SEEING AND SPEAKING TO OUR SITUATION AS PROPHETIC PEOPLE

SEEING AND SPEAKING TO OUR SITUATION AS PROPHETIC PEOPLE

©Wendell Griffen, 2017

September 10, 2017 (Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

New Millennium Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Isaiah 59

59See, the Lord’s hand is not too short to save,
   nor his ear too dull to hear.
² Rather, your iniquities have been barriers
   between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
   so that he does not hear.
³ For your hands are defiled with blood,
   and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies,
   your tongue mutters wickedness.
⁴ No one brings suit justly,
   no one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,
   conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity.
⁵ They hatch adders’ eggs,
   and weave the spider’s web;
whoever eats their eggs dies,
   and the crushed egg hatches out a viper.
⁶ Their webs cannot serve as clothing;
   they cannot cover themselves with what they make.
Their works are works of iniquity,
   and deeds of violence are in their hands.
⁷ Their feet run to evil,
   and they rush to shed innocent blood;
their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,
   desolation and destruction are in their highways.
⁸ The way of peace they do not know,
   and there is no justice in their paths.
Their roads they have made crooked;
   no one who walks in them knows peace. 

⁹ Therefore justice is far from us,
   and righteousness does not reach us;
we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness;
   and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
¹⁰ We grope like the blind along a wall,
   groping like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
   among the vigorous^* as though we were dead.
¹¹ We all growl like bears;
   like doves we moan mournfully.
We wait for justice, but there is none;
   for salvation, but it is far from us.
¹² For our transgressions before you are many,
   and our sins testify against us.
Our transgressions indeed are with us,
   and we know our iniquities:
¹³ transgressing, and denying the Lord,
   and turning away from following our God,
talking oppression and revolt,
   conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart.
¹⁴ Justice is turned back,
   and righteousness stands at a distance;
for truth stumbles in the public square,
   and uprightness cannot enter.
¹⁵ Truth is lacking,
   and whoever turns from evil is despoiled. 

The Lord saw it, and it displeased him
   that there was no justice.
¹⁶ He saw that there was no one,
   and was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm brought him victory,
   and his righteousness upheld him.
¹⁷ He put on righteousness like a breastplate,
   and a helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on garments of vengeance for clothing,
   and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle.
¹⁸ According to their deeds, so will he repay;
   wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies;
   to the coastlands he will render requital.
¹⁹ So those in the west shall fear the name of the Lord,
   and those in the east, his glory;
for he will come like a pent-up stream
   that the wind of the Lord drives on. 

²⁰ And he will to Zion as Redeemer,
   to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord.
²¹And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the Lord, from now on and forever.

        Isaiah 59 may seem an inappropriate passage as Little Rock, Arkansas approaches the sixtieth (60^th) anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School on September 23, 1957.  There is not much about it that is celebratory.  Instead, Isaiah 59 is a prophetic indictment against an unjust society.   This chapter does not commend the state of affairs in that society.  It denounces and condemns it. 

The prophet makes it clear from the outset, however, that the situation could not be blamed on God.  See, the LORD’s hand is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear (Isaiah 59:1-2). 

It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to think and speak about injustice and about systemic, organized, and calculated oppression.  And often when people manage to engage in such uncomfortable and unpleasant thinking and speaking together, we try to shift the blame for social injustice onto God.  We think God has let us down.  God has turned off the divine hearing aid.  God is not strong enough to make things right. 

The prophet in Isaiah 59 overturns those ideas.  According to the prophet, societal injustice is a barrier between us and God.  God is neither puny nor unaware of our situation.  According to the prophet, a society can become contaminated by its sins (unloving and unfaithful behaviors) and iniquities (depravity shown by preference for oppression, hate, fear, and deceit over fairness, love, hope, and truth).  When that happens, injustice runs unchecked because people are infected by it. 

From that prophetic perspective, Isaiah 59 is a fitting starting point for our reflection on the state of public education, despite however uncomfortable and unpleasant it may be for us to admit.  Sixty years after September 23, 1957 – when nine black students, supported by L.C. and Daisy Bates and other courageous people associated with the Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), defied racial segregation in public education in Arkansas by entering the largest and most prominent public high school in the capital city of Arkansas – the harsh observations we read in Isaiah 59 apply to our society the same way they applied to the society to whom those words were addressed.

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness (Isaiah 59:3).  Those words remind us about the history of brutality and treachery carried out against the cause of fair, free, and inclusive public education in Little Rock over the past sixty years.  Politicians opposed the idea of black students attending public school on equal terms with white students so much they tried to block the Little Rock 9 from entering Central High School in 1957.  The next year those politicians shut down the entire school district. 

If we are honest, we will admit schemes have been concocted over the past sixty years to cheat all children in the Little Rock School District from the opportunity to receive a free public education in schools that are racially inclusive and fairly administered.  In 1957, the schemers openly opposed racially inclusive and fairly administered public schools.  In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus – pretending that he was protecting public safety – ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the Little Rock 9 from entering Central High School.  In 2015, the Arkansas Board of Education dissolved the elected Little Rock School Board pretending that it was protecting public education.  In 2017, the Arkansas Board of Education – not the National Guard – is blocking children from attending public schools that are fairly administered and racially inclusive.  

If we are honest, we will admit that business, civic, and religious leaders in Little Rock have consistently schemed to frustrate efforts to provide children in the Little Rock School District with racially inclusive and fair public education.

 

School attendance zones were drawn for years to preserve some schools as enclaves for white students while maintaining all black schools until court decisions forced them to be redrawn. 

