by Steven Clark Goad

One winter’s day in December 1955 a diminutive southern seamstress got on the bus as was her usual routine. She sat down in a seat behind the driver. He insisted that she move to the back of the bus or he would call the cops and have her arrested. She chose to stay in her seat.

If I were a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama I would have been embarrassed by the publicity such behavior created. Rosa Parks, bless her memory, unwittingly became an icon and the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Because of her and those like her Condolezza Rice works at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world today.

This little diatribe isn’t about Ms. Parks so much as it is about our
frightening proximity to feral behavior. We are just one
speech/argument/drink from the likes of a Hitler or Saddam Hus-sein or Pol Pot or some racist neighbor living next door, or worse, in our own house.

That we treated fellow citizens and humans beings the way we did back in Montgomery in 1955 (and still do individually in pockets all across this great nation) is testimony to our ability to lose our grip on civilized behavior.

I hear that in this country all men are created equal. Yet it seems like in some places a few folk are created more equal than others.

This scribe will probably make no great impact on civil rights or parity among the citizenry of the United States. But I would like to think I was able to do what many with the spirit of a Rosa Parks can do every day of their lives when opportunities of like nature present themselves. Many of you already know that I ministered with a church in the deep South. We were a lily white congregation. In my ignorance of the leadership of that church I invited a sweet black widow lady to be part of our fellowship. She accepted the invitation. There was a mini-uproar among the elitists of the flock. But that soon died down and she was accepted by those in the church who loved all souls, regardless.

As Snoopy might say in one of his novels, the plot thins. I was so pleased by having assisted in integrating that congregation that I presumed to baptize three black men into Christ. When news of this filtered through the membership, the deacon in charge of buildings and grounds drained the baptistery and disinfected it. The next Wednesday I was invited into the elders meeting and given my pink slip. So much for my sacrifice for rights, civil or other-wise. It hurt. I wept. But I got over it. The church is still integrated to this day, for which I am thankful to God. I have often wondered if that lovely Ray Steven’s song might have been sung like this by those elders: “Jesus loves the little children; all the children of the world; white and white and white and white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Church, I am calling for all of us to divest ourselves of this unctuous
urge to suppose that we are better than others because our skin is lighter in pigmentation. Our bank accounts do not elevate us or diminish us. A poor man and a rich man can all come to the table of the Lord and be welcomed.

The darkest black and the whitest white are welcome to the banquet. So if you are still harboring even the slightest hint of racial prejudice in your heart, get over it. Have a lot talk with God about it. Ask the Lord to give you the intestinal fortitude to reach out in love and fellowship to all people regardless of their race or ethnic traits.

Scripture informs us that Jesus died that all might live. That includes
everyone who would come to him in humble faith and obedience. The Ethiopian nobleman was baptized and accepted into the family of God just as Saul or Tarsus was. Every race at Pentecost was accepted as well. May some of us live to see the day when there will be no need for Rosa Parks’ in Montgomery or impudent Yankee preachers in Mobile.

-Steven Clark Goad

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