Peace in the face of hatred

Joe Jackson was not really a friend. Like so many people I knew at the time, he was a drinking buddy. Which generally meant that he drank in the same bar as I did and was there most of the times I was. We normally talked about the weather, sports, or some gossip going around the bar, Joe knew all the gossip. But after he had four or five good, stiff, whiskey and ginger-ale’s in him, talk always turned to the seminal moment in Joe’s life, it happened near a bridge on a Sunday in 1965, in Selma, Alabama.

Joe was a black man, who grew up in Selma during the civil rights movement. And as we sat in that bar in Glendale, California over twenty years later he would tell stories of the life he lived and the things he experienced. But when he talked about the bridge, he would often say to anyone who would listen, “You don’t know nothin’! Unless you were there and saw what I saw. You, just don’t know nothin’!” Joe Jackson had been a young boy who was watching as 600 peaceful protestors led by Hosea Williams and John Lewis tried to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge on March 7, 1965.

He had not been among the protestors but was on his bicycle delivering newspapers, so his story went. Of course, he had heard of plans for a march. There had been a lot of talk since the shooting death of a young African American man during a demonstration in February. But his family was not involved. His mother worked two jobs and his father was away most of the time working on several farms in the area. This left Joe and his brother to earn all the extra money they could.

Joe would always get emotional at this point in his story. He would describe how he had seen the protestors as they came out of a local church and as they marched two by two heading toward the bridge. And even though he had papers to deliver he could not help himself, he wanted to follow along. He remembered there were others who were doing the same following but not part of the march. As they approached the bridge Joe decided he needed to get back to delivering his papers but within minutes he heard such a ‘clatter of noise’, those were his words, that he turned back around and rode again toward the bridge. A man who knew his father stopped him from going anywhere near the carnage that was happening, but he saw the results, people running and bloody. Almost at every telling it would be about here he would say again, “Unless you were there, you don’t know nothin’!” Then Joe would be silent and so would I, just two people staring into our drinks. But soon talk would return to the mundane, sports, the weather, and gossip. Joe knew all the gossip.

I had forgotten about Joe until I moved to Georgia, a few years ago. Driving from Oregon to our home here we made a point of crossing over that iconic bridge. But the funny thing was, that I did not think of Joe as we were doing it. It was not until quite a few months later when I was listening to an interview with Congressman John Lewis that he came to mind. As Lewis was describing that Bloody Sunday, as he had innumerable times before, I could hear Joe telling the story as he remembered it. A good feeling came over me. Congressman Lewis, Joe, and so many others had been affected by what happened that day back in 1965, when peaceful people came face to face with evil hate and in the end peace won. It was a time of true overcoming.

I don’t know why I thought of Joe this morning. Maybe it is how I see that even as our world, our country has made progress through peaceful means that is no longer our rhetoric or our way. Ugly words and even uglier actions seem to now dominate every aspect of our interactions, even as a portion of us call ourselves Christians. I am sure one reason Joe came to mind because he was right, we do not ‘know nothin’’ and we did not learn anything from our past or history, hatred still seems to rule. But the real reason the Holy Spirit brought Joe back from the cobwebbed recesses of my memory is to remind me that I need myself to be a person of ‘peace’, through Jesus Christ, in the face of hatred.

Jesus assured us of this: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do, I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14: 27) It is His peace in this time of trouble that will allow me and you, if you seek it, to see that we are nearer than ever to His soon return. I do not need to be sucked into the rhetoric of hatred but move forward, as Jesus did, in the face of it.

Joe witnessed the results of peace in the face of hatred. He never forgot it. We are in a time when all of us who truly believe will be tested in ways as bad or worse. Today the Holy Spirit is asking me, “Are you ready? Will you stand?” I pray my answer is yes. But I can only know that for sure if all my trust and really all my life is in the one who faced death to save me. That is my only hope and even I ‘know nothin’ else, in that I am sure and at peace!

Blessings and Happy Sabbath,
John
11/9/18

Author: John

Christian blogger