Where in the World is God Pitching God's Tent? by April Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
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April Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
Sermon for July 19, 2015 Proper 11 B
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Where is God pitching God’s tent in the world?
Today’s readings from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are about how God is moving with God’s people. In 2 Samuel we are told that David is disturbed by the fact that he has a nicer dwelling than God, whose ark has been moving about in a tent. But, God tells Nathan that God has never asked to live in a house. God gets a little indignant with David, asking “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought you the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.”
Basically, God tells David (through Nathan) that God isn’t ready to settle down yet. God wants to continue to journey with the people of Israel. Being in a tent affords God the freedom to travel and journey with the people.
God’s identity as a God of the tent reappears in the New Testament in the form of Jesus. In Mark, we hear that whenever Jesus enters a town, a city, or a farm, people brought the sick to him in the market place on pallets. The market place was the most public place in a town or city. It was the center for commerce and an unexpected place for Jesus to heal people. Generally sick and infirm people were kept out of sight, not brought out in public. And rabbis like Jesus generally did their teaching in the temple. But Jesus’ ministry took place on the move – and wherever the people were gathered. Just as God moved among God’s people in a tent in the time of David, Jesus moved among the people of his day.
And of course, God continues to pitch God’s tent among us today.
For me, God is pitching God’s tent among us as we see a new movement for racial justice in the United States.
As I kid growing up I heard all types of stories about racism and how it had touched the lives of my mother’s family in Macon, Georgia. My great grandmother was the child of a plantation owner and his slave. My grandmother worked as a maid to support her family because it was one of the few paying jobs a black woman could get in her day.
My mother tells me stories about navigating in a segregated world – separate drinking fountains, worries about where to stay on long road trips, fears about where she could safely go. I was told as a kid and now I understand that I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors. And I’ve always known that racially motivated violence and police violence is a reality for people of color.
My parents moved to New England to give me opportunities they believed I wouldn’t have been afforded in the South as a black person. My mother was determined that I would grow up in a different world from her. Like many black kids whose families moved north, I spent summers back “home” with my grandmother in Macon. She lived on an unpaved street where she knew the drug dealers by name and where I rarely saw white people. That was just the way it was in her world. Racism was overt in Georgia, unlike in New England where people were generally not openly racist toward me and my family. Sometimes I felt guilty about being an African American woman growing up with the privilege of living in New England.
Since the death of Trayvon Martin, though, I’ve become more and more aware that the people whose names and faces I’m seeing on television who have been subjected to violence at the hands of the police (or other white citizens) are people who look like me.
Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, Dajerria Beckton in McKinney Texas, Eric Garner in New York City, Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Tamir Rice – 12 years old, armed with a toy gun – in Cleveland, Ohio.
For the first time in my life I felt like I needed to do something drastic, to speak out, to stop pretending that the horror of what was going on didn’t touch my life. Before, the things in the news had seemed so distant. But this police brutality and murder hurts my heart in a way I have never known before. My people, black people, people who look like me were being targeted and killed and continue to be targeted and killed.
Last December, Marie told me that there was going to be a Black Lives Matter March in New York. She told me Union Theological Seminary was gathering people to worship and then go together to march. I realized that I NEEDED to be a part of this march.
When we arrived at the chapel at Union for worship we were given forms to fill out and a button that had Union printed on it with big letters. The button was so we could be easily recognized if we needed help and so we would not get separated. The forms asked for our names, known allergies, contact person, and if we had any physical limitations. On the bottom of the form was a phone number of the person who would have all of our information. We were then instructed to write the phone number on the inside of our arm. All of these measures were taken in case we got arrested. After worship we were instructed on how to conduct ourselves in case we were arrested. I’m not going to lie - I began to get frightened. Marie and I looked at each other and sighed.
I kept reminding myself that people during the civil rights movement did more dangerous protesting than I was about to do. I picked up a sign from the back of the chapel to carry while we marched. When it was time to leave everyone started chanting, THIS IS WHAT THEOLOGY LOOKS LIKE over and over again as we walked to the subway station. In the subway station and on the subway we sang protest songs. Many of the people in the subway moved away from us, stared or just got off, but we kept singing. I felt such a connection to all of the people from Union, even though we didn’t know very many of them. We all knew that God was on the move with us as we united to protest for justice.
When our group met up with the other marchers on the route, I could see all the helicopters, police and media. I held up my sign which read “I can’t breathe.” This was the plea that Eric Garner repeated 11 times as police had him in a choke hold. I held my sign up boldly making sure it could be seen. And I cried when I first chanted: I can’t breathe…one, I can’t breathe… two, I can’t breathe…three, I can’t breathe… four, I can’t breathe …five, I can’t breathe… six, I can’t breathe… seven, I can’t breathe…. eight, I can’t breathe …nine, I can’t breathe…. ten, I can’t breathe… eleven.
I walked that day like I had never walked before, I walked with passion and purpose. I walked with my white wife in a march to show the world black lives matter that my life matters.
God’s movement in the world is not always comforting. God is pitching God’s tent in the world right now. God is pitching God’s tent in the midst of injustice and racial relations. God is pitching God’s tent in radical change and the righting wrongs of the past. Just like in 2 Samuel God is not interested in staying in one place. God is journeying with God’s people. God is showing up in public and untraditional places.
Let us always proclaim; Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to from God generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)