Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Mile Marker: on the Road to MLK’s Dream


These days I am working at a church in Meridian, Mississippi. A friend of mine who is the lead pastor at an exciting growing church has been stricken with pancreatic cancer. In June he called me to come help out as a kind of interim pastor as he fights for his life against the cancer. I was honored and, of course, accepted the invitation.

Aside from driving through Meridian a few times last winter, I had not heard of the place except from news reports when I was a child. The news Meridian made in those days was not good. They told of horrible racial troubles. From what I remembered of the reports, Meridian represented some of the worst of the prejudice and bigotry the South had to offer. When I came to help my friend and his church I decided to try to keep an open mind toward the community. After all, the 1960s were a half-century ago.

I was surprised and pleased to find that the congregation, while it is predominately made up of white people, included several black families. It so happened that one of those families had a 14-year-old boy who was desperately ill with cancer. He had come home from spring football practice complaining of a sore knee and a bump on his leg. By the middle of July he was dead. The church had prayed fervently for the healing of this young man and they were devastated by the news of his passing. The youth group was particularly hard hit. The heart of everyone went out to his family. 

The boy’s family chose the church as the scene for the viewing and funeral. It would be the first funeral in the new sanctuary building. The whole church rallied around the family, offering the traditional family meal after the service. That was a big offer as it turned out, because the family members at the funeral numbered 100 or more.

The funeral was a sad, beautiful time of both sorrow and hope. After the funeral and the committal, I stood in the multi-purpose building and watched as the family shared the meal that the church provided. I have attended many such funeral dinners. This one was fairly ordinary. The family served themselves buffet style and women and youth assisted by some of the men made sure the serving bowls stayed full, walking among the tables filling and refilling glasses with tea and lemonade. I’ve seen this many times, but suddenly I saw special significance in this one. The family was African-American, and those doing the serving were mostly Caucasian church members. Big deal? Yeah, big deal. This is Meridian Mississippi. Not far from here three “Freedom Summer ” civil rights activists were murdered while trying to educate and register black voters in 1964. 

The amazing thing was that the people at the dinner that day were taking it all in stride. This congregation was simply taking care of one of its own families, with no notice about the skin color. They just wanted to do what they could to lighten the load of this family and honor the memory of the sweet young man who had lost his brave battle. If this can happen in a place with the bitter history of Meridian, Mississippi perhaps, it can happen anywhere. I quietly rejoiced with some tears in my eyes as I watched.

Now, I know the relationship between the races in America still has many problems. We have a long way to go to reach the promise of the Declaration of Independence “that all men are created equal,” and Martin Luther King’s dream that one day his children and all people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But, I rejoice because we have made progress. At the funeral and the dinner, I saw a mile marker on the journey. It was a place to look back and see how far we have come, as well as to look forward with resolve to finish the journey.


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