July 10, 2016 Community Christian Church
Roger
Ray, pastor “Because Black Lives Matter”
Over here on my right is a
grand piano. It has 88 keys. 52 of those keys are white. 36 of them are black.
We have the good fortune of having a remarkable pianist in our church that
makes magic come out of those 88 keys every week. He doesn’t use all 88 keys
every week but they are all available to him. He uses the ones that are needed
in the moment.
How crazy would it be if Barry
came in one day and said, I am going to find the right key on this big keyboard
and only play that one note all day? There is not just one right note. At any
moment any one of those 88 keys may be the right key while most of the others
are wrong keys for that moment.
This week, this crazy week in
American history, this violent, insane, sad week, every preacher, every
politician, every community leader and organizer, is trying to find the right
thing to say. People on social media have tried to find the right meme, the
perfect quote, to speak to the nightmare of the police killings.
I don’t disagree with the
people who are quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that you cannot drive out darkness with darkness,
only light can do that. And you cannot drive out hate with hate, only love can
do that. In fact, that needs to be said. It is true and it is right, but if
that is the only note you play in this complicated situation, then you are
making even Martin Luther King sound trite, like a platitude in needlepoint on
your grandmother’s kitchen wall.
In the past year, 965, nearly
1000 people were shot and killed by the police. Just over half of those had a
gun in their possession. 90 of them were unarmed, about 400 of them had a knife
or some other weapon. 300 of those people were black. So that means that,
considering the percentage of the population, the police are five times more
likely to shoot and kill a black man as they are a white man. A black man is
shot and killed by the police on average, at a rate of one a day. If you think that
anger is not one of the notes that needs to be played at this moment in
American history then you just don’t get it.
The man who shot at white
police officers in Dallas this week was an angry man but he was a murderer. He
wasn’t just insane… there were reasons why he did what he did…that doesn’t make
what he did excusable or acceptable in any light. But I understand. Ironically,
he shot police who were protecting the people who were protesting police
violence. He shot innocent people… good people… public servants who placed
their lives at risk every day for the common good. Dallas, for all of its problems, has one of
the best records for police refraining from using deadly force, for being
trained in de-escalation, and non-violent policing. What he did was
treacherous, monstrous, wrong, but we should not act like it just came out of
the blue. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
One year ago, a young white
racist went into the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston and shot and killed
nine people… nine black Christians who were not rioting, looting, threatening
anyone..Who were not resisting arrest, fleeing from the police, or even selling
CD’s or loose cigarettes on a street corner.
They were not driving a car
with a busted taillight or stealing a pack of cigars from a convenience store.
They were in church, listening to their pastor lead them in a Bible study.
The shooter wanted to start a
race war but the surviving family members and church members immediately
stepped forward and offered this murderer forgiveness, even love. That was an
amazingly brave and inspiring thing for them to say and to do. I appreciate
that they played that note. I’m just saying, it is not the only note to be
played.
Anger has a place here. Fear,
sorrow, grief, rage…. There are a lot of right keys. Revenge is wrong. Hate is
wrong. But forgiveness isn’t the only right one either!
I drove down to Charleston the
week after the shooting and delivered a love offering from all of you to help
that church with their expenses after this tragedy and I cherish the memory of
being hugged on the sidewalk in front of Mother Emanuel by one of the survivors
but I am going to tell you the truth…. That’s what you came to hear isn’t it?
Don’t you want me to tell you the truth?
The truth is that I am still mad as hell about that mass murder.
I’m mad because it not only
should not have happened, it should not have been made so easy by bought-off
legislators who have turned our cities into an American version of Bagdad,
where any punk, nut-job, or psycho can buy military styled weapons and
ammunition that will shoot right through a car!
