by the Rev. Dr. Jia Starr Brown
Click here to watch the sermon recording on YouTube.
Jesus and Harriet have a great deal in common: both had a rocky start to ministry, both had an unlikely lineage to leadership, and neither aligned with what society expected a leader or change agent to look like. Jesus was a foreigner – an immigrant – who refused the worldly crown and the fame that came with it.
Wikipedia shares the following about sister Harriet Tubman:
“Born in 1822, Harriet was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women’s suffrage.”
This Wikipedia entry is right above a ridiculous amount of folx arguing about whether the claim that Harriet liberated 1000 enslaved people was true…as if rescuing 70, 50, 25, 10, 2 people would have been an easy feat back in times of slavery! Hardly. As if any of us could wrap our minds or our hearts around the idea of traveling toward horror not once, but thirteen times.
Even Harriet’s desire to do so makes her a she-ro indeed, and her active attempt, whether successful or not, is a Herculean and a prophetic feat.
You see, Harriet wasn’t the typical person we envision saving, freeing folx. Man was super before superwoman was allowed to be so – super and woman. Harriet was the dream of
many enslaved in flesh – maybe not as expected, but God is never what we expect.
God is not explicitly man or explicitly white, not only in the clouds or solely available on scheduled Sundays. God is not Charleston Heston or scripted drama.
Biblically, God always calls the outsiders, outcasts, the least of these, to speak truth to the insiders, the privileged. Notice – God’s prophets are always one of the vulnerable. Jesus and Harriet, both societally vulnerable misfits, were called to do a mighty work to liberate a people who don’t truly know they are in bondage.
Harriet was called to liberate her own people, and so was Jesus – in this case not only Lazarus, but also Mary, Martha, and ultimately the Jews. We find that same designation – Jews – throughout the book of John. Jews was/is the designation for the church folx, the self-righteous ones who had been indoctrinated to believe that the way things are is the way things are. Some folx just got it like that.
The Jews described in Scripture here were believers in God but not necessarily in Jesus, and thus had no idea that meant they weren’t truly believers in God in the first place. They didn’t realize that if they didn’t believe freedom was possible for everyone, that liberation was possible for everyone, then they couldn’t believe in Jesus, and thus they couldn’t believe in God. Clinging to tradition, they couldn’t even make room for imagination. They couldn’t even dream of better. They didn’t realize they were also being bamboozled. Comfortable in their bondage, they were also getting got.
Twice the Jews tried to stone Jesus in Judea – the first time for speaking truth in John 8, and the second time in John 10 when they came with their stones and pitchforks, their crosses to burn, prepared to kill Jesus after he did what they knew he would do: speak the truth in Judea, which is in Jerusalem – translated as the “City of Peace”. Both times in the City of Peace, they intended to cause harm. In the City of Peace they threatened, plotted, acted, to disappear, snatch, and extinguish Jesus.
And, he wants to go back again…there to such a harmful and horrific place that is peaceful for some but not for all.
To help somebody. To help some people.
To help God’s people.
Harriet, following Jesus, also escaped bondage and decided to go back to a horrific place…to a place where people brought stone-made guns. She also decided to go back to a place that was peaceful for some but not for all, to a place that tried to break her in mind, body, and in spirit. They tried to kill her.
She chose to go back as well – to save some body she loved. To save some people she loved. To save the people God loved.
Can’t you hear it? I can hear the Disciples saying: “You have got to be kidding me Jesus. You want to go back THERE?”
I can hear Harriet’s friends and family saying, “Harriet, you have got to be kidding me.”
It made sense that those closest to Jesus and Harriet tried to warn them, save them, and keep them from danger. It made sense that they initially questioned their power and ability to change the world, as they knew it, for the world they knew it could become.
Indeed, neither Jesus nor Harriet seemed to look like or act like the people they were expected to be.
Women were supposed to be meek, mild, quiet, followers. They were considered property. Jesus, a foreigner, was expected to know his place, follow the rules, and accepted things as they were.
Both of them in the world but not of it, unwelcome and unbelieved to be more than the world said they were. Both of them pushing against societal limitations that kept them contained. Imprisoned, if you will.
Bessel van der Kolk M.D., author of “The Body Keeps the Score”, discusses “learned helplessness” as he shares the infamous experiment with a dog in a cage. He writes, “Dogs who had earlier been subjected to inescapable shock made no attempt to flee, even when the door was wide open. The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized animals, or people, take the road to freedom. Their fight/flight response has been thwarted. Scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.”
Likewise, society conditions us to stay in our bondage, unable to even imagine a life that could be better.
Fuller. In color.
For us all.
Jesus knew that better was possible. He knew that people couldn’t imagine it, even with words. He knew that he needed to show them, so they would believe.
You see, sometimes we are in bondage because we cannot see beyond our current circumstance. We say: “well he’s dead and there’s no coming back from that.”
“We just need to accept that slavery/hard times will never end. This is as it was and will always be.”
