1 10 16 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/7ac14e7513bfac546f9332a507303ab5.pdf bb4110abb82ec8cd67e981665e6212fb PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-306_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University --of modern man. It takes on another character. It depends upon what you're looking at and how you define and describe it, is whether or not you condemn it or not. And then what I condemn in you, I say as I look at it in me, that I'm smart or I'm clever. I'm intelligent. I'm something else. Now all of this is by way of background. Because what I want us to do for the time that we have this afternoon now, is to see what are some of the techniques that people use in order to survive in situations and conditions in which there seems to be no plan for their survival. In other words, what kind of-- because life is a lie. Remember way back 1,000 years ago, you were talking about this. Life is a lie. And it is the nature of life just to seek the thing that nourishes it and keeps the going. Now When you are in a situation that your back is against the wall, the same principle is operating. You're fighting for your life. Now with people who live with their backs against the wall, what are some of the things that come to their rescue that makes survival possible? Now it is-- one more decision. When I was-- oh, maybe it was last year or two [INAUDIBLE] the Conference of Christians and Jews, the national organization, had a-- Nelson Rockefeller was the honorary chairman that year. They always select some money honcho to be the national chairman. [LAUGHTER] I used to work for them. [LAUGHS] And he came out here for a luncheon meeting, a dinner meeting. He flew out and was flying back that night. And they selected about a dozen people-- President of Standard Oil, President of Crocker Bank, President of Bank of America, President of somebody else, somebody else, somebody else, and a federal judge who was presiding. And somebody invited me to come along. And they wanted me to have about 10 minutes to talk. I was preaching. [LAUGHTER] And they wanted me to have my 10 minutes of talk in response to Mr. Rockefeller, you see. All right. I started out-- and this is a personal thing-- Sue says, what are you going to talk about? I said, I don't have anything to talk about. But I'll talk 10 minutes about what Nelson Rockefeller does not say. Yes. [LAUGHTER] So she said, well, at least you ought to shine your shoes-[LAUGHTER] --so you won't disgrace her. Oh, forgive me. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu That's nice. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Anyway, I went up and we-- there were about a dozen or so. And we sat around or stood at a table like that. The federal judge-- I'll think of his name in a moment-- sat here. Mr. Rockefeller sat to his right. I sat to his left. And then the other men sat around us. Well, the judge and I exchanged greetings, and he introduced Nelson Rockefeller. And I went about my business and let them talk. But I'd finished eating. Then I played a game. I began studying the faces of every man around to see what kind of animal he reminded me of. [LAUGHTER] And I was about 3/4 around, went into the concentration. And I heard Thurmond, and I looked up now. And I thought these millionaire hand traps. [INAUDIBLE] And the judge was doing this. He switched the whole program on me. And I was to talk before Nelson Rockefeller. Oh. And I didn't even hear him introduce me. I was just lost in this game when I was playing. So I stood up. And I had to get myself together. It scared me within an inch of my life. Because I didn't know what on earth I was going to talk about. So I began quoting. I tried to quote something-- something familiar, something maybe like, a Psalm or something. Right in the middle of it, forgot it. And I said, of course, all of you know-Now that was [INAUDIBLE]. [LAUGHTER] And I finally wandered along, and still nothing happened. Then something like a comet from outer space-- and I had it. And this is what it was. I said every man seated around this table is a minority. I said, in the first place, every man around this table is either rich or he represents well. And the vast majority of people on this planet are poor. Every man around this table is white. And the vast majority of people on this planet are colored. Every man around the table is either Jew or Christian. And in combination, it is one of the minority religions in comparison. But then I pulled it up to the business. And then, you are a minority within that minority if you believe in what brings us here. And that means that if you do every man, woman, boy, girl, old, or young, that you can influence them, all of them, must work at this thing day or night. Or else we all are lost [INAUDIBLE] in high weeds. Then I sat down. All right. Then they called on Nelson Rockefeller. And I'll never forget it. He reached in his pocket, took out his speech. And he said, here it is. My secretary typed it up, brought it to me at the airport, or wherever it was. So I prepared. But after listening to what this man had to say, what on earth can somebody like me say? So for the next 10 or 15 minutes he kept wrestling with this thing. I never thought of myself as a man minority. And he tried to imagine what the feeling of that thing was. And that was his speech. Well, I got out of this-- 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University --as fast as I could. And then there are a lot of other things that go along this story that followed months and years after. But that is illustrative of the thing that I am talking about. Now the question-- the question all of you, could be all of us [INAUDIBLE]. What do you say, or what is your kind of faith or your kind of religion, or your kind of whatever it is say in your own right and name to the person with his back against the wall? Not what the organization you represent says, but what do you say? Now maybe you say exactly what your organization says. I don't know. But that's the question. Now-Excuse me. [INAUDIBLE]. Isn't it important that you know that if you are saying what your organization said, that it is really either what you truly believe as an individual or that you are merely representing the organization's point of view as distinguished from your own individual connection? If-- if you make it clear. Yeah. And then we get lost. And that's where the bite is. Yeah, right. You see? How can you have an organizational response to a person whose back is against the wall? I don't know. But you believe me, Karen. Mm-hmm. [LAUGHS] Now that's not nice. [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] Yes. Now let's-- see, one of the marvelous things about thinking is that you take your problem-whatever it is-- and keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing it, and pushing it, until you see the universal implications of it, until you put your problem in the widest, broadest, deepest context that you are capable of. And if you do that, then you can-- for your solution, you draw on these resources. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now this what you do in concert-- for instance, when you have a problem-- you're a professional. Now you're coming back to me. [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now you-[INTERPOSING VOICES] Now you're a professional. Now in the first place, if you'd analyze the thing that brings a person to see why do they come-- all right-- well, you know in the first place that they have a problem. But the first thing that you do with a problem-- you do it naturally-- is to try to locate it and define it. The classic book on this-- let me give you a reference-- a very simple book written 35 years ago by John Dewey, How We Think, a simple, terrifying of all the rancid minds, but from a fresh mind. Now when you locate your problem, then a lot of times that's your rule, to help them [INAUDIBLE] help them locate what's wrong. They don't know what's wrong. You help them locate and define it. Then sometimes to locate and define it is to solve it. If I come up in this room at night and I hear a scraping noise around there, and I come on around-- and all kinds of things come into my mind living in San Francisco when I hear that odd sound. And then I discover, let us say, that the window was open and the wind was making the curtain do that. Now when I locate it, I solve it. See, to locate it and define it, sometimes is to solve it. But suppose that just isn't the case. You haven't located that. And then I draw all of my personal resources, my wisdom, my experience. And there's nothing in my experience that can help me. So I go to somebody who has more experience, who has a richer resource. That's you. And you begin to make suggested solutions. And as you talk to them, one person, she said, well, you know, now my mother seemed to think-- now my mother told me that. And I tried it, but it didn't work. Or my husband's-- it just didn't work. So you go back again and you keep-- and they turn to you because you have a richer reservoir of suggested solutions than they have. Hence, you're the council. Yes? And what I was going to add is you keep on talking and you keep discovering that those things that you denied, dismissed, could be refocused. Right. Right. Right. But this is an insight that you share with them. You see? And sometimes, you see, once this happens they don't need you anymore. That's right. You know? No, you do. Hey. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University You know, they can go on their way. Now once the person settles on what seems to be the most promising suggestion, then there's one other step. And that's to do a dry run. Test it out. So the person you're talking to may ask you a lot of detailed questions. Now suppose he says this. Suppose this happens. And then after you do that, then you corroborate. You test it out and experience it. Now it seems me that is it is this framework that we are trying to put in the hands of the people who you're trying to help. This is what we do. And that's why you can't do anything for them. But you're trying to do something that enables them to get their hands on techniques and procedures that would do for them what you see can be done. You say to yourself, if knowing what you know and you were in their place, this is what you'd do. But they don't know. You see? So there certain elemental things they resort to that are available to people who are desperate. Now one of the things is the positive, and creative, and often explosive effect of fear on the consciousness of the individual, the fear. Now I want you to listen to this. And bear in mind what we've talked about. If you talking about techniques for survival when your back is against the wall, and you have got-- [INAUDIBLE] and you're fighting for your life, what is the role that fear plays in that circumstance? Now that's what I want you-- all right. Now we're ready. [AUDIO PLAYBACK] - Continuing our thinking together about Jesus and the disinherited, and this morning we are dealing again with the question of fear. Fear not that was the word. Fear, the great companion of the poor, the creeping, slinking hound ever on the trail of the be-deviled seekers for [INAUDIBLE] from oppression and wrong. The poor know fear, fear of a special breed, the poor. Jesus knew all of this. His days were nurtured in great hostilities, focused upon his kind, the sons of Israel. There was no moment in all his years when he was free. Sometimes in lonely places, beneath burning stars, wrapped in the silence of the hills, he felt eternal stirrings at his roots and knew that always beneath him, above, beyond, within, the god of life kept watch. This was the truth he felt. Fear not them who kill the body, and after that there is nothing more that they can do. But fear God. That is it. The fear of God, the fear of man-- which shall it be? The one lays bare the heart of reverence, pours wave after wave of healing balm upon the broken and forlorn, makes strong the failing [INAUDIBLE], renews the mind, and affirms the craving weary. It frees the self of [INAUDIBLE] care, nourishing the life with strange new courage. It is what the birds know as their wings lift them high above the planes. It is the quiet trust glimpsed in the eyes of carefree children. It is the blushness blossoming of roadside flowers, or the gliding confidence of fish through quiet or troubled waters. It is what burns in the prophet's eyes, or glows in the tranquil spirits of those who have come through great tribulation, the fear of God, the beginning of wisdom. Before the altars of its surging fire, the fear of man is rank and vile, the great blasphemy, the supreme sacrilege, the final corrosion. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Fear not, says Jesus. Let all the sons of man echo in their hearts the triumphant word. But fear is the emotional response to danger. It is the response to that which threatens the severing of the link that binds a man to the future. The future. And that is why the fear in the sense in which those who are on the outer rim of the common life, those who are not nurtured by the overall guarantee that gives to them a place of security in their world, summarize all of their reaction to fear as an atmosphere and a climate by the punitive focal fear of violence and death. Now one of the things that we observe when we look at fear as it operates in this fringe world-this fringe dimension of the common life that includes the vast population of this earth-- is this fear push far enough becomes the courage of despair. [INAUDIBLE] Fear crowded becomes a courage of despair. Now this kind of courage is grim, fierce, intense, desperate, inner destructive. It is like the-- let's see. It is like the electric light bulb that just outburns itself just before it goes out. Those you who are familiar with bulb stealing will know what I mean. [LAUGHTER] Now fear has an effect on the [INAUDIBLE]. It's so obviously to say. Now listen very carefully, if you please. - But it's important to say. Those who have been studying the body and studying the mind and studying the emotions tell us that fear causes certain bodily changes, certain changes in the chemistry. I'm not wise enough to say any more than that. I remember in seminary, my senior year one of my classmates preached a sermon on fear. And he talked about his childhood on a farm in Indiana. And his father kept bees. And he described how the bees always attacked if you were afraid. And now this may not be scientifically correct. I just have to quote him. He said that when you are frightened and you're working with bees, you generate what he called acetic acid. I don't know what kind of acid that is. [LAUGHTER] And nor do I know how to spell it, even. [LAUGHTER] But this is what he said. And the acetic acid appears in the moisture in the skin. Is very visible. The moisture may be invisible, but the bees know this. And they move in for the kill. [LAUGHTER] Now the response of the organism to these changes expresses itself in two positive dimensions. One, the dimension of flight. Flight. And the other is to resist, to fight. And it is with this letter 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu that that fear push finally becomes a current of despair. Now the tragic thing is that when the response is flight for the master, there is nowhere to run. That's it. Nowhere to go. Pitts Theology Library Emory University - For flight means nearly escape from the particular expression of the attitude of the environment. It does not mean as escape from the attitude. For wherever you run, you encounter the manifestation of the same thing. That's right. - Now Jesus understood this, I think. And he made and attacked upon it not by singling out this particular thing and dealing with it. But he made a fundamental attack upon the experience of fear, and the kind of insistence which is fundamental to his religious insight and his religious experience. I do not know what the psychologists or the psychiatrists would say about how the poor or the weak or the desperate can reduce to manageable units their fear, so that in the presence of their fear their lives may be lived with some measure of meaning and dignity. I do not know how they would grapple with this problem. There is enough difficulty involved in dealing with the particular kinds of fears with which all of us are more or less familiar. So I don't know what they would say. But I know about the religion of Jesus. And they always come out of the same place. But the religion of Jesus says that there is an answer to the fundamental problem that is raised in this kind of fear. And that problem is, who am I? How can I escape the fear that is created by the bondage of the stereotype? The bondage of the stereotype. Which tends always to nullify, to cancel out the private significance of the individual, the personal worth of the individual independent of any kind of classification, any kind of status, any kind of position, any kind of judgment that is passed upon the individual by the prestige bearing or non-prestige bearing elements in the environment. How-[END PLAYBACK] I want to take a minute. Escaping the bondage of the spirit, so that I am not I. But I am a member of a class or a group. That works both ways. It's funny. Now I don't know any answers to any of this business. Gee, whiz. But I remember years ago when Roland Hayes was skyrocketing. Someone wrote a biography of his life. And, I don't know, I guess I was in college or seminary or somewhere when the book came out. And in it, this person quoted a conversation that he had with Roland Hayes' mother. I could see myself that Saturday afternoon sitting up in my room in the dormitory, reading this thing, and how I got up and walked up and down. And this is what Roland Hayes' mother said. This is the other side of the thing that I'm talking about. She said all these things, the singing for the king or the queen or whatever, all of it was good, she said. It was wonderful. But Roland, remember you are a negro. All right. Now when I read that, I got out of my skin and walked around in my bones. [LAUGHTER] 7 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I said now, what? Who wrote this thing? What? What? What on earth is going on? This is vicious. And I think they're putting words in this old lady's mouth. This is my reaction at 21, or whatever I was. And then years after, it began to dawn upon me based upon my own experience, that wherever else I landed out here, I couldn't get out there without that first admission. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That's right. You see, I had to just state it in a categorical cliche, if I can put two words together. In order for me to be at home everywhere, I had to be at home somewhere. I had to be at home some-- and this is what the old lady saw. Mm-hmm. OK. But when I was 21 or 22, I couldn't see that. I thought she was saying stay in your place. She wasn't saying that at all. You see? So that in arresting what I call whatever it is, the stereotype-I'll use a phrase there. Bondage. Yeah, bondage is a stereotype. It is a very significant phrase, a very significant use of the term. And my mind was going through a very narrow passage there. Because there's a difference, you see, between the bondage of the stereotype-- whether it's economic or social or whatever it is [INAUDIBLE]-- and therefore be imprisoned by it. The key is bondage. Right. Than to lay claim to your own root, and standing with that as a solid foundation go forth. Go forth. Now this is-- now the difference between that and a lot of other things you're going through now, I can't deal with anything that threatens my life if I don't know who I am. If I don't know who I am, then I-- so that I can't take my stand to affirm whatever it is that is I, was which my environment has to deal, the world has to deal. In other words, what I'm really saying-- and I don't want to wear it out-- is that if I have no sense of self, then I have to be defined by anybody who is big enough to define me. So I'm out there [INAUDIBLE] will you tell me who I am, please? Yeah. And you can be defined several times. That's right. That's right. In an hour. That's right. That's right. Give me a name. And the tragedy, the social tragedy that people who are on the periphery of society-- the tragedy is that because they're there, they seem to themselves to be anonymous. Anonymous. And when you help them define themselves, your work is just then beginning. I come back to something you said the other day, when these people 8 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu who now are sitting at the table and are doing something above budget whether they spell the word or not. That's right. Yes, please. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now that's the first major step. But we don't know how to do the thing that follows from that, so that the new sense of self that is initiated by giving them a seat at the table and a pencil must be given a content that they've never had. And we have so-- we don't know. We don't know. We haven't-- I don't know what the word is. But we have very few skills for helping them to develop this content. And then we also-- the bondage of the stereotype comes in right in that spot. Because the people who are now supposed to help them-- not people like me anymore, but people within the system, the school districts, and the people like that who didn't think they were capable in the first place. But the mandate said they had to be doing it. So that's the last person to look-- not people like me. We've been shut out. We can't go into the social institution. So they're victims of the bandage, because they don't think they can do it in the first place. And so because they don't think they do it, they are not helping them to. So the only thing they know how to do is to hold this pencil up and says I won't sign off. Because after all, I'm the budget chairman. Yeah. You see, and the whole new kind of technique has to be developed. Because if there were no roadblocks at all to keep us from doing this-Exactly. --would we know how to help them put in this thing? You need professionals. You know? Because we've had very little opportunity to learn how to do this. You see? Because those of us who are used to this, we are still trying to do it. [INTERPOSING VOICES] We're trying to-- one of the jokes in our family after old Nixon became president-[LAUGHTER] That's the joke in the country a while back. Oh, it was. [LAUGHTER] 9 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Oh, for one of the great jokes that whenever anybody was down, you wanted to give them one of this. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] That's cute. Pitts Theology Library Emory University [INAUDIBLE]. So guess what Nixon said to Pat the first morning they woke up in the White House? Pat, I've been president one night. Or like the man in my town who is the showman, who was an old rich fellow. And he got a Locomobile. Nobody in this room is old enough to know what a Loco-- but it was a [INAUDIBLE]. I mean, you had to be in the chips to have a Locomobile. Big thing, seven passenger. And if it didn't sing in a second, it wasn't a Locomobile. [LAUGHTER] That was the phrase. So when this man dies, he loved his chauffeur so that he give him this automobile. [INAUDIBLE] Now when this man-- after that, whenever he drove the automobile he had a cigar in his mouth even though he didn't smoke. Because he didn't want anyone to think he was the chauffeur. [LAUGHTER] Now this is what I'm talking about. You see? So that if tonight-- if tonight it were possible for all of us to get to the pencil holder-- and let us say the pencil holder was without suspicion of us. How on earth will we go about supplying this thing that they would need? And fortunately-- and I say fortunately as I break my heart-- we don't have the opportunity to make the discovery of our own bankruptcy at that point. That's right. But we had better get ready. You know? Because over night there can be the death of one person-That's right. The domino effect [INAUDIBLE]. --or 10 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1976) AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-306_A.html" ></iframe> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-306_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Afternoon Seminar, Concludes Morning, Jesus and the Disinherited VII, VIII (Jesus and the Disinherited) [Side A], 1976 Feb 28 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/28/76 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Description An account of the resource In this recording, Thurman discusses techniques used for surviving seemingly unsurvivable situations. He then tells an anecdote about a time he had his back against the wall, and how he got out of it. Thurman states that if one can’t differentiate between their organization and their self, then they’ll become lost. Thurman also advises on ways to solve one's problems. He says to take one’s problem, and to put it in the widest context possible to be able to fully understand it and find a solution. Or, one can locate their problem and then define it. And once they have done that they can go to someone else with more experience, and then go and try out possible solutions. Thurman then circles back to the feeling of having one’s back against the wall, and how to escape it. He talks about the fear one feels, and how it creates a fight of flight response. With flight, one runs away from a scenario, but fight is actively resisting. Jesus fought by attacking the idea of fear. Thurman concludes by analyzing the fear and cage that stereotypes create. He states that if one has no sense of self, then they will get defined by someone else. Stereotypes make people feel like they can’t do things, and then others start believing the same things, and everyone becomes trapped by these stereotypes. