment becomes a proactive and intentional approach that helps our guests to rebuild and restore their confidence and spirit.
The glue to that rebuilding is spiritual. This is why the Bible study time is important. It becomes the first block. Jesus came to preach Good News to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted. We take Jesus’ mission seriously. We affirm the worth and dignity of every person who enters our doors regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their failings. Love does make a difference. How you treat people does make a difference.
Change is possible but it does not happen overnight. But it does happen through consistent modeling. It happens when people begin to experience unconditional love and acceptance. In the seven and a half years that I have been blessed to be a part of this ministry, I’ve learned not to make assumptions about those who are poor. Many of them have put their trust in people who have betrayed their trust. Some of them have even been betrayed by the Church. Any ministry that seeks to
partner with the poor must earn their trust. Your title, your collar, your position does not automatically give you the right to do so.
I’ve learned over these years that the community is looking for leaders who are authentic and real. And when they sense that, they will give you access into corners of their lives that may have been reserved for their closest family member, or friend or that they have kept locked away deep inside of them for a very long time.
The more and more I think about the why of BOHEM, the more I am convinced that this ministry must be about soul and spiritual healing. It must be about restoring the vital things that have been lost by a community that has always suffered disproportionately in the face of poverty and challenged by racism. And what has been lost and what we must work tirelessly to help restore is confidence in their self-worth, their dignity and ultimately a belief in their humanity.
Let us keep this Ministry in prayer and those that we are privileged to walk with.
Blessings,
Pastor Ken Wheeler, Director
Bread of Healing Empowerment
Eulogy for Anita Ruby
Prayer: O God, our great Shepherd, we come before you this day even though our hearts are heavy with grief. We still come with grateful praise for your eternal goodness and for your mercy. We ask that you would look upon Anita’s family with kindness and that you would touch their grief with the deepness of your love and comfort. We give you thanks for the time that you gave Anita to all of us and we are so thankful that she is now at home with you. Bless us as we continue on our earthly journey that we may be able to live with grace, humility and love for others. This is our prayer and we pray it in the precious Name of Jesus, Amen
I give God thanks today for his amazing grace. I give God thanks that God is still a Good and awesome God even though death has intruded in the lives of this family.