Reading from Walking in the Wind by John Lewis
Mark 4:35-41
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
July 26, 2020
The story is devastating and uplifting, both at the same time. It is devastating in the picture it paints of our human vulnerability. We are like children—little children—in a rickety house in a storm, in danger of being whisked away by a funnel cloud or crushed by the very structure intended to protect us. John Lewis begins his memoir with a story that highlights how small we are.
Devastating. And uplifting. We are so small, and even in our smallness we matter. We can walk with the wind, corner to corner. We can clasp our hands and work together and make a difference.
The story Robert read provides the inspiration for the title of John Lewis’ memoir, Walking with the Wind, published more than twenty years ago. The story is the heart of the prologue to a 500 page book, Lewis’ personal account of the civil rights movement in our nation.
I happened upon this story of the children in the rickety house on Facebook, and it made me cry—a good test, I decided, of a moving sermon illustration. I ordered the book on-line and waited for it to arrive. In the meantime, I began to second-guess the story as a metaphor for working for change. I love the image of those children holding down the house, and I wanted the adults to come in and fix it for good. I wanted what I imagined to be a more empowered vision of humankind, a metaphor that highlighted our capacity to do more than make it through yet another storm.
I started playing with the metaphor, expanding the story. I imagined, when the wind subsided, a community effort of carpenters, engineers and hard workers coming in to shore up the foundation of the house. I was off and running in my imagination. Something, though, prompted me to slow down.
The more I added to the original story, the further I was able to run away from that devastating picture of our human smallness in the face of overwhelming storms. The more I created my own metaphor, the further I got from the wisdom of John Lewis, son of black sharecroppers, civil rights leader, member of Congress, whose courage and perseverance helped transform our nation.
The book arrived, finally, on Wednesday. I began to read. Young John Lewis—called Robert or Bob by his family—was an unusual child, who preached to the chickens in his back yard. When his family didn’t have money for him to go to his dream school, Morehouse College, he went to a seminary that trained black preachers, sponsored by the white Southern Baptist church. He was inspired by the witness of Jesus and Gandhi to claim a deep commitment to non-violent struggle. He was jailed and beaten and emerged more determined every time.
Lewis’s memoir is about brilliant, dedicated people building consensus, engaging in in-depth training, strategizing, persevering, planning for the long haul. If John Lewis chose the story of Aunt Seneva’s house to frame his remarkable memoir, I thought, surely I can honor his life by sticking with his metaphor. No metaphor is comprehensive; each gives us a window into truth. This metaphor has deep truths to teach us, as we struggle with what it means to work for change amidst the storms of our lives and our world today.
As I re-read the story of Aunt Seneva and the storm, I realized how much I had missed the first time around. I had this picture in my mind of a frantic scene—a group of children packed into a house, racing desperately from one corner to the other. But Lewis is very clear: they walked. Frightened, for sure, but they were not frantic. Aunt Seneva guided them from corner to corner, calmly and deliberately, assessing and re-assessing the situation each time.
I began to see how my instinct to expand the metaphor to including shoring up the foundation of the house had led me to miss the strength of the foundation conveyed in the original story.
I combed the book for more information about Aunt Seneva. I learned she was married to Uncle Rabbit; they lived about a half mile from John Lewis’ family. She was part of their tight-knit neighborhood outside Troy, Alabama, where almost everyone was an aunt or uncle or cousin. The whole family attended Macedonia Baptist church on the 3rd Sunday of each month and Dunn Chapel AME Church every 1st Sunday. Both were small, joy-filled congregations that only had the resources to meet monthly.
What gave Aunt Seneva courage to stay calm in the face of a terrifying storm? How was she able to modulate her own fear in order to comfort fifteen frightened children? Where did her clarity and creativity come from?
I don’t know. I wonder, though, if it came from the scriptures she read and the hymns she sang at Macedonia Baptist and Dunn Chapel AME. I wonder whether it came, at least in part, from our gospel reading, from a deep conviction that Jesus was with her in the storm. I wonder if, for a brief moment, she silently cried out to Jesus like the disciples did in the boat in the midst of their storm. I wonder if she heard a voice say, “Peace…be still…”– not to the winds raging around her but to the storm of panic welling up inside her. Maybe the assurance that she was not alone enabled her to stand on the strong foundation of faith built over a lifetime—a foundation of trust in the presence and guidance of God.
I don’t know. These are only my wonderings. What I do know is that somehow, Aunt Seneva was able to claim strength, wisdom, and calm from deep within her. The house might have been in danger of flying loose in the storm. Aunt Seneva was resting, though, on a firm foundation, deep roots that grounded her and gave her courage.
Those fifteen children, young and small and vulnerable as they were, also stood on a solid foundation. They knew they were loved. They knew they could trust Aunt Seneva. Even though their fear might have tempted them to hide under the bed or rush out of the house into the rain, their certainty that Aunt Seneva loved them enabled them to stay. They formed a line, clasped hands and walked with the wind, from one corner to the other, until the storm subsided.
This story caught my attention because we live in such a stormy time. The winds of change are whipping around us. The things we thought would always be the same are flying off from the foundations; we don’t know if we will ultimately find them undamaged or have to create something new from scratch. The storms are exposing things we knew were there but tried to pretend were not: deep inequities in our society, tension in our families, emptiness behind our frantic busyness. We don’t know how to plan for the future. We face a raging storm caused by a microscopic virus. We face a rising storm as people demanding justice clash with forces resisting change.
It is a stormy time. These two sacred storm stories—from John Lewis’s memoir and the apostle Mark’s gospel—offer guidance for how to live in such a time. They hold out a reality check. They give us an assurance. And they issue a challenge.
The reality check: Yes, we are small. Yes, the storms we face are huge. These two stories invite us to acknowledge that dual reality. It doesn’t do us any good to pretend we are bigger and stronger and weightier than we are. It doesn’t do us any good to pretend the storms are less powerful than they are. Fooling ourselves generally leads to foolhardy choices—and we don’t need to make them.
That reality check, thank God, is accompanied by an assurance, or perhaps a series of assurances. We are small—and we are not alone. Jesus is with us in the storm—maybe a friend sleeping in the boat or a wise aunt we can trust, maybe deep inside us, in the teachings we have learned, in the songs that give us hope, in the love we have absorbed. The structures around us may seem precarious, but we are standing on a firm foundation—faith deep enough to hold our doubt, love broad enough to lift us in our distress, courage we didn’t know we had. We are small and we are not alone. Jesus is with us though the gift of community. Together we are strong enough to withstand the storm.
The reality check and its accompanying assurance lead us to our challenge. It is tempting, when we see the floorboards lifting, to panic—to run even though we know this storm cannot be outrun, or maybe to abandon the group and rush to find the safest spot under the bed before someone else gets it.
These two stories challenge us to resist those temptations. Don’t panic; instead, listen to the wisdom of the community. Don’t go off on your own; instead clasp hands. Don’t run; walk together.
We are small. We are not alone. Together, with clasped hands, we can walk with the wind, toward healing and justice and hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.