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mary Sellers Conley fear Jesus Self-identity stereotypes https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/2e6687379a668b79a79faf89356d5c9e.pdf 8f1761b5d9e5744c4361d9b823f70879 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-306_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Well, when first went to Howard, we lived on the campus. And there's a picket fence separating our yard from the sidewalk. The main drag in Howard came down this way. Then there's a sidewalk that came down by our house up to 6th Street here. So the Western Union boys would come down that long drag on their bicycles, turn here, and ride along outside that picket fence. And my dog Barrymore always played a game with these, where usually by the middle of the morning, he would come on and take his position on our front porch. And he'd watch Western Union boys coming all the way down the drag. And he'd watch him. And when he turned to come down opposite our picket fence, Barrymore would meet him in the corner and bark him all the way down to the end of our yard, and then get back up to wait for the next one. And one day we had a terrible snowstorm. And there were 4 foot banks of snow in the corners. Barrymore played his usual game. And he was running, and the momentum carried him up the hill, up, up this bank of snow, and he was over the fence before we knew it. And there was nothing between him and the bicycles. And he began screaming. He panicked. And I ran out to see whether somebody was hurt. And nobody was hurting. But when he found that there was no barrier between him and-- he didn't know what to do. Now, you know we might wake up tomorrow morning. You can't beat the manipulator of this universe. You may wake up tomorrow morning, and here it is. And I'm not sure how you'd go about supplying what we see the pencil holder needs so that finally he won't get a cramp in his hand holding the pencil so that he can't get it down to write. Yes? Do we have to separate these two processes? What burden do we bear to coalesce the process of sense of self within the context? You see, I think-- if I understand your question-- you see, I think a part of the definition of the sense of self is to work out its meaning in all of these connections, not only-- and then in the context of all my relationships. Yes. Excuse me, I didn't mean to-- But you see, the way our society is arranged, very rarely are we called upon to work it out in the dimension that I'm talking about. Yeah. That's-- You see? But now and then-- now and then. But in some ways, we can't anticipate, some ways we cannot anticipate, we are occasionally thrown into a position where this is our opportunity. Yes. And I want to be sure that I know what I'm talking about-- I mean, I've said what I'm thinking. In anticipation of the new sense of self within the context of the member of the parent advisory committee, we begin with the pencil in hand on some dry runs, and all of that. Maybe I'm just being idealistic. That's what I'm trying to say. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Well, on that point-- here again, in the early realities of the war here and the migration, a group of women-- what did they call themselves? The Bay Area something-something female-- no, they didn't call it female something. But it was made up of women. And they staked out one of their things. That was to help the people who'd come in from Alabama, Mississippi, West Texas, and so forth, who had never voted-- to help them learn what to do, how to take the pencil down. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So they went down to the city hall and borrowed four or five voting machines, put them up in the old Booker T. Washington Center, and every Sunday afternoon, they were there teaching all the people who lived all around [INAUDIBLE] everywhere who would come there on Sunday to teach them how to manipulate the voting machine. Now, another illustration of another aspect of this thing. I was going from Texarkana, Texas down to Houston. And my train got into someplace like Big Sandy, Texas about 2 o'clock in the morning. And you had to wait there about three hours to get the trains going on through to Houston. I got off the train. And then out of nowhere this man began walking with me. He was Negro fellow. And he said, are you coming here to stay some time? And I said, no, sir. I'm just waiting for the next train. It's coming by in about two hours and a half. And he said, well, this is the last train that comes until your train comes. And [INAUDIBLE] every train is late, because this afternoon the deputy Sheriff was killed. And the town is wild. They're going through and it's a dangerous time for any Negro to be anywhere. And so I came down to meet the train. So if you're a stranger, you don't have anywhere to stay, I know where I could take you. And he said, since you are not staying, I want to tell you what you must do. Now you sit in the railway station in the light with your suitcase at your feet. So if the mob sweeps through you, they will know you don't belong here. You had nothing to do with this. You're-- and if you have to get some information from a ticket agent, and you go to the window and you ask him something and he doesn't answer, don't give him any lip. Because then he might blow your brains out. So you just sit here. Well, I was [INAUDIBLE] got [INAUDIBLE] and I moved to the steps, had my bag in front of me. And I was still in the light. You know how you feel the presence of a person? Because we aren't too far removed from our animal history. And you can sense the presence of a thing that you can't see. And I felt this person. And then I heard these words-- if I was a Negro. And he got that far, and he emerged out of the shadows in the light of the window so the light feel across his face. He was an old Texan without the dignity of the [? Carl Hand. ?] I mean, he was a run-down somewhat demolished man. And he said, now, if I was a Negro, I'd about this voting business, I tell you what I'd do. He was still looking out that way. He wasn't looking at me. He said, you know, this Negro dentist lost his case at the Supreme Court, because he was trying to get the Supreme Court to break the back of the Texas primaries so the Negro could vote. He lost. Now he's going to keep going until one day a court is going to turn yes. And then every 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Negro in Texas who registers can vote. And all decent people like me will be put out in the Gulf of Mexico. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And then he said, now, that is going to happen. Now, if I was a Negro, this is what I would do. I listened to him. Every time the white people voted, I would have booths set up in every Negro lodge, every Negro church, every Negro barber shop, every Negro restaurant, and we'd all vote on the same people that the white people voted on uptown. And then when the voting was over, we would declare our own little people who had won and tear the ballots up, because it wouldn't mean a damn thing. But the next time I'd do it. And you know why I'd do that? Because you see, all of us would get the [? habit. ?] Because when the Supreme Court finally says you can vote if you don't have the [? habit, ?] by the time you get to heaven we'll find another way. Heaven [INAUDIBLE] And he went on out down the railroad platform and disappeared. Now, this is the principle that I'm gonna talk about. This man saw it. Now back to the point. If suddenly we had free and easy access to the people with the pencils, could we have them supply the things that they would need to bring the pencil down and do this? I believe so. I really do. I think that's my dilemma. That's how you got to me last night. Because that's really what I'm going through. It's a trust relationship. It's a trust. It's the real conviction that the high expectations-- people are victims of low expectations-- the manner in which they were selected, the manner in which they were elected, appointed, or anointed. That's one of the things-- how did they get there. So I want to really look at the whole thing. I want to look at how did they get there in the first place, and to get them to see the dynamics of their placement. Then the second, I'm concerned about how they were oriented. And I really feel the kind of orientation that we could do together-- the person who has been selected-- that there should be some tutoring. There should be kind of mutual tutoring. How did you feel when you went in this really roleplaying the advisory councils they'd had before? And really saying that I really want to look at this. I want to look at your role as a member of this group, as a decision maker. And really, I want to take a look at the kind of guidelines that you have to go by. And let's read through those guidelines together. And that's really helping me, because I want to know, too. I want to know how to do this, because this is a very brand-new role that I will be playing. So somehow or another, I see a need to have a mutual conversation and communication with the person who's got this new position. And then I want to do something tryouts, some testing out, some role-playing, something really challenging, where I play the role of the principal, or 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu whoever that is they always have so much trouble with, challenging them and talking down, and then getting them to realize how we can communicate with each other. Almost a play-acting kind of thing, where I play a brand-new role with them, which I was too busy to do the last go round, but have plenty of time to do now-- so busy fighting something else. Yeah. Right. You were going to say something? Pitts Theology Library Emory University But now this is really the main thing. That is, how do we help people to do this role? But most of all, how do we make professionals aware of how to do it where we're not slobbering over it? Yes, I want to say something similar to that. I have an experience similar to that. And I've been in a quandary as to how to develop this trust and how to eliminate the barrier for our communications. And on the other hand, we have individuals who have demonstrated at a certain level that they can now become councillors. And what I wanted to do was to start with the framework of developing them-- the understanding of the difference between a professional and non-professional. Just generic information. And there was some suspicion on the part of the director as to whether I should do it that way. So I had to revise it into the way that he suggested but never lose sight of the goal that I had to go back and try to develop that philosophy so that we could all have a great [INAUDIBLE] about what we were doing. So I got some ideas from Opal, but I had also worked out these particular ideas by finding that I'm going to have to move very slowly [INAUDIBLE] until I can eliminate that element of suspicion on the part of the director. Yes. And also, to deal with the suspicion [INAUDIBLE] which the director causes you to have of him. I began to feel that I was one of the-- and now I'm wondering if there is really this true interest on behalf of the clients that they are serving, on behalf of the staff who worked there, and then my behalf. You know, I'm a very insignificant person. And I'm wondering if this suspicion is not demonstrated in terms of sabotage and some other ways when you try to do something to [INAUDIBLE] Well, we see the setting for this thing. And Joyce. Do you want to take a break, Howard, it's a quarter to 5:00. No. Yes. Quarter to 5:00? The time you pass says, oh, you've used this [INAUDIBLE] 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Quarter to 5:00? We've been [INAUDIBLE] for 45 minutes. All right. Let's stop, then. Or I can [INAUDIBLE] and you all listen to him. No, no, no. We don't want to have divided minds. So let's just break. And then-- Pitts Theology Library Emory University [INTERPOSING VOICES] This was a key a method that enabled them to escape destruction. But the method doesn't know anything about that. The method only knows how to method. You mean external destruction, not really the-- [INAUDIBLE] but it's kind of like selfdestruction, too. But you see, it's hard to dry the line, you know. Somewhere in the category of your experience, you've got to have something somewhere that affirms you. You've got to have-Otherwise you're going to self-destruct. That's right. You've got to have it. And you see, the tragedy for so much in our lives is the fact that we have-- [INAUDIBLE] wonderful. Like a sticky little thing. Wonderful. [INAUDIBLE] You were anticipating [INAUDIBLE] wonderful [INAUDIBLE] The tragedy that we have grown up over a 100 years or more in a social climate in which there was no immediate protection against the profoundest kind of humiliation so that whether it was your father [INAUDIBLE] or your mother, so that the only-- oh, thank you, Virginia. I wondered what all the [INAUDIBLE] they were. Good, thank you. Do you want anything to drink? No, I have some. [INAUDIBLE] brought me some coffee. Thank you. So that it is really rebuilding the whole ego's structure. And one of the reasons why in my own youth [INAUDIBLE] one of the things that sent me for instance to the exploration of the whole excavation and all that of Negro spirituals was right there. Because I had to find something that gave a certain kind of [? iron ?] that then survived a culture under circumstances in which survival was most [? impossibly ?] a rational thing in the [? world. ?] 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And I think-- I don't know how to do this, of course-- but we've got to find the problem of the poor in a society in which wealth, or what I'm calling wealth, the absence of poverty, is an expression of the bias of the universe. It just isn't bad management. So there's a fundamental difference between being poor and being poverty stricken. Pitts Theology Library Emory University That's very true. You see. And the technique-- the resurrection, or whatever it is, rehabilitation, or redefinition-this need for it is very different in dealing with these two-Cultures. --two separate entities. And one is a quality of being. And the other is a status or a condition. And you can deal with one by giving jobs and so on, and so on, so. But yes, please. See, but the eligibility worker does it a little bit different. That's right. She doesn't know one from the other. And she doesn't know the difference between the poor in heart and poor in spirit, and the just poor without money. And this has really been very hard for us to really talk about. And you see, then we have people-- what we've done is we've created a pecking order in the communities, where they don't even want to say they are poor. They don't want to be identified with poor people. That's the proud people. That's the people who are with low income, but feel very good about themselves. This whole business feeling good about yourself has really come in there, and it's cut down the strengths of the neighborhoods. That cut the hopefulness. It has been cut out. And so now they are fighting each other. What I'm really trying to say is that our social welfare system has really helped to really create a divisiveness among its clients. I think also the schools, too. Often because here, you know, we're giving a pass where the kids are abusing the so-called free lunch program. This is what some people say [INAUDIBLE]. Parents should get up and make their lunches and so forth. So consequently, some of the teachers police the children and look in their [? cum ?] file. They have a car, and they have their child down there getting free lunch. So this divides a school, too-- the high school students. Those are free lunch kids over there. You see, so I see this whole thing, what you said, too. Exactly. So that's just compounding. Yeah. You were going to say something to Jane? Everybody should get a free lunch. It gives back to your concept of brotherhood. Just because you're there, you're a brother. You might be hungry. 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Are you going to deal with pacing yourself? Well, you know, we have more than [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University I don't know. Pacing yourself. It may be that that will come in the tape that you wanted to do tomorrow. [INAUDIBLE] we're going to try to put it all together if you want to-- is everybody here? Where is Melissa? Jean. What? Jean. She went back to [INAUDIBLE] That is a professional. You know, Dr. Thurman, you said something this morning before we took the break on, what kind of self concept, what kind of armor do you have that kind of helps you when your back is against the wall? What have we got? I've been thinking about that. And that's what I was thinking about the other day when I was trying to find out what leadership is, if I knew where that definition is. I was trying to struggle through it. And I thought about it. Because you've been really reinforcing this each day that we've been here, talking about your parents, and talking about your heritage, and talking about the kind of relationship that you had with your mother, with your grandmother, and the whole family, the whole sense of identity and oneness with the family. And I think if you asked me that question, I guess that would be what I would tie into that kind of equipment, having somebody who many, many years ago really told me I was somebody and had a potential of being somebody, even though the forces outside my house-- in Tyler, Texas, incidentally. Yeah, I know that place. Tyler, Texas. Everybody in Tyler, Texas that I knew did not say the same thing. And every force in Tyler, Texas really was a struggle. And when I think about the fact that-- I used to live in front of a cemetery, I never told you this. And when I was a young child, the Ku Klux Klan used to have a [INAUDIBLE] [? Ford. ?] And they used to, right in front of the tombstones over there across the street from my house, that's where they would line up to go on their whatever they were doing at night. And I was afraid, deathly, of the Ku Klux Klan, because what I knew they had done. And I'll never forget the kind of way that I was taught to cope with racial prejudice and bigotry and discrimination in Tyler, Texas, was to have a sense of humor. And I used to play a game. 7 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And I find myself now coping that very same way. I play a game. And I know it's a game. And I used to outdo white people. And when they'd do something to me, I would figure out a way that I could outdo them in the way in which I related to them-- with humor. I'm very skilled. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Right. Now, you know on that-- On that point, I think we are ready to go to-- you opened it up, [? something. ?] Let's go to deception. We go to deception now. [LAUGHTER] But it did work in Pasadena. [LAUGHTER] It did work in Pasadena. [INAUDIBLE] Tyler. [LAUGHTER] Can you find it? It remains me. When I was a little girl, I saw my mother pick up the shovel and threaten the chairman of the board [INTERPOSING VOICES] And she taught me an approach, that frequently you'd like to shovel a person. Oh, I don't know. [LAUGHTER] She did it. Come one step closer to me and I'll break your-- You want to stay with [INAUDIBLE] are you reading, or you want to write on [INAUDIBLE] I think you've got to go straight. All right. Down on the corner to the left. Wherever we sit we'll get together. Take it just a minute. All right. Do it. Can I kind of-- 8 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Yes, you can. --do a few things? When [? Opal ?] was describing, [INAUDIBLE] talking about putting that pencil down, I'm seeing it in maybe a complicated way. I see my role in helping get the pencil down. But I see having to work through a lot of misconceptions, a lot of dependency. That ain't easy. Because a lot of folks don't want to look at it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Some of it is superimposed on the [INAUDIBLE], even at far above poverty level-- an interpretation of who we are and how you identify a more violent form of racism than having to go to the toilet assigned, "colored." No. And you see, and not only do we become like the thing we love, we become like the thing we fear. Like the thing we what? We fear. Oh, fear. And I think-- are you ready, [INAUDIBLE] Ready in a [? second. ?] Well, I'll stop talking. That's a heavy, though, you left us in. Yes, you see, it is psychologically understandable that towards the thing we love, all the doors open. I mean, everything is open. So that we assume-- and this is right-- we assume that we become influenced, become like the thing we love. But the other side of it is also true. The thing that threatens us, that holds us at bay, over a time interval of sufficient duration, a very interesting thing happens to the person. That is heavy. Can't [INAUDIBLE] Your nervous system commits the thing that threatens. Your nervous system commits the anatomy of that thing to memory. So when you get in the position-- for instance, let's do it graphically. If for a x number of years, I'm down here and the heel is right here, so that a heel blocks our my whole horizon, my nervous system commits the heel to memory. So when I get up from there and I'm standing up, then the behavior panel I must unlearn is not to take that heel and do it to the other person-- exactly what over this long time interval was done to me. 9 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, so in that sense, we become like the thing that threatens, if it threatens us over a long time interval as to dominate our focus and our attention. Good case in point would be some emerging African nation. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Yes. Yes. Yes. We've seen this phenomenon of some of the minorities who get [INAUDIBLE] and they became the tyrants [INAUDIBLE] Where in the totality of the experience have the synapses that control everything to learn anything differently? So that somebody has to stand to be there at the moment of moral crisis to define what it is they're doing now. This is precisely a duplication of what was happening to you when you were down there. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Whole lot of things. Of course. That's what we want to do. That's the whole point. Every Friday, I like to tell-- look, you know what? You know, call people to the phone, they make people wait. They did the very same things to their neighbors that the caseworkers did to them. But every Friday I was reminding them about that. Yeah, but can we expect anything differently? Yeah. I hope so. I hope so. I think the first thing we've got to understand is the anatomy of the behavior. So that you don't react too emotionally and say it's wrong or-- I mean, that's stupid. But if we understand, then we are in a position to set up another kind of behavior. And you can't do it overnight. And the man knew all that. The Negroes just wait. We just wait. I'll wait. I got [INAUDIBLE] Right down under that old tree at the crossing. And while he's waiting, he's saying, y'all unify. [LAUGHTER] Who speaks for you all? All you need to do is look at your urban centers. Go unify. The black [INAUDIBLE] urban centers. The white folks just waiting for them to collapse. Then they'll move right back again. 10 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu You know, there's a legend that all of my friends in Nigeria are telling me at the [INAUDIBLE]. I think something is going to be written one of the novelists' books. