Conflicting Hats (Includes references to 2018 films, Green Book & Blackkklansman)

I wear many hats.  I’m a minister.  I’m an American.  I am chair of Horseshoe Falls Regional Council.  I am on the management team for the Skylight Festival (Buy your tickets now!).  I am a mom.  I am a wife.  I’m a friend.  I’m a musician.  I’m a writer.  I am a woman who wants to be referred to as she and her.  I’m of European descent.  Like most people, I have a variety of roles in my life and have a variety of labels.  Sometimes it feels like too many and then I have to start letting some of them go, but mostly I enjoy my many hats, the roles I play, and the people with whom I work.

But there are times when roles conflict or collide with one another.  For example, I cannot be on a committee at St. Paul’s United Church or be chair of their Council because I serve as their minister.  As a minister, I am not a counsellor.  I can listen and offer spiritual advice, but I could get in big trouble if I start to act as a counsellor.  I could be hurting those who are coming to me for help.

It used to be that as a woman, I couldn’t be a minister.  In 1936, the United Church began to ordain women, but restricted it to those who were unmarried, widowed, or at a time in their lives when they were no longer required in the home.  So I couldn’t wear my wife or mom hat and be a minister in the church.  These restrictions were lifted for ordained women in 1964 and for deaconesses in 1970, but I can imagine that it was still difficult for women, single, married, with or without children, to be accepted as a minister and to be respected as a leader in the church.  I imagine that qualities like vulnerability, softness, being emotional, wouldn’t have been as valued as qualities like, strength, logic, and assertiveness.  Women would have been expected not to be too feminine but would have been criticized for being too masculine, which, many of us know, still occurs today with many leadership roles in our society.

Green Book was a very popular movie from 2018 and it's a great story.  It’s about a pianist, going on tour, who hires a driver.  It’s about the relationship between these two men and the experiences they have together on this journey.  What makes the story complex is that the pianist is black and the driver is white, and the tour is in the deep south in the 1960’s.

I don’t want to give too much away for those who haven’t seen the movie, but they do begin to respect one another and learn from one another.  It is less a show about racism in America and more about two very different people who learn to respect each other’s lives and experiences.

There is one scene in the movie where "Doc", the pianist, expresses his frustration with his identity.  This clip contains some profanity, but, if you don't mind, I invite you to take a peek.  (You can start the clip at 1:20, for less profanity.)

Doc is a man with hats in conflict.  He doesn’t fit in with his own people.  He is rejected by white people.  He’s divorced and unattached.  He’s alone.  He doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Another movie that came out last year was Blackkklansman, a movie by Spike Lee.  This is a movie about racism in American.  It’s set in the 1970’s and it’s the true story of a man who is the first black cop on the Colorado Springs Police Department.  This man, Ron Stallworth, goes undercover and actually becomes a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  You might ask how this can happen, but the initial conversations between Stallworth and the KKK are by phone.  Then then find a white man in the force who represents him in person.  Stallworth has several phone conversations with David Duke, the head of the KKK, that are actually pretty hilarious, if you can look past the racism and bigotry.

As we talk about identity though I highlight two characters from this movie, Flip, a white, Jewish cop, and Ron.  Flip is the one who physically poses undercover.  He pretends to be Ron, when they are face to face with the KKK.  There are several times when he is accused of being Jewish and in one scene is held at gunpoint and commanded to take a lie detector test to prove he isn’t Jewish.  He talks to Ron about his background, how he didn’t grow up Jewish, he didn’t observe the holy days or rituals, and never really considered himself Jewish, but now he is adamantly having to deny his background and trash talk all Jews.  Although he has never identified as Jewish, that identity is a part of him and trash talking his own heritage is disconcerting.

And then we have Ron who has gone undercover and is falling for a woman, Patrice, who is President of the Black Student Union.  Patrice refers to all cops as “pigs," for good reason, as you will see in the movie.  These pigs, she asserts, are against black liberation.  In this movie clip (which contains a couple of F bombs), Ron is trying to warn Patrice of an upcoming Klan attack and has to confess to her his identity as an undercover cop.

Identity.  Can you be a black cop in a system that supports racism while supporting black liberation?  Ron believes he can and he attempts to prove it.

There are two stories in our bible that I would like to hold up, each a story of a man wearing conflicting hats.  First we have Moses.  Moses was born among Hebrew slaves but was raised by Egyptians.  In this story, Moses has come upon a slave being beaten, one of his own people by birth.  He kills the soldier and hides the body.  The next day, he comes upon two Hebrew slaves who are fighting and attempts to break up the fight.  He probably identifies with them and feels he has the right to interfere.  He asks them, “Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?”  Now Moses may see himself as Hebrew but the slaves see him as a Hebrew with the power of an Egyptian.  They ask him, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” and then ask him if he means to kill them like he killed the Egyptian.  Knowing his secret it out, Moses flees.  Is Moses Hebrew or Egyptian?  He cannot be both and yet, he is both.

In one of Paul’s letters, the one he wrote to communities in Galatia, other early Christians like Paul were telling these Gentiles (non-Jews) in Galatia that in order to follow Jesus they had to become Jewish: they had to become circumcised, follow the food laws and other Jewish customs.  Paul disagreed.  And Paul was Jewish.  He never let that part of his identity go.  He was circumcised and followed all the Jewish laws, but he felt the message of Jesus, the gospel he was preaching, was more important that forcing others to conform to his own identity.

There are many others stories of people struggling with their identities, of people juggling different identities, in the bible, in the movies, and in our own communities.  How many stories do we hear of people “passing” in order to receive rights and privileges.  How many people who are black, hispanic, or indigenous, with lighter skin, have passed for white in order to be treated fairly?  How many people who are gay, lesbian or anywhere to the left or right of the gender normative have hid their true selves in order to be accepted and embraced by their communities?  How many hide disabilities or health struggles because they want to be treated fairly and not pitied?  How many of us hide our true selves, our true identities, because we are afraid, because we want the same rights as everyone else and to be loved.  We do this because our society is still about us or them, we or they, black or white, Christian or heathen, woman or man, normal or strange.  These dualisms, that cause racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism, also cause splits in our identities, cause us to feel hate for others and even shame for who we are?

We need to be able to start seeing the grey, or, better yet, the spectrum of colours in the rainbow.  We need to unpack the stories we read in our bible and see them through a different lens.  We need to question what it means to be welcoming and inclusive.  Is it enough?  How do people come to know a place is safe, where they can feel a sense of belonging, where they can feel fully affirmed and loved for who they are?  These places are rare.  How can we make them more abundant?

May God be our rock and a steady presence as we are challenged.  May Jesus be our inspiration and example in his teachings and actions.  May the Spirit be always at our backs, pushing us towards bringing God’s kingdom on earth.  May it be so.  Amen.