Last week, eight of us from First United Methodist Church Winter Park traveled to Montgomery, Alabama on a Civil Rights Pilgrimage. We visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Legacy Museum, the Rosa Parks Museum, and traveled to Selma where we worshipped together and shared Holy Communion on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We were guided by Rev. David Williamson and Rev. Laverne March of Belonging, Inc., an organization that leads groups through cross-cultural dialogue and equity work. It was three days of walking, listening, and looking at hard things together.
Today, I want to tell you a little about our journey.
The Legacy Museum is unlike anything I have experienced. Room after room tells the story of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration in America. Not abstract history. Specific names. Specific places. Specific dates.
I found a name from my hometown.
Elijah Clark. Huntsville, Alabama. July 23, 1900. Lynched, along with many others, eighty years before I was born, in the city where I grew up.
I was raised in Alabama. I was taught that the Civil War was the “War of Northern Aggression.” I was taught that slaveholders were, by and large, kind and benevolent. I was never taught about Elijah Clark or that lynchings even happened.
Looking back, it is obvious. This was not an accident.
This week’s scripture is Ephesians 5:8-14 (NRSVUE). Paul writes, “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”
That’s where a lot of us want to stop. We are the light. We are the good ones. We know better. But Paul doesn’t stop there.
“Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that becomes visible is light.”
This is the paradox Paul highlights: exposure itself is a form of redemption. When we cease to look away, stop spreading comfortable lies, and finally name darkness, a change occurs. The light not only illuminates but also transforms our world. Acknowledging these events is crucial; it opens the door for the light to enter and bring change.
The museum ends with pictures of black children. Smiling, laughing, and just being kids. And I stood there undone. How do we still not see this? Although we have made significant progress since the 1960s, society still lacks true equal justice. Not yet. Not while Black children are six times more likely to be shot by police than white children. Black Americans are incarcerated at over five times the rate of white Americans. Black women also die in childbirth at three times the rate of white women. And we continue to teach sanitized versions of our history, so as not to make waves and so we all can “move on.”
And then we went to Selma.
We stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The same bridge where on March 7, 1965, six hundred people were beaten back by state troopers with clubs and tear gas for trying to march for the right to vote. It’s called Bloody Sunday. We stood next to that bridge, and we broke bread together. We shared the cup together. We took communion on the ground where people bled for dignity.
I don’t have words for what that felt like. I’ll just say this. The table has always been a place where broken things get named and held. We saw the light, our eyes were open.
That is what Paul means when he says, “Therefore it says, ‘Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'” Ephesians 5:14 (NRSVUE)
This pilgrimage was a wake-up for me and others, and I hope that more people can experience this in the future. Because you cannot live as a child of light while refusing to look at the darkness. You cannot find what pleases God while protecting yourself from the uncomfortable truth. You cannot bear the fruit of what is good, right, and true while sleepwalking through history.
