Good Friday 2005
Grocery Shopping.
The check-out line.
I knew I was in trouble when the young clerk picked up my selection and asked, “Is this an avocado?”
“No, mango,” I answered.
And to speed up the on-the-job training and my trip, I handed him the kiwi and named it.
"Oh, good,” was the response, “I didn’t know what that was.”
So I want to talk to you about fruit. First fruits and Strange fruit.
In Jesus time, the very first fruit or grain gathered at harvest time was set aside to be offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
The early church came to talk about the early converts to the Way of Christ as the first fruits of the Spirit. They saw their Risen Lord as the first of the first fruits.
I suggest Christ on the Cross of Calvary is also “Strange Fruit.”
Billie Holiday sang a very short song about strange fruit:
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
The song was banned by radio station managers.
You can imagine why.
Yet, even without airplay, word-of-mouth was so effective that the recording reached number 16 on the popular music charts within three months of its release.
Strange fruit is part of our history.
End of 1952, Tuskegee Institute announced it was no longer going to publish its annual “Lynching Letter.” Since 1912, it had reported the number of lynchings in the United States for the year. There had been no lynchings for two years. Now the college was going to report on jobs and income figures for Negroes.
In addition to the “Lynching Letter”, there were other forces which dragged the killing of black men, women and children into the light. One was the efforts of the NAACP for legislation against lynching and Jim Crow.
President Truman was the first American President to address an NAACP convention and he talked about “civil rights” not “the Negro question”. He sponsored an anti-lynching bill. Some declared it was way too radical for the white South and others said it was a gimmick to revive Truman’s reelection hopes in the North.
President Eisenhower asked the FBI for a classified briefing about race in 1956. And although J. Edgar Hoover, FBI head, did not want any formal legal responsibility in the area of civil rights, one of the charts prepared showed that the number of lynchings had dropped from 20 a year to 2 when the FBI began informally investigating the killings in 1939.
And by the time of President Kennedy? Well, by the 1960s, SNICC and other groups were ready to sue the Justice Department for lack of action in investigating and bringing to justice those who tried to harass and keep blacks from registering and voting.
More and more light was shed on the racism of whites.
They couldn’t hide in the dark, under sheets with just eyeholes.
They were seen and known. Their behavior exposed and named as intolerable.
This is what happens to us when we behold Christ on the Cross of Good Friday.
We are convicted.
We stand in Christ’s light and see ourselves.
And our actions.
And inactions.
Those things we have done and left undone.
For which we are sorry.
Why are we sorry?
We want to be right with God.
We want to please God.
We want to be good.
But the same things stand in our way as blocked the disciples, the chief priests and elders, and Pontius Pilate.
Fear.
Greed.
Indifference.
All of those emotions are very self-serving, self-referenced.
It’s all about “me” and not about the “other”—God, God’s people.
We are like Peter who stepped out of the boat, and took a few steps on the water while his eyes were on Jesus—but, the moment he looked at his own feet, he was sunk.
We have to keep our eye on Jesus—hanging on the Cross.
Strange fruit dying into first fruit….
Now we don’t want to look at either the strange fruit of this country’s history or the strange fruit that was our Lord on that very first Good Friday when all seemed bad.
But we have to look at what is bad, what is wrong, around us until in God’s light we can see what is right and do it.
There was an exhibition on the history of lynching at the National Park Service’s Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Site in Atlanta.
At its disturbing center was an exhibit called “Without Sanctuary”— The words to the poem ‘Strange fruit” were printed on a wall in stark white letters near the entranceway. And there were photographs displayed that had been taken at lynchings from the 1880s through the 1940s..
Yes, there were pictures of victims like Laura Nelson and her son, dangling from a bridge in Oklahoma.
But there were also pictures of white faces – lynchers and onlookers—smiling into the camera as if they were posing with a trophy.
Coretta Scott King whose great-uncle was lynched in Alabama was at the opening. She said she had to see and know.
The last line of today’s Passion Gospel is “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”
John is quoting from the prophecy of Zechariah.
We are to fulfill that prophecy.
We are to look ….
But not like the drivers who create a gaper delay when they slow down to see the scene of an accident. Not with curiosity.
This crucifixion is not an accident.
So our looking does not have to be an exercise in fault finding.
We are to look to Christ so that we can become Christ like ourselves.
Open your eyes. Look. Calmly. Carefully.
Look at the strange fruit dying into first fruit….
That is who we are to become…
People who are passionate and compassionate.
People who are loving and giving and forgiving.
Look at the strange fruit dying into first fruit…
The one who calls us friend, and brother, and sister, and beloved…
The one who calls us by name…
Look at the strange fruit dying into first fruit…
The one who sends us out to fed the hungry, house the homeless…
The one who sends us out to find the lost and lonely…
The one who sends us out to free the oppressed and to heal the hurt…
Look on the strange fruit dying into first fruit…
The one who at supper with his companions, took the bread blessed it and broke it and then gave his very body for their nourishment.
Look on the strange fruit dying into first fruit…
Christ, our Passover…
Sacrificed for us…
Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace; so clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching out our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you for the honor of your Name. AMEN.
