France?

On Monday afternoon, if everything goes according to plan, my wife Christy, my daughter Catherine, and I will head to France for three weeks.

“France?” You say. “Why France?”

I think it started when I was fifteen years old, in my first French class. I opened my grammar and there were these two boys, Guy and Michel, greeting each other in French.

“Bonjour, Guy!” (Hello, Guy!).
“Bonjour, Michel” (Hello, Michel).
“Ca va?” (How’s it going?).
“Ca va bien, et toi?” (It’s going well, and you?).
“Pas mal” (Not bad).

I was suddenly able to picture this whole other world, where people spoke a different language and ate different foods and did different things than I had done when my brothers and I were growing up in West Virginia (“Tu veux jouer au football?”). I was smitten. I wanted to go there, live there, and learn how to greet my friends as casually as Guy and Michel did.

“Bonjour! Ca va?”

In my thirties I took my first trip to the Holy Land, my first real international trip of any kind. I remember standing to stretch at one point on that long flight, looking out the window at the green countryside below, and asking the flight attendant where it was. “France,” she said, and I wanted to open the emergency exit and jump out.

And then in my forties, on a mission trip to Russia, I had a 24-hour layover in Paris. It was my first time in that city. Robert Cochran was with me, the Director of Missions for the DC Baptist Convention, and at one point he and I were sitting on the upper deck of one of those wide, flat-bottomed boats that ply the Seine. It was after dark. We came around a bend in the river and saw the full moon rising above the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I said, “Robert, it’s a good thing you are not a good-looking girl (and he wasn’t), because this is so romantic I would be tempted to kiss you right on the mouth!”

My daughter Catherine seems to have inherited my infatuation with France. She studied French in high school and college, and last fall, before the first of two fairly extensive brain surgeries, she began to show me what she had found on a site called “Cheap Houses in France.” I said, “Maybe we don’t need to move to France, but if you find a good place we might be able to visit for a few weeks after your second surgery.” And she did. She found a house in a tiny hilltop village in the South of France that rented for three weeks for about the same price we would pay for a single week at Virginia Beach. And I found airfare from Washington to Paris that was cheaper than my last domestic flight.

And that’s why we’re going to France.

I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have great help at home. Senior Associate Pastor Lynn Turner (and lifelong woman in ministry) will be preaching on Sunday, July 7; Steve Blanchard, aspiring novelist and the director of our most visible ministry—Compassion—will preach on July 14; and rising star Allison Collier, Associate Pastor for Christian Formation, will preach on July 21. I hope you will give them your full support and reassure the congregation that a church that has been here for 244 years can probably get along for a few weeks without its Senior Pastor.

A bientot!

Lift Every Voice

Today is Juneteenth, a national holiday commemorating the end of slavery in America by recalling a specific event on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to tell the slaves that they were free. During worship on Sunday, as a nod to that event, our auditioned choral ensemble stood to perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the African-American National Anthem.

I love that song.

I learned it when my children were students in DC Public Schools, particularly Alice Deal Junior High, where Ms. Carson, the choral director, thought that every month was Black History Month and wasn’t afraid to mix a little gospel music with the other songs performed at school concerts. I learned that the lyrics were written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900 and set to music by his brother John Rosamund Johnson. The NAACP website explains: “At the turn of the 20th century, Johnson’s lyrics eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans.”

Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

As our ensemble sang those words on Sunday I noticed that Sandra Harris was standing in the congregation. Sandra is one of our African-American members and a dear friend. She and her mother used to come to church together until her mother died a few years ago, and then Sandra came alone. She’s a retired math teacher with a wonderful sense of humor and a tendency to spoil me with little gifts on all the Hallmark Holidays. Father’s Day, for example, when she gave me the latest John Grisham novel and a Starbucks gift card, as if she really did want me to get a cup of coffee, settle into a comfortable chair, and read an entire novel just for the fun of it.

That’s a good friend.

