David Lloyd
May 25, 2025
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Two weeks ago in discussing Dr. Wilda C. Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church that we are using, Deborah Sokolove said that
Rather than simply ignoring the parts of the biblical record that today seem immoral, unjust, or downright cruel, we can acknowledge the whole truth of our past and use that knowledge to move forward into a more just, merciful, and inclusive future.
I hope that you have noticed a certain similarity between my advocating for continuing to read both the parts of scripture that make us uncomfortable and the ones that comfort us, and the arguments that are currently being made in the political realm against removing any discussion of problems in our nation’s past from our schoolrooms, libraries, newspapers, and government websites.
It seems to me that we should not whitewash our religious history any more than we should our national history. Rather, when a problematic scripture comes up in the lectionary, I hope that the preacher for the day tackles it head-on, helping all of us wrestle with the uglier parts of our past as well as celebrating the unfolding mystery of the Good News that keeps us coming back, Sunday after Sunday.[i]
Our lectionary scriptures this week make me uncomfortable in the way that Deborah described. The passage in the 17th chapter of the Book of Acts discusses the missionary work of Paul and Silas, specifically mentioning that prominent aristocratic Gentile women became followers of Jesus after hearing Paul and Silas preach in the synagogue of Thessalonica. Our lectionary continues with the women and men who are new Christians in Thessalonica sending Paul and Silas during the night to Berea in southwestern Macedonia. There the two missionaries preached in the synagogue and created a new Christian congregation from Jews and prominent Greek women and men. In Seekers we might not be surprised at Luke mentioning the women believers; it’s in our congregational DNA.
But why did the believers in Thessalonica send them fifty miles away to Berea during the night? Traveling during the night in the ancient world was dangerous. The answer is in verses 5 through 9 that Dr. Gafney’s lectionary has omitted:
However, the Jews became jealous and, recruiting some reprobates from the marketplace, formed a mob and soon had the whole city in an uproar. They made for Jason’s house, intending to find Paul and Silas there and bring them before the assembled people. They weren’t there, however, so they dragged Jason and some of the faithful off to the city council, shouting, “The people who have been turning the world upside down are now here. Jason has been housing them. They all defy Caesar’ edicts and claim that there is another ruler — Jesus.” The mob stirred up the crowd and city magistrates who, upon hearing the charges, made Jason and the others post bond before releasing them.
Her lectionary stops at verse 12, while most Bibles end the section after verse 15. Here is the second omitted section of her lectionary:
But when the Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God was now being taught in Berea, they came there to make trouble and stir up the people. The sisters and brothers immediately sent Paul to the seacoast, but Silas and Timothy stayed behind. Paul was taken as far as Athens by an escort, who then returned with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join Paul as soon as possible.
I find these omissions problematic. Did she exclude mention of the negative reaction of “the Jews” to Paul and Silas’ preaching to avoid Christian readers of the Bible from antisemitism? That’s a worthy goal. But if Christians today who use her lectionary assume that Paul and Silas encountered no opposition to their preaching of the gospel, will they be prepared for the opposition to the gospel they may encounter today, not from Jews so much as from those “Christians” who follow a false gospel, one that doesn’t require loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Let’s imagine ourselves as these brand new believers. Can we imagine their fear? Do we publicly defend Paul and Silas and the gospel at the risk of our own lives? Do we publicly deny defying Caesar and explain that Jesus was not an earthly ruler? Or do we remain silent? Do we raise bail money for Jason and the others who have been arrested? Do we help Paul and Silas slip away in the night to safety?
For me, the rhetoric and actions of the current Administration seem a bit like the opposition to Paul and Silas in Thessalonica and then in Berea. I am a little nervous each time I join our Seekers’ Friday afternoon vigil for racial and ethnic justice, wondering if the next person coming up to talk to us or to take our photo is a friend or hostile to our beliefs in inclusion, equity, and justice.
Turning to our verses from the epistle to Titus, I found the first two verses to be a challenge for me:
Remind people to be loyally subject to the government and its officials, to obey the laws, and to be ready to do whatever is good. Tell them not to speak evil of anyone or to be quarrelsome. They must be forbearing and display perfect courtesy to all.