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The legend is that there was a time of famine among all the birds, [INAUDIBLE] and they starved to death. It happened to turtles and everything else. They just couldn't get anything to eat. But the word came on day that the king of the birds up there had prepared a tremendous banquet. And at last all the birds could get together and get on up there and eat and live. But turtle couldn't fly. And he went around and said, you know I can't fly. But if you just help me-- a feather from you, a feather from you. And one of the birds said, you know, you are a crook. You can't be depended upon. He said, oh, I'm a changed man. I'm hungry. So they put together all these feathers and gave him wings. And he went on up there. Now, then they were waiting for the great doors to swing wide so they come in. The turtle said, oh, I've been around. You people have-- you haven't been exposed to [INAUDIBLE]. Let me talk for you. And he said, one of the first things you have to do is everybody has to have a name. You just can't be an eagle. You've got to be John Eagle or somebody. Everybody has to name [INAUDIBLE]. And my name is All Of You. So when the king of the feasts came out. And the turtle moves to speak and said, now, for whom did you prepare all of this? He said, for all of you. And he turned to the birds saying, I'm very sorry, but that's my name. [LAUGHTER] And he went on in there and he ate. And so the problem was, how in the world is he going to get back? So they took their feathers back. And he just begged. They said no. Like they should have done. So he said to the owl now, you've always been kind of friendly. Now, when you get back down there, tell my wife-[LAUGHTER] Tell my wife to take all the blankets, all the pillows, mattresses, everything soft, and put it in the yard. So-[LAUGHTER] --when I fall, I land on something soft. So the owl said, yes, I'll do that. So he told his wife, your husband will be coming-He ain't coming home. 11 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu [LAUGHTER] And he wants the loudest possible welcome. So he wants you to have every kind of metal-- That's right. Convince owl. [LAUGHTER] Did you hear the title of this next part is "deception"? [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University [LAUGHTER] And so every can, everything. And when he came down, he hit it. And that's why the turtle's shell has all these little pieces in it. That's the legend [INAUDIBLE]. That's nice. That's very nice. Now, Joyce. Now we're ready. That was good. Lord, look at the time. It sure did go fast. It's too fast. Slow up. [SIDE CONVERSATIONS] [AUDIO PLAYBACK] - I am continuing our thinking together on Jesus and the disinherited, not only because of some [? eminent ?] necessity, but because it is very important that we surround our own minds and spirits with as much insight and understanding [? with ?] reference to the life of Jesus as we possibly can, while we are being stampeded during this period by so much that detracts from the heart and pulse beat of his religion and his concerns. We begin dealing this morning with the question of hypocrisy, of deception. As one of the hounds of hell dogging the footsteps of the disinherited, of the weak, of the disadvantaged, of the poor, deception is often a technique of survival for the weak, for the poor. It is a method, a device, a process, even an experience, by which the individual who is unable to measure arms with the adversary can lengthen the brittle thread of his life, even when to do so seems to be a great irrationality. 12 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, the fundamental proposition to which I will invite your attention is this-- when deception serves as a device for-- 13 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1976) AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-306_B.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited transcript - GL 5/23/19 Cross-reference with BU finding aid indicates this series may have been at Morehouse - SR 2021/03/04 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-306_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Afternoon Seminar, Concludes Morning, Jesus and the Disinherited VII, VIII (Jesus and the Disinherited) [Side B], 1976 Feb 28 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/28/76 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Description An account of the resource Thurman starts this recording by telling multiple anecdotes that focus on the idea of sense of self, and the idea that people are victims to low expectations. He then proceeds to talk about how he wants to question how people in power got there, and the idea of mutual communication between people. He not only talks about relationships between people, but also how to escape one's own self destruction. Thurman also gives his opinions on the world that humans have created and how society is set up. There’s no protection from humiliation, and the world is divided. There is also divisiveness in the social welfare system with abuse of free lunch policies at schools. Thurman then relates that to brotherhood in the sense that if one is a part of the school, one should get a free lunch. He also gives advice on how to protect oneself when your back is against the wall, and the ways that he coped with bigotry and racism growing up. He also talks about the fact that a lot of people don’t want to look at more violent racism, and that society not only becomes like the things people like, but also the things they fear. Finally, he finishes by talking about deception, and the fact that it is a tool of the weak. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mary Sellers Conley deception division welfare https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/4d4e144797a44ab03177d5f613d27ba3.pdf b8a407a3880f9537ad8cb4fc59d5ae0a PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-619_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University As we sit together surrounded by the climate of silence and reflection, there are many things that crowd in upon us. The long shadows cast by the events of the last year so recently passed. The high resolves with which we began it. The stumbling, faltering ways by which we ended it. The narrow escapes from violence within and without. The high moments when it seemed as if for one swirling second all the goodness and beauty and completeness of life were contained. Those hours of sadness and tears, when that was taken from our midst, someone whose life was deeply entwined with ours, and since they are journeying. The way has been hard and difficult, with no bond to heal the ruptured life, the broken heart. The long shadow of the events of the year that has passed so recently is upon us as we sit here, our father. We do not quite know all together how to face the future. We do not know what there is in store for us tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But as we share the meaning of this moment, our father, gentle our spirit with thy great calm, that we shall not be afraid, that we may be sustained whatever may betide us. This is not our only option, our father. But we turn to it with confidence and with hope. Leave us not in the despairing grasp of what may be our own futilities. Oh God, God of our spirit. Wherever there appears in human history a personality whose story is available and whose reach extends far in all directions, the question of his working paper is as crucial as is the significance of his life. We want to know what were the lines along which he decided to live his life. How did he relate himself to the central issues of his time? What were the questions which he had to answer? Was he under some necessity to give a universal character to his most private experience? Our attention is called to such a figure because of the impact which his life makes upon human history. For what is human history but man's working paper as he rides high to life, caught often in the swirling eddies of tremendous impersonal forces set in motion by a vast impulse out of the womb of the eternal. When a solitary individual is able to mingle his strength with the forces of history and emerge with a name or character or personality, it is no ordinary achievement. It is more than the fact that there is a record of his life, as singular as that fact may be. It means that against the background of anonymity, he has emerged; articulate and particular. And this is an achievement. Such a figure was Jesus of Nazareth. To some, he is the grand prototype of all the distilled longing of mankind for fulfillment, for wholeness, for perfection. To some, he is the eternal presence hovering over all the myriad needs of humanity, yielding healing for the sick of body 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu and soul, giving a lift to those who weariness has overtaken in the long march, and calling out hidden purposes of destiny, which are the common heritage. To some, he is more than a presence. He is the God fact; the divine moment in human sin and human misery. Pitts Theology Library Emory University To still others, he is a man who found the answer to life's riddle. And out of a profound gratitude, he becomes the man most worthy of honor and praise. For such, his answer becomes humanity's answer, and his life the common claim. In him, the miracle of the working paper is writ large for what he did all men may do. Thus interpreted, he belongs to no age and no race and no creed. When men look into his face, they see edged the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts wish thank you, and thank god. 10 years ago-- and I should say, parenthetically, this is not a plug-- but 10 years ago I sat down in written form an answer to a problem with which I had been wrestling all my life as touching the impact and the significance of Jesus of Nazareth. It is my purpose during the next few weeks to take another long, hard look at this, for much has transpired since that time. And you will pardon me as we work along together if here and there some other things that I have to say may seem to you so intimately private that I may seem to be living my private life in public. I begin then with the first moment when I had to deal with the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ on the life of people devoted to him as Savior, and the effect that that impact, with all of its integrity of meaning and purpose, the effect that it had on me as a little boy. It was the first time that I had ever seen a man die. It was my father. I was a boy, seven years old, and he was a man, 55 years old. My mother and I stood beside his bed-- I on one side, and she on the other-- as his giant frame, for he was a big man, wrestled in the last agonizing stages of the fight for air when the body is a victim of double pneumonia. That could be heard all through the rooms which we occupied as our home. That sound which once it is heard can never be forgotten. The sound which in our community was called the death rattle; the fight of the lungs for air. My mother was very devout. And as she watched my father die, she said, calling him by name, Saul-- for his name was Saul Solomon Thurman-- Saul, can you hear me? And between these gasps, he said, yes. Shook his head. "Are you ready to die?" she said. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And then with all of the effort available to him, possible to him, with punctuated gas, he said, Alice-- calling my mother by name-- all my life, I've been a man. I can face death. I'm not afraid of it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And with that, his huge body was lifted as it were out of the bed, and my mother and I held him down by shear force. And then there was that great spasm, and he died. The minister of our little church, because my father died out of Christ, felt that in all honesty-and here I do not speak with vindictiveness and judgment now-- he felt with all honesty that he could not have my father buried from the little church, nor could he take the service himself. Now, this posed a crucial problem, for it meant that our only other option was to have the funeral in one of the two rooms that we occupied. This was not possible. We could not have it at the undertaking parlor downtown, because the undertaker would not even embalm us there. If we were embalmed, we had to be embalmed at the place where we died. Therefore we could not even be buried in such a place. So my grandmother went to talk with the minister. And she said-- to talk with the deacons of the church. I'm sorry. She said, the minister has said that Saul cannot be buried from the church. Now, ministers come and go, but deacons are here with us. So what are you going to do about it? And the deacon said, of course, he can be buried from the church. But who would take the service? And then a traveling evangelist appeared, and he offered his services to this little heartbroken family. And we were very happy because of what it meant. And then at the funeral, as I sat with my mother and grandmother on the mourners seat, listening to the minister, it suddenly struck me with great horror that what he was doing was preaching my father into hell, and had seized upon this dramatic moment as an object lesson to all sinners and all persons who had not confessed to Christ. This is what happens to you. And I said to my mother, mama, he didn't understand Papa, did he? Didn't know Papa. I kept building this thing in me, saying it over and over again. And then, finally, she reached over and put our hands on my knees to communicate the great tenderness that always rode high on her spirit. And I was quieted. But coming back from the graveyard, I talked it out with them. They tried to explain to me what it was that was at work here. I listened, but I could not understand. And as a seven-year-old boy, I said, well, one thing is certain, that if I ever grow up to be a man, I will never have anything to do with the church. Well, and here I am. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I have lived with this dimension of the impact. Now, I want you to follow me carefully now for a little while. So this began my search. Jesus. Was that his gospel, really? Pitts Theology Library Emory University Here you see is an honest, authentic response to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the response to which the individuals felt called upon to put the strength of their arm against the weak, the needy, because the weak and the needy had not given voice to the magic formula upon which the salvation of Jesus Christ rested. And a little later, when I began to encounter all the circuitous and terrifying problems of the various kinds of violences in my environment, and as I looked out upon the great divide that separated Christians from each other, the crucial problem began to mount more and more frontally in my mind and in my thoughts. And strangely enough, all during the period I had worked out privately and intimately a place, a kind of fellowship-- I don't know quite how to put this-- but a meaning and a significance in the life of Jesus independent of all the things that were being said about him. He and I enjoyed each other. He was as real to me as my right hand. And sitting down on the sand dunes watching the waves of the Atlantic Ocean late at night, if anyone had come upon us, upon me, they would have thought that I was standing in immediate candidacy for some place of incarceration, because I was having conversation. I was talking with him about things, but never praying to him. This is very interesting. Talking with him about various things. I could hardly wait to get off by myself to compare notes. All this in my little imagination. So then on the one hand here was a Jesus, very real to me, no god at that time for me, but a very real personality, who had the listening ear. And on the other hand, here was all the other things around me done in his name often that could not be identified with the personality with whom I felt myself in almost constant fellowship. I don't know how to put this in any other way, but I do hope you understand me. So as the years unfolded, I had to face this. I had to find for myself what there was here in the life, in the record that was capable of administering to the needs of my mind and my spirit in a manner that would leave all of the impact of the things in my environment ineffective in their ability to snatch away from me the companionship which he provided. I was very grateful for the fact that I had spent so much time wrestling with this, getting no answers, and often confused and depressed, because in 1935, when I went to India, the first day at Colombo on an invitation from the principal of the Law College, I was asked to give a lecture on civil disabilities under states' rights in the United States. Well, this was quite something. Well, I didn't know anything about the technical jargon. I knew about civil disabilities. I didn't know very much about states' rights. That was just political theory that I didn't understand. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu So I apologized to these law students and the law faculty for the fact that I would not be able to speak in their language, their jargon, but I would talk about the thing experientially, and then they could transpose it into respectable jargon that fitted their pretensions. And this is what I proceeded to do. Pitts Theology Library Emory University At the end, there were two questions asked me; one by a young Hindu fellow who said, can you tell me out what kind of exhibit-- out of what kind of material exhibit number something was made that attorney Leibowitz used in his defense of the Scottsboro Boys in Decatur, Alabama, as he said. Well, I didn't know anything about that. And the second question, why did your community wait until the famous Euel Lee case on the eastern shore of Maryland, as he said, before you contested non-participation in jury service? Now, here are two fellows, who one a Hindu, one a Muslim, who had never been off the island of Ceylon raising that kind of question. This was 1935, before Sputnik. Then at the close, the principal invited me downstairs for coffee. And we drank our coffee in complete and utter silence. And then when the service was removed and the door was shut, he said, I did not intend to ask you any question, but after listening to you upstairs, I'm convinced you're an intelligent man. What are you doing over here? Oh, he said, I know what the newspapers say about a pilgrimage of friendship from the students of India-- from the students of America to the students of India, Burma, and Ceylon. But that doesn't answer my question. What are you doing over here? This is what I mean, he said. 300 years ago or more your forefathers were taken from the Western coast of Africa as slaves by Christians. He said one of the names of a very famous British slave vessel was Jesus. He said, you were sold in the new world to people who themselves were practicing Christians in a Christian country, a country started on the basis of Christianity. One of your famous Christian hymn writers, Sir John Newton, as he said, who wrote and published "Glad Tidings," "Tidings of Peace," and he quoted all of him. Oh, how sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear. He quoted all of that. Made all of his money by selling your forebears. 70 years ago you were freed by a man who himself was not a practicing Christian, but was a spearhead of certain political, social, and economic forces he himself did not quite understand. And now for that long interval since, you live in a Christian country in which you cannot be free, in which you proscribe that you are lynched, burned. He had all the catalogs. And one of my students went to Columbia to do an advanced degree in law. And he sent me a clipping back that described how in some place in your country, some man from your community was being hounded by a mob on a Sunday night. And the church dismissed its services that the men may join in the hunt. And when the man was done to death, they came back and resumed their worship of their Christian god. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, he said, here you are standing in that tradition talking to us. I do not wish to be rude to you, he said. But I think a man like you is a traitor to all the darker peoples of the Earth. And I wonder what you can say in defense of your position inasmuch as you are an intelligent man. Pitts Theology Library Emory University At last now there was brought into sharp focus the problem with which my mind and soul had been wrestling. Who was Jesus? Was he what the Christians say that he was? What was the primary accent of his life? Upon what did he place the emphasis? What kind of religion did he have? Was he on the side of the strong or the weak? The mighty and the powerful or the disinherited? Was his god the god of power and vengeance and authority and control, the god of veto and certification? Or was he some other kind of god? Who was he? And so I began working to see what kind of answers I could find, because if I could not a way, a clue in his life that could sustain the integrity of his meaning independent of all of the hallowed devotion as expressed in the devoted thought and the inspired moment, if I could not find for myself this, then I could not call myself a Christian. Who was he? On that answer turned the fate of my whole life, my whole life. The first thing that I found out, that's all I should have an opportunity to say now. The first thing that I found out that hit me with a sort of-- I don't know how to describe it, but it hit me. The first thing that I discovered was that Jesus Christ was a Jew. I just hadn't realized this. But he was a Jew. And again and again in pursuit of the implications of that discovery, I have been startled by what is disclosed in my mind. That almost did not equal. As great as is the miracle of this strange and wonderfully incisive and sensitive spirit is the miracle of the Jewish community itself. How on Earth? How on Earth or in the heavens could a band of human beings covenanted together by whatever may be the ties name them? How on Earth or in the heavens could they endure the kind of unrelieved, organized, created, devastating destruction from 70 AD down to the present time and still remain intact? I don't understand this. It confuses the very grounds of my spirit in an effort to get at a satisfactory rationalization for the phenomena. And out of the womb of that kind of experience in the movement of the forces that go to determine the significance of human history, Jesus came. So it is small wonder that Albert Schweitzer, whose birthday anniversary we celebrate today, says, he comes to us as one unknown without a name, as he came to the men by the seaside who knew him not. He speaks to us the same language. Follow me. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the trials and the sufferings and the sorrows and the joys through which they shall pass in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery. They shall learn in their own experience who he is. Who he is. Who he is. 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Leave us not alone, our father, in the torture of our minds and the tumult it stirs deep within our souls, but speak to us spirits thy calmness and tranquility that we may walk in the way that stretches out before us in thy trust. Oh God, our father. 7 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-619_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 1 and 2, 1959 Jan 11, 18 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-619_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 1, January 11, 1959 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-01-11 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 1 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. Begins by referring to Jesus' "working paper." Thurman's book was written about ten years prior, and he wants to take another look at these issues with consideration of all that has happened. He tells the story of his father's death and funeral when he was seven. As he grew he found he had a very intimate relationship with Jesus, even verbally discussing things with Jesus at night in the sand dunes. Jesus was a real personality to Thurman. However, he couldn't square this intimate, real "personality" Thurman had come to know with the things people said about Jesus.</p> <p>Later, when he traveled to India and asked why he was a Christian, when Christians had harmed the black people so terribly, even considering people like Thurman a traitor to his people by professing Christianity. That encounter led Thurman to go back and study the actual life of Jesus. He realized that Jesus was a Jew. Thurman began wondering how the Jewish people could have possibly endured all the suffering they had endured since AD 70 to the present, and in fact Jesus came out of that milieu of suffering community. He quotes Albert Schweitzer, and points out that people shall know Jesus by experience, even mystery, through the trials, sufferings and joys of life.