This was originally delivered as a sermon at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, NC on Mother’s Day by Charles Wynder, Jr., Missioner for Social Justice & Advocacy Engagement. Here is an excerpt of the sermon. Please see related link at the bottom of this page to access the full sermon.

Our Gospel hymn this morning, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?, brings back the memory of the image of the Pieta, as well as, the scripture and tradition that reminds us of Mary and the women who were not only present at Jesus’ crucifixion, but also being their presence when they accepted his body, and we know they were later present at the empty tomb.  O’ the power of presence!  The words of this hymn, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?, brings it home.  A Negro Spiritual composed by enslaved Africans in the United States, I learned in my sermon preparation that it was included in the Episcopal Church’s hymnal in 1940 and was the first Spiritual to be included in any mainline American hymnal.   A favorite of Mahatma Gandhi’s, it asks us to grapple with profound questions as it focuses on the death of Jesus by crucifixion.  It forces us to recognize the cross that we sometimes dress up as a piece of jewelry or art for what it was in Jesus’ day – an instrument of oppression by the Roman Empire of Jewish bodies.  This hymn refocuses our eyes, our hearts, and minds anew on the suffering and the passion of Christ.  For some of us, it brings to mind the relationship between the cross and the lynching tree.

It should also focus our hearts and minds on the suffering of Black men and a woman living under the threat of police violence and the threat of violence from private citizens like George Zimmerman: all because we are perceived as different, dangerous and fundamentally and less valuable than others in our society.   We call this Othering.  When we fail to really see our neighbor and see the divine in them, we fall into the trap of viewing them as abstract: a thing, an object to fear – Other.  We all can fall into this trap regardless of our race or ethnicity.  It is, however, in really seeing our neighbor as a child of God and in the image of God, that we are able to understand Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel from John, “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”

You may ask why I share these words and message on Mother’s Day.  I do so because it affords us the chance to acknowledge the grieving and a groaning of the mothers of the young, men, young women, and sometimes children who were killed in this most recent wave of police involved deaths. People like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and the 12 year-old Tamir Rice. Tamir Rice, twelve years-old, was playing in a toy gun in a park. The police drove up and shot him in three seconds. Twelve years old. And, they said they thought he was 19 years old. Twelve years old and three seconds.   And then there is Tanesha McBride, Freddie Gray and so many others.  These mothers are women who understand the wailing and the grief of Mary when she received the body of Jesus and cradled him in her arms. 

I challenge us to grapple with this pain and these issues because they lie at the heart of the Gospel reading today.  Scripture which asks us to confront the question of whether we believe the children in West Baltimore, in Ferguson, MO, and in Black and Latino Charlotte are “all of our children.”  Or, are we so far removed that we can’t see their humanity?  Or, are they (these children) such an abstraction that they are only accessible to us through the news?  This is why it is important for us to raise up the image of Mary today, it is why we it is important to raise the image of the mother’s in our times who have lost sons to the official violence of the state. For that is what Jesus’ death also was, death by the state.  We participate in these losses and violence through our silence. This silence runs counter to the words of Jesus, and his example.  You may ask again, but why Mother’s Day?  Because Mother’s Day was created by Julia Ward, an abolitionist and author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic who was appealing to all women to create a space for reconciliation following the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.   She wrote an appeal to all women of the world because women and mothers know what happens when we don’t have love, justice and reconciliation.  So, the challenge to reclaim this day for Love, Justice and Reconciliation lies at the heart of today’s history and founding.

This is why Bishop Marianne Budde has issued a letter to the Diocese of Washington writing, “All mothers worry about their children’s well-being. Yet we cannot deny that the painful truth that children of color are at far greater risk than white children in every category of danger and vulnerability.  In particular, children of color are more likely to be victims of violent crime or subject to mistreatment and abuse in our criminal justice system.  Whenever a child, even an adult child, enters our collective consciousness because of the violence perpetrated upon them, we hear an anguished mother’s (and father’s) cry. On Mother’s Day, I ask that we join in prayer and collective witness on behalf of all mothers’ children, and especially children of color who are disproportionately at risk in our land.”  I think it is profound that Bishop Marianne has several women of color preaching around the Diocese about this topic and invited all the congregations of the diocese regardless of their demographic make-up to make a collective witness on Mother’s Day.  She invited them to “commit to praying for all mothers’ children, especially mothers of color, in public worship.”  She encouraged them to “invite a mother of color to speak, to preach, or to share her experience in church.”  She asked them to consider, “organizing a public procession, after worship, around your neighborhood or town in prayerful witness to the truth that (in her words) all mothers’ children are priceless in God’s sight, but only some are treated that way.” 

Bishop Mariann suggested that the people of the diocese “commit to learn more about racial disparities among other actions.”  She wrote, “We intend to make our public witness known.”   You may ask, we may ask, why a white woman Episcopal Diocesan Bishop married, mother with two adult sons, would make such a statement?  Well, she must have anticipated our question.  She wrote in her statement, “Should anyone ask why we are taking these actions, please say this:  Until the killing of black and brown mothers’ sons become as important to the rest of the country as the killing of white mothers’ sons, we who follow Jesus cannot rest. Faithfully, Bishop Mariann.” 

Her words echo those of Ella Baker in 1964. Ella Bakers words that form the basis of Sweet Honey and the Rock’s Ella’s Song.  More importantly, they speak to the words in our lessons today and they echo the actions of Jesus.