What if the laws enacted by Congress or Maryland or D.C. do harm? What if the laws are good but the regulations and executive orders to implement them do harm? What if the government officials are neither obeying the Constitution, laws and regulations nor doing good? Am I still to be loyally subject to them? Or am I to disobey them in order to do good? Is it better to be forbearing or to follow the late John Lewis’ advice and get into “good trouble?” How can I discuss my disgust and fear of our national politics without being quarrelsome with those who disagree? I sometimes struggle to be courteous to them even if they are courteous, let alone discourteous. I’ve been angry and hurt and stressed since the Inauguration. I suspect some of you have been too.
Our gospel for this week also raises several questions for me. Luke begins by saying that it is a parable on the necessity to pray always and not lose heart. But the parable doesn’t state that the widow prays. Instead, it describes her as demanding so persistently and stridently that the corrupt judge protect her rights to the point of being so obnoxious that he gives in. Luke closes the parable with Jesus asking the disciples, “But when the Promised One comes, will faith be found anywhere on earth?” Is he really asking us to demonstrate our faith by emulating the widow? Are her persistent cries for justice a form of prayer? If so, I do not pray nearly that persistently despite Peter Bankson’s admonition to do so. Do you?
Today’s lectionary scriptures demand a lot from me as a Christian, from us as a small part of the Body of Christ. Am I up to the challenge? Are we up to it?
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we honor those who have served in our armed forces and have died. Why did they serve? Some did because they believed in defending our country or protecting other countries. Others were looking to challenge themselves physically and emotionally. Others were drafted or were about to be. (I was in the last group.) Whether or not they saw action in combat, we honor them for doing their duty, some of them in terrible times.
This secular holiday began immediately after the Civil War when communities began decorating the graves of the soldiers who died in it with flowers. The first commemoration that was documented contemporaneously (as opposed to claims to have been first that were written decades later) occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. The Civil War had begun in Charleston harbor with the secessionists’ bombardment of Fort Sumter. The Union Navy blockaded the harbor and began to fire at the city. The Confederates sought to deter further bombardment by stashing Union prisoners of war (POWs) throughout the city, including in the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, a symbol of the White slaveholding aristocracy.
By 1864 the North was willing to exchange POWs with the Confederacy but by this time nearly two hundred thousand Black men had enlisted in the Union Army. The South was unwilling to exchange Black POWs for Confederate POWs so the North would not free their Confederate POWs. (Israel and Gaza have somewhat similar challenges in freeing prisoners.) In 1864, 257 Union soldiers had died of disease while imprisoned at the Race Course and were quickly buried there in a mass grave. After Savannah had been captured by Sherman’s troops, the Confederate army burned its supplies as it evacuated Charleston.
The 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, mostly Black, and the 21st U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment marched into Charleston on February 17, 1865 and were greeted joyously by enslaved Black people there as their liberators from slavery. By late April Black men of the “Friends of the Martyrs” and the “Patriotic Association of Colored Men” had reburied the 257 Union POWs properly in individual graves on the Race Course and had erected a fence around the new cemetery with an arch at the entrance entitled “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
On April 30, 1865 thousands of free Black men and women and northern abolitionists marched in a parade onto the Race Course to honor those 257 Union POWs. Black children strewed flowers over their graves, singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” “America,” “Rally Round the Flag,” and “John Brown’s Body” (although they might have been singing “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”). The history of this first commemoration was forgotten – or suppressed – by White Charlestonians but it was kept alive in oral traditions of Black Charlestonians.
That isn’t the end of the story. Yale University historian David Blight found the contemporaneous newspaper account this ceremony in the Harvard University library while conducting research for his book Race and Reunion at the end of the 20th century. In 1871 the 257 Union troops had been disinterred and reinterred in a military cemetery in Beaufort. The oval racecourse remained but it became a city park, renamed by the White establishment for Wade Hampton, a renowned Confederate cavalry commander and one of the richest and largest slaveholders in the state. Hampton became known as the “Redeemist Governor” who ended Reconstruction and ushered in the Jim Crow era of segregation in South Carolina.