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens Albert Schweitzer black history defense of Christianity experience father's death India Jesus Jewish history Jews mystic Saul Solomon Thurman slave history slave ship Jesus traitor working paper https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/9911dc7d3ceafdf527b74d97e945744a.pdf 5740bef5fa95fd02394edad568686977 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-623_B.mp3 [MUSIC PLAYING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University [CHANTING] Once a game, all men of tender hearts are disturbed because of the evil tidings, of the violence of the mob that once again moves in Mississippi. We feel in our own bodies the panic and the fear, and the pain, and the agony of the victim. We feel in our own minds and spirits the violence and the hate, and the fear, and the insecurity, and the discomfort of those who have made of another human being a victim. We settle ourselves in the midst of our own guilt and uneasiness of mind and spirit. We sense our shame, our humility, and some measure, our helplessness. Great and profound are the questions that turn over in our minds as we contemplate the meaning of the deed. Oh, God, who must somehow understand what does the [INAUDIBLE]. We have no words with which we come before Thee. The long strain of our contrition and our alibis somehow disintegrates in our hand. We would seek Thy forgiveness, but we do not quite know how, our Father. We would seek Thy love, but we do not quite know how. We offer our predicament to Thy scrutiny and Thy love, with the great and agonizing hope that our experience may not confound thy wisdom, and our frustration may not put Thee to route. We wait for the conservation that only Thou can give. Oh, God, God, our Father. [MUSIC PLAYING] We come this morning to our discussion of the 10th in our series on Jesus and the disinherited. One of my friends asked me the other day, when he saw number 10 out on the bulletin board, who is the 10th man to be disinherited? He was sure he was the ninth. As the background for our thinking together, I want to read two things. "Nothing shocked him, which did not mean at all that he had no code of honor or morals. His code was severe and stern, but his sense of human fallibility and of the fine fight that human nature was always making, against stupendous odds, stirred him to a fine and comprehending charity. There is nothing human that does not interest me, said the priest. All the waywardness of humanity provokes a smile. There is no wickedness so great that I cannot pity, no folly that I cannot condone, patient to wait for the unraveling of the skein of life till the great Creator will it. Meanwhile, looking at all things under the aspect of eternity, and ever finding new food for humility, and the barrenness of my own life. Do not imagine that I fail to realize that I have added my full share to the general evil of the world, in part unconsciously, in part against my 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu conscious will. It is the knowledge of this influence of imperfection forever flowing from myself to all others that has taught me charity with all the wrongs that flow from others to me. Pitts Theology Library Emory University As I have clung to the world despite all the evil that is in the world, so have I clung to myself, to see justice go down and not believe in the triumph of injustice. For every wrong that you weakly deal another, or another deals you, to love more and more the fairness of what is right, and so to turn with ever increasing love from the imperfection that is in us all, to the perfection that is above us all, to the perfection that is God." And then this, "Hate is the last great fortress of the weak. A deadly moving current of resentment sweeps through the channels of the mind when overarching wrong inflicts its bitter lash. But this may pass and leave no trace, save the quivering aftermath of fading pain. The subtle thrust of implied scorn may trick the mind to send the spirit hurtling down crazy stairs, to land at last to where clever thoughts may find retreat. A time does come when the dregs of all the piled up scorn of men's contempt mount high to overrun the cup of great endurance. When, like a flash of light that blinds, there bursts upon the soul the stark alarm, the last substance of sense of self respect is spilled. Alone, and desperate, desperate and alone-- pitiless and scarred, the weak stand crushed. Something stirs-- the strength of bitterness. The iron fiber of great revenge melts the shattered feelings into one great block, and hate is born. Hate becomes the validation. Hate becomes the ground of courage. With this, the weak strike out." Hatred is a form of violence in its starkest dimension. Hate is to will the non-existence of another person. Hate is to will the non-existence of another person. It is very interesting how, because of the general climate of impersonality in which we live in modern life, it is very interesting how embarrassed we are when that climate of impersonality becomes personal. For instance, at the end of chapel this morning, if the person who is sitting next to you, say they turn and give you his name or her name, and shook your hand, you would-well, you would like it, but you would hardly know what to do with it. You know, you'd be embarrassed. I had-- when I lived in Washington, I had a dog whose name was Barrymore. And his dominant characteristic was his friendliness. And everybody said he wasn't any good because he was so friendly. He just, he greeted everybody with this open faced fashion, and therefore, no one felt that he could quite be trusted to take care of anything, period. There is a campus in Ohio-- I'm tempted to name it, but I won't. I always enjoy going to this campus, because everybody on the campus speaks to you. You just walk along, and whether you're a visitor, it doesn't make any difference. And the person speaks. And I remember, each time I go, I must do a double take first, to know that I, oh yes, I'm here. Not because we live and move in a world of complete hostility. I don't mean that. But we are surrounded by a climate of impersonality. That's the only way that I can say it. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu We have contacts, yes, but our contacts are-- are contacts without fellowship. They are contacts that are anonymous, anonymous. And this means that it is increasingly difficult, except by effort, to have primary confrontation with other human beings. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And there is something that is apt to be very devastating about a confrontation with another human being, for this-- this interrupts our own self centeredness and our preoccupation with our own ends and purposes, and means, and living. It is perilous, again, because in-- in a confrontation with another human being, we must revise our own self appraisal. Because every time we have a primary confrontation with another human being, there is always in that some element of judgment. In the light of which, we must reexamine ourselves, and decide whether or not the reaction of the other human being is one that is worthy, that is based upon the stuff of primary contact. Therefore, because of this atmosphere of impersonality that makes for contacts with our fellowship, the way is open for the unrestrained operation of what may be called a sense of fancy in relation to other human beings, as contrasted with a sense of fact. It is so simple to develop attitudes of unfriendliness in a climate in which you do not have anything at stake in the other human being. Now, contacts, without fellowship tend to express themselves in the kind of understanding that is-- that is cold and indifferent, and very often, the kind of understanding that is very devastating. The sort of understanding that a person has-- that you feel a person has a view when you walk into his office, for instance. And he is engaging you in conversation, and you-- you think that the second button in your shirt is unbuttoned, but you dare not look. The sort of understanding that-- that strips, that exposes, that lays bare, that is hard, cold, relentless, devastating. And this is the kind of understanding out of which ill will is made. It is the seedbed of hostility. It is the area in which it is possible for us to do will the non-existence of another human being. Now, for the weak, for the poor, for the disinherited, by definition-- bitterness, resentment, hostility, which when distilled, crystallize into a hard core of hatred for people who are disadvantaged in terms of our definition. This-- this hard core of our bitterness, of hatred, becomes a mechanism of defense for the human spirit. Now, let's-- let's get at this. If, for instance, you are one of nine children in a family, and there was enough money for shoes for eight of the children, and you did not get shoes, even though your eight brothers and sisters got shoes. Now, it's all right if this happened once, because you would say that your turn is coming. But if this happens several times, then you would begin to wonder who is doing what. If, for instance, you had-- at the dining room table for dinner, there were ten, nine pieces of cake, eight very healthy slices, and one rather weak slice. And you are given the weak slice. Now, this could happen once, you see, and you would say just the plate just turned the wrong way. But if this kept up, the time would come when you would begin to discern a pattern. And you spoke to your older brother about it, because you and he had a certain working sense of 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu community. And you told him that you didn't plan to tell him this, but he was so open and so friendly and so full of compassion that you actually told him what you were thinking, and that was that your father didn't like you. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And he's shocked, and upset a little. And then you say, now, please don't-- don't-- don't tell my daddy, or whatever you call him, because I don't want to hurt him. And then your brother told your father. And your father took you aside to talk with you. And you felt alienated a little. And he was hurt, and after he was over his initial reaction, and you knew now that you are not in good standing. You've done the wrong thing. So when these other events take place after that belong to the same pattern and category, you are wise now. You do not say anything to anybody. But at night, when the light's out, and you are alone in your little room, or your little bed, you reach down in the quiet places of your own spirit, lift out this bundle of cumulated hurts. You finger them tenderly in the darkness. And you say to yourself, I cannot speak about this without incurring the wrath of the judgment and threatening the love of my parents, or throwing the relationship between me and my brothers out of line. But one thing I can do, I can resent this. And no one can prevent me there. So in the darkness, I distill out of the cumulated hostility all that is fluid in it, all that is moving in it, until what is left is a residue of core, of-- of bitterness, with which, when I identify myself, I am able to stand there with an immunity that the attitude of my household and my family cannot undermine. I can't say a word, but I can feel. And if in the atmosphere, every avenue of retreat is cut off for the validation of my personality, for the acceptance of myself on the part of others selves, with whom I'm associated in the family circle-- if all of these are reduced to zero, I can stand within the intensity of my own hatred, and affirm my right to be a person in the midst of the climate. Now, this is violence. For the thing that develops in me is-- is the-- the-- the willing of the nonexistence of all the rest of the people. It isolates me, cuts me off from any sense of community. And it becomes the moral justification for anything that I wish to do that would equalize the situation. It's very simple, but very terrifying, illustrated in a very crude way. Here is a person who cannot tell you what that person thinks of you until he loses his temper. You've seen people like that. As long as there is no defense behind which the personality can take refuge, then nothing can be said, but-- but once the temple is lost, then-- and you are angry, then the anger becomes a windbreak behind which the sensitive part of you can take refuge, while the other part of you steps around on this side, and says all the things that are necessary to be said. And then you come back around this side, and be yourself again. That is why during times of war, one of the very first things that any country has to do is to redefine the meaning, the definition, the concept of the enemy country. This is what hatred has to 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University do, for you see, if-- if the Germans, when we were at war with Germany, if the Germans remain the Germans, with all that they symbolize, and culture, and creativity, and so forth-- if they remain a great nation, then it would be very difficult to engender the kind of violence that war precipitates, without at the same time-- in carrying out the violence, there would be a kick back in the spirit of the persons who are carrying out the violent, and-- and they would be ashamed of themselves. They would be guilty. They would feel outraged within their own spirits because of what they are doing to fulfill the dictates of this historic moment. So how can you have decent men, courteous men, kind and gracious men, men who love their families and love their friends, and who are gentle-- how can these men become arms of violence for the state, unless something takes place deep within their spirits that makes it possible for them to do this, and at the same time regard themselves as human beings? This is why he has to be taught, in order that the spirit might be immunized against disintegration, as men in the fulfillment of what to them is a moment of destiny are called upon to do to other human beings violent things that they would not do under ordinary circumstances, unless this radical thing had taken place deep within him beforehand. Now, this is precisely what he does for the weak, for the poor, for the disinherited, or for any group, for that matter. When did they move in an environment that is blotched, and they feel that in order to survive in their environment, they must do dirty things, they must do violent and bloody things, how can they do these things without resigning their membership in the human race? The only way that they can do it is to declare the object of their violence to be outside the human race. Then, standing within the human race, they can deal with those who have been rid out of the human race without any sense of moral responsibility. This is what hate does. And we may pray that the world will get rid of hatred. We may preach many sermons about it. We may say that it is against the will of God and the order of life. It is in violation of the ethics of the faith. But until we understand what it is that it does to the helpless and defenseless man, we cannot move with our gospel in to the region of redemption, which must be necessary if we are to find a way by which it becomes a reasonable thing for a man to live and walk together as children of the living God. This-- this is the assignment of modern man. And if we do not meet its demands, perhaps it would have been better if we had never been born. Leave us not alone, oh God, in this stifling dimensions of our needs, but in Thy forgiveness. Walk with us, that we may not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the darkness that creeps up from within. Dismiss us with Thy spirit, oh God, and grant unto us Thy peace. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CHANTING] 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-623_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, 9 and 10, 1959 Apr 5, 26, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-623_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 10, April 26, 1959 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-04-26 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/774a95bee92bcd3f68432cd973308d51.pdf 9e3469dfef71b02f35f79b2fd002f1db PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-624_A.mp3 [MUSIC, "O MASTER, LET ME WALK WITH THEE"] Pitts Theology Library Emory University O Master, let me walk with Thee, in lowly paths of service free. Tell me Thy secret, help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care. For our meditation, may we pray together the Lord's Prayer. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen. [MUSIC, "O MASTER, LET ME WALK WITH THEE"] As a background for the continuation of our thinking together about hatred as one of the defenses of the weak against the strong, I am dividing the time into two sections. The first is an allegory that I want to read. It's a little long, so I ask your indulgence hoping that your imagination will follow where this leads. A man cried up to God, and God sent down an angel to help the man. And the angel came back and said, I cannot help that man. God said, how is it with him? And the angel said, he cries out continually that someone has injured him and he would forgive him and he cannot forgive him. God said, what have you done for him? The angel said, I've done everything. I took him by the hand and I said, look when other men speak ill of that man, you speak well of him. Secretly in ways he shall not know, serve him. If you have anything you value, share it with him. So, serving him, you will at last come to feel possession in him, and you will forgive him. And the man said, I will do it. Afterwards, as I passed by in the dark of night, I heard one crying out, I have done everything. It helps me nothing. My speaking well of him helps me not at all. If I share my heart's blood with him, is the burning within me less? I cannot forgive. I cannot forgive. Oh, God, I cannot forgive. I said to him, see here. Look back on all your past. See from your childhood all smallness, all indirectness that has been yours. Look well at it. In its light, do you not see every man your brother? Are you so sinless you have the right to hate? He looked and he said, yes. You are right. I, too, have failed. I forgive my fellow. Go. I am satisfied. I have forgiven him. And he laid him down peacefully and folded his hands on his breast. And I thought it was well with him. But scarcely had my wings rustled and I turned to come up here, when I heard one crying out on earth again. I cannot forgive. I cannot forgive. Oh God, 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu God, God. I cannot forgive. It is better to die than to hate. To hate, hate. But I can't forgive. I can't do it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And I went, and I stood outside of the door in the dark. And I heard the man say, I have not sinned, so if I have torn my fellow's flesh ever so little, I have kneeled down and kissed the wound with my mouth till it was healed. I have not willed that any soul should be lost through hate of me. If they have but then said that I wronged them, I have lain on the ground before them that they might tread on me, and so, seeing my humiliation, forgive and not be lost through hating me. They have not cared that my soul should be lost. They have not willed to save me. They have not tried that I should forgive them. I said to him, all right. Be content. Do not forgive. Forget this soul and its injury. Go on your way in the next world perhaps. He cried, go from me. You understand nothing. What is the next world to me? I am lost now today. I cannot see the sunlight shine. The dust is in my throat. The sand is in my eyes. Go from me. You understand nothing. Oh, once again before I die, to see that the world is beautiful. Oh God, God, God. I cannot live and not love. I cannot live and hate. God, God, God. So I left him crying. And I came back up here. And God said, this man's soul must be saved. And the angel said, how? And God said, you go down and save it. And then God bent down and whispered in the angel's ear, and the angel spread out its wings and went down to earth. Now follow. The angel went down and found the man with a bitter heart and took him by the hand and led him to a certain spot. Now the man wist not where it was the angel would take him, nor what he would show him there. And when they came, the angel shaded the man's eyes with his wing. And when he moved it, the man saw somewhat on the earth before them. For God had given it to the angel to unclothe a human soul, to take from it all those outward attributes of form and color, and age, and sex, whereby one man is known from among his fellows and marked off from the rest, and the soul laid bare before them bare, as a man turning his eye inwards beholds himself. They saw its past, its childhood, the tiny life with the dew upon it. They saw its youth when the dew was melting. They saw its hopes that were never realized. They saw its hours of intellectual blindness, men called sin. They saw its hours of all-radiating insight, which men called righteousness. They saw its hour of strength, when it leaped to its feet crying, I, I am omnipotent. Its hour of weakness. And it fell to the earth, and grasped dust only. They saw what it might have been, but never would be. And the man bent forward. And the angel said, what is it? And he answered, it is I. It is myself. And he went forward as if he were have lain heart against it, but the angel held him back and 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu covered his eyes. Now God had given power to the angel further to unclothe that soul, to take from it all those outward attributes of time and place and circumstance whereby the individual life is marked off from the life of the whole. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Again the angel uncovered the man's eyes, and the man looked. He saw before him that which in its tiny drops reflects the whole universe. He saw that which marks within itself the step of the furthest star. And tells how the crystal grows under ground where no eye has seen it, that which is where the germ in the eggs stirs, which moves the outstretched fingers of the little newborn babe, and keeps the leaves of the trees pointing upwards, which moves where the jellyfish sail alone on the sunny seas, and is where the lichens form on the mountain's rocks. And the man looked. And the angel touched him. But the man bowed his head and shuddered. It is God. God. And now the angel recovered the man's eyes. And when he uncovered them there was one walking from them a little way off. For the angel had reclothed the soul in its outward form and vesture. And the man knew who it was. And the angel said, do you know him? And the man said, I know him as he looked at the other man. And the angel said, have you forgiven him? But the man said, how beautiful my brother is. And the angel looked into the man's eyes, and he shaded his own face now with his wing from the light. He laughed softly and went up to God. But the men were together on the earth. We suggested in our-- the first part of our thinking together about hatred that-- that hatred is say- is the last line of defense for the personality that is under siege. It is positive in the sense of being authentic. In the sense of being present and accounted for, it is positive and sometimes temporarily constructive. For there is a time interval in the manifestation of hatred, as we have been thinking about it, in which the hatred becomes the ground for the validation of the personality. In the presence of the unanimous negative judgment of the environment, it provides for an interval, a place upon which to stand to affirm one's being in the presence of forces, personal and impersonal, which deny one's being. Hatred is positive, but is ultimately destructive. It is positive and often temporarily constructive. It is positive and ultimately destructive. It is ultimately destructive because, in the first place, it dries up the springs of creativity in the life of the individual, for it dominates the horizon with one overwhelming simple answer to all that is wrong with life, and this is a deception. It's like, well, a simple illustration, but a very interesting one, is in the experience of Ahab in Moby Dick, you may recall. All that is demonic in life, all that is frustrating in life, everything that moves contrariwise in life, in the thought of Ahab was summarized in the movement of the white whale and the existence of the white whale, and therefore he felt that if somehow he could conquer the white whale, then all the problem, private, personal, social, individual, collective, all the problems, would be solved. And he said as the winds began to blow, threatening the vessel and threatening his life, as he stood on the deck with his wooden leg fastened on the floor, watching the billows rise and fall, 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, brow furrowed, he began a very moving soliloquy in which he said, let the winds blow. They may dry up the bowels of the sea. They may destroy this vessel. They may consume me. But I can still be ashes. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, if that which consumes the life, that which to which everything else in life is reduced. If that thing is negative and against life, then the logic of such an wholehearted commitment is the destruction of the self. So we come full circle. For when I hate a person, I will that person's nonexistence. I will that person's non-being. I will that person's withdrawal from the human race. And the logic of the experience of hate is that my own isolation become so complete that I, myself, seem to myself to be no longer a member of the human race. Now, in terms of religious experience, hatred because of its isolation, it gives the individual a sense of being cut off from God. For every time the mind and the spirit start moving to the trysting place, there is the image, there is the figure, there are those others that blocked the way. Over, and over, and over again a man may try through all kinds of spiritual etiquette, through a cycling series of many-sided devices to bypass the object of his hatred and keep his tryst with God, but he can't do it because the figure blocks the way. Now I will come back to that in just a minute at the end. There is a strange-- I don't quite know how to say this. There is a strange contradiction or a paradox or irony in man's experience with hatred, for the hatred has its own life, its own life cycle, its own fundamental scheme, its own inner propriety, its own logic, its own results. And even though, as a result of my response or as a result of that which has-- I have suffered. And even though, in my effort to develop scar tissue, to ease the agony that I may go on with my life, and in this airport I release hatred, which logically may be consistent with the deed that has been inflicted upon me. Nevertheless, the moment the hatred is released, the hatred begins to function as hatred functions. It does not know anything at all about the reasons why it came into being. It is completely unmindful of the logic of this, or the justification, or even the morality of it. The only thing that hatred knows is to reproduce itself in kind, over and over, and over, and over, again. And this leads me then to say that a part of our great and central responsibility in the living of our lives, if we undertake to live them under the aegis of the gospel of God, we must not only take responsibility for the things that we do, the positive, direct act, bottoming the private act, the individual deed with the integrity of the self. We must not only do this, but we also must take responsibility for our reaction to the circumstances, to the events, to the people, by whom we are surrounded. I am responsible to God not only for what I do to you, but I am responsible to God for my reaction to you for what you do to me. Sometimes, with all my heart, I wish that this were not so. The kind of burden that must be carried because your life is under a mandate that makes your responses to your environment, in accordance with the integrity of your commitment to life, so the exhilaration and the relief that comes from being able to express, in terms of response to 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu environment, a wild and unrestrained vitality, [? unchannelled ?] by any moral responsibility that grows out of the sense of responsibility for one's response. But this is an indulgence that God does not permit us. Pitts Theology Library Emory University I must take two steps. That is as far as I will go. I must somehow develop a desire to desire to be rid of my hatred and to enter into community, and this is heart. I do not know all of the skilled ways or any of the skilled ways by which the manipulation of a man's insides can bring to pass this new purpose, this new desire. I don't know enough to know how this is done. I do know, however, that again, and again, men have discovered that when they are able to lay bare their lives to the scrutiny, and to the judgment, and to the will of God. When they are able to make as an offering to God the unwillingness to renounce the hate and to include in this offering some, faint though it be, expression to God that He may-- He may find a way by which there may be created in us a desire to desire to forgive. Though I do not know outside of the religious experience how this can be done. I am sure that there must be ways that more skilled people with others' insides than I am, that can determine. But I know this. I know this from my own life. I know God. God can do this. God can look with such intensity into the human heart that what God is will be born in the human heart and will grow. And a man will be able to deal with another man, even as God deals with man. And then the second step becomes inevitable. I must put at the disposal of the new creation in me all of the resources of my mind and personality, all of the resources that are at the disposal of the sensitive mind and spirit, the skills and the techniques and the methods that will enable me to reestablish the hated person into the human race so that in my relationship with him, it is no longer open season. He moves from the area that is not a part of my magnetic moral field into that area which is a part of my moral awareness, and perhaps, when I do this, and not until then, is the way open for it to be to me a reasonable thing to love him. And if I am unable to do this, all the prayers, and the tears, and the beating of breasts will not avail. He must be brought back into the human race, and then I become available to him and he becomes available to me. And in that encounter, it is possible to develop a new quality of relatedness. All of this to the man or to the group that's fighting for his life, all of this insistence of Jesus, that you love your enemy seems to take from the individual and the group its last line of defense. But I think that's a delusion. But for anyone who's standing in that situation, I have no right to say that that is a delusion. We have tried, our Father, to make articulate the stirring of the mind and heart that's just out of reach. We make as an offering to Thee, even our failure. Walk beside us in our journeying, and leave us not alone even to the devices of our own minds and spirits. But be in us and above us forever and ever. [MUSIC PLAYING] 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-624_A.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 7/6 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 11 and 12, 1959 May 3, 24 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-624_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 11, May 3, 1959 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-05-03 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 11 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. In this sermon he discusses hatred. He argues that hatred is a defense of the weak against the strong. However, hatred dehumaninizes the other and becomes self destructive. Hatred crushes the hater by placing the cause all of life's problems on one simple target. Hatred ignores the complexities of life, becomes all consuming. Since it cuts one off from the person/people who is/are the object of the hate, it also cuts them off from God. It isolates a person, making them feel "cut off from God" and from other humans. He argues that people will try anything to keep their hatred, but maintain their relationship with God, all to no avail.</p> <p>Thurman argues that each of us is responsible to God not only for what we do, but how we react to what others do to us. He finally argues that overcoming hatred cannot be done unless God comes into the hater and transforms them internally. Hence, the hater must "desire to desire" release from the hate. When God removes the hate from us, we see all people in their complete humanity and we are brought back into community. To illustrate his points he uses an allegory of an angel God sends to help a person deal with hate, and he uses Ahab from "Moby Dick."</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens Ahab angel allegory Hate hatred Moby Dick https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/0d2da1d518a85a04b1961da00edddae6.pdf c5c1a73c2e25b9a790d5de4ce27f5d1b PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-624_B.mp3 [MUSIC PLAYING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University [HYMNAL SINGING] [INAUDIBLE] As we sit together in the congregation, each of us is mindful of the tight circle in which his life is lived or of the ways by which life closes in, stultifies, frightens, disturbs, all of those private regions of the heart where desires have their beginnings-- the quiet anxieties of the spirit that express themselves in many ways that defeat the outward life. We are very mindful of the tight circle in which we live as we sit together in the midst of the congregation. There are floating hopes and dreams and desires that surround us but do not quite take hold upon us. And as we still ourselves in Thy presence, oh, God, our father, we trust that there may be visited upon us that which can widen the tight circle of our little lives, that which can make room within us, for love where there now is hate, for understanding where there is misunderstanding, for courage where there is fear. We want this so much for ourselves. We are tired, our father, of the narrowness and the weariness of the littleness of our lives. This we know. But again and again, our father we do not know how to do any other way. We try. Thou [? knowest ?] [? it. ?] Now we wait. We wait with confidence that what we have been unable to do, using all the powers of our minds and imaginations, Thou may show us how to do. As we wait in Thy presence in the holy place, oh, God of our spirits, we wait Thy pleasure. [MUSIC PLAYING] And to those persons of the radio audience, this is the final broadcast of the Sunday Morning Service and the rebroadcasting of the Sunday Evening Service. It is in order to express the appreciation of the chapel and the university for all of the many expressions of gratitude and enthusiasm, which from time to time, you have shared with us either by direct correspondence or by the telephone. And there was something very switching about coming to the end of anything, even to the end of a three month series on a single theme. The truth is, of course, that we do not ever come to the end of anything, do we? And there is a sense in which what we experience, as we experience it, deposits something of itself in the total solution which is ourselves. And this becomes a part of us forever, sometimes with our deliberate cooperation, and sometimes against our conscious will. As a background for our thinking together about love and the context on which we have been working, I would like to read a paragraph written by Olive Shreiner. It undertakes to establish in a non-religious dimension, the case for the timeless validity of the love ethic. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu From the mysterious drawing together of amoeba to amoeba, their union and increase on through all the forms of sentient life and in the life of the varied vegetable world, the moving original power is always this stretching out, uniting, creative force, shaping itself in the union of male and female, of begetting with their begotten, drawing together creatures of like and unlike kinds, bringing into all the forms of friendship and union and love-- this lies at the root of existence. Pitts Theology Library Emory University It shapes the petals of flowers, not for death, but to call the insects to suck their sweetness and carry fertilizings to one another. It sings in the song of all song birds calling to their mates. It blossoms into human speech. To kill, man might have been silent. But to communicate with and bind himself to his fellows-- child to mother, mother to child, the sexes to reach each other, man to reach man, belonging to a social organism-- in order to do this, man was obliged to blossom into speech. Everywhere, this binding moving creative force moves at the very heart of things, growing more and more important and complex as the creatures mount in the scale of life till it reaches its apotheosis [? in ?] the artist in whom the desire to create dominates all else, who not from himself, but by the necessity of some force within himself, is spent and must spend himself to produce that which gives infinite joy, without ever being used up. All of which, there need be no struggle. For not seeing the statue or hearing the story or not singing the song makes all who do not hear it poorer. Men have so recognized that this creative and not destructive power was the fount and core of life that, in all ages, they have tended to call the highest intelligence they could conceive of and, therefore, the Supreme God, the Great Creator. And their devils have been destroyers. It is false to say that the mighty jaw and the mighty claw and the stomach that is never filled and is always seeking to fill itself are the fundamental moving power in life. 'Tis love that makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go round. Now we have been thinking about the religion of Jesus and the disinherited. Our last discussion had to do with the significance, yes, the moral significance of hatred as a last line of defense of the weak against the strong, of the helpless against the powerful. It was pointed out-- and I do not mean to recapitulate except to say this-- it was pointed out that hatred is positive and destructive. It is positive. Because again and again, it has what seems to be in it an inherent authenticity that exists with intensity, with strength, with flavor, with energy for a time interval of limited duration. Because ultimately, this energy exhausts itself and reduces the individual who has become the instrument in its hands to that which is lifeless and dead and hard and isolated. And whatever that is that isolates a man, that cuts him off from the creative energies of mind and spirit that may be generated by himself or by his fellows about the world in which he lives-whatever this is that cuts him off, that isolates him, that finally corners him so that he has no way to move, is against life. It takes all the oxygen out of the air. And the soul perishes. And this is the judgment of life against hate, whatever may be the rational basis for the generation of hate in the first instance. Now love-- and I do not speak with a great deal of 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu wisdom. I simply speak as one who is struggling with this, if happily he may find how, sometime before the end of life, to fulfill it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So what I have to say is just a log on the journey. Love is positive and creating. Get the distinction. Hate is positive and destructive. Love is positive and creative, for it seeks always the maintenance and the furtherance of life at its highest level. It was the religious insight of Jesus that the creator of life, God, was the source of love, which locates-- which [? insight-- ?] locates the ground of love in the spiritual experience of life, rather than locating the ground of love in the ethical or moral dimension of life. This is very important for me. Because what we experience in Christianity is that love, as an ethic, is apt to be a kind of metaphysical principle with reference to which the individual has no private spiritual state. It is for this reason that we can very glibly say that the thing that distinguishes Christianity from other religions is its insistence upon the love ethic. And we can say that the meaning of our religion is love. And all of these words which have to do with love, we can say it, believe it, mean it, but always thinking of it in terms of a metaphysical principle that is applied, like a yardstick, to the outside of life, to the outside of relations, to which relations must conform in some external matter. As a matter of fact, we have done with it precisely what Hinduism did with the concept of Reverence for Life. It made the concept of reverence for life a metaphysical concept. And by so doing, it gutted it and took out of it all of the dimensions of compassion and the brooding tenderness that would be the inside manifestation of reverence for life. And it is for this reason, perhaps, that there was an inner necessity within Hinduism that created out of its very bowels of its genius, Buddhism, to provide a quality of compassion and tenderness so that the metaphysical concept could be located as a part of the inner fabric of the total structure of the being, rather than a dimension of the mind having to do with the [? outside's ?] relationships between expressions of life. Now love, then, is positive and creative. It is, in the thought of Jesus, it is the expression, the inner movement of the intent of God in the creation of life. Therefore, when I love, in this sense, I am seeking to act out of my center which is rooted in my spirit as a child of God. It is not to relate to people or to act out of my wishes for them, primarily, out of my fear of them, primarily, out of what I expect to get from them, as a result of that which moves from me to them. All of these things may be done. But they are not related to the heart of what the love experience means in the thought of Jesus. Now when we apply this, when we apply it, in the lives of men and women who find themselves with their backs against the wall, those persons who find that they are cut off from all of the ways by which they may rationally and deliberately defend themselves, does this insistence take on a different character. Let's examine it. I must [? be-- ?] weak or strong-- I must, if I am to be involved in the kind of religious insight that seems to me to be relevant and meaningful to life, I must act with all of my deliberate intent 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu in a manner that seeks to maintain and further life at its highest level. Now this is the proposition. In order to do this, then I must deal even with my enemy on such a basis. I must seek to address in my enemy the same thing that is in him that also is in me out of which I speak to him. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now this is tough. This is tough. Because I find it so simple for me to feel that this thing in him that is like the thing in me is so buried, so covered over by his kind of viciousness, his kind of meanness, his kind of evil distortion of spirit, that when I speak to him out of this innermost center, it bounces back. Now this is why I think there has, grown up in the human race, a technique and a method for operating in this way. It is rather-- it came into very great and worldwide prominence under the magic of Mahatma Gandhi. We call it non-resistance. But that's not an accurate word. It's passive resistance. It is resistance. But it is passive resistance, for it says, you see, that I will not cooperate with any man whose activities are working against the maintenance and the furtherance of life on its highest level. Now, I will not feed this. That's what it says. Understand me, please. I will not cooperate. I will not do anything that will aid and abet this thing that he is doing which is against the maintenance and the furtherance of life at its highest level, and therefore, which is against life. And in the language of this concept, it is also against God. So I resist. And I should not be in any congratulatory mood because I am using nonviolent resistance as [? over ?] against violent resistance. Because sometimes I think that the most violent resistance in the world is nonviolent resistance. I can adjust myself to blood, to that which lacerates the flesh. Because it is tangible, I can feel and see the injury. And I can deal with it in a sense with a measure of detachment as if I had become, in some sense, disembodied and suspended from my body and [? watch ?] its mutilation with some measure of detachment and dignity. But when my insides are invaded by the subtleties of violences that attack the dignity of my spirit, when I must live and move in an atmosphere where there is no voice that has a familiar ring, where there is no sense of the strength and the support of another, where I am cut off and invaded, now this is a far more deadly kind of violence. Now to pick up the thread. When I use nonviolence as a technique-- and there is a difference, perhaps, between using it as a social technique and using it as a private way of life. And let us not be deceived by this. I have known that I have been involved, in one way or another, myself, I suppose, at times. I have known men and women who subscribed and who worked very hard on behalf of the use of nonviolence as a technique of love in the world, but who, themselves, were very violent human beings in terms of how they related at the level of the individual. I think this is one of the reasons why it is so difficult for the various groups that work for peace ever to get together. You know, there's no war among the people who are trying to get a war-less world. And you can imagine. And this is the reason. There is a subtle distinction, you see. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And what I am pleading for is that what becomes the technique that I use to invade the external world seeking always to bring about in other individuals, the operation of the same dimension of spiritual significance that is operating in me-- when I do this, I must bear in mind that the technique that I use in order to bring about social change must not be other than the technique that I use in my private personal intimate relations. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now when I fear, when I fear the individuals who exercise the violence-- because I may be weak, or to use a blanket term, disinherited-- then my reaction of fear feeds the deeds they are doing. It feeds the deeds so that it works against the maintenance and the furtherance of life at its highest level. Well, when I was a boy, occasionally I did things that displeased my mother, and so did my sisters. And it became necessary, sometimes, for my mother to expose us to her violence by way of a very interesting kind of application. Now whenever my sister was being whipped, to use just the good classic word, when my sister was being whipped, she did not do a thing. She just stood, looking my mother straight in the eyes, as if to say, you may be relating to me out of one kind of dimension, but I am relating to you out of another center. And by so doing, I found over and over again that my mother, my mother somehow could not quite whip my sister with the abandon and enthusiasm that the thing called for. But when my turn came, well, all the neighbors knew what was happening over at the Thurman family. And because of this the reaction on my part, my mother could abandon herself in this whole matter and do, I'm sure, more to me, and more carefully, than was indicated. But my attitude gave her an edge of self righteousness-- not quite-- but something that right was on her side in what she was doing. Now it seems to me that in the exercise and the for instancing of what is the creative intent of life-- and this is where I [? root ?] love-- in the exercise of what is the creative intent of life, as you move towards the other person who may not be exercising this, as far as your experience with him is concerned, then you must see to it that your reaction to what he does will not feed this thing in him. Now it may be that what has to be done-- and I can't go into this now, unfortunately-- it may be that what has to be done is a situation has to be created. And this is why I think that the means of non-cooperation is so crucial and so important. A situation has to be created in which the individual who is working against the maintenance and furtherance of life will be shocked. It serves the same purpose to the social psyche that I think sometimes radical shock treatment serves to the disturbed individual. We do not quite know what happens. But it means that this thing, which is the chronic intent of life that life be maintained and furthered at its highest level, this thing has a chance, now, to wake up from the bottom and get within reach of the individual who loves. A major operation, again and again, has to be performed before this thing is in reach, less all you do is to pour it out and it bounces back. Something must loosen it. How to get it loosened so that 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University it is within reach of your heart that would love that [? appoint ?] in the individual that is beyond all good and all evil is the area in which we need the best wisdom and the best mind and the best spiritual insights? For there must be-- and here I say it last, but logically, it should have been said at first-- there must be something to happen in you as well as in me that will make us want to do this, that will make us will to love so that the energy of our spirits can be put at the disposal of the intent of our hearts. And if it is true that that which is at the heart of creation [? is ?] such an intent, if somehow I can, with all my pride and my hurt and my pain and my sense of injustice and brutality, if I can expose all of this and the rejection of my will-- if I can expose it all to God and hold it, hold it, hold it before his scrutiny until his very love calls forth from the very depths of my being [? itself-- ?] And this is why, my friends, that to love your enemy, to love the person whose activities work against the furtherance of life and its maintenance is not an ethical act, it is not a political act, it is not a moral act, it is a spiritual act. I must desire-- to desire-- to do this. Or else, with all the techniques and skills in the world, I am a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal. It is so very hard, our father, so very, very hard, God, to forsake the security of our pride and the strength of our retaliation and the self validation of our bitterness and hatred. It's so hard, God, to forsake this. We feel so stripped and naked, vulnerable and exposed without it. Hold us tenderly while there is born in us a new spirit, out of which we came from Thy Spirit. Walk with us in our lumbering stumbling feeble ways. And don't hold it against us when we fail again and again. And steady us with they trust and they great overwhelming love that we may learn how to be what Thou art, our Father. [MUSIC PLAYING] [HYMNAL SINGING] [INAUDIBLE] 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-624_B.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 7/6 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 11 and 12, 1959 May 3, 24, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-624_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 12, May 24, 1959 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-05-24 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 12 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. In this he defines love as the "maintenance and furtherance of life at its highest level". He begins with a quote from Olive Schreiner. Love is not an ethic in the sense of being a "yard stick" for measuring oneself, but the inner intent of God in creation. He uses the life of Jesus as a model for love, especially for those with their "backs against the wall." </p> <p>Thurman insists that love resists cooperating with anyone who is working against this maintenance and furtherance of life. He argues that nonviolence may actually be worse than violence, as people can adjust to physical violence, but resistance "shocks" a person by invading their inner life and cutting them off from support. Nonviolence is a technique for bringing about social change, but unless nonviolence becomes the inner self of a person then someone working for peace may be extremely violent in their interpersonal relationships. He argues that fear feeds those who work against life at its highest level, and gives an example of his and his sister's reaction to their mother's corporal punishment.</p> <p>Finally, he argues that love, and specifically the love of an enemy, is not an ethical act but a spiritual act, for God must come into our inner selves to bring about within us a desire to want to do this.