So, when I saw her standing on Sunday my first impulse was to stand with her, but I hesitated because I knew what was coming next:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place For which our fathers sighed.
We have come, over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

I texted Sandra later and said, “I’m glad you stood for the African-American National Anthem today. Tell me: is it appropriate for everyone to stand when it is sung or played, or only African-Americans? I love that song, but I always feel a little funny singing about my weary feet having come to the place for which my fathers sighed. That is not my history as a white person, and I don’t want to pretend that it is, but I do love that song and I love singing it at the top of my lungs.”

I didn’t hear back from Sandra right away. I was afraid she was angry, and letting me stew in my white guilt for a while as a way of punishing me. While I was waiting I asked ChatGPT, the Artificial Intelligence app on my phone, if it’s appropriate for white people to stand during the singing of the African-American National Anthem. It came back with a very nuanced answer that concluded with this paragraph:

In summary, while there isn’t a definitive yes or no answer, standing during “Lift Every Voice and Sing” can be appropriate if done with genuine respect and understanding of its significance to the African-American community. It’s essential to approach such gestures with sensitivity and awareness of the cultural context and feelings of others involved.

So, even before I heard back from Sandra I made up my mind that the next time we sing that song in worship we will introduce it as the African-American National Anthem and invite the entire congregation to stand as a gesture of respect and solidarity. I sent her an email to that effect, apologizing for any previous offense and asking if she had received my text message, and that’s when she wrote back and explained that she didn’t get my text because I had, apparently, sent it to her landline.

I tell you the truth: it’s hard to get things right these days, whether it’s standing for “Lift Every Voice” or texting to an actual cell phone number. I’m grateful for patient friends like Sandra who have learned how to forgive old, well-intentioned white men like me. She must cluck her tongue from time to time, shake her head and say, “Help him, Jesus!”

Yes, please.

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Photo at top: Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 held in “East Woods” on East 24th Street in Austin. Credit: Austin History Center.

How to Use the Bible

Today’s the day.

If everything goes as expected the Southern Baptist Convention will ratify an amendment to its constitution that will effectively ban SBC churches from ordaining women, allowing women to preach, or giving female staff members the title “Pastor.”* Mike Law, a pastor from Northern Virginia who proposed the amendment, would probably tell you that he’s just trying to be faithful to Scripture, where the Apostle Paul says he forbids “a woman to teach or have authority over a man; they should remain silent” (1 Tim. 2:12). And it’s true: that verse is in the Bible, and since we believe that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), we believe that it has something to say to us.

But what?

Paul was living in a time when women were considered second-class citizens and the property of men. They were not allowed to go to seminary or study the Scriptures. It almost makes sense that you wouldn’t ask them to teach or preach. So much of the Bible is like that: conditioned by its culture to reflect views we no longer hold.

We need to remember that Scripture was written by human authors over a period of several thousand years. Their words were inspired by God, yes, but their worldview was primitive. They believed the sun went around the earth instead of the other way around. We can forgive them for their ignorance, but we don’t have to replicate it. We don’t have to say that women can’t be pastors simply because it didn’t make sense in the first century.

And yet some people do, and they continue to do it even though they should know better. Why? Because it serves their purposes; it keeps them in power. Think about it: through the years the Bible has been used to justify slavery, subjugate women, and condemn homosexuality. Who benefits? Take a look at the photo above.**

When Jesus visited his hometown synagogue he was invited to preach. They gave him the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, an Old Testament book filled with ancient cultural references. And yet Jesus opened it to the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

That’s how Jesus used Scripture: to bring good news, to proclaim release and recovery, to liberate the oppressed, and to announce the Lord’s favor.

That’s how I want to use it, too.

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*Note: the amendment did not pass. It received 61 percent of the vote, just shy of the necessary 66 percent supermajority. Opponents argued that the SBC already had a mechanism in place for expelling churches with female pastors (the Baptist Faith and Message Statement of 2000, which insists that “the role of pastor is limited to men, as qualified by Scripture”). The assembled messengers proved that point by ousting First Baptist Church, Alexandria, VA, on Tuesday.

**photo by Doug McSchooler/AP