[Note: This is from a sermon delivered by The Rev. Jennifer Gregg at St. Helena's Episcopal Church, Lenox on January 14, 2024]:
Mark 1:4-11
This is my beloved son.
She didn’t have to say it. You could sit it in the look in her eye. The way her lips curled, breaking into a smile as she looked over at him. The way she gently tucked him in, pulling up his covers. Her adoration and pride for her beloved boy radiated from her being. “Bo” was her heart’s treasure.
1955 Mississippi, though, was different from Chicago. Mamie Till-Mobley wrestled with whether to send her son to visit his cousins. The white folk of Mississippi would not see Emmett’s belovedness the way she did. The rules of interaction were different than in Chicago. She worried about his safety as she and Emmett made their way to the train station. Standing on the platform with great courage and visible trepidation she handed Bo, her heart’s treasure, to the family members who would care for him. “You take good care of my boy,” she said. Squeezing Emmett tightly, she breathed in the fullness of his being and gently let him go.
These scenes frame the opening of the movie Till, the story about the brutal lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in August of 1955.[1]
If you know this story, you know that during this fateful visit Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy, was taken from his relative’s home in Mississippi after an interaction at a local store between Emmett and Carolyn Bryant. Emmett had allegedly whistled at Carolyn after being in their store. Days later, her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, kidnapped and brutally killed Emmett, taking him from his relative’s home.
This is my beloved son…. See him, Mamie said to the world. Know what was done to him. This is Emmett. My beloved son with whom I was well pleased….
After seeing his body, the one she had tucked in at night; kissed when it was hurt; held to her heart the day he was born--she made the bold decision - to make his beautiful and brutalized body visible to the world. Emmett was not only her son now. He was everyone’s son. Our nation was faced with what to do with the brutality and hatred that led to his death.
Mamie, was not the first, nor the last mother to say to this country, “this is my beloved child….” Countless others have followed. If I were to name them all, I would be standing here for days not minutes. They are the mothers of Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Trayvon Martin. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd.
There are many. Too many others. Names we need to learn. Stories we need to digest. With each one hear their mothers say, “these are our beloved children.” Know their names. Say them. Tell their stories. Learn about who they were.
Like Emmett Till, they are more than their assigned offense. Their lives, their bodies were beautiful and sacred, made in the image and likeness of God. Formed from the very fibers of God’s being.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, knows the anguish of these mothers She watched her own son be crucified at the hands of a world and political system that found his message of a powerless love a threat to their loveless power.
As a mother and a parent, there are not enough words to convey the anguish, fear and deep-seated anger I would feel if I had to consider the possibility that every time my child left my presence, there was a chance they may not come home because the world was built against them. Knowing not everyone saw my child with the eyes and heart that I did. The anticipatory grief alone would be enough to break any mother over time.
Even on the hardest days, our children are our lives, hearts, and joy.
If I know this about my own children, how can I not know this about every other child and person I interact with? “This is my beloved child……in whom God (and someone else) is well pleased.”
We are all brothers and sisters, each of us made in the image and likeness of God in whom God first called a beloved creation “good.” “Very good.” How do we make sure that God's given belovedness is present in every system, in every interaction, and in our understanding and celebration of all that makes the body of Christ so diverse?
2024 marks 61 years since Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Though it is easily quoted, we as a country and as a faith community have a long way to go before it is fully realized. After a century of failed attempts to outlaw lynching, 67 years after Emmet Till’s death, lynching was finally signed into law as a federal hate crime in 2022.
We cannot undo the pain of the generations of mothers and fathers who have lost their sons and daughters to the hatred of racism. However, we can work toward an antiracist future. It begins with awareness of our very different lived experiences.
Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds write in their children’s version of the book “Stamped,” this:
“Scrolling will never be enough.
Reposting will never be enough.
Hash tagging will never be enough.
Because hatred has a way of convincing us that half love is whole.
What I mean by that is we – all of us – have to fight against performance and lean into participation. We have to be participants. Active. We must be players on the field, on the court, in our classrooms and communities trying to do right. Because it takes a whole hand – both hands – to grab hold of hatred…”[2]
I would add, it takes not just our hands. It takes our hearts. Hearts to be curious for what we did not know, rather than ashamed. Hearts, willing to be broken open rather than hardened, as we hear the pain and stories of others’ lived experience. Hearts willing to be humble and contrite, to listen more than we speak and follow those who have lived these realities rather than lead. Abram X. Kendi concludes, “we cannot attack a thing we do not know.”[3] We must begin with where we are and grow from there.
The brutality and hatred that led to the death of Emmett Till plagues our nation still. Many denominations are creating and supporting programs designed to educate an anti-racist world. In the Episcopal Church this work is happening through Sacred Ground. Sacred Ground examines racism in our country as well as the history of the Episcopal Church through the lens of sharing sacred stories.
Please, look around you for the opportunity to dive deeper into this history. It takes all of us, with God’s help, to co-create a world where an anti-racist and Beloved Community can grow.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead
