Visit to Trinity UCC Church

Yesterday's trip to Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago was quite wonderful. Fourteen of us went, many from Congregation Sha'arei Shamayim (CSS), the Reconstructionist Jewish congregation of which I am a member. (The bus driver and his wife also joined us. They didn't even realize that it was Obama's/Wright's church until they were inside--and they really liked the service.)

I couldn't have organized the trip without the help and support of many people, including CSS administrative assistant Jim Manos, who made many phone calls for me to bus companies and to a restaurant we stopped at for lunch, Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, and several friends and acquaintances, including Bacia Edelman and Judy Klehr, who helped promote the trip to people they knew. Several people who could not make the trip for various reasons (illness, Mother's Day commitments, and so forth) sent checks to help pay for the charter and make seats available to people who could not afford the fare.

The trip generated some wonderful publicity, including a conversation on last Tuesday's "Eight o' Clock Buzz" on WORT, our community radio station, between Norm Stockwell and host Stan Woodard, and a really good article in the May 7 Capital Times by Judith Davidoff, which you can access at http://www.madison.com/tct/archives/. I know it also generated a lot of discussion (dare I say argument?) between friends, spouses, and acquaintances. I couldn't have imagined better consequences!

We were warmly greeted by the church, and our presence was noted from the pulpit. The service itself was incredible, and quite different from the Youth Sunday service that Jed and I attended in late March. This was a full-out regular service, with the adult choir, which must have nearly a hundred members, singing almost throughout the service, accompanied by organ, electric guitar, and drum set. Rev. Otis Moss, James Wright's successor as pastor, led the service and gave the sermon. He's an amazing orator, and the organist accompanied him with little riffs as he built, again and again, to a peak of excitement and exhortation.

At one level, the service could be seen as purely religious, though clearly that strain of Christianity that emphasizes Jesus's compassion for the poor and unfortunate and insists that we emulate it. At another level, there were clear (to me, anyway) though implicit references to current political events. For example, a responsive reading reiterated the statement, "Divine love does not ask family to choose between family members." The minister was explicit about the inclusive nature of this statement: "Beloved, we love W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. We love Marcus Garvey and Ida B. Wells. We love A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. We love Ella Baker and Angela Davis. We love Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael." And a little later in the litany: "Beloved, we love Ishmael aned Isaac. We love Jacob and Esau. We love Moses and Aaron." He never said "We love Rev. Wright and Barack Obama," but the importance of not choosing between even these "family members" driven apart by politics and media was clear.

The sermon, also, was effective on multiple levels. On the surface, it was exegesis of the week's scripture reading, Luke, chapter 7, verses 36-49. In these verses, a Pharisee, Simon, invites Jesus to have dinner with him. A prostitute enters the house without being asked, and washes Jesus's feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, kisses them repeatedly, and anoints them with balm or perfume. Simon is appalled. If Jesus knew she was a prostitute, he says to himself, he wouldn't allow this. (Rev. Moss said, in an aside, "Now how would Simon know who this woman was, unless he'd been hanging around the red light district himself?") Jesus tells Simon a story to emphasize how much more important forgiveness is, for someone who has many sins, and he forgives the prostitute's sins, wiping the slate clean, so to speak, so she can begin a new life.

At the beginning of the sermon, partly I think because it was Mother's Day, Rev. Moss emphasized the righteousness of women, and the difficulty they had in being ordained by the men who governed the churches (including UCC), even though they had clearly been "ordained by God." It was a very feminist and also, in parts, very funny introduction, praising women (like the prostitute) who did not know their place, and refused to accept other people's definition of who they were. It introduced one of the themes that ran through the whole sermon: do not let other people define you. Rev. Moss focused, later, on how important this was in the black community, especially for black youth, so often defined in negative stereotypes by the media, the school system, the police and the courts. As he pointed out, "If I can dismiss your pain [by defining you as a "bad person"], I don't have to act [to change society or correct injustices]."

The second main theme of the sermon, picking up on Jesus's forgiveness, wiping the slate clean, was that we, too, should forgive past sins and look to the present and the future. Again, Rev. Moss focused the congregation's attention on black youth, suggesting that what should matter is what a young person is doing now, and what he or she will do in the future, not his or her past grades, or drug use, or misbehavior. He pointed out that even Richard Nixon was spared certain punishment by Rosemary Woods' judicious use of the "delete" button, and noted that "God does not want a resume of yesterday; doesn't care about the stereotype people have of you.... Jesus doesn't see every negative thing.... If God doesn't look back, why should we?" So use that delete button!

Not everyone in our group agreed, but several of us saw the sermon as (among other things) an extended metaphor about Rev. Wright, and the way he has been defined and stereotyped by others--and particularly by those who don't want to act to correct the problems in the black community, and in the US, that Wright has spent his career addressing. (And I'm not referring to the spread of AIDS by the government. Or his alleged anti-Semitism.)

It was really a masterful sermon, I thought, because it was so rich in meaning, and in levels of meaning. And I have to say, it was some of the best theater I've ever seen! Truly, the whole day was wonderful.

And now i'm off to the Arboretum, where I think the fruit trees are in full bloom.