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens fear interpersonal relationships love nonviolence Olive Schreiner resistance https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/afe5fbc151b0cb75459c30eecfe4878a.pdf 952ce76e938b29bd6b04ab37b615369b PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-619_B.mp3 [MUSIC PLAYING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University As best as we may or find it possible so to do, let us pray together the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. [MUSIC PLAYING] The trained mind when brought face to face with the mystery of Jesus has no choice but to seek to reduce it to some unit of comprehension and understanding. In other words, the mystery somehow has to make sense. This is a legitimate and inescapable demand. One profoundly significant and primary consideration must be held steadily in mind, as this sort of examination is pursued. Despite all the merit that there is in the scholarly and reverential researches into the facts concerning the historical Jesus, they do not, nor can they explain Him adequately. A spiritual genius or any kind of genius for that matter cannot ever be explained in any complete sense. This is true, whether the explanation is in terms of his historical setting or his psychological pattern, his social, biological, and religious heritage, or whatnot. The one thing about Jesus that no explanation can [? compass ?] is why Jesus differs from those others, whom the same explanation would fit. Uniqueness is continually elusive. Any explanation of Jesus in terms of the social and economic forces of his time must inevitably explain his contemporaries as well. Such may explain why He was a particular kind of Jew, for instance. But it does not explain why the other Jews were not Jesus. And that is, after all, the most important question since the thing that is most compelling about Him is not so much the way in which He resembled His fellows, but the way in which He differed from the rest of them. It is reasonable to suppose that Jesus inherited the same traits as countless other Jews of his time. He grew up in the same society, the same traditions, pinnacled on the same funded prophetic insights. Yet He was Jesus. And the others were not Jesus. Often we seek refuge in history, or psychology, or economics. And we are reluctant to face the problems which remain when history, or psychology, or economics has done its uttermost. All these disciplines and others useful in their way. But the tragedy is in forgetting what that way is. In other words, to quote a young sociologist who died long before high noon, "The scientific mood does not imply that other moods are fatuous or futile. It does not hold that the truths it ennobles men to discover are the only truths. The scientist knows too well that behind the symbols of mathematics and the formulae of chemistry and physics and the rigid generalizations 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu of psychology and the social sciences lie. The unexplained mysteries of twilight and music, of autumn nights fringed with silver, of human fortitude and human idealism." Pitts Theology Library Emory University We pick up our journey today. Jesus and the disinherited. Last Sunday, we ended on a note with which I wish to begin today. And it's rather awkward to try to do this in the context of our sermon and inspiration. The temptation is to make it seem and sound like the unrealities of the classroom. Jesus was a Jew. A Jew. And as a Jew, He belonged to the Jewish community-- using community in the formal and informal sense-- that was surrounded by the Roman gentile world primarily. Certainly in terms of the kind of government that held the reins, that established the frontiers and the controls over the common life. This is true. The civilization by which He was surrounded was primarily Greek civilization. For the Romans were wonderful human beings who were able to develop far reaching skills and techniques of government. They were remarkable engineers. Because the engineerings upon the engineering skill depended the security of the empire. But they were not essentially civilized in the way the Greeks were civilized. This is no reflection on them. It's simply the fact of history. And the Greeks, the Greeks were civilized. And they had been conquered. And as one historian puts it, the conquered made conquests of the conqueror. The Greek with his sensitive mind and his world view and the subtle nuances of his culture simply moved all through the common Roman life and gave to the Roman mind a feeling torn and a quality of perception that was not indigenous to the mind itself. But be that as it may, the culture was a Greek or Roman culture in that sense. And this-- this was the sea that surrounded this island that the Jewish community. And Jesus was one of these. Now, pressure upon this island was very great, because of the nature of the case. Even people who have no sense of destiny do not wish to be controlled. But if you have a sense of destiny, then to be controlled is something that takes on the nature of blasphemy. So the Romans, even though they had accepted this responsibility and an invitation of the Jews who were hard up for some release from the inner pressures to which their lives were subjected nevertheless there was the tension between the Roman world and the Jewish community. Because always, always there was the sense of destiny. And that which blocked the sense of destiny was the political's power and the economic power that was characteristic of the Roman Empire. So the climate was a very, very stormy climate. It was like the climate of Little Rock the first day that the federal troops went in. That's the kind. Now, this gives you some feeling quality of the kind of climate. This was the constant state of mind of the body politic, if I may use such words. I remember many years ago, I attended a conference in-[LAUGHTER] 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University --Indiana, Indianapolis. And it was the conference of The World Student Volunteer Movement, a great missionary movement that at one time was the spearhead of evangelical protestantism as it sought to conquer the world. We were young. And we did not like these rather stodgy kind of program that they had. They brought people back from the ends of the earth. And the people said nice things. But we thought that they needed to bite into life. Youth is always trying to bite into something. So we withdrew. 550 of us withdrew, not breaking up the conference, no. But we withdrew for a series of programs of our own. We felt that if we could select the people who would come and would have a little [INAUDIBLE], we could get the truth, rather than merely the facts. So we decided that we would have a meeting on the impression of a series of foreign students at the time, their impression of American education. And since they were all among friends, we felt that they would tell us what this was really like. One of the young ladies who spoke was a Korean girl. She was a sophomore at Syracuse University. She made a statement something like this. I-- I know that I have been asked to talk to you about my attitude towards American education as seen from the vantage point of a sophomore at Syracuse University. I am a Korean. And there is only one thing that a Korean has any right to talk about in public. And that is freedom from Japan. And for 20 minutes she made a passionate plea. And then at the end was this tremendous [? peroration. ?] If you see a little American boy and you ask him what he wants, he says, I want a penny to buy some candy or to get a whistle or to put it in my piggy bank. But if you see a little Korean boy and you ask him what he wants he says, I want freedom from Japan. And the next person to speak was a graduate student from Harvard who was Japanese. And this-this was very interesting. Now, the climate-- this is all that I am mentioning this for, not to tell you what happened-- the climate of which this Korean girl spoke is the climate in which Jesus lived all of His life. And the climate in which He was crucified. Not very far from the place where He grew up, a man decided that he could do something about Rome. So he organized the young men into a great insurrection. And the insurrection did not last, did not fulfill itself. These men were killed, were caught, were captured. And most of them are crucified. And the town nearest to the place from which the insurrection sprang was burned to the ground. 2000 years before Hitler a town was-- was destroyed because of what some body or bodies in that town had done. And the town had to be rebuilt. And to rebuild it, it required carpenters. And Nazareth was only five or six miles away. It is not unreasonable to assume that among the carpenters who rebuilt [INAUDIBLE] was Joseph and Jesus. What was going on in his mind? A sensitive Jew deeply gripped by the passion of destiny that belonged to Israel, feeling in the lonely watches of the night that the God of Israel kept a tryst with him. What did it say? What did He say to him? How-- how can I fulfill the deep insistences of my heart and spirit and mind until I make some basic decision about the enemy, the survival of the people? This was is problem. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Before he could get over to considerations which had to do with the meaning of existence, with the particular expression of His life, He had to deal with this crucial problem. Just as you would if you are a native South African this morning and you are trying to decide about a vocation, about the meaning of the voice of God in your heart. You would have to hear through the climate. Given my situation, what do I do if I love God? Do I join up with the zealots? Pitts Theology Library Emory University The Zealots are those who felt that there is only one thing that the Roman understands. And that's seeing his own blood flow. That's a language that he can understand. They were interesting people. They walked along. They had these long daggers up their sleeves. And they'd go along in pairs talking and tending to their own business. And they'd see a very prosperous looking [INAUDIBLE]. And they'd walk up to him and greet him and then accompany him a little, talking of commonplace nothings. And then before he knew it, his heart would be punctured. And as he stretched out dying, they would look over him weeping, wondering who had done this violent thing full of terror. God will give His angels charge concerning you. He will bear you up. They will bear you up on Their wings, lest you dash your foot against a stone. Do it. Destroy the enemy. God will take of it. Because this is God's will, that the destiny be fulfilled. And when you do anything to remove that which blocks the destiny, you become an arm of the righteous will of God. And God will support you. Because your cause is righteous. Because your cause is His cause. Why didn't Jesus become one of them? But more crucially, why did He select one of them as His disciple? I don't know the answer. But He remained a zealot. Because when you read the listing of the disciples even now, it is so and so and so and so, the zealot. He kept the title. So His point of view must have remained sufficiently intact to be identified. Then there were those who said, why be [? Picayunish ?] about this? Rome has everything anyway. It has all the power. It has all the economic resources. It is able to place one man here. And he remains, or another man there. And if you play your hand right, you can manipulate this pagan empire from the inside. So that at the strategic moment when the destiny of Israel is ripe and the Messiah comes, there will be at every critical, sensitive, crucial spot in the Roman Empire one of us. Penetrated. Cover all the area. And then when zero hour comes, the thing collapses. And you have all the strategic spots. And after all, the culture is pretty good. It's pretty good. Nobody wants to be different. When you go to a place, you can't eat what you want. You eat because of something in you that discriminates about diet. This is a nuisance. You can't marry whom you want or marry because of this insistence about destiny that's unique. This is a nuisance. So why not just become culturally a good Roman? And then everything that's coming to the Roman will come to you, including his fall. And assure him all the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them. And if you will bow down and worship me, if you will give to these kingdoms the nerve center of your consent, then all that they are will be yours. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And after all, this is what you want. Or there were those who said the whole business is rotten. And I had better withdraw. We had better withdraw from it. We've heard a great deal about them now since the Dead Sea Scrolls have turned up. The [INAUDIBLE] it said don't contaminate yourself really. Don't get mixed up in all of this. Withdraw. Find a place where there is a climate of your own. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Something so wonderful about this, isn't it? Do you ever long to be on that island somewhere where there's no proing and conning. And you don't have to work out so many times some adjustments to people who are going in a direction that is not in your direction. But if you could just get on this island with even a desert and the sea between you and all these others, then you could live your wonderful life of quiet disintegration. [LAUGHTER] Now-- now [INAUDIBLE] were more positive than this. They felt if they could devote all of their time to prayer and to having no responsibility for possessions, that perhaps-- and this is the wonderful thing-- perhaps it is possible to create by sheer naked spiritual energy the kind of ground swell that moves at a level that's deeper than politics, deeper than cosmology, deeper than dogmas of any kind. But to a ground swell of the spirit of the living God that will shatter the foundations of empires without anybody's ever having to lift a finger of violence. And this is a reasonable thing. If God is the creator of life and this is the end which God is seeking, why not be able to become a channel through which the living spirit of the living God can be released at a point that will shake the foundation? So don't fight. Pray. Don't haggle. Meditate. Purify. At least find one place-- let the spirit of God find one place that is wide open through which the moving energy which is His can be released into the world to do its perfect work. Why didn't He go with them? Now, this is part two of part one. I talked about the world, the climate. Now what kind of religion did Jesus bring to His problem? Obviously, very little that is relevant can be said about this in five minutes. But I want to point out one very important thing, and then touch it. The religion of Jesus insisted that a man is responsible for his actions before God. But more crucially, a man is responsible for his reactions to his environment before God. So it became very important to Jesus what his reaction to this total situation was. Because this was a part of the responsibility which He held before God. Now, what kind of God did he-- did He have? God was the creator-- creator of the world. God was righteous will. God was a person. Now, this is very important. A person. Now, interestingly enough, notions of God as personal in the history of the human race usually belong to what we call the primitive cultures. Now let me illustrate how we reproduce this. When I was in seminary, one of my classmates came from a little farm. He was a very pious, very devout [INAUDIBLE]. And God was just almost a glorified man moving around. And then after he began to study, you know, he was studying psychology and social origins and all the history of ideas, well, he became more and more sophisticated. And I went with him-- I 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu went with him one Sunday to his little congregation at [INAUDIBLE], New York. And I was interested in listening to his prayer. Now, this boy he was much less involved and less complicated. God was very real. God was a person. He began his prayer, Oh, thou metaphysical absolute. Now-- Pitts Theology Library Emory University [LAUGHTER] Now-- now-- no. He'd come all the way-- now this is-- this is-- this is the thing-- this is the thing that happens you see. As you are a simple and primitive God is real. God is personal. God is primary. But as you begin to deal with notions of generalizations, with concepts that are binding in order that the total structure of human life and existence will have some general principles upon which-- on the basis of which it moves, then the personal God is lost. And the logic of the generalization-- now, this is the thing that happened. The Greeks when they were primitive and they were much less complicated, they had many gods. And every god was personal. And he had a series of personal acts. Some acts were good. Some acts were bad. But he had a thisness and a thatness about him. But as they began to get general ideas and the idea of one universal spirit, this universal spirit sort of absorbed all these personal gods. Now, this is the thing about the God of Israel that to me is just absolutely staggering to my mind. And that is that here in Jesus and in Israel, God was personal. God was righteous will. And at the same time, without any loss of personality or persona, He was the creator of existence. They put these two notions, these two primary demands that the human spirit makes about the nature of existence if it is to live its life with some measure of meaning and dignity, they put these together in one created synthesis and said that this God who is righteous will, expresses his righteous will in time. And if He expresses His righteous will in time, then that means that in time we see the operation of purposes and goals as over against a time process that is continuous, that has no beginning and no ending. It's rather extraordinary isn't it how as we have become more sophisticated in our own time and our God, any sense of a personal God is more and more lost among the brackets of higher mathematics, that what we think about our destiny as human beings becomes increasingly pessimistic? This is interesting. Now, I don't quite know how to resolve this. I know how I have resolved it. But the problem is the scene. What Jesus brought them [INAUDIBLE] and I stop and begin at this point next week. What Jesus brought as central in His thought this is what he brought to the problem. This is the kind of raw material that the problem had to work with, that God had to work within Him, an idea of God as righteous will and Creator of existence. A righteous will that expressed itself in time in terms of purposes and goals and destinies. And in order to do that, it had to be particularized in a group of people. So you get the community that has some primary relationship with God. And the goal of this community at first was to guarantee itself. And through the open and transcendent wonder and glory of the 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu prophetic spirit, this destiny that at one time was confined to the people of the beloved covenant and the beloved community who were responsive to the particular acts of God in human history, these people became the living instruments through which this experience of God would become a part of the experience and the destiny of the whole human race. And how to embrace this great idea and be yourself at the same time is the persistent dilemma. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Walk with us as we wrestle to find a way to reveal thy life and thy spirit and thy mind oh, God, God, God. that we may be through to the light dismiss us with thy spirit and grant unto us thy peace [INAUDIBLE]. [MUSIC PLAYING] 7 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-619_B.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 7/6 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 1 and 2, 1959 Jan 11, 18, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-619_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 2, January 18, 1959 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-01-18 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 2 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. He quotes from Russell Gordon Smith from "Fugitive Papers." Thurman argues that the Jews had a sense of destiny, which was hindered by the fact of Roman rule and created a constant turmoil and sense of danger. What made Jesus, then, different? The common belief was that anyone who upends that which blocks destiny, becomes a righteous arm of God as the enemy is destroyed. The Zealots want to appear Roman, then kill it from the inside. The Essenes wanted to withdraw completely, feeling the Roman Empire to be totally polluted, and hoping that through shear naked spirituality God would overthrow Rome without anyone having to resort to violence.</p> <p>In the religion of Jesus, each person is responsible for their own actions in response to the environment they find themselves. Education can make God less personal and, ironically, we become more pessimistic about our destiny. God used that Jewish/Roman/Greek environment in which to shape Jesus and his community.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens Essenes Fugitive Papers Jews and Rome Le Roy Little Rock Psalm 91 Russell Gordon Smith seminary Sepphoris Temptations of Christ World Student Volunteer Movement Zealots https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/049db35a251bbae71e9233923b5ded4a.pdf bed62a991e2c59dfe6515c4bf32e73b3 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-620_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University The goodness of our fortune this morning is etched against the background of many tidings of great suffering in our land. The thousands of families that have found it necessary to seek shelter in places of refuge that are not their own. For those who are filled with the desperation of known only to those who stand helpless lay in the presence of suffering and anguish and need which they cannot meet. Against the background of the hunger of the world is the fullness of our stomachs. Against the background of the sickness of the world is our private experiences of health we would remember the needy. This is so difficult to do, so very difficult. Grand our father that the persistent pressure of thy needy children will tenderize our spirits and make soft our hearts. That each of us in his own way will find how to give expression to the impulse inspired by the movement of thy spirit within us. This is the way we want to feel. This is the way we want to behave, our father. Forgive us for our blindness. Forgive us for the hardness of heart. Forgive us the arrogance of our comfort. Forgive us, oh God, and grant that we may be so touched at the quiet place in our hearts and lives, that we may even dare to give ourselves, to give ourselves, to give ourselves, our Father. [MUSIC PLAYING] As a background for our thinking together, as part three in our series, I want to read an interpretation written by a contemporary British poet. He calls it "Joseph." He is a good lad, never given us any trouble, knows how to use plane and chisel, the different fields of wood. Since he could grasp for [? Neil, ?] he's helped me here, held planks for measuring and watched while I fashioned the yokes and plows. He'll be a craftsman. He has the hands for it. Just 12, next march, he'll come with us up to Jerusalem for the Passover. A man already and only yesterday I built the cradle for him. Yes, time passes. He knows his books, the rabbi says, better than he does. That's his joke, of course, and cuts his letters in the sand as clear as any scholar. Friday's trumpet never bothers him, and Sabbaths, he marches to the house of gathering, like other boys to sports. You should see him sitting crosslegged among the scattered [? herbs ?] watching the reader's mouths to taste the flavor of their words. Then, the prophets, quite often he's chosen. Mary's very proud then and reads their thought as his. A ringing voice, he has. Isaiah is his favorite. Now, oh out on the hill, if I know him, keeping the [? locks ?] company. You'll see. He'll be in to breakfast with that dream on him but cheerful and ready for work. Here he comes now. See how his eyes go first to the sacred scroll nailed to the door post? 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Good morning, lad, a friend to see us, Eli from Capernaum passing through to Caesarea. Your mother's bracelet, that was his, an excellent piece of workmanship. That timber? Oh, it came last night. Well, you must learn it some time. Crosses, that's what it's for, at least the cross beams for them. We have to make them. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Judas, the Galilean, and all this follower, the young fool, Eli, he raised the rebellion against the census. You heard about it. No king but God, their cry. 10,000 of them, and only 2 survive. Yes, they stormed the armory at Tiberius, seizing its weapons, but they stood no chance against the Romans. General [? Varus ?] broke them like a dead branch and then burnt Sepphoris. We saw the flames from here till morning, not a house, not a single house. Women and children shipped to slavery, and those remaining from the massacre now to be crucified. Yes, every one a hideous death. I'd sooner lose the money 20 times than be a party to it, but Roman orders, you know? All carpenters within 10 miles. Poor, luckless fellows, why did they do it? Why can't they understand that violence only breeds violence, that those who take the sword will perish by the sword. I know, I know, but there are other ways to right man's wrongs than washing them in blood. God did not set us here on this little world to kill each other. I'm sure of that. He loves his children, as I love Jesus here. We cannot serve him by actions he abhors, only by pursuing the work he made for us-- farming or carpentry or what you will, by loving God and loving God in man. Coming, Mary. The other room, Eli. The meal is ready, and I've talked long enough. Come, lad. Come. We'll pray for them, yes? And for all mankind wandering so far from God. We begin part three of our thinking together. As a preliminary statement of part three, before I pick up the thread, it is important to bear in mind something that is so easy to forget. And that is that Jesus was a young man when he died. There's something so ancient about our experience in Christianity. Ancient in the sense that it is old and familiar and traditional and bedded down that we forget that Jesus was a young man even at the time of his death. And this fact I think had a great deal to do with a certain quality in his insight and in his mind and in his spirit. But bear that in mind as we are working alone together. We begin then today with a continuation of the kind of content that there was in the religion which Jesus brought to the crucial issues of his time. It was pointed out that he inherited an experience of God that was indigenous to the life of Israel. God is the creator of existence. God is the king of the universe. That he is personal. His life is characterized by what was called the righteous will, and will implies action in time, and this action manifested itself in a series of mighty acts. One of these acts, of course, was the creation of the world. Another act was the creation of a community that would be responsive and 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu sensitive to the will of the creator as a community. So that there would be an instrument, a collective instrument, through which the righteous will might manifest itself. This was the raw material in the background of the thought and the experience which Jesus brought to problems of his time. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, of course, it is true that all of these others about whom we spoke last Sunday had the same inheritance. This was the inheritance of the zealot. This was the inheritance of [? the ?] [INAUDIBLE]. This was the inheritance of the [? pharisee ?] and the herodian and [? the ?] [INAUDIBLE]. But in Jesus, something else seems to be at work, something additional, and I will see if I can put it into some form, some words. To Jesus, far more important than the fact that he was a Jew living as a part of the Jewish community in the Greek or Roman world. More important than all of the problems and the issues that stem out of the fact that he was a member of this minority with its back against the wall in a heathen-- from their point of view-- world. Far more important than all of these things was something else, and this is the wonderful thing about this strange, this strange man. To him, God was primary. Now, let's linger over that a little, and if we can settle ourselves into his point of view, then perhaps we can understand the meaning of what he undertook in the world. Whether we agree with it or not, whether we like it or not, that too is irrelevant at the moment. God is primary. That is to say, every question, every practical consideration, every issue of his life with reference to the issue of the question he raised a further question. And that question was, what is the will of God concerning this? Now, we can see how daring this is. When you are thinking about doing something, an act of some sort, and you raise a question about it. Is the first question you raise concerning an act that you are contemplating as to whether or not the act is right or wrong? It is apt not to be that kind of question. The question that we usually raise is-- first, before we get over to the other one-- what bearing will this act have on the things that to me are important? One, what people will say about me. Now, if I act this way, will they say yay or nay? And my emotional security is somehow contingent upon the degree to which they are willing to say yay to me. What bearing will this act have on where I want to land in terms of status, in terms of position, in terms of set goals that I have for the fulfillment of my life? What bearing in it have on the security of my children, on whether or not they will be able to continue living in the manner that they are accustomed to live? I remember years ago, I went into a shoe store in Rochester, New York, to obviously, to get a pair of shoes. And I asked this clerk to get me a pair of black Oxfords, and he said, what size do you wear? I said, oh, 10 1/2, and he took my shoe off and put that measuring rod under it. And then he disappeared, and he brought a pair of black Oxfords that fitted me, and they looked all right. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University So I paid him, and when he brought the box back I lingered for a minute. Because it was one of those awful days in Rochester, the days in which the sun dies, the days that remind you of a grown man at the funeral of a friend, and he wants to cry and can't. That kind of day, and it was slushy outside in addition. And this man said to me, this is an awful job that I have, and I said, it seems pretty soft to me. You walk around all dressed up, and you have a flower in your button, and it's comfortable in here. Oh, he said, I don't mean that, but he said, you see, I'm not permitted-- it's against store policy-to let anybody know the size of their feet, and he said, I just get tired of lying about this. So I said, well, you don't have to lie to me about it. What size did you sell me? He said, 11 1/2. But, he said, every time I am tempted to get into the kind of work that will be an expression of my own sense of values, I remember my little boy and my wife and my mother, all of whom are dependent upon me for this kind of income that I'm getting. Now, this is the consideration. It is for obvious reason, you see, that men who undertake to say, with reference to Jesus, that I am perfectly willing to accept his ethic, his moral teachings, his precepts, but I cannot abide his religion, misinterpret the genius of the man. For always, the question that he raised was not how expedient is this? What bearing will it have on some species end that I have set for myself? But what is the will of God? And it is important to hold in mind when such a question is raised that for him this was not a matter of philosophical or metaphysical speculation. He started in his experience with God as primary fact-- as a matter of fact, as God as the only authentic fact in existence. And everything else derived its meaning, its significance, its relevancy, its purposes from this central [? fact. ?] Now, that means, you see, as down the road-- when we are spelling out the bill of particulars with reference to the poor and the disinherited-- we will see how radical this is. For it suggests, you see, that the question prior to the political question, the question prior to physical survival, the question prior to all experiences is what is the will of God? Now, this means then that if we look carefully into his life, we will discover that because of his experience of God as he felt it and thought of such experience, it led him to certain very important and significant conclusions with reference to the meaning of life. For instance, he did not accept the dichotomy, or the dualism, between God as just and God as kind, for instance. There is a time when justice outweighs all other considerations, and that therefore the justice of God is the most bedrock quality. Because it means that there is an integrity in the very nature of existence upon which the human spirit and all living things may depend. And that in the last analysis, this integrity will not be betrayed, because God the creator of life and existence is just. Now, Jesus put another word there and created a great deal of confusion. He said, God is just and kind, kind. Now, he says that because he is kind-- now, listen carefully and think about it-because he is kind, he can be trusted. Not because he is just he can be trusted, but because he's kind. Now, so kind is he-- so kind is he that he causes his reign to fall on the good man and the bad man. He lets his sun shine on the just man and the unjust man. He is concerned about the sparrow that falls on the wayside, about the leprosy in the leper, the blindness in the eyes of the blind, the 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu madness in the mind of the deranged. His kindness reaches in, touches, makes whole, identifies with, and this can be trusted. This can be trusted. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, he takes it a step further. He insists that how the individual then relates to God is very important. For the insistence is upon the inner will, the inner desire, the inner intent, so more relative [? than ?] springs from a new basis. It springs from the inward parts of the individual who is performing the act. Even a good deed from which the doer has inner detachment, which good deed fulfills itself, in perfection and in healing and in redemption in the world, this is not enough. The inner spirit of the individual must manifest itself in the integrity of the act. And even when he insists that by their fruits ye shall know them, included in the notion of fruits is the intent of the heart and the mind. This is radical desperation. For it says, you see, that I must relate to the actions of my life in the same way that God relates to actions in time and space. That out of an inner center must flow the deed. Therefore, we are back at the earlier point. I cannot raise the question then, if I do this particular thing, and no one knows it, no one knows really how I feel. But if I can make you feel that this is a good thing that I am doing for you, isn't this all right? Isn't this all right? If I can detach myself so that I will be involved in but not affected by the act, isn't this all right? And he insists that God is primary. That we relate to him in the same way that we relate to the deeds of our lives in turns that are primary. That because God, at long last, can be trusted I should keep my eyes on him rather than on the effect or the result here or here or here. When I was a boy, one of the ways by which I earned a part of what I called my living was teaching elderly ladies how to ride a bicycle. I was quite expert at this, and I would ride along and have my hand on the post of the seat and talking. And now and then, I would withdraw my hand. They wouldn't know that my hand was not there, and they would go on. But always one problem presented itself. Whenever a stone or a root appeared in the road, then the lady who was learning to ride the bicycle would get tense. And she would say, there is a rock, and I would say, yes. I see it, but don't you look at it, because if you keep your eyes on it, you'll go straight over it. Look the other where. Now, this is what he's saying. Don't look at the stone in the road. Now, this sounds like Pollyanna, you know? Well, we'll see how Pollyanna-ish it is a little later on. Don't look at the root. Look at God, who is the creator of existence of stones and roots and either he can be trusted or he can't. If he cannot be trusted, then for life, there is no meaning, and for existence, there is no integrity. If he can be trusted, trust him and see. Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow. They [? toil ?] not neither do they [? spin, ?] yet your heavenly father takes care of them. Aren't you worth more that these things? 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Don't watch [? wrong ?] so hard. Don't let yourself be stampeded by the marching legions and the lecherous glances that they cast at the daughters of Israel. Don't lose your life trying to find it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And they thought him mad. They thought him a betrayer and a traitor. And to those who had their security rooted in the nature of the event, to them he was a traitor. And it is my sincere and profound conviction that this man is the great enemy of our civilization and our culture. And if his will, as he experienced it, becomes operative in our society, not a single stone will be left upon another. Our survival as a culture I think is contingent upon the degree to which we are able somehow to separate ourselves from his all mighty insistence and his terrible religion. But if we say yes to it, we shall become like Him even the perfection which is God's for which he strove will be our striving. O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity, interpreted by love. Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease, take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of they peace. The beauty of thy peace, oh, God, Oh, God, God, our father. [MUSIC PLAYING] 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-620_A.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 7/6 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 3 and 4, 1959 Jan 25, Feb 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-620_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 3, January 25, 1959 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-01-25 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 3 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. He begins with a reading called "Joseph" by Clive Benson (not mentioned by name). The thrust of this piece is that God is primary, and can be trusted because God is kind. God is just and kind at the same time. There was only one real question Jesus was ever asking, "What is the will of God?" Not, "what do I want," or "how will this impact what's important to me?" He wants us to focus on this, and he tells the story of how he taught older women to ride bikes, and when they'd see a rock ahead, he'll tell them not to look at it or they would go straight at it. "Don't watch Rome so hard."</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens bicycle Clive Benson Joseph rock root will of God https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/54abf2c53cc5237ffe2eb37901982a67.pdf 37e2dfc62c3f611f0d990b389eeb6231 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-620_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His namesake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointeth my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord. Forever. Forever. [MUSIC PLAYING] As a background for the continuation of the theme on which we are working, Jesus and the disinherited, I'm reading two things from Clive Benson, the British poet. One is called "The Brothers," referring, of course, to the brothers of Jesus, and the other is called "The Phoenician Woman." It is the brothers who are speaking here. Going from Nazareth? Where? To the Jordan Valley, leaving your home and your trade, your own kinsfolk? For what? For John, an unwashed preacher, a ranting hermit who sacrificed family and wealth and a seat in the priesthood and for locusts and prophecies? Why? You're mad, insane, selling your life for a whim, for a religious frenzy. Mad, yes, mad. Will you share his faith and his filth, outcast like him, rejected by brother and friend, a life of rebellion, hunger, a shameful death? If the thought of that leaves you unmoved, then remember us, your brothers and your sisters, and the mother who gave you birth. Look at her there, standing in tears, forsaken, bewildered, left by her firstborn, you, the head of the household. Think of her neighbors' looks, the humiliation, her fears and her griefs. What? What do you say? Whoever obeys the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, my sister, my mother. By the God of Israel, would you preach at us, your ministry start at home? Better recall, if you can, your father in Nazareth, your pledge to him, your promise of filial care. You shall honor your father and mother. Remember that when you mouth your texts at us. Remember that and carry forever the shame of your father's children. Now "The Phoenician Woman." She has followed us all day, master, hook nosed, insistent, yapping at our heels in commercial Greek. Her husband's a boat builder. Those boats of [INAUDIBLE] wood. Her daughter, it seems, possessed of a devil that you, master, a Jew, are supposed to exorcise. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Talk to her, master. Send her away. Tell her you came to the children of Israel, not to Phoenician dogs. He turned on me sternly, but his voice smiled. You hear what they say, he demanded, talking to the lady. Is it right, do you think, taking the children's food and tossing it to the dogs? Pitts Theology Library Emory University Master, I replied, feeling the bond between us, a humor we share alone, even dogs are allowed scraps from the table when the children reject them. His face smiled now. You have understanding and faith, mother. It will happen as you desire. It was true. Coming to the hill above Tyre, weary beyond all weariness, I fell on my knees, letting my eyes search where feet could not follow, looking down on the cluster of evening ships, the causeway with its moving chain of carriers, and a heap of murex shells outside the dye works. I saw her coming from the bazaars to meet me, my daughter, her white conspicuous among blues and purple. She did not need to speak. She walked up the hill as a girl walks whose arms are her own. I want to take us for one more leg on our journey and to see if I cannot make a plateau out of this for you to hold until we start again of-- it is rather difficult to get out what has been gnawing in me, so that I want to try, if I may, to summarize what is my concern in two or three comprehensive sentences, and then work back to see if we can't get at it. The basic proposition is that the contribution-- let's see-- the contribution which Jesus made to the working concept of brotherhood, which was his inheritance, was this. He substituted the exclusiveness which is inherent in any definition of brotherhood, you see, inclusiveness. Now, think for a minute. By definition, you see, brotherhood is exclusive. What he did was to substitute the exclusive [INAUDIBLE] and redefine it in terms of inclusiveness. And this he could do in the light of the meaning of his religion. I shall come back to it as we begin to work it out. Now, Paul in his treatment of this experience, did the same thing, on a more limited scale. He included in his definition the Gentile world. So there again, he pulled out exclusiveness and introduced inclusiveness. The difference, however, he made his inclusiveness contingent upon the relationship of the individual to Christ. So whereas in the thought of Jesus, the inclusiveness was due to the way the individual is related to God, in Paul, the inclusiveness was due to the way the individual must be related to Christ. Now, the church picks up this and makes its definition of brother in Christ what, do you know? Inclusive immediately of all the believers, potentially inclusive of all who will believe. And out of this concern, there is the necessity to go out to ready people for their acceptance of Him in order that they may be included. So the church finds itself ambivalent, then, you see, confirming in its commitment this inclusiveness, defining the nature of the believer in terms that are exclusive, putting the burden for inclusiveness ultimately upon the shoulders of the person who must do something in order to be included. And it is for this reason that within the church itself, individuals, groups are 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu permitted to be regarded as included but not quite. And this is the basis of all the segregation of the Christian church. Now let's go back and work it so that if you don't get anything else, I've said what's the heart of what's in my mind. Now let's see if we can't work at it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University God, in the thought of Jesus, God is the creator of life, and that human life, we begin with that point, and that all men are brothers by virtue of the fact of their creation, and the derivative from the fact of the creation is that there is in all of them a part of the living God who is their creator, which is the basis of the Jesus doctrine of brotherhood. It is not contingent upon any kind of classification, any kind of belonging, any kind of status, any kind of construct of relatedness. It is inherent in the nature of the existence of the individual. He is created by God. And in him there is that which is of God the creator, and therefore I get to you through God the creator. He causes His sun to shine on the good man and the bad man, the wicked and the unwicked, the believer and the unbeliever. And have I a right to exercise a principle of discrimination in my dealings with human beings, a principle that God Himself does not exercise in the way in which He shares His life? This is the radical thing in the definition, in the re-defining of brother in the [? real ?] [? spirits ?] of Jesus. For you see, the word brother means by inference something that is unique, particular, exclusive, because it stands over against those who are not brothers. Now, if it is true that God is the creator of all and there is, therefore, in each one of us His spirit, and thus, we are under some inner necessity to relate to in order that we may be aware of the dimensions of our own brotherhood, if this is true, then no category is as understanding that separates. Now, this is radical. It was radical for Jesus. Think of what it meant, what it meant for him to take a position like this. What about the Samaritan? What about the Gentile? What about the Roman? What about the uncircumcised? What about those who are not a part of the covenant? Now, this means it seems that in Him there is a redefinition of the significance of the individual, that God relates not merely to the group, not merely to the family, not merely to the nation, but God relates to the individual. Because the groups will change, will shift. Kingdoms will wax and wane. Civilizations will rise and fall. States will be active today and inactive tomorrow. But always, there is the individual who relates to life out of the depths of his intimacy and his privacy. And it is for this individual the constant equation in all of these social forms and patterns and constructs. The individual, therefore, is the one for whom God cares. Now, Paul had essentially the same psychological problem that Jesus had, only more crucially difficulty, if I may tie up two words like that. For Paul was a Jew as Jesus was, but Paul was free. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And this is of such overwhelming importance to understand the nature of his victory over himself and his heritage. He was a free Jew. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He boasts of the fact in his trial that he was a Hebrew son of a Hebrew father, as touching the law of Pharisee. He was of a core. He found his emotional security and stability in the very core of his belonging in the context of Israel. And in addition to this you see, feeling as he did about being a Jew, at the same time, he was privileged to experience in the way he was treated by the Romans as if he were not a Jew. Think of what this did to his whole psychology. By blood, training, background, he belonged to this group in the Roman Empire that was under the hammer with no political freedom, with a sense of having their lives pinched in by the pressure of the Pagan world, at the top of which sat the Roman Empire with its marching legions. It was all right. But Paul was not affected by this. Because for some reason we do not quite know, by some historical incident-- it may be his father did something to save a Roman general, or maybe he did something else. I don't know just what happened. But he was given perpetual citizenship. Now, think of what that means. Living in the midst of the Jewish community, a part and parcel of all of their life and hopes and dreams, but when it came to any kind of discrimination, he was an exception. Think of what this did to him. Suppose I went down to Mississippi just as I am and because of some extenuating circumstance that all the laws of Mississippi that have to do with segregation would not apply to me. I would have open sesame to the city of Vicksburg. [LAUGHTER] Now, do you see what it would mean? Now, this would tempt me to do what? It would tempt me to say to my friend in Vicksburg who is having a lot of trouble and under great pressure, now, really, they really aren't so bad, if you could see the other side of the street the way I do. Now, to soften this, [? don't ?] [? take it ?] [? easy. ?] [INAUDIBLE]. If a Roman soldier were whipping Paul, he could say to that soldier, take your hands off me. I am a Roman citizen. I appeal to Caesar. But if a Roman soldier tripped Jesus into a Palestinian ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar. He was just a Jew in the ditch. So this subtle thing is a psychology of force has had a profound influence in the development of the notion of brotherhood in the Christian religion. Now, please do not misunderstand me. But this that I am about to say now is not all that there is in Paul. But what I am trying to help you understand is what happens in the kind of definition that he gave to brotherhood growing out of his experience. This was all brought home to me in a very striking way. I've written this account. So some of you perhaps have read it. But when I was a boy, one of the chores of which I started out in life after I became literate was to write the letters for my grandmother. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu My grandmother was the anchor person in our family. And everybody wrote to her knowing that, in due time, all the members of the family would hear. And very [INAUDIBLE] the family began complaining that they couldn't read my writing. And my grandmother then shifted my chore. I became the reader, and my sister became the writer, because she wrote with a nice girl's hand. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One of my chores was to read the Bible to my grandmother. But she would not ever let me read any of the letters of the Apostle Paul. And I was concerned about it. But my grandmother was the sort of person that you didn't raise any questions about anything. You just abided. But when I went to college, at the end of my junior year, I came home and was a little more, well, you know. So I was reading the Bible to her one afternoon on the front porch. And I said to my grandmother, why is it as we grew up you would not ever let me read any of the letters of Paul to you? And she said, oh, that's very simple. When I was a girl and a young woman on the plantation in North Florida where I was owned and lived until the Civil War was fought, twice a year, the minister of the master had special services for the slaves. And he always preached from the same text, words of the Apostle Paul-- slaves be obedient to your masters, for this is right in the Lord. And I promised myself that if I ever learned to read or if I ever became a free person, I would never read that part of the Bible. Now, this is present in the thought of Paul, logically and consistently present, growing out of the psychology of his experience. But there's something else there. He found that through Christ, he could redefine the meaning of brotherhood in the same way that Jesus found, through God, he could redefine the meaning of brotherhood. So that Paul says in Christ, then, there is neither [? bond ?] [? nor ?] [? priest ?] or [? West ?] Greek or barbarian. Now, the church, then, following in the wake of this, this historic religious experience, defines brotherhood in terms of those who are brothers in Christ, in Christ, using as the key, you see, the very same basic insight that Paul used. But that's different. Through him, there are certain formalities that are necessary in order for you to qualify to be a brother in Christ, you see? So that if you define the meaning of Christ in one way, then this alters the conditions that must be met by those who are excluded before they can be included as brothers. Do you remember when we began the series? I told you about the experience of my father. Now the minister of that church defined the meaning of Christ in a way that excluded my father from being a brother. Now, so the burden of proof, then, for becoming a brother rests on the individual and how he relates to a doctrine and the dogma and the creed again and again. So we find this [INAUDIBLE] today that we define brotherhood in terms of Christ-- the church does. And this is in the nature of the case initially exclusive. Deep within the incentive of the religious experience is an obligation to those who are excluded. So moving out of the experience of brotherhood, we go forth then to transform the world and make the world available to the experience of brotherhood in Christ. So that everybody, then, according to this essential position, everybody potentially is a brother. Only those who believe 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu are actually brothers. So the process, therein, that those who believe are under obligation to bring those who are potentially brothers until they too are in the fold. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, the difficulty is, [? the ?] [? difficulty ?] [? is ?] [? in, ?] that the definition of brotherhood spreads out so as to reflect what is the pattern by which the particular society or individuals may be governed. So when I say, if I permit any extenuating clause-- and this is the heart of my own concern and the depths of my own dilemma-- any extenuating clause like [? brothers ?] [? potentials, ?] opens the door for every other kind of exclusion. If I can-- when I look at you and I say, you have not been visited by the grace of God in Christ. And therefore, you are not a part of the body of Christ. And if you are not a part of the body of Christ, then you are only potentially a part of the brotherhood of man. And we don't logically put it down in such hard, cold terms, but this is the way it operates. Then I say, [? you see, ?] [INAUDIBLE] as long as I can say this, then the door is open for me to put in my little exceptional clause. You don't cut your hair properly. Or your hair's red, and it should be green. Or you have bad manners. The door is open now for all kinds of extenuating circumstances which place the burden of proof for becoming a brother in Christ not in the nature of man's existence as man. No, but in the nature of some kind of classification. And that's why the definition which Jesus Christ gives for brotherhood will destroy our culture and destroy our civilization. Because our civilization within the church and out the church, within all the groups that's built upon another principle, men are brothers because of something that is organic-- the country they belong to, this or that, or they are not brothers by virtue of the fact that each one shares at the deepest levels of his being in the creation which isn't [? God's. ?] This is the only basis upon which any kind of brotherhood can stand, for it is here that at last a man begins to get an inkling into what is the nature of his infinite worth. And whether he is lame, sick, [? hurt, ?] ugly, beautiful, wise or stupid, sane or insane, saint or sinner, American or German or Russian, Methodist or Baptist or Hindu or Presbyterian, all of these are organic classifications that have no standing in the definition of brotherhood according to Him as it is derived from how He feels. Got the will of God broods over the minds of men, like the spirit of the hive broods over the apiary of bees. And it is to this new dimension that we are called. The feebleness of effort and the great turmoil out of which here and there a light may come and Thy voice may be heard, we thank Thee, oh, Father. We thank Thee. Dismiss us now with Thy spirit and forsake us not in the lonely way that we take, oh, God, God of our spirit. [MUSIC PLAYING] 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-620_B.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited - GL 7/6 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 3 and 4, 1959 Jan 25, Feb 1, Side B Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-620_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 4, February 1, 1959 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-02-01 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 4 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. Reads 2 pieces by Clive Benson: "The Brothers" and "The Phoenician Woman." This talk is on "brotherhood" or inclusiveness. He argues that Jesus considered someone included by their relationship with God, whereas to Paul it was one's relationship to Christ. The church has followed the Paul model. He points out that Paul had a different viewpoint than Jesus. Both were Jews, but Paul had Roman citizenship and could claim that for protection whereas Jesus could be treated as trash. He claims it made Paul look at the Romans as "not so bad," and he likens it to him being given complete freedom in Mississippi to live like a white person even though he was black. He talks of his grandmother, who was a slave, refusing to read Paul because twice yearly the master would have the preacher come and lead services always using Paul's text of "slaves obey your masters." He argues that Paul's definition of brotherhood, or who's included and who's excluded, is different than Jesus'. And once we have any reason to exclude anyone, then we can then make up any reason we want for excluding someone. Hence, church and civilization divide people up, but true brotherhood is based on our universal connection to God.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens brotherhood Clive Benson exclusiveness Grandmother inclusiveness Mississippi nationalities Paul slave The Brothers The Phoenician Woman Vicksburg https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/60eede7160d72dc0403f5cf34d074144.pdf da7fc3ebf1d49a68cbb88e58a54ecfa2 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-621_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Again and again, we are deeply aware of the circle that shuts us in, so that despite all of our many sided exposures to each other, we are cut off. We are alone in our solitariness. So much of our aloneness is due to the uncertainties of our own feelings about ourselves and about others. At times, we are aware of the way in which in our blindness, a careless word out of which all kindness has been extracted may undermine the confidence and the strength of someone who walks the way with us. We are so involved in the necessities of our own lives, trying to thread our mystery today with such a simple clues as our close at hand, that we are unmindful of the ways in which we turn others empty from our door. We are aware of our own hurts, our own wounds, our own injuries, and out of the depth of our private agonies, we are tempted to feel that no one understands, and those who understand do not care. And thus, we gather together in the midst of the congregation, touching each other's shoulder, sharing in the common sense of the common presence until at last, there begins to stir within us something that breaks the circle, spills over into other lies, and we are no longer alone. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Forever and ever. We're picking up the threads of our thinking together about Jesus and the disinherited. And this morning, we are thinking together about the poor and the disinherited. As a background, will you listen to these two readings from the same British poet from whom I've been reading most of the time in the series. "Martha of Bethany," this is called. "It's all very well sitting in the shade of the courtyard talking about your souls. Someone's got to see to the cooking, standing at the oven, all morning with you two taking your ease. It's all very well, saying he'd be content with bread and honey. Perhaps he would, but I wouldn't, come into our house like this, not giving him our best. Yes, it's all very well him trying to excuse you, saying your recipe's best, saying I worry too much, that I'm always anxious. Someone's got to worry and double if the others don't care. For it's all very well talking of faith and belief, but what would you do if everyone sat in the cool, not giving their meal? And he can't go wandering and preaching on an empty stomach. He'd die in the first fortnight. Then, where would you be with all your discussions and questions, and no one to answer? It's all very well." Now, this rich young ruler, "What must I do, Master, to gain eternal life? From my youth, I have kept the commandments, honored my parents. Theft, murder, lying, adultery, all these by God's mercy have passed me by. What then must I do, Master? What more must I do? 'Sell all,' he replied, 'and follow me.' And he's the same, he a carpenter, a carpenter's son, sacrificed nothing, and his man, Peter, smirking self-righteous, what did he lose but some worn nets, a boat share, and trade in the market? 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It wasn't myself I was thinking of. Ease and possessions. But the responsibility of wealth towards its dependence, what of them if I had obeyed him? What of my servants? That's what I'd tell myself now, but do I believe it? Then, silent, I walked away, watching my sandals, while his voice, the voice of my heart, followed me homewards. Pitts Theology Library Emory University In misery, I stopped by the lake, hid by the crowd wall. I heard him speak of the kingdom of God, the camel and the needle." I invite you to move back at the beginning of our thinking in order to pick up a thread that moves more and more to the heart of my concern in this entire series. It was pointed out that Jesus was a Jew and that he was intensely Jewish, that he lived and wrought his work from within the context of the Jewish community. All of his points of fundamental reference that sprang out of the peculiar quality of his religious experience, these were rooted in history. So deeply influenced those who were his earliest followers, that for a long time, they were made up largely of persons who were not only Jewish, but who also were functioning actively in the house of Israel. Now, this we forget, but to pursue it is beside my point. He was also a poor Jew, a poor Jew. For when, in accordance with the Jewish law, the child that openeth the womb should, after the period of the cleansing of the mother, be brought to the temple for dedication, a lamb for a burnt offering, turtle dove or a pigeon for a sin offering. When Jesus was brought to the temple, two turtle doves, two pigeons, for the law said that if the family be too poor to afford a lamb, then the family may use two turtle doves and two pigeons, two turtle doves for the burnt offering, two pigeons for the sin offering. He was poor. But he was poor not merely in the sense of limited economic resources, but he was poor in terms of the larger community to which he belonged, for his community was a marginal community in the Greco-Roman world, a marginal community. You know what that means? Well, this will open up to us the meaning of being poor, poor, poor. That is, that you stand outside of the normal guarantors of security in your society. You are without the symbols that are accepted by the society as being manifestations of authentic belonging. To be marginal, to be on the fringe. Now, one of the effects of the is to give to the individuals a very-- to tend to give to the individuals a very low self estimate. I remember one night in North India after a public meeting, and we had gone to the place of our retirement, and as a matter of fact, we had retired. And there was a general rapping at the outside door. And in characteristic fashion, lest I might disturb the nocturnal ramblings of some unsuspecting cobra, I took my flashlight and made a nice illumination on the floor, so that we would be of one party. And I went to the door. And at the door, there stood a little Indian boy, his head down. And he said, I have come because I heard what you said tonight. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I was standing outside, listening. Is there anything that you can say that can help a nobody? He was an untouchable. Now, we say that this is an extreme and dramatic manifestation of the concern that's in my mind, but let's examine it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University When you are outside of the main stream of a society, you are disinherited, and you feel that nothing that you do, nothing that you may become can have any direct bearing on the social process that regulates and determines the common life. How do you think Jesus or any Jew of his time reacted when a family was visited by a Roman legion? That which is the symbol of the controller and the dominant mind of the society when it is brought into primary contact with those who stand just outside, there is a sense of utter defenseless, because there is no legitimate way by which you can count effectively. This was a part of the psychology by which the life of Jesus was surrounded, so that when he began thinking about the way by which the marginal units in his society would be able to survive, to have a sense of participation in the common life. He looked around to see where in the society and within the Jewish community, where had there been worked out some kind of social answer to this problem. The Pharisees, by the logic of their origination or their origin, should have found an answer, but they have not. As we pointed out, they had withdrawn more and more and having being apart, but not involved. The Herodians had taken another position. The Sadducees had taken another position. But there was one group, the Essenes, who seemed, perhaps they have gotten a clue. We don't know to what extent Jesus was involved in the movement of the Essenes. There's a great deal of discussion about it now that the-- those things-- the scrolls, now that the scrolls have been found. But as I look at this, it seems to me that there was something in the notion of the Essenes that at first must have attracted Jesus. All this may sound very academic to you, but it's very important to get it in our heads. Here was a group, you see, that that had withdrawn into places of retreat, some of them. They had established a community, a common community, sharing everything. They were responsive to a central, righteous leader. They did not stay in their retreats, but they projected this communal way into the traffic of the common life in the Greco-Roman world. They learned what it meant to pool interest, to pool concern, to put at the disposal of a common ideal all that you have. They were able to experience commitment with a spiritual immunity against the idolatry of commitment. But there was something wrong with them. If the clue to survival is to be found by principles that can only be worked out in some kind of esoteric community, then these principles are not particularly valid, because most of the people will not be involved in any kind of esoteric community. Where in the common experience of the people may there be found a clue, which will give to them a means by which they may survive in a manner that is personally and spiritually redemptive? Where was this to be found? 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The only place that it could be found, as Jesus saw it, was in the family, because you did not know have to set up a little private esoteric world in anticipation of the end of the age. But you could just be in the family and learn all of these things. What then does the family, from this point of view, say about the clue to the survival of the individual in terms of his essential dignity? For this, after all, you see, is the problem of the poor. Pitts Theology Library Emory University How can I count, even to myself, particularly if my heritage is that if you are poor, it means that you are not prosperous, and if you are not prosperous, it means that God has not blessed you, and if God has not blessed you, then it means that God takes the same attitude towards you that the society takes. So you are lost in both dimensions. Now Jesus took this and introduced something else. The thing that gives to the individual his meaning is not how he is classified. It has nothing to do with blood. It has nothing to do with status. It has nothing to do with anything that is organic. What he did was to take the kind of discovery that the family makes of the individual and project that discovery on a canvas that is as wide as the human race. For in the family, even though the child may be crippled, may be blind, may be an imbecile, may be dull witted, may be brilliant, may be ugly, but somewhere within the structure of the family, there is worked out a way by which the tenderness, the love, all that is meant by caring, can be spelled out at the level of the person, whose need is greatest and who may be least able to defend himself. Now, this is the place where it is worked out. Now, says Jesus, the whole human race is the family of God, that God cares for the individual. And we must, in our relationships to the individual, deal with the individual this way, rather than this way. In terms of the political and social and economic survival of a group, this was his practical problem. I would suggest that what he discovered and the definition that he gives to the meaning of the discovery, namely love, was for him and his world, not merely a religion and a religious experience. But it was a technique of survival by which the experience of the individual would counteract the effect of his, the individual's, being on the margins of the society. Now, this places within the reach of the individual a kind of emotional security, which by some standard may be regarded as wishful thinking, but it is ultimately the only answer to the three persistent demons that always work away at the life, the common life and the security of the poor, the weak, the disinherited. We [INAUDIBLE] not fear of an individual, but fear as a mood of the spirit, fear as a climate, hate, hate as a device by which the emotional security and the personal dignity of the individual is affirmed in the presence of forces and persons that would seek to undercut its movement and hypocrisy as a device by which, when you are marginal, you seek to give to yourself the security of being non-marginal by not ever letting any persons who are not marginal be able to locate you. So that the weak, the poor, have always found in Christianity something which is not always emphasized in Christianity. I was 25 years old before I ever heard from our pulpits a sermon 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu which addressed itself to what Christianity had to say to people who stood with their backs against the wall. Pitts Theology Library Emory University All of my life, I had heard sermons about what our attitude should be towards people who stand with their backs against the wall, how we should help, how we should succor, how we should give aid, all of the things in such terms. But what is the council of the religion to the man who is desperate? And it is this that Jesus saw, and it is to this that he addressed himself. This is the heart of his religion. Again and again, this has been missed in our emphasis. But wherever the gospel is preached, whatever it may be the power written emphasis that it may have, this insistence on the part of Jesus manages to get through to the desperate. And that is why his religion, though not a political or economic reformist religion, the logic of it in what it does to underscore and to deepen and to make aware the dignity of the individual becomes the source of revolution and the source for social change. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the disinherited for they shall inherit the earth. I wonder what would happen if we ever believed this. Walk beside us, our Father, leaving in our hearts the quiet strength of they companionship, that we may live each day as thy children, unafraid. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited (1959, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource "[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who stand with their backs against the wall.'" - Vincent Harding, foreword to 1996 edition of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).<br /><br />First published in 1949, <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em> was also a common topic in Thurman's lectures and sermons. In 1959, he delivered this 12-part sermon series as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.<br /><br />[In Progress] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Ken Owens AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-621_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1950s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Jesus and the Disinherited, parts 5 and 6, 1959 Feb 22, Mar 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-621_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 5, February 22, 1959 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959-02-22 Description An account of the resource <p>Part 5 of <em>Jesus and the Disinherited</em>. Again reads from Clive Benson, "Martha of Bethany," and "The Rich Young Ruler." Remember that Jesus was a poor Jew, and not just economically poor but a member of a marginal community which tends to give to the individual a low estimate of themselves. Story of the untouchable Indian boy who came to Thurman during his trip to India and asked, "Is there anything that you can say that would help a nobody?" When you are outside the mainstream of society, you are a disinherited and you feel that there is nothing you can do or become that would impact society.</p> <p>Thurman argues that the Essenes did somewhat answer this problem by sharing all things and building common community, but it is useless if one must disassociate from the larger world. The one place Jesus found where a person could live a redemptive life was in the family. We think that if we are not prosperous then God has not blessed us, and that means that God has taken "the same attitude towards you that society has." A person's meaning has nothing to do with classification. What Jesus did was take the discovery of how a family loves all its members (strong and weak), and then project that onto the whole human race as the family of God. This works against fear and hate. Thurman says he had heard plenty of sermons on how to treat and aid people "with their backs against the wall," but not until he was 25 did he hear a sermon to the "people with their backs against the wall." What would happen if we believed that the poor would inherit the earth?</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Ken Owens Clive Benson Essenes family family of God God's family marginalized Marthan of Bethany poor The Rich Young Ruler untouchable