So many inflection points in our history involve crossing a river. For whatever reason, the architects of the past seem to perpetually build towards this circumstance. When confidence was low and the cause was faltering, General Washington forded the Delaware River on a cold Christmas night to surprise enemy troops and strike a decisive blow. The battle was small, but pivotal in turning the tide of the war and increasing troop recruitment. His audacity was essential to forming a new nation, founded on new ideas. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army in 49 B.C. the Roman Civil War effectively began, which led to Caesar becoming dictator and issued in the imperial era of Rome that changed the course of human history. “Crossing the Rubicon” is now imbedded into our vocabulary, meaning to pass the point of no return. Even the Bible can’t resist telling a good river story. When the Jordan River stood between the Israelites and their promised land, Joshua instructed his followers to consecrate themselves and God would do amazing things. The Israelites crossed the river following the physical manifestation of God’s covenant and faith alone that they would be taken care of. They stepped into the water, which subsequently parted and paved the way for their passing.
In all of these events crossing the river was risky. Anyone who has studied explorers or huddled around the family PC playing Oregon Trail, knows this. It takes courage, resolve and faith. We are unashamedly biased towards a good crossing story. Our belief that “Crossing the Street” can lead to life altering experiences, but “Crossing a River” appears to have an elevated significance. Instead of a personal renewal, this crossing seems to be more of a historical sacrament. Time and time again, we find ourselves on the banks of a river, with the water lapping at our feet… at a turning point. Maybe it is just coincidence. Maybe the “mysterious cycles in human events” that FDR recognized and Mark Twain’s belief that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but does rhyme” are just happenstance. Or maybe not. Either way, it is evident that the script writers of history can’t resist bringing their characters to the banks of a river. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, the scribes of antiquity cracked their knuckles and inked their quills to compose another masterpiece. John Lewis and hundreds of civil rights activists set out to march from Selma to Montgomery in an attempt to register to vote. Their journey was brutally halted by state troopers standing in the way, after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, high above the Alabama River. Lewis wasn’t armed with a musket like General Washington, or a Roman spear like Caesar. He wasn’t led by a group of holy men carrying the physical manifestation of God’s promise to his chosen people. In fact, a lot of people thought what he was doing was against God’s will and believed that disturbing the peace like this couldn’t be God’s way. John carried two books and some fruit in his backpack for the journey and possible overnight stay in a jail cell. It didn’t happen in the cover of night, like the continental army. His crossing happened in broad daylight, right in front of our eyes. And the events that took place on the banks of that river haunted us. They ripped us apart, as a country, as a people, and as an idea. The event ushered in a period of change in our country’s legislative progress as well as a similar change in individual lives throughout the nation. People who saw it couldn’t shake what they saw. The image of John standing on the bridge facing the line of state troopers is so powerful. He looks so small and so young but his courage is effusive, his resolve is palpable, and his faith is incandescent. It is an image as iconic as the painting of Washington at the bow of a small skiff with a “stars and stripes flag” (which didn’t even exist at the time) restrained yet blowing in the wind. At both moments, a new nation was formed.
After hearing that John would be making his final crossing over the Alabama River, we wanted to be there to see the mysterious cycle for ourselves. To see an inflection point in history, where a nation and its people were changed. To see, as LBJ put it, “where history and fate met at a single place and a single time to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.” We wanted to see how the script writers would close a chapter and honor one of our heroes. So we got in our car and drove.
We know that driving across the Deep South over a compressed weekend during a pandemic, equipped with masks and hand sanitizer, only to emerge from our vehicle for bathroom breaks and one short ceremony, isn’t exactly travel blog gold. But here we are in 2020, a year with more potholes and closed shoulders than the South Carolina stretch of interstate 85. It was enlightening though. Driving from Raleigh to Selma is like traveling back in time and it also highlighted the situation we find ourselves in. Every town you stop in or pass by appeared to be operating in a different world from the next. In some areas Covid restrictions were strict and evident, in others they were nonexistent. Some people wore masks and skittishly bounded away from any passersby while others carried on as if nothing was out of the ordinary. If James Madison wanted them to wear a mask, he would’ve told them to in the Constitution. Two different mindsets, two different realities from both sides of the spectrum and everywhere in between. It was sad. Regardless of which side you are on or which reality you reside in, it is heartbreaking that we can’t seem to find common ground, not with political ideology, but physical reality. There aren’t just blue states and red states, but blue towns and red towns, and blue people and red people, with everyone playing the role that they are told to play, with nauseating predictability. It was cathartic to travel towards a place and moment that hopefully can be appreciated and revered by everyone. A place that was consecrated into the blueprint of our nation and unites us, not divides us. A moment that embraces the complexities of the nation’s history, good and bad, and doesn’t gloss over the tragedy, pain, injustice or struggle. An American moment.
John Lewis considered it a Christian moment, where he and his companions took a step toward creating what he called the beloved community. A moment where he actively and zealously lived out his faith in God, and didn’t just passively wait for God to come and extricate him. John’s faith did not offer him much peace or contentment, but disruption. He didn’t act like a Christian who believed in any pre-tribulation rapture theology, where God would someday come and rescue him from the wicked world and take him away to his true home in the clouds. He acted like a Christian who believed that salvation was not about fleeing to God’s Kingdom, but bringing God’s kingdom to us. Not a detachment from this world, but an entrenchment into its trajectory. A world where peace was not possible, until kingdom come. John’s actions spoke less to someday flying away and more to the belief that this is my Father’s world, oh let us never forget, and though the wrong seems oft so strong, He is the ruler yet. It is easy for us to find comfort in that hymn today. When the Chip and Joanna line at Target ceases to exist, millions of fans will cling to this verse of Franklin Sheppard’s hymn for comfort. For John, growing up in the segregated south, hearing the words that things may be wrong but God is still in charge, was not trivial, but life affirming. John couldn’t go to places as benign as a library without being overwhelmed with how wrong things have gone. His whole world from the beginning insisted that this place was not his home, and did not care about him, and did not value him. If anyone would’ve been justified to pine for a new home in the sky, it would be a young John Lewis. Fortunately for us, he did not think this way. When he asked his parents about the segregated south, they would tell him that this is just the way things were but he heard his Father saying that this is not the way things were supposed to be.