In the South, a different version of the first commemoration arose in 1866 when Mary Ann Williams, widow of a Confederate general, was serving as the secretary of the Ladies Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia (now the city outside Fort Benning). The Association was dedicated to the decoration of Confederate graves, and she wrote a letter to two local newspapers urging that “ladies of the South” decorate “the graves of our martyred dead with flowers…Let the soldiers’ graves, for that day at least, be the Southern Mecca, to whose shrine her sorrowing women, like pilgrims, may annually bring their grateful hearts and floral offerings.” (She wasn’t referring to Yankee dead.) The day chosen was April 26, the day Confederate general Joe Johnston surrendered to General Sherman. Her letter, signed as “Southern Women” was republished in the newspapers of eight states in the South and four in the North, resulting in grave decoration ceremonies in six southern states (for Confederate soldiers) and four northern states (for Union soldiers). It was known in the South as Memorial Day. The Association later morphed into the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the primary sponsor of the hundreds of Confederate statues, including the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which promote the myth of “The Lost Cause.”
General John A. “Black Jack” Logan of Illinois, Grand Marshall of the Grand Army of the Republic, gave a speech alluding to the “Confederate Memorial Day.” Two years later, in 1868 he issued General Order 11 to the GAR, directing its members to commemorate “Decoration Day” for deceased Union soldiers on May 30 at Arlington National Cemetery. When southern families and the Ladies Memorial Association asked to place flowers on the graves of the Confederates buried there, General Meigs had them barred from the Cemetery. The next year GAR members guarded the Confederate graves at the cemetery to prevent any decoration by flowers.
By 1890 every northern state observed Decoration Day while southern states observed Memorial Day on a different date. It wasn’t until 1967 that Congress declared Memorial Day to be a national holiday on May 30. The next year Congress enacted the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, moving it to the last Monday in May. And that’s what we have tomorrow.
Our country has had terrible times, and we are in some now. A song by the Weavers says it well:
Our fathers bled at Valley Forge, the snow was red with blood
Their faith was worn at Valley Forge,
Their faith was brotherhood.
Wasn’t that a time, wasn’t that a time?
A time to try the soul of man,
Wasn’t that a terrible time?
Brave men who fought at Gettysburg now lie in soldier’s graves
But there they stemmed the rebel tide
And there their faith was saved
Wasn’t that a time, wasn’t that a time?
A time to try the soul of man,
Wasn’t that a terrible time?
The wars are long, the peace is frail, the madmen come again.
There is no freedom in a land where fear and hate prevail.
Isn’t this a time, isn’t this a time?
A time to try the soul of man,
Isn’t this a terrible time?[ii]
I have been musing for some months about Simon Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus praises Simon and says that from then on Simon will be called Peter, the Rock, and on that rock Jesus will build his church, and the jaws of death won’t prevail against it. In The Message’s version Jesus says the church will be “so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.” Both translations imply that the church is active, not defensive: not that the church will keep death at bay, or keep evil out, but that the church is defeating death, it is triumphing over death. The Church seeks out “good trouble” in the words of the late John Lewis. We volunteered to be in Christ’s Church, nobody drafted us. We are soldiers for Christ and this is our duty in a terrible time. It’s a challenge, isn’t it? It’s a little scary. Let’s take heart from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, chapter 6 verses 10 to 18. I’m using J.B. Phillips New Testament:
In conclusion be strong—not in yourselves but in the Lord, in the power of his boundless resource. Put on God’s complete armor so that you can successfully resist all the devil’s methods of attack. For our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil. Therefore you must wear the whole armor of God that you may be able to resist evil in its day of power, and that even when you have fought to a standstill you may still stand your ground. Take your stand then with truth as your belt, righteousness your breastplate, the Gospel of peace firmly on your feet, salvation as your helmet and in your hand the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Above all be sure you take faith as your shield, for it can quench every burning missile the enemy hurls at you. Pray at all times with every kind of spiritual prayer, keeping alert and persistent as you pray for all Christ’s men and women.
We’re going to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” as our closing hymn. Pay attention to the words as you sing them. It’s not about going to war, it’s about marching as to war against Satan. It was written as a “Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners” in 1865 for British children walking from one church to another on Pentecost in Yorkshire.[iii] I had forgotten that this song was frequently sung in the civil rights movement. Let us be remembered in our deaths as having been good soldiers for Christ, and that will be memorial enough. Amen.
[i] https://www.seekerschurch.org/sermon-page/
[ii] Lee Hays/Pete Seeger/Ronnie Gilbert/Brooks- Sanga Music, Inc. BMI. [Last verse added by Virginia Coigney]
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward,_Christian_Soldiers