Good Morning St. Andrew’s
A friend recently posted on Facebook, Episcopalians who identify as white: Why do you think that it’s important to commemorate the legacy of Absalom Jones?
A great question.
Today, I’m moved to preach to you about Absalom Jones: A Tree Planted by Water.
Many of us know the main details of Absalom Jones’ life, or at least the ones that have survived the two centuries since he lived.
Born into slavery in Delaware in 1746 and sold with his family to a neighboring farmer around 1762.
He was - later that year - separated from his entire family, when they were sold on and he was moved to Philadelphia.
Allowed to get his education in reading and writing, married in 1770 to Mary King,
He had to buy his wife’s freedom in 1778, so that his children would not grow up as enslaved people in a country that found it intolerable not to be free, from the shackles of tyranny, this my friends is called irony.
Manumitted after the war, he took up his own identity, called himself Jones and joined this new movement that was breaking away from the Church of England called methodism.
We know about “The Great Walkout” from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where the white clergy and vestry told their black fellow congregants that they had to sit in the balcony.
We know that he established the Free African Society with his friend Richard Allen, who stayed with methodism and created the African Methodist Episcopal Church, while Jones went with the newly re-formed and de-anglicized Episcopal Church.
We know that Jones and Allen were instrumental in gathering the black community of Philadelphia to nurse black and white neighbors during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793.
They worked night and day, while most people with means left the city
But did you know that they had to deal with a disinformation campaign that tried to say that they were profiting from their caregiving.
It’s almost like saying that religious organizations were laundering money to support those in need (at least there was no such thing as social media back then)
The mayor of Philadelphia was able to quash the rumor. Isn’t it amazing what can happen when political leaders take the side of truth rather than trying to stoke social discord with the misinformation of their day?
Doesn’t it show you how far back in time our political leaders today want to take us?
We know the old addage, “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”
Consider for a moment that the reason so many of our leaders and wider culture are trying so hard to deny black experience, to dismantle DEI programs, to rail against Critical Race Theory, and to ban our histories,
Is so that they can repeat it. I’ll let that sit for a minute.
We know that Absalom Jones was ordained as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal church in 1802 after establishing African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, as the first fully black church in Philadelphia. (he beat Richard Allen’s Mother Bethel AME by 12 days).
We know that he died in 1818 on February 13th, which is his official Feast Day in the Episcopal Church.
We know this, but what does it mean to you as a historically black congregation founded almost exactly 100 years after St. Thomas’?
And to my friend’s aptly put question, what does it mean to me?
The “tree planted by water” is a powerful metaphor.
Today in our Scriptures, we get two of the most famous passages that use this trope; Jeremiah 17 and Psalm 1.
In both passages, the trope is used to describe and emphasize the differences between certain types of people.
Jeremiah makes the difference between those who trust in mortals and those who trust in God.
Psalm 1 calls the different groups the wicked and the righteous; those who delight in God’s law and those whose law is bad counsel, scorn, and sin.
What does it mean, then, that those who are good are like a tree planted by water?
First of all, it means that God is the source of life and abundance and that such an understanding is the foundation of the happy life;
If you think that something besides God is water, then it will be impossible to be planted near water.
This is going to be a deep cut, but to put it into modern terms, if you think that Brawndo has what plants crave, droughts a comin’ baby!
Okay, let me digress for one minute for those who have never seen the movie Idiocracy.
It was a satirical movie from 2006, which imagined two not so intelligent people from our time being accidentally cryogenically frozen and waking up in the future only to realize that instead of progressing rationally, our society devolved into a hyper-consumerist culture with little to no education.
They went from being average people with no ambition in life to being the smartest people in society.
The hallmark of this future America was that instead of watering their plants with water, a company that made an electrolite drink called Brawndo convinced everyone to water the plants with their product.
It would be like trying to water your garden with Gatorade. In this future America, there is a drought;
Nothing will grow.
The simple question that the time-travelling duo ask is, why not try water?
The answer is always the jingoistic company proverb, “but Brawndo has electrolites, Brawndo has what plants crave.”
That advertising message has such power in the future American society that they won’t even try watering the plants with – well - water, and the couple is almost lynched because they dare to resist the common wisdom.
