Rev. Joseph Boyd
I’ve been grateful for the bit of rain we had in Youngstown, Ohio. It’s reminded me of my undergraduate days in Portland, Oregon, a place that has now garnered worldwide attention for protesting and the presence and retrieval of federal troops. It has been quite strange to see places I know intimately to be put on the world stage for reasons I never would have been able to predict. It is strange to see a line of moms and dads with leaf blowers facing federal troops, and remember with fondness that if you went just two blocks down from the protest you would be able to get one of the best doughnuts of your life until 2 am in the morning. It was strange earlier seeing Tulsa put in the national spotlight, and knowing the visceral sense of walking around Greenwood, where Black Wall Street once stood, and the BOK center where Jennifer and I protested inside a bank four years earlier due to their funding of an oil pipeline project. In a few short years, Eastern Oklahoma is now reclaimed as indigenous land.

I feel a sense of awe when I think of these rapid changes, juxtaposed with my lived experience that even 10 or 5 years ago seems like a very different time. The unpredictability is what is most startling. I never would have been able to guess that the whitest major city in the United States would be the epicenter for the Black Lives Matter movement. I never would have guessed that our national sports leagues, including Major League baseball, arguably the most American of sports would begin with the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals intentionally taking a knee in unison 30 seconds before the national anthem on opening day, and staying there in protest and solidarity throughout the whole anthem. I couldn’t help but wonder what Jackie Robinson would have thought and felt during that moment, a man who broke the color barrier and endured insults from fellow players and fans throughout his entire career. He died in ‘72, just as it looked like the civil rights movement in all its glory was finished. His widow Rachel Robinson at 98, announced the beginning of the Dodgers season this year. It wasn’t just Jackie who had to endure those years. Rachel told of the numerous death threats, how terribly lonely Jackie felt, and how she watched various pitchers intentionally hit him while at bat, so that they could injure him for the season. Of course, this was before any cohesive movement, national or global. She felt it was just him and her vs the entire world that was working toward his defeat. In a moment when it seemed that Jackie was about to implode due to not being able to eat or stay in the same accommodations as white teammates, and constant violence on and off the field, it was Rachel who told Jackie what was at stake. She said: “the issue wasn’t simply baseball, but life and death, freedom and bondage, for a lot of people.” They formed their own team to navigate not just their life, but life as we know it today.

It makes me think that nothing is just simply what it is on the surface. It’s not simply baseball. Each action we take seems to be some pointer toward something that is beyond itself. It is very simple, and in that simplicity there is much more than we can ever understand. I think about having lived in places that are shaping not just the national but global conversation on what it means to be a person during these times. Conversations about the role of the people, the role of government, conversations about the simple, everyday decisions we live out.

I’ve been thinking of how difficult it is to move this world collectively as a “we,” while still very much feeling an “I.” This tension is not new, but this tension is reaching new heights as our national death toll is now at 150,000, and we have no real system in place as a country to curb or prevent the spread of this virus. In a season where movement feels most natural, many are traveling across states, and now through contact tracing are seeing the repercussions of this very natural impulse. It is startling to see the world we’ve related to in a particular way no longer makes sense in the world we are in at present. Of course, the nature of the world is change, so we will not be in this predicament exactly like this forever, but we are in it now, even though we are ready for this to be over. It’s not. Again, I’m probably not telling you anything novel, but sometimes it’s helpful to hear someone outside your own head state the obvious.

The pandemic does not seem to be improving for those in the United States as a whole. Even if certain parts of the country are seeing a decrease in daily cases, there are other areas that are seeing their largest numbers to date. Again, this may seem obvious, but sometimes saying the obvious can be helpful. If one part of the country is seeing a rise in cases, the rest of the country is also in trouble. The reason for this is also obvious, but also is taking us longer to understand: what happens in one state impacts the entire nation, and what happens in a nation impacts the entire globe. In the same way we don’t exist as completely separate autonomous beings, our states are not separate and autonomous, though many act like it. Much of the loneliness of the West is the delusion that we can live and make choices autonomously, as if these choices don’t impact the entire world. Again, this is obvious, but it is taking us longer to truly digest this.

