A Day of Mourning, Rejoicing, and Dreaming

Today is a tragic day, but a day of memory, a day of hope. It is a day of anamnesis, a special kind of remembering where the past is relived in the present and propels us to the future. Last night, around 7 o'clock, Rosa Parks died at her apartment in the Riverfront apartments in Detroit. Parks moved to the Detroit area after she lost her job in the wake of her "civil disobedience" on a Montgomery bus. Her refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man was a catalyst in the civil rights movement and in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We rejoice in her legacy, which will never die," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a statement Monday night. "In many ways, history is marked as before, and after, Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down. Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors to our long journey to freedom ... She wove glory with grace."

While we mourn the death of this amazing woman, we rejoice in the power of her life, the transformation that her small act of defiance brought to an inherently evil system of segregation, and her spirit for civil rights and liberty to the nameless and voiceless on the margins of our society. Not only do we rejoice in her life, we pray that her spirit of justice and reconciliation will live on in us, especially those of us in the white majority.

Parks' life and work has helped bring us to the point we are today. Her death serves as a reminder of how far we still have to come, especially in our churches. May we continue to dream of the day when all, Jews and Greeks, slave and free, black and white, male and female, will be one in Christ and in our churches. May we struggle for the rights of the least of these, not because it is a good civic responsibility, but because we are all created in the image of God and the gospel is only working when the dividing walls separating people from one another are torn down in Christ.

I also just received this from a friend and partner in ministry in Detroit. I asked him in an email today about the impact of Parks' death on him and his community of faith (one of the African-American Churches of Christ in metro-Detroit). He responded:

"The passing of Rosa Parks will cause all of us to think about where we are in the civil rights

movement. I think it will serve as a wake up call to those of us who have become complacent. It is time for us to evaluate our priorities and get back to the basics of life, liberty and pursuit of fulfilling God's will for our lives. I believe Rosa Parks fulfilled God's will for her life. I hope it will cause all Americans to realize that we have a lot work ahead of us. I hope all of us, especially our youth, of all ethnic backgrounds, might recenter on the teachings of Christ."

One the news today, Jesse Jackson said that Rosa Parks life and her vision for humanity will live on each time a person mentions her name. That is anamnesis. May God grant us the grace to make it so.