It’s hard to believe resurrection/freedom can happen when folx have been walking dead for so long…hungry for so long…low for so long. It is hard to believe that wins can happen for them when they have been told for so long that they were losing…losers…a lost cause. After white supremacy and patriarchy tells us we are nothing for so long, it is understandable that we come to underestimate others and ourselves, assuming that we’re just not “fill-in-the-blank” enough to do the thing that needs to be done – that we long for and that the world needs.
We just can’t imagine any other setting or circumstance where the math equation adds up to a different solution. Christena Cleveland, author of “God Is a Black Woman” writes: “Imagination is theology; we can only believe what we can imagine. And our cultural landscape hasn’t given us many tools to imagine a non-white, non-male God.” Why does Christina Cleveland write that God is a Black woman? Because if God can be a black woman, then God can be for black women. If God can be for Black women – the most vulnerable and oppressed group in society – then God can be for any of us.
All of us.
For you.
Jesus intentionally waited until the fourth day, when the Jewish tradition said the soul was already gone and all was already lost. He waited until after the fact, after the hope was lost, after the curtains were closed and everyone was told “you ain’t gotta go home, but…” Jesus waited until the world said “the end” to the story before he showed them the addendum. He waited before he showed them the possibility…before he showed them the power of the promise of the holy impossible. Jesus knew that they had to see to believe.
Talk about grace: To know what you know and do what you do and say what you say and folx still don’t believe.
And he still travels Judea. He still gives of himself. He still empties himself. Over and over and over again.
Likewise, Harriet knew better was possible too. She knew that a place existed for the “here and not yet” prophets of this world, whose bodily existence spoke messages sent by God even when their voices were silenced…the ones whose presence in the societal outskirts spoke prophetic volumes of the gaps that God did not design or co-sign.
Harriet knew that she was more than the freedom papers that she carried – even the ones that weren’t her own. She knew that white supremacy was going to hunt her down, pull her over and stop and search her, ask for her license, registration, freedom papers, and mispronounce her name. Even when she did nothing wrong. (If I could count the number of times folx hear me teach, preach, see the letters before my name and read my bio and still ask me for my freedom papers…this happens more often than I care to count.)
Both Harriet and Jesus told the people – the bamboozled Jews and the conditioned enslaved; the puppeteering leaders and the whip-holding massas; that what society said, what the man-made church said, wasn’t the last word – it was just their word.
Both Harriet and Jesus, in their societal vulnerability and their God-breathed strength, punctured the fabric of the status quo and showed the world what was possible…that God is possible.
That God can speak through and use the least of these. That an immigrant can be holy and a queer person can too.
That a person in poverty can be powerful and black woman can too.
And, they started to dream. “If Jesus can resurrect on the fourth day, what else is possible??”
They started to hope. “If God can move through a woman – and a Black one at that – who else might God use?”
They started to believe. “Maybe God can use me…use us too.” Maybe God can love me…love us too.”
To go back to Judea over and over and over again takes a lot of strength. A lot of courage…and a lot of faith. Only someone who knows that the reward is worth the cost would take such a risk.
Sacrifice.
Putting one’s life on the line repeatedly is the epitome of solidarity. To tell a people that they are beloved and worth more than the scraps of the table they’d been given – and to stand, march, and kneel, with them.
To go back for them.
In the dark and in the light.
It tells them they are valuable.
Do you know that belief is a gift to the world? To believe in something inside you, something is beyond you – it does something to your mind, your body, and your spirit. It does something to your life. That’s the key – the mind. Believing. Choosing to believe.
John writes in Verse 45: “Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him”… which means they didn’t believe when they got there. They didn’t believe when they walked there, when they went through the performative motions, or when they traveled to the tomb. The entire time the Jews followed Mary and Martha, the entire time they followed Jesus to that place of worldly death, they didn’t believe.
It makes me wonder how many folx are sitting in these pews, following Jesus, who also don’t believe…
Do you know what a person can do when they believe? When they believe they are worth something? When they believe they can be something? When they believe they can change something?
Do you know what mountains a person…a Church…a community can move when they believe they can?
Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
He didn’t just say it to Mary. Didn’t just say it to Martha. He said it to Mary, Martha and all of the gawking haters and nosy
neighbors who came for spectator sport and for show. He said it to all of them because freeing the bound is everyone’s responsibility.
If we can, we should. Period.
And, we definitely can. Consider what Minnesota did in these past several months – after being historically silent to the voices and the oppression of people of color, Minnesota finally arrived to believe that we could fight against the small-minded giant called “empire”. We came together, shared our hearts and our gifts, and combined our collective power. We stood and marched and organized, united against the horrific and condoned snatching of our immigrant siblings.
We made history, and more importantly, we made a difference.
And we should have. As my daughter has said on multiple occasions: “Why should we be rewarded for doing the right thing?”
Likewise, Harriet wasn’t eager for applause or fame. Neither was Jesus. She didn’t want fame and He didn’t want a king’s crown.
Jesus already had a King’s crown, and God already knew Harriet’s name.
Change happened because many Minnesotans finally believed in ourselves and in the truth that our neighbors deserve to be treated with respect and are entitled to due (fair) process.
Imagine what we can do if we continue to believe that every person is entitled to freedom.
Liberation.
Life.
Jesus came to tell us that. Harriet came to tell us that.
Thank God they came to tell us that. Amen.