Did you know that the police in
Dallas this week had to hide behind the engine block of their squad cars
because the kind of bullets that sniper was using could go right through the
other parts of the car and kill them? You can buy an assault style rifle and
high-powered ammo at Wal-Mart right next to the toy department. You can buy it
at the Bass Pro shop, next to the fishing tackle. You can buy it at the
Battlefield Mall in an athletic store where your kids go for their soccer and
baseball supplies.
And if you have a criminal
record or some kind of official impediment to buying military style weapons at
these conveniently located retail stores you can buy it on line on eBay or
Craig’s list, or at a local gun show. I
recently happened to overhear a conversation among three local lawyers and one
volunteered that he just wasn’t making much money out of his law practice but
he was making a killing selling AR-15’s on line.
He buys them at a local store
and sells them at a huge markup to someone who can’t buy them at a store. Because it is legal in a “don’t ask, don’t
tell” private sale, to sell military style weapons to someone you know good and
well cannot buy it from a store because they are dangerous people. As the
character, J. R. Ewing, on Dallas said, “Once you give up on your integrity,
the rest is a piece of cake.”
I’m not just lifting up this
one snake-in-the-grass for ridicule because, honestly, all of America has given
up its integrity when there was no meaningful gun control law enacted after the
school shooting at Columbine, at the theater shooting in Aurora. Attempts at
some kind of assault rifle ban failed after Congresswoman Gabby Gifford was
shot in the head.
We gave away any integrity we
may have once had when 20 little school children laid dead on their elementary
school floor at Sandy Hook and we did nothing. A church shooting in Charleston
didn’t do it, a massacre in a gay nightclub in Orlando didn’t do it, now a mass
killing of police officers in Dallas won’t do it either unless somebody
somewhere sends out a search party to find some integrity somewhere.
We have good friends, founders
of this church, Ron and June Hertenstein… when Ron and June moved to Florida
they got involved with an organization called “No Labels.” It is a political
organization that is trying to strip away the divisive labels of left and
right, conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, and they are trying
to get good people to be good again… to tone down the rhetoric, stop the name
calling, and try to unite for the common good.
I love those goals. And you
know, when they lived here, June was always trying to persuade me to say what I
say more diplomatically, to be more moderate, more kind, more accepting. I
think she did a pretty good job, don’t you?
Seriously, you have heard me
say it right here in this pulpit: we must end the divisions. This partisan
divide is destroying our nation. We don’t need a liberal news source and a
conservative fake news source, we need good, honest, factual journalists who
try to inform more than they try to persuade.
We need journalists that are
interested in educating the public and not just selling ads by hysterical and
salacious reporting. All of those are beautiful notes, good notes, noble keys,
but they are not the only keys to be played right now.
Americans felt justified in
sending Navy Seals in helicopters to the home of Osama Bin Laden and shooting
him right in the face right in front of his many wives. I don’t like it but I
can’t mount much of a defense for a moral monster that orchestrated the murder
of 3000 innocent people on 9-11.
But since 9-11 there have been
nearly half a million Americans killed by guns that continue to be insanely
available because of the lobbying efforts of the NRA. Osama killed 3000 people.
The NRA has the blood of 490,000 Americans on their hands since that horrible
day, 35,000 of those were homicides, more than a dozen times as many as Bin
Laden killed.
Now Senator Mitch McConnell
tells us that we can’t approve a new Supreme Court Justice unless that justice
has the approval of the NRA.
Why don’t we let Isis appoint
our next Supreme Court Justice, they have not killed nearly as many Americans
as the NRA has facilitated? No one in congress has taken as much NRA money as
our own Senator Roy Blunt. I just received a letter this week from our congress
member, Billy Long, in response to my pleading letter to him, begging for some
kind of reasonable reform of gun laws. Congressman Long told me that he would
never do anything to restrict the free exercise of the 2nd
Amendment.