Real estate developers schemed with Little Rock civic leaders to expand city services to “white flight” developments westward.  City services must be provided to those upper-income neighborhoods, but the boundaries of the Little Rock School District were deliberately not changed.  This has allowed residents of those neighbors to live outside the School District and not have their property taxes go toward supporting the LRSD. 

Religious leaders and congregations claimed that public schools were not sufficiently moral, so they set up private schools where white parents could know their children would not learn alongside black children to any appreciable degree.  Again, those private religious schools have been established to the west of the Little Rock School District.

So, if we are honest with ourselves, we will confess that the words of Isaiah 59 apply to the state of public education in Little Rock over the past sixty years.  No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity.  They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web; whoever eats their eggs dies, and the crushed egg hatches out a viper.  Their web cannot serve as clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make (Isaiah 59:4-5). 

The nature of an egg is not determined by its outward appearance, but by what is produced when the egg is hatched.   The efforts about public education by self-serving politicians, real estate developers, and religious hypocrites over the past sixty years have been harmful– like the eggs of serpents – and useless – like spider webs are for covering oneself from nakedness.    

Sadly, this perspective does not come through from publicized events planned by the Little Rock School District and the National Park Service this month to commemorate what happened in 1957.  The theme for those events is “Reflections on Progress.”  But rather than celebrate, we should embrace the prophetic perspective found in these words.  Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo!  There is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.  We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.  We all growl like bears; like doves we moan mournfully; we wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us.  For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us (Isaiah 59:9-12a).

Prophetic people should beware the temptation to accept pleasant lies rather than face and proclaim unpleasant truth.  One of those pleasant lies declared in Little Rock and elsewhere in the United States – that white parents want their children to attend public schools with black children – has been obvious for the past sixty years. 

White parents, not black parents, moved out of Little Rock to Sheridan, Lonoke, Bryant, Benton, Cabot, and Conway.  Real estate developers planned communities to attract white parents who were looking to find houses in communities where black people would be a smaller minority of the population, meaning there would be fewer, if any, black students attending schools with white children in those communities. 

If we are true to our calling as prophetic people, you and I should, like the prophet in Isaiah 59, confront our society with the bitter truth that there has not been much progress toward racially inclusive and fairly administered public education in Little Rock over the past sixty years.  Staged ceremonies, events, and publicity stunts intended to show off the supposed “progress” cannot and will not change the truth we know too well.  That confession will set the stage for us to embrace some aspects of God we don’t often think and speak about. 

First, realize that God sees and is disgusted about the injustice others would have us ignore and deny.  According to the prophet, God not only sees injustice, God is disgusted by it.  Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance… Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled.  The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.  He saw … and was appalled that there was no one to intervene (Isaiah 59:14-16). 

God is not pleased by ceremonies celebrating the courage of the black students who challenged racial inequality in public education in 1957when black and brown students in 2017 are shut out of advanced placement classes in high school.  God is not pleased by ceremonies touting “progress” when elementary schools that served black and brown neighborhoods are closed over the voices of the people who live in those neighborhoods.

That is good news!  It is good to know that God is disgusted by the things that disgust us.  To put it more colorfully, God is pissed!  God is sickened by the hypocrisy that passes for support for public education.  God is sickened by the games being played and lies being told.  God is sickened when people who have hijacked public education for profit-making claim they are doing so in the name of reform.  It is good to know that God is disgusted, appalled, and pissed! 

Jesus overturned the tables of money exchangers during Holy Week.  He chased the money exchangers from the Temple.  He called religious leaders hypocrites.  That conduct shows that we have divine authority to act with holy outrage about the systemic injustice and oppression going on in the name of public education!  Like Jesus, we have divine permission to be appalled, disgusted, and yes – pissed – about the hatefulness, hypocrisy, and deceit that is happening and that people want to conceal by using the surviving eight members of the Little Rock 9 as propaganda tools for their fake display of “progress!”  

God is not only displeased; God is determined to act when humans refuse to correct blatant and systemic injustice.  The prophet proclaimed in Isaiah 59 that God put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle (Isaiah 59:17).   

Fabricated ceremonies won’t fool God or stop God from holding the purveyors of injustice accountable.  According to their deeds, so will he repay; wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies … So those in the west shall fear the name of the LORD, and those on the east his glory (Isaiah 59:18-19).

Prophetic people should see and condemn the racial injustice that passes for public education in Little Rock and elsewhere in this society.  We should also declare that God is displeased about the way power and privilege have been abused to deny all children in this community to full, free, and fairly administrated public schooling. 

We should also proclaim God’s promise of prophetic presence and hope.  This is what comes in the last word of Isaiah 59.  [T]his is my covenant with them, says the LORD:  my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the LORD, from now on and forever (Isaiah 59:21).  

Yes, there are purveyors of injustice, but they are not unchallenged.  The Spirit of God is upon us.  The Spirit of justice is upon us. 

The Spirit of truth is in our mouth to speak truth when others conceive and hatch lies. 

The Spirit of fairness and revolution empowers and guides us to confront and overturn systems of oppression. 

God’s Spirit inspires us with boldness.  God’s Spirit sustains our hope despite sixty years of schemes, lies, and setbacks.  The Spirit of God not only calls us.  The Spirit of prophetic challenge and truth and hope will not leave us.  It will not leave our children.  It will not leave those who come after our children, “from now on and forever.” 

Let us confront and challenge the propaganda campaign surrounding the 60^th anniversary of the effort to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in the power of that Spirit. 

Amen.