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 Faithful Witness |
19 August 2007 Since we gathered in worship last Sunday, the deaths of two people in particular have warranted space in The Washington Post on the same day, Monday, August 12. The more recent death was that of Merv Griffin, age 82, known to most of us as the producer of game shows “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune,” as well as “The Merv Griffin Show.” I don’t recall watching a single one of his programs in any venue, but there’s no question I am part of a very small minority. Griffin died a billionaire, after parlaying his gift of gab and business acumen into holdings that included hotels, casinos, radio stations, and thoroughbred racehorses.[1] The broadcasting industry’s homage continued for at least three separate days. He was known to millions, but in all probability, a generation from now, his impact on us will be negligible. The other death was that of Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, on 10 August, at age 90. Hers is not a household name. But her uncompromising witness to justice, nurtured in her Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing, changed American history. On a July morning in 1944, Mrs. Morgan boarded a Greyhound bus in Glouscester, Virginia, bound for Baltimore. She was a 27-year-old mother of two, recovering from a miscarriage, and was settled on an aisle seat four rows from the back for the long ride home to see a doctor. Next to her was a young mother with an infant. They were riding in the section designated by Virginia’s segregation law for black passengers, but half an hour into the trip, a white couple boarded, and the bus driver ordered Mrs. Morgan and her seatmate to give up their seats.[2] Mrs. Morgan not only refused, but told her seatmate to stay put too. So the bus driver drove to the jail in Saluda, Virginia. There, the sheriff’s deputy boarded the bus and gave Mrs. Morgan a warrant for her arrest. She tore it up and threw it from the window, insisting she’d done nothing wrong. She’d paid for her seat, and was sitting in the section designated by Virginia law. When the deputy then grabbed her arm to yank her off the bus, she kicked him “in a very bad place. He hobbled off, and another one came on.” It got worse. Ultimately, Mrs. Morgan was dragged off the bus and charged with resisting arrest—a charge she agreed to. But she refused to plead guilty for violating Virginia’s segregation law.[2] She lost her case, which argued that segregation laws unfairly impeded interstate commerce. But her case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court by two young NAACP lawyers: Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie. We know that Marshall went on to become the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court; Hastie also continued to break new ground, becoming the first African American judge on a federal appeals court.)[2] “On 3 June 1946, in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate travel was unconstitutional as ‘an undue burden on commerce.’…[It goes without saying that the southern states refused to enforce the decision. So,] in 1947, a group of black and white activists with the newly-formed Congress of Racial Equality decided to test the Morgan decision on a two-week ‘Journey of Reconciliation’ through four Southern states. Traveling on buses and trains, the activists sang…You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow, [including the verse,] Get on the bus, sit anyplace, ‘Cause Irene Morgan won her case.” Morgan’s husband died less than two years later. She later married Stanley Kirkaldy and moved to New York, where she lived until five years ago, when she returned to Virginia.[2] Mind you, I have nothing against Mr. Griffin. But if I had to choose which person I’d rather meet and spend time with, there’s no question it would be Mrs. Irene Morgan Kirkaldy. She belongs to the great cloud of witnesses who stand at the sidelines and cheer those still running the race. Her witness of June 1944 cheered on that of another great witness, some 11 years later—and hers is a household name: Rosa Parks. Morgan’s witness cheered the Freedom Riders of the 1940’s, and their successors of the 1960’s. What a shining light in that cloud of witnesses! And how biblical! From everything we learn in the Bible, it isn’t usually the rich and famous—David and Solomon being rare exceptions to the norm—but those who are engaged in the ordinary stuff of life whose witness cheers us on. Mrs. Morgan Kirkaldy is riding the bus on her way to the doctor. Moses is minding the sheep in the hills of Midian. The prostitute Rahab appears to have been plying her trade among the spies for Joshua. She betrays her own people to the Hebrews as they invade the land of Canaan and destroy the city of Jericho, some twenty-three miles east of what becomes Jerusalem. Why? Because she hears the story of the Exodus and the Hebrews’ God, and is convinced that God is sovereign over heaven and earth. Rahab’s witness lives in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Rahab is the mother of Boaz, who marries Ruth, the Moabite, who refuses to abandon her mother-in-law Naomi, and returns with Naomi to the land of Judah, the southern part of Israel. In other words, it doesn’t matter who we are. It doesn’t matter what our occupation or trade made be. Simple acts of faithfulness pull ordinary, ordinary people from the obscurity of time to become identifiable faces in the cloud of witnesses. Samson let ego and lust override gifts of strength and intelligence. But as the last of the judges of Israel, his impact on the Philistines in their two-hundred year conflict with Israel over the lands of Canaan is legend. Gideon is less than convinced that God even wants to use him—let alone is able to do so. So we read of a test with a soggy fleece when everything around it is dry; we read of a dry fleece when everything around it is soggy. Together, they convince the earnest young man that God’s call to faith and faithfulness is real. Hebrews goes on to identify a whole group of people who have suffered for their faith. We don’t know who they are. And that’s the point. They could be anyone. They could be you; they could be me. Because faith is more than a spiritual experience, no matter how singular, no matter how powerful. Faith is more—much more—than belief. Because belief can be just that. I believe that the world is round, that gravity is the invisible but powerful force that keeps us firmly planted on this planet. These beliefs don’t require any real response or action on my part. Not so with faith. Faith requires witness. The two go together like rich chocolate cookies with creamy white filling—double stuffed. Sometimes that witness is in the form of action like that of Irene Morgan Kirkaldy and Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie. As the author of the book of James has it, “faith without works is dead.” And sometimes that witness is in the form of speech—the parables of Jesus, the preaching of Paul, the proclamation of Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King, Jr. Ultimately, faith is the way we live in both word and deed, that gives witness to God. And when we make stupid mistakes and snatch defeat from the cusp of victory, the fans, the cloud of witnesses returns—not unlike the Redskins—and cheer us on. How cool is that? # # # [1] “Merv Griffin; TV Host, Game-Show Creator,” Adam Bernstein, Obituaries, The Washington Post, Monday, August 13, 2007, B4. |