The weight of inheritance
Thumbnail image by Soniakapadia, used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
The Rev. Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
March 16, 2025—Lent 2C
Genesis 15:1-7; Phil 3:17-4:1; Psalm 27; Luke 13:31-35
As many of you might know, I spent last week on a Civil Right Pilgrimage. A group of fifty of us from across the diocese were in Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, bearing witness to the long history of relations between black and white people in this country. Which is to say, learning about our American inheritance.
It was, as you might imagine, profoundly disturbing. At the same time, if one was able to absorb the enormity, it was also profoundly inspirational, and will surely shape my preaching and teaching for years to come.
I’ll begin today, with the experience of the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, which offers a visceral overview of the 400 years of African-born people and their descendants on this continent.
It opens with the trans-Atlantic voyage itself, plunging us into the story of those who were kidnapped and sold, chained and stowed, and then died as they were shipped across the ocean. We are forced to witness their cries from the bottom of the sea, then turn to face the realities of those who survived the journey, only to be sold into chattel slavery. To trace the development of an idea of racial inferiority that could justify the possession not only of a slave you bought, but of their children, of an entire race.
What I hadn’t realized before I went through the Sacred Ground curriculum a couple of years ago, was that the very idea of whiteness (this new idea that the English were in the same category as the Italians, for instance) was born HERE, out of the need to justify this particular form of slavery. Other nations had always had slaves that were captured in war, or those trapped by poverty. But only here was the idea put forth that you could be born and remain a slave, simply because of the color of your skin. And that idea came about because it was economically profitable for it to be so.
Racially-justified slavery built this country. Built its economy. Made us rich.
Which means that it isn’t that surprising to discover that the Civil War didn’t actually end the subjugation of black people in this country. The 13th amendment outlawed involuntary servitude with one caveat: “except as a punishment for crime.” Which meant that landowners who had lost their livelihood when their slave labor was taken away, could push for laws (Black codes, which made a wide variety of offenses illegal) that allowed them to regain unpaid labor from the penal system. The idea of racial inferiority continued (“look at how many of them are in prison!”). The desire to increase one’s own wealth through unpaid labor continued. The through-line of American slavery continued.
A hundred years later, that through-line continued to outlaw inter-racial marriage, draw red-lines around certain neighborhoods, and prevent black people from voting. A hundred years after slavery had supposedly ended, the Civil Rights movement was still necessary, and it was VIOLENTLY opposed by judges, elected officials, and police departments across this nation.
The through-line of American slavery, its myth of racial inferiority, and the economic benefits of its existence, continued.
Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “outlawed discrimination based on race” the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was necessary to push back against the many ways that southern jurisdictions made it next to impossible for black people to register and vote.
The through-line continues. Honestly, what’s most striking is that the language and tactics have changed so little over the centuries. Describing the request for equality as a demand for “special rights” is old in this country, my friends. And the use of unequally-applied criminal codes, to control and demonize a population? … it’s even older.
It is a deeply uncomfortable history to have to own up to. To be brought face to face with the reality that my ease and prosperity was bought at such a cost (to others and thus to my own soul) … it is painful. It’s no surprise that so many wish to pretend and deny and diminish that pain away.
But the fact remains, that it IS our inheritance. It is our past that continues to form and affect the present. Which is why I was glad to be able to pick up the theme from our reading from Genesis, to consider the idea of inheritance, and what it might mean.
For Abraham, it is clearly an unexpected blessing to be promised not only descendants, when he feared he would die without a child, but a land to end his wandering. The inheritance God promises is hope and joy and possibility for him and his descendants.
But anyone who has read the rest of the Bible, read about the slaughter that accompanied the conquest of the Land—not to mention anyone who pays attention to current world news—knows that the gaining, losing, regaining and keeping of that inheritance has been as complicated as world history itself: joy and prosperity for some, at the cost of immense loss and death for others.
The inheritance of Abraham, that is, is as mixed a bag as the founding of the US. A legacy that comes with a necessary admission of sins committed and debts to pay, that will always unsettle the sense of homeland until it is faced and made good.
Without that willingness to face the totality of our inheritance, our minds will (as Paul puts it today) be set only on earthly things, with our belly (and ours alone) as our god. We will walk on the land, refusing to notice the blood and bones beneath the surface. Head down, eyes closed, we will never look up and see the expanse of the stars above us: ALL those who came before and will come after us. Those who were brought here in chains and broken to build our wealth, and those who claimed to own them. Those who fought to be free, and those who fought to keep using them.
They are all there, all part of our inheritance. And that is a hard, hard truth. But to know that, to face that, is also to see how brilliant some of those stars are: to see and be made breathless by those who continued to put their lives on the line to bring real legal protections; to live up to the American ideal that we are all created equal; to grow into the spiritual truth that our responsibility is not to ourselves but to each other.
Because that too is part of our inheritance. But we cannot claim the good without acknowledging the evil. Cannot truly be God’s people without a willingness to see and admit what was done and who paid the price, to see and admit the ways in which that price continues to be exacted, long after the ways we have tried to correct it. Because inheritance runs deep. And the land remembers.
But our sacred story promises that our inheritance can be redeemed, can someday be received with honor. As Christians, we are familiar with the process: it requires self-examination, confession, repentance, and a sincere effort to make restitution. As a diocese, we are just now beginning a reparations process that will challenge and invite us to participate in all of these things, and I pray that we will welcome this chance at redemption.
May God strengthen us for this work, by which we seek to lay claim to our full inheritance, and allow the full richness of our inheritance to claim us in return. May it be so. Amen.