What McConnell, Blunt, Long are
telling us is that their political bribes are more important to them than are
the lives of Dallas policemen, of school children in Sandy Hook, church members
in Charleston, or movie goers in Colorado, or dancers in Orlando. And in saying
that, without malice, without any need for revenge, without any divisiveness or
partisanship, let me just factually say that McConnell, Blunt, and Long, and
all of the members of Congress who have blocked sensible gun reform and have
carried the NRA’s water for them do not deserve to be in office.
I could build a strong case for
why they should be put on trial for treason against the people of the United
States. I don’t believe in capitol punishment or political executions, but I
believe that Osama Bin Laden at least had convictions behind his crimes…. Our
elected class of criminals have less integrity than did the Bin Ladens and
Saddam Husseins of the world.
Violence is not the answer.
Retaliation is always wrong. But for God’s sake, we can’t keep trying to find
common ground with people who just want to rip the ground out from under us.
There is no middle way with moral monsters. We have to stop re-electing these
minions of evil.
It didn’t start out that way
but the NRA has become a domestic terrorist organization and taking political
donations from them should immediately disqualify any candidate running for
office and maybe it should get them on a terrorist watch list or a no-fly list
but they sure shouldn’t be sent to the Senate or the Congress to represent the
children, movie goers, night clubbers, church members, and police officers who
are being gunned down in our streets.
Finally, I must beg of you to
give me just a little more time to speak directly to the issue of race. There
are things that need to change in America to de-escalate the violence, the
crime, and the poverty.
We need universal health care
as a human right just like public schools are available to everyone and the
fire department puts out fires at the homes of the wealthy and of the poor
equally. We need to raise salaries to a living wage and do whatever we have to
do to reach full employment whether that is through public works projects or
through aggressive job training and wage subsidy programs. We need to
strengthen social security so that everyone, white, or black, or Asian, or
Hispanic, or Arab, can retire with dignity. A lot of our problems are economic
class problems and those can be fixed if only we have the will to do it.
But economics isn’t the whole
picture. That’s where my man, Bernie Sanders, was missing the mark early on.
When he was initially asked about race, he talked about full employment and a
living wage… which makes a certain sense but he wasn’t hearing the real point.
When he was confronted with Black Lives Matters demonstrators, he said, “All
lives matter,” and that seems like the right answer to white people who didn’t
hear the real message. Because it isn’t just about economics, it is about
racism. It isn’t even just about gun violence or police brutality, it is about
racism.
I’m a pastor. What could be
more natural than for me to say that all lives matter? … That human life is
precious, sacred, that it has inherent worth.. that we all matter… but folks,
please hear me: White people have always mattered.
There has never been a question
about whether or not white lives mattered. When white Spaniards arrived on
these shores in their armor and helmets and they would force Indians to carry
them on their backs until they collapsed, literally riding humans as if they
were horses or mules… it was obvious that white lives mattered.
When, for hundreds of years,
white slave ship captains brought boat loads of African slaves to our shores in
chains to be stripped naked and sold at auction on the public square of our
towns and cities, sold to slave owners who worked them to death, who flogged
them, raped them, and murdered them…. It was obvious whose lives mattered.
Throughout the 20th
century’s American apartheid with its segregated schools, neighborhoods,
bathrooms, and lunch counters, with lynchings, and voter suppression, there was
never any doubt that white lives mattered.
What has been less clear is
that Black Lives Matter. And so, in the face of the shooting of Trayvon Martin,
who was armed with only Skittles and Ice Tea, by a man who was found to be not
guilty for murder even though he chased him down and shot him, we begin to wake
up to the fact that it needs to be said. In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing you
say it… would you say it out loud, “Black Lives Matter.”
Most of us here can recite the
names of the books of the Bible, we can name the American presidents and the
capitols of our states… it wouldn’t hurt us to be able to name the names of the
black people whose lives have been senselessly taken from them. Will you say
his name, Trayvon Martin?
