Sermon: “Finding and Telling the Truth Takes Persistent Spirits”

The struggle. The movement. The revolution. If someone were to ask me what these words mean, I’d say it’s a smile. It’s the fire in my stomach and the grin on my face when I hear James Brown sing, “Say it out loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!!” or Aretha singing, “FREEDOM!” or Bob Marley proclaiming, “Thru the powers of the Most High we keep on surfacing!” Nothing makes me happier than reading or singing or hearing the truth. That’s what a movement is about — connecting to something larger than yourself that means hope. It’s a glorious thing to share and to believe as a group that the truth is as ancient as the first laugh. We as a people know how to treat each other and we know how to shape a free society that takes care of one another. It has been done, and it is how it shall be.

I think the last 25 years have been both saddening and uplifting. On the one hand, the South has incarcerated more people than any other region and people of color are still the last hired and first fired. On the other hand, we still have radical grassroots organizations fighting welfare deform, apartheid, toxic chemical plants, police brutality, and workplace hazards. People are struggling, winning, and uniting across many fronts. I feel a strengthening of Spirits and with that, unification — the understanding that all injustices are linked, and when gay men and black men are lynched, the hatred behind those evils must be fought on the same battlegrounds. There is no other way!

This wave of right-wing “moral” politics and religious ideas is not new, nor is it the answer to this complex world. It’s the kudzu of the real struggles in this world. Kudzu covers a tree or bush until it is stifled with green leafy vines so that it no longer functions as a rooted tree, but as a slathered, complicated piece of foliage. “Moral” politics hides the roots, hides the real problems with false questions. Sex education in schools? Too many homosexuals with special rights? Too many “thugs” in your neighborhood? Heard about some welfare frauds stealing your tax dollars?

These are the wrong questions to be asking. Why do people have to steal food and sell drugs? Why do young people suffer with sexually transmitted diseases without going to doctors? How do anti-gay policies create a ripe environment for hate crimes and lynchings? Can people really live on social welfare, and how much does the government spend on that in comparison to corporate welfare?

Ask these questions and it’s clear the Babylon system is falling again. We can see it day after day. The corporate temples crumble with every laid-off worker. Each time an elderly person dies of neglect and hunger at a run-down facility, the health indifference system tumbles. Every time a child is left alone while her mother works her third job of the day, the child careless system fails. Every time a poor urban black male is incarcerated for selling drugs, the incorrections system drowns.

This struggle will not be won with materials, but with our Spirits and our smiles. Finding the truth and telling the truth takes persistent Spirits. Southern Exposure continues to thrive after 25 years with the same Spirit of resistance, faith, and zest. It’s not a fancy magazine, it doesn’t have glossy photos or eye-catching techno-hype graphics. It speaks for itself.

That’s what Spirit does — it liberates itself in the face of incarceration and oppression and makes itself heard. Ase.