The divide we see today is not really about religion or where we live. The divide is not even about political parties or whether you support protesting racism. The divide we see today is not about wearing masks or whether it is appropriate to bring firearms to a public event. The divide we see today is not about the people vs the government, protesters vs the police, blue states vs red states. These are all just surface symptoms of a much deeper divide that we are given the precious opportunity during this time to uncover. The divide we see today is not about all the things we see filling the news machine on a daily basis. All of these stories are symptoms. The divide comes down to a fundamental understanding of who we are as an “I” and as a “We.” The divide is not about choosing one or the other. The divide is recognizing the “I” in the “We,” of respecting individual conscience and agency that always exists in a context of mutuality – mutual pain, mutual disease, mutual liberation, mutual hope. Our task as I see it is not to pick a side of “I” or “we,” but to courageously awaken to navigating this divide by learning what it means to be both, to live both, with humility and integrity.

We are an individual and we are a part of a community. No two people will live the exact same life and make the exact same choices. It would be ridiculous to try to enforce this. But one thing that is happening now that is truly astonishing is public lived and outspoken debate about what is for the common good. You will have those who will lean on the side of individual free choice as being the ultimate good, and you will have those who say whatever sacrifices we make for the collective good, is what is best for the individual. No side is right 100% of the time. To recognize this is to liberate us. To recognize that there is a place for individual choice that is about life and death, and there is the reality of life and death for our entire species that is all about you as an individual. To see and respect this is to transform our ideas who we think we are and what we’re doing here.

I aim to follow the recommendations of our health officials to avoid crowds, wear a mask in public and keep physical distance. But I’ve also attended protests, sometimes with hundreds of people, and I’ve tried my best to keep these guidelines, but I’ve not done it perfectly. I made an individual choice that deviated from what I normally do, because I felt within reason that the risk was justified. I’m not saying this is fundamentally correct or even reasonable. What I’m saying is all of us are being asked to navigate this divide between our individual choice and calculate the cost and benefit of that choice toward the collective good. And that is a new awareness for most of us. Human behavior is not driven by scientific data of what is in our best interest as a species. If that were the case we probably wouldn’t eat as much meat, pollute our own home, or do work that wastes our true abilities so we can have stuff we like. We are driven not by data but by our values. If we are unsure of what our values are, studying our behavior can show us. Which is why many find it kind of funny to attend church especially in this day and age, but it actually makes perfect sense. We are driven by what we value, and we do have some agency and choosing and living out those values albeit imperfectly. If the life of our species and our planet and our own individual wellbeing all hinges on what we value, I think it’s a good idea to find out what we truly value. What are we alive for? What are we willing to risk our life for, and what seems irrelevant or short sighted?

The best part of my job at a unique church like this is though I offer you an example of values, and share with you my recommendations, I’m not in charge of what you value or what you don’t. You get to decide that for yourself, as an individual in the context of a community like this. This doesn’t mean you get to believe what you want, however. We say in our covenant that: Service is our law, and we aim to seek the truth in love. We encourage freedom with accountability, which is love. Right now, as a nation we are seeing with prowess the great strength of individual freedom and unavoidable public accountability. We are being tasked to navigate this divide with more care, consideration, and thoughtfulness than we’ve ever had to. Of course, it looks horrible and clumsy on a mass scale, but my hope is that for certain individuals this will be a period of growth, navigating the divide of what we want and what the world needs.

Many traveled up North following the passing of Jim Crow laws seeking the warmth of other suns. There was the promise that different soil would sprout different fruit, and that a different land could help shape the destiny of an individual in a way that no other land could. Many came to cities like Youngstown, New York, Portland, Oregon seeking a different kind of warmth where there was more freedom, and different understanding of normal community behavior. They came seeking more than jobs. They sought lives, lives they could call their own, children who would know what it felt like to grow up with a sense of opportunity and imagine a much bigger world.

We are undergoing a great migration today with our borders closed to other nations. We are being asked to migrate from I to we and back to I. We are being asked to live as migrants, never staying stuck to our old identity of you and me and us and them, and see that yes there is you and yes there is me. And my true life is in migration back and forth, back and forth, every day of my life. There is no such thing as just baseball. There is so much more going on. There is so much more that each of our actions will contribute to our understanding of you and our understanding of me. We are building a whole new identity, and for those who refuse, the identity is cracking under our feet and leaving shards on the streets for federal troops to pick up. We are a living embodiment of so much more than we ever imagined, a living example of freedom, freedom from bondage, including the bondage of I and the bondage of you. The sun that was sought decades before is finally warming, and we are now seeing in the place where we stand a different kind of fertile soil emerge, a soil that has the potential to grow a different kind of person. And in that person is a whole other world, a world that has finally just arrived for us to live into.