Ecumenical Service of Remembrance and Reconciliation
50th
Anniversary of Integration of Central High School
Robinson
Auditorium
September
23, 2007
Victor
H. Nixon
RECONCILIATION
1 Corinthians 5:17-20a
I am
honored to participate in the worship of God with my esteemed colleagues in
ministry, these splendid choirs, and with all of you today. It is so important that people of faith join
hearts and hands not only to commemorate the historic event that brings us
together today but to cooperate in the days ahead in our journey toward peace,
justice and reconciliation.
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I was seventeen years old in
1957, beginning my senior year in high school in a tiny, all-white Arkansas
community. So I really experienced
nothing of the events transpiring around Central High School in Little Rock
except what I read in the newspaper and watched on television, albeit with
great interest. Although we discussed integration at home, at school and in
church, it was all from a distance. I did
not personally endure the riots, the hatred and fear. I did not witness the bravery, faith and determination. I did not attend a school encircled by
military and angry mobs. I simply went
to school as usual and graduated.
Yet, what I did experience was the affect that
Central High had upon my family, my friends, my church and my community,
namely, that we were forced to look deeply inside our hearts and to decide
where we stood on racial justice individually and corporately. The results I remember were revealing,
though not surprising. We were
divided. The vocal majority were
segregationists. Very few were
outspoken supporters of integration.
Many remained silent and afraid, thankful that all this was transpiring
down in Little Rock and not in our hometown.
Yet, that simply was not true because the struggle with racism and
injustice was occurring within each one of us, within me.
So I remember today with enormous gratitude all
the heroes who endured in the struggle to integrate Central High and to teach
the rest of us lessons about freedom, justice, dignity and honor and for all
who have made this 50th Celebration of the Integration of Central
High School possible.
But we must do more than remember because the
struggle has not ended. We are still a
racially divided people in this community.
We are still a racially divided people in our churches. Many minds and hearts remain
conflicted. For people of faith the
hard work of reconciliation remains to be done, reconciliation with God,
reconciliation with one another. If all
that we do is remember, shame on us.
In his sermon entitled, “A Tough Mind and a Tender
Heart,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted the words of Jesus in Matt.
10:16: “Be ye therefore wise as
serpents, and harmless as doves.” He
argued that because faith is concerned with truth, it demands
toughmindedness. Yet however
disciplined our minds become, our hearts must remain compassionate. Jesus soundly criticized hardhearted
persons. The person who lacks a tender
heart is subject to irreconciliable hatred which can explode in violence. Dr. King said that we worship a God who is
both toughminded and tenderhearted.
“God has two outstretched arms.
One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle
enough to embrace us with grace.”
We have been given a magnificent legacy to
remember and inspire us. Ours is the
ministry of reconciliation. It will
require that we be toughminded, that we not give up on that goal. It will require that we be tenderhearted,
that we be compassionate toward one another.
Above all, it will require that we join hands together, as today, with a
common faith in God and a common quest for justice, peace and the common good
of all, so that fifty years from now our children and grandchildren will
remember with thanksgiving and blessing.
Thanks be to God. Amen.