The police were heavily armed
and Eric Garner was unarmed when the police literally choked him to death on a
sidewalk in New York City. The version of that murder given by the police would
be all that we would know about it if it were not for the fact that Ramsey Orta
videoed the police in action. They tried to stop him but he kept videoing the
incident and because he did we know about it.
None of the police involved in
the murder of Eric Garner were indicted. You know who is in prison though?
Ramsey Orta. That’s right, it took them a month but they found something they
could charge this black Good Samaritan with and he is in jail now. It isn’t
obvious, so we need to say it and say it loud, will you say it with me, “Black
Lives Matter.” He has been dead for two years now, but will you say his name,
Eric Garner?
Two years ago, John Crawford
picked up a BB gun off of the shelf in a WalMart in Dayton, Ohio and was shot
dead by two officers, neither of whom were criminally charged in his death.
Will you say John Crawford’s name with me?
Two years ago next month, right
up the road from us in Ferguson, MO, 18 year old Michael Brown was shot and
killed for walking in the street in his neighborhood when he was told to walk
on the sidewalk. The officer who emptied his revolver into Michael Brown was
not criminally charged. Do you see why saying “all lives matter” doesn’t get to
the point? Will you say his name with
me? Michael Brown.
12 year old Tamir Rice, was
shot and killed by two officers while he played with a BB gun in a Cleveland
city park. The officers didn’t even take the time to tell him to drop the gun,
or raise his hands. In less than two seconds of rolling up on the scene, Tamir
was dead.
That’s not what the officers
said but that is what the video showed. These incidents are not new, as
Tanahasi Coates said, it is the cameras that are new. Black people have been
telling us about police shootings and violence for a hundred years but we
thought they were exaggerating. We thought they were criminals, thugs who
resisted arrest and who threatened the police, as if there could be a nationwide,
century long secret conspiracy among black people to make these stories up. The
incidents are not new. The cameras are forcing us to face facts that we have
long denied. We all watched Tamir Rice die… will you say his name?
Last year, Walter Scott was
stopped in Charleston for having a burned out tail light. He was about to be
arrested for failure to pay child support so he tried to run away and the
officer shot him in the back and when he was dead he put his Taser by the body
and concocted a story about Scott trying to take the Taser from him. That
officer has been charged with murder but only because there is video evidence
of his crime. His trial will take place in October. Let’s remember Walter Scott
by saying his name together.
Then there was the famous case
of Freddie Gray being killed in police custody in Baltimore. Several of those
charged in his death have already come to trial and so far all have been found
not guilty even though Freddie Gray is still clearly dead. Let’s remember him:
Freddie Gray.
This could go on all day but
let me conclude by just mentioning two more. Philando Castile was shot and
killed by an officer in St. Paul, in front of his girl friend and his girl
friend’s four-year-old daughter while entirely and politely complying with the
officer’s instructions. He was a black man who volunteered that he was legally
exercising his second amendment rights to carry a weapon. When told to show the
officer his driver’s license, Philando complied but while he reached for his
wallet, the officer shot and killed him in a moment of panic about being in the
presence of a black man with a gun.
The day before, Alton Sterling
was shot at point blank range after being subdued by police in Baton Rouge.
Sterling, the father of five was selling cds in front of a convenience store
and ended up with five bullets in his chest for no apparent reason. That’s why
I don’t say “all lives matter,” because the point that needs to be made, the
awareness that must arise to make it possible for America to regain some
integrity is this: Black Lives Matter.
And here is some truth for you
to take home with you today: You can be entirely supportive of our police force
while still insisting that they come to terms with their own institutional
racism. No one wants to live in a city where there are not brave and
sacrificial public servants in uniform who keep our cities safe but that does
not mean in any way that we should hold down our voices when we insist that
they must understand that Black Lives Matter.
In a complicated world we have
to play all of the keys, the right way a the right time….the white ones and the
black ones.
The anger, the rage, the
sadness and tears, the love and forgiveness all have a place as we work
together to make sure that the killing stops.Black Lives Matter