The bible verse that reminds me of John Lewis is Matthew 10:34. Jesus, seemingly in a bad mood, confounds listeners for centuries by saying, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Luke’s account of the scene uses the word division instead of sword and goes on to talk about how the presence of Jesus will cause schisms in our world. His presence was not meant to bind our world together, but to tear our world apart… and create a new world. His world. I don’t know about you but this seems like a different Jesus than the Jesus that I grew up with. The verse makes Jesus sound more like a religious zealot than the nice guy we hear about at youth group after the wiffleball tournament. From the youngest age, I was hearing about a Jesus that was convenient and fit perfectly into the world that I lived in, while John was innately filled by a Jesus that was unsettling and combative against the world he grew up in. This usurper had captivated John’s heart with a gospel of divine division and that message could not be contained. Just ask the chickens at John’s childhood home outside of a little town called Troy.
It was this message that compelled John to help change the country and the people who live in it. Cory Booker tells a story about how John’s actions in Selma helped shape his life, even before he was born. There was a lawyer in New Jersey who had his whole life figured out. He just graduated law school and was about to start his own law firm with some friends. He was at peace and ready for the next 40 years of a quiet, comfortable life. He sat down in his living room recliner, kicked his feet up, and turned on the TV to get some well-deserved rest. When he turned on the TV he saw John, standing at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, looking small and young with his backpack, staring down a line of armed State Troopers. He watched as the peaceful demonstrators were beaten and repelled from the bridge. He watched as John’s skull was fractured, with tear gas filling the air. He heard men, women, and children screaming. As he watched, the plan he had for his life was shattered into a thousand pieces. He couldn’t shake what he saw. He had to do something. He had to change. So he began volunteering his time as a lawyer to help African American families purchase homes in white neighborhoods where they were traditionally not allowed to live. Booker’s parents became his clients. They were both executives at IBM. Both made a great salary and wanted to raise their family in a safe neighborhood with good schools. They toured a house in a desirable neighborhood that met all of their requirements, but the listing agent told them unfortunately the house was no longer for sale. The lawyer had a white family tour the house immediately after and the listing agent was more than happy to accept their offer. Booker’s parents secretly purchased the home, but when they showed up to complete the paperwork with the lawyer, they were chased away by a dog and the lawyer was assaulted. After an ensuing legal battle, they eventually finalized the purchase and were allowed to raise their children in a home that promised safety and a good education. Booker’s success was inextricably linked to this education and safe upbringing that may not have been afforded to him, if a lawyer from New Jersey didn’t see John cross the Alabama River and feel the sword Jesus spoke about… and become a convert.
At the ceremony, we stood on the Selma side of the bridge and watched John’s casket pulled by two horses go by. The crowd watched the passing of American greatness. The horses stopped at the foot of the bridge. Rose petals were scattered along the path that represented the blood that was spilled years ago. This time Alabama State Troopers cleared the way. Unlike the writers of network TV, the script writers of history never disappoint. The horses started again, at a faster gait to carry the casket over the bridge. We watched as it reached the crest of the arch, high above the Alabama River. We watched him slowly disappear over the crest, toward the other side of the bank. There was no turning back.
We drove back to Montgomery ahead of the processional on the same route that the marchers walked to the state capital building. We saw people in parked cars along the road, waiting to get one last glimpse of our American saint, who risked his life in hopes of tearing the old world apart and creating a new world. A better world. Mothers and fathers holding signs that said thank you. Grandmothers with their grandchildren, huddled on their car hoods, searching the road to see their hero one last time. Paying their respects and most certainly regaling the younger generation with stories of how the diminutive Lewis changed the most powerful nation on earth. Expressing to them John’s simple creed that if you see something that is not right, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something, to get in the way… to get into trouble.
John, at the age of 23, ended his speech at the March on Washington saying that they were going to “splinter the segregated south into a thousand pieces… and put them together in the image of God and democracy..” That statement made many uncomfortable, especially the people whose lives conveniently fit into the world he sought to break apart. It is hard to believe that dispelling segregation and building a society in God’s image was ever controversial, but at the time it was. It’s a lesson for us today about the perception of equity in our society that can be illusive. In retrospect, Selma seems obvious now, but at the time it wasn’t. There were genuinely good people who disavowed people like John and categorized him as a radical. We cannot just assume we are on the right side of history, we have to earnestly search for that answer. It can seem hopeless to fight through all of the fog in today’s society. Right and wrong don’t seem as straight forward. There are so many voices muddying up the waters between us. It’s hard to tell which side of the bridge we are on, or even which side we should be on. We are imperfect creatures and our judgment can fail us. Luckily, the God that met John in the segregated south can still meet us today. The same God who will not discard the world we live in but isn’t above splintering it into a thousand pieces in order to put it back together and create a new world. A God who can still disturb and disrupt our lives and compel us towards trouble with a gospel of divine division in order to someday convert, even us.
