Amistad

Isaiah 55:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

March 11, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

 

            The Prophet Isaiah speaks to a people who had been captured and exiled from their homeland, a people thirsty for not only food and water, but peace and freedom and hope.

Most of us in this room have not had that experience of being physically exiled from our home. But there is a story that many UCC churches are remembering today about just such a group of people who ended up here, in New Haven, in 1839, after having traveled unwillingly from Africa on a schooner called the Amistad.

           

I hope that most of you know this story well, or have even been on the replica of the schooner which sits at Long Wharf and is now preparing for a journey to England and then down to Sierra Leone and across the Middle Passage to replicate the journey of the original schooner beginning in June. But for those who do not know the story, and even for those who do, it is worth remembering the basic outline this morning. If you want to know more, go to the Amistadamerica.org website.

 

            In 1839 a group of men, women and children had been captured from their villages in what is now Sierra Leone. Sold into slavery, they had been transported to Cuba by a Spanish ship where they again were sold and loaded onto the schooner Amistad headed to other Spanish plantations in the West Indies. But on the sea, the Africans, led by Sengbe Pieh whose likeness is on the statue next to the City Hall across from the Green, got loose, killed all but two of the Spanish crew and ordered the others to sail them back to Africa. The sailors did so by day, but by night they turned the ship around and headed west. Eventually they ended up in Long Island Sound near Montauk Point, and when they came ashore, the Spanish sailors asked that the Africans be held for murder and returned to the Spanish as property stolen, then to be transported back to Cuba. They were brought to New Haven to be held until the legal process determined their fate

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            That might have been the end of the story, had not some anti-slavery lawyers gotten involved, some of whom were affiliated with the Connecticut Congregational churches. Long legal battles ensued, funded largely by Congregational church folk, who also cared for the Africans while in jail, taught them English so they could assist with their defense, and shared the gospel. Eventually they convinced John Quincy Adams to take the trial to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he fought against the U.S. Government who wanted to return the Africans to Spain. Adams argued the technical treaty issues, but he also eloquently argued that human beings cannot be considered as property. Remember this trial took place in 1841, when enslaved Africans in the US were still considered property. But Adams won the case, and the 38 surviving African men and children (out of the original 49) were freed. A year later the churches of Connecticut had raised enough money to buy a ship to send the Africans home, later bringing one of the children, a girl, back to be educated at Oberlin College.

 

            What a story this is, such a good one in fact that no less than Stephen Spielberg made a movie out of it a number of years ago, although he rather left out the church folk’s part in this story. The UCC churches of Connecticut are rightly proud that our ancestors had such a large role in speaking and acting on behalf of these unjustly exiled people and in returning them home. We might celebrate that history with a paraphrase of the final words of this lovely poem in Isaiah, “For they went out in joy and were led back in peace; the mountains and hills of Africa burst into song and all the trees of the fields clapped their hands.”

 

            And here we sit today, descendents of enslaved Africans and free African immigrants, descendents of white Europeans, descendents of Asian, Hispanic, and West Indian immigrants as well as Native Americans, a rich mix of America. And well we might say, “we’ve come a long way, baby,” and congratulate ourselves that the churches of New Haven played such a role in the 19^th century in abolitionist movements, while, of course, being careful not to talk about the church’s more dubious role in Hawaii or with Native Americans. We know mistakes were made along the way, but most of the time, we were on the right side!

 

            So it was interesting to me this past weekend to hear the thoughts of 62 teenagers from 9 Connecticut UCC churches as we discussed what social issues the youth thought the churches needed to address in the 21^st century, more than 150 years after the Amistad came to New Haven harbor. Near the end of the weekend, the youth were asked to choose social issues they wanted to attend to in their personal lives and with the help of their churches. The top two issues for our youth, and for the others, were racism and violence.

 

            Hold that thought, because I’m going to come back to it, but I want to come by way of the reading from Luke today. You see the folk who were talking to Jesus about these incidents of disaster, one caused by tyrannical rulers and one a natural disaster or accident, were sure that they had not been victims of such disasters because they were good. So first Jesus gave them a theology lesson: “God does not use oppressive tyrants or accidents or natural disasters to punish those who are sinners, so those who die in such a way are not any more sinful than you or I; they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

            Now, basic theology lesson concluded, let’s go on to what God does expect from you folk who are sure you are so good, or at least not as bad as others. Unless you examine yourselves constantly to see how your life lines up with God’s expectations, your sin can cause harm to you. If you have an adulterous affair, your marriage is likely to fall apart. If you drink to excess and get behind the wheel of a car, you are likely to hurt yourself, someone you love, or a stranger. Any kind of sin has the potential to bring harm to you or others, so you need to be examining your life.

 

            But there’s more to it than that. Even if you examine your life and think you are not doing anything bad, that’s not enough. Hence our fig tree story. That fig tree did not harm anyone; it didn’t fall down on an unsuspecting child or spread disease to other fig trees. It just stood there, beautiful and proud, but without fruit. The owner did not want it cut down because it did something bad, but because it did nothing at all. Jesus is saying that God expects more of us than just rote adherence to basic human decency. God expects us to act fruitfully, to use the gifts we have been given to enhance the life of the world, to seek out occasions God puts in our path to bear whatever kind of fruit our particular gifts allow.

 

            So back now to the reflections of our teenagers, whose ancestries run the gamut from African American to West Indian to Native American to Asian to a grab bag of European ethnicities. Racism is a reality in their schools, in their towns, in the media, in our nation’s politics. This is the issue that will not go away, not only in our nation, but in human societies the world over. And every time we think we’ve fixed it, we’ve gotten past it, we’ve become sophisticated and enlightened about it, suddenly we get slapped in the face by something that happens at work or school or by someone like Joe Biden who says of Barack Obama, “You got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” And lots of white Americans can’t understand why when Biden complements Obama he is condemned as racist. After all these years we are still struggling to find a common language, a way of understanding the past and present so that we can break down the dividing walls of hostility and so bear fruit together as Americans.

 

            So churches like ours, who played such a critical role with Sengbe Pieh and his fellow Africans 150 years ago, still have work to do. We cannot sit in our trees here and not respond when we see racism around us of within our walls. We cannot keep silent when our children experience racism; we need to equip them. We cannot pretend we each do not have to work on this for our own lives, because we do. It’s not easy work; it’s not having dinners to raise money to hire lawyers or buy a ship. We are called to continue to dig deep around the roots of the racial divides in our society. We are called to, if you will, let Jesus make us into manure. You remember in the parable the gardener asks to be allowed to put manure, fertilizer, on the fig tree in hopes that the tree would produce fruit. As we come together and learn from each other and open ourselves to what God has to teach us in this encounter here, we might become fertilizer for our society on this issue.

 

            I was raised in a very racist home. I have worked hard over the years to unlearn what I learned, but I am not done with that work. I suspect I am not the only one here like that. Let us commit to help one another in love to continue that work, and so be fertilizer in this society. Let us not shy away from one another or from engaging in difficult and vulnerable conversations around race, whether the issues are as old as black and white or as recent at immigration reform. Let’s get hip deep in the manure Jesus is trying to work into the tree. Because God needs us to produce the fruit which will make us, in the words of God to the people of Israel, “a witness to the peoples, a leader to the nations.” Amen.