Mass in Commemoration of Martin Luther King Day

Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse.

In my early memory of the Civil Rights movement -- that is a "white man's" memory which is necessarily shorter and more recent than that of African Americans -- we reminded one another that "colored" or "negro" people were just like "white" people, but with dark skin. That seemed, at the time, a generous reassessment. We wanted to forget the ugly stereotypes we had heard and accepted. We knew those words and images were demeaning, grotesque, and untrue. Accepting African-Americans as white people in black skin seemed like a step in the right direction.

In other words, we were attempting to sew a piece of new, unshrunken cloth onto an old cloak. We were willing to make a minor adjustment in our understanding of a different group of people whom we had seen in other (distant) parts of town, but rarely or never spoke to. They were largely invisible to the new medium of television; and if they appeared in movies they were portrayed as friendly servants or smiling entertainers. 

My parents did not hide from their children the darker side of American history; we knew of the savage displacement of aboriginal Americans and the history of slavery. But I wonder if they knew the crueler version of "eenie, meenie, miney, mo." I was fifty years old before it occurred to me that nickel didn't fit the context. To children and their clueless parents it was just a way to make an arbitrary choice from many options. 

In the fifties and sixties, most white Americans could not suspect how deeply racist attitudes, policies, and habits ran in our language, customs, and practices. We would mightily resist the metanoia the Civil Rights movement demanded. It didn't seem necessary; it suggested that there was an intractable wrong in a way of life we assumed was basically right. 

When I was appointed as the pastor of an African-American Catholic church in Jennings, Louisiana I knew enough to know that I had a lot to learn. I hoped I was willing to learn. It took a while to discover I was "stepping on landmines" and unaware of it. I might not discover that I had said something that others found offensive. A "landmine" was a word or gesture perceived as insulting and rude by people who could not imagine why I would say or do such a thing unless I was intentionally being rude. I might not discover the hurt I'd caused for a very long time, if ever. More often, I hope and pray, I was forgiven for being an ignorant Yankee. Sometimes, helpful colleagues would tell me what I'd done. 

As when, I remarked to a group of black pastors, how well the children of our churches had behaved, "much better than white children!" A good friend later pulled me aside and said, "Ken, we can say that to one another. You can't." 

I got it. He was right. I learned from it. 

I learned that history cannot be erased even when people on all sides reach a new understanding. I will always be a white man, and I must always atone for that. I must ask my black brothers and sisters to tell me their stories of the American experience, when and if they find me trustworthy and willing to learn. 

Atonement is not grovelling in shame; it is listening to others and recognizing that their personal experience, sensibilities, sensitivities, reactions, and responses are not my own. It is honoring the unique haecceity of each person. It is learning how to share the truth with different people, whether that truth be the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a confession of my sin, or an admission that I too have suffered. Atonement is becoming as one, it is forgetting self and playing team. 

Atonement is enormously satisfying and remarkably pleasant as we journey to the Promised Land.