Divided Houses

It's been quite a week. It seems like every week I think things have gotten about as bad as they can get, but then something happens that makes me think I was being naïve.

This week it was Charlottesville, Virginia. I know Charlottesville; it's a beautiful place. In downtown Charlottesville, like a number of Southern towns and cities, is a statue of Robert E Lee, Virginian, Episcopalian, a slaveholder, and general of the Confederate armies during the Civil War. He had been a general in the Army of the United States until the South had declared it would secede from the union. Lee was given the choice to stay with the U.S. Army or to lead the state militia for the South. He loved his state, and so he chose to fight for Virginia, something for which he is now called a traitor. It was probably a hard decision for him to make, I'm sure, and at the end of the war, after he had surrendered his sword, he had to go and build a new life. He became the president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, and when he died, at his funeral no flags were flown, no uniforms were worn, and even the respected Mr. Lee wore a plain suit at his burial.

During the years after the Civil War there were people who came to Robert E Lee and asked to put up statues to memorialize the defeated generals and soldiers, but Lee turned them down, believing that it would only increase the pain and retard healing of the wounds that the Civil War had caused in the South. What would he think of all the statues of himself? He would probably just sadly shake his head turn his, turn his back, and walk away, thinking that his words had not been heeded.

Lee was a symbol of what we have come to realize was a house divided against itself, a comparison that was made by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, but originally appeared in the three synoptic Gospels which quoted Jesus is saying that  a house divided against itself cannot stand. It was nothing new under the sun, because for millennia houses and countries have been ripped apart by politics, by conquest, by ideology, by hatred, and a number of other causes. In some cases, the divided have been able to build  strong foundations for themselves, but in many cases, like our Civil War, there remained a rift never totally repaired, even to this very day.

Jesus used the figure of Beelzebub, or as we call it, the devil, to illustrate the principle he was trying to get across. He said that Beelzebub could not stand if he were divided. In other words, his strength would be diminished by having to control two opposing sides rather than one unified whole. It is like walking a tightrope without a balance pole.

I grew up in the segregated South. I knew about segregated water fountains, bathrooms, waiting rooms, churches, schools, and the whole bit. But I also lived in a small town where there were African-Americans living next door to Caucasians without friction and in a very friendly manner. There are a lot of people today who would find that laughable and who would argue that it was not possible, given that we were a racially divided area in so many ways. Yes, the house was divided, and very probably we didn't handle it well at all, although I don't remember a lot of difficulty when our schools were integrated. The two groups were segregated themselves by choice for a while in that same building, but gradually the invisible barriers went down and we began to be a school rather than two opposing camps.

I look at the church, now that the Cromwellian era is long gone, where one would think that the church might come together as a unified whole with its focus on the worship of God and the following of the teachings of Jesus. Instead, it seems to have set up its own divided house, again based on a number of criteria. In the Anglican/Episcopal church, we are trying to work through our problems of racism, gender and racial equality, orientation, and interfaith and intercultural relations. It seems like in some places they have put up statues (or inviolable rules) of heroes to those on one side who, to those on the opposing side, are seen as traitors or heretics. I look, for instance, at the division of the Anglican/Episcopal church over the question of homosexuality and orientation. I can't literally visualize statues representing each side, but I see both sides fighting to make their side victorious, each with arguments bolstering their side which they feel is substantive and authoritative. There are so many other issues that divide us, but race, gender, and orientation right now seem to be the biggest cracks in the foundation of the unified church.

Lee believed that such things as statues could be reasons for keeping wounds open that should be healing. Even as a slaveholder, he felt that whether Yankee or Confederate, they had all undergone trauma and both needed healing, a unified healing, not a separated one. Anything that became almost an idol would be another instrument of keeping that division alive. Very possibly he would be grateful to have all of the statues removed and either placed in  museums or in a Confederate cemeteries or whatever. I think he was a very wise man in that respect, and I think he had it right about taking down the idols and looking only to God.

What idols have I got that I need to take down? What preconceptions do I need to eliminate? Where do I need healing? And most of all, what is keeping me divided in my search for wholeness, unity, and peace within my relationship to God and the world? I've really got work ahead of me this week, And please don't mind if I'm grateful to Robert E Lee who, despite his flaws, left words that have begun healing in me have a part that I didn't even know was still wounded.

God bless.