So, the first lesson of Jeremiah and Psalm 1 is… plant yourself by water, not by jingo.
The second thing to notice is that the world of this tree is not an ideal world, but it still bears fruit.
We know that plants grow in good climates, we know that when plants are stressed, they don’t often produce fruit.
They save their energy for better times.
When Jesus sees the fig tree that has no fruit as he enters Jerusalem for his final week of life, he notices that the tree has no fruit on it.
He says to cut it down, if it will bear no fruit, though the disciples talk him out of it.
Even in hard times, if you tap into the living water of God, you can - and you must - continue to bear fruit.
Anyone can do good, when things are easy. It is the mark of the faithful that they step up to do good, when the going gets tough; to produce fruit even when the land is parched.
My friends, Absalom Jones is important to me, because he exemplified what it is to be a tree planted by water.
We think that our times are difficult, and for us they are. In our day, what we are facing in society and globally is nothing other than the devil’s attempt to take us back into tribalism, bigotry, and hate for our fellow humans.
This past week, the Goose Creek Police Dept. in South Carolina tried to highlight their staff of color in Facebook posts and to show appreciation for the diversity of their workforce.
The online comments got so bad; hateful, racist, and vitriolic that they announced that they were moving their celebration internal to the department, because the public was too irresponsible to “back the blue” as they often claim to do.
But, this isn’t an isolated incident, nor is this limited to the time since we had a new presidential administration.
This national moment goes beyond Nazis parading on the streets of the oldest black run village north of the Mason-Dixon line.
There was a viral social media craze in 2018 and 2019 in which white students in various places including Aledo, Texas, California, Massachussets and other places
Where white children as young as middle school held virtual “slave auctions,” taking pictures of black students at their schools and “selling” their classmates to each other in profanity laden message groups.
This isn’t just happening in the South y’all.
It’s not just happening in America either. Radical nationalism and bigotry are on the rise around the world and have been for more than a decade.
As the 80’s power ballad says, “the heat is on.”
We’re in a nationwide a global spiritual drought, feeding our societies with Brawndo, and expecting blessing and prosperity.
It feels like a moment, and it most certainly is.
But, the prophet Jeremiah tells us, and Absalom Jones reminds us that the tree planted by water does not fear when the heat comes.
When epidemic hit, Absalom Jones stood up and cared for his neighbor.
When society did everything to tell him that he was worthless while still putting a price on his labor, he knew his own worth.
When the church tried to send him to the balcony, he went to the mountain top.
Absalom Jones is important to me, because he reminds me that all history is our history, if we’re willing to learn from it.
Sometimes we think that we can only learn from things that are our own;
That somehow we silo ourselves from others’ experiences, because it doesn’t affect us directly.
My ancestors were not the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
People who wield the power of division want us to be divorced from the histories of those we think of as “other.”
They want us to think, “not my problem,” or “that was so long ago,” or “that could never happen to us, we’re white or latino or asian or indigenous, Jewish or Muslim or Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist.”
The truth is, if we put our threads together, what we see is that oppression can and will come for anyone.
The only antidote is to Lift Every Voice that has ever faced oppression, and to Sing of God’s never-failing Grace for those who trust.
Absalom Jones is important to me, because he is one of my spiritual ancestors and he shows me what faith is not in spite of the fact that he was black, but because he was black.
He teaches me how to be a better Christian and a better white ally.
He teaches me how to trust in God, to bear fruit, even when the conditions for growth are not present.
He teaches me that a tree planted by water doesn’t wait to put out its fruit,
it rests its roots in the living water of God’s Grace and produces goodness no matter how dry the rest of the world is.
My message to you today, as it has been for the last few weeks is God’s continual call, “Do not Fear.”
Dig deep, bear fruit.
Our ancestors did unimaginably hard things, we can do hard things too, because we have a Place for Embrace, a place to tap into living water.
Take that strength with you;
The strength and resilience of Absalom Jones,
Do not wither.
God is on our side, and as the cry has gone out in so many generations before us, who faced as much if not more than what we are called to resist today,
We shall overcome, and we will continue to Lift Every Voice and Sing.
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