We’re in Key West, Florida, on a trolley car, heading up Duval Street, gawking at the locals as our tour-guide driver shares town tidbits and calls out stops. Sloppy Joe’s Bar. Light-house Museum. Bahama Village.

“And our AME church,” the driver is saying after turning a corner, “was founded by a former slave named Sandy Cornish, one of our beloved departed citizens.”

I nudge my husband, Dan, with an elbow. He nudges back. Our ears perk up. On this last-minute holiday trip to the Florida Keys, the last thing we expected to hear about was slaves or the AME church. For sure, we didn’t expect to hear such people called “beloved.” We are African American and AME, though, and the events of this past year have led us to such curious moments.

“Let’s get off here,” my husband says, and we head to the trolley door and exit. Out on the sidewalk, however, for a moment we feel confused. The quaint white-brick church near the trolley stop is AME Zion, a sort of denominational cousin of our African Methodist Episcopal family, but the little church is still picturesque and, for us, feels affirming and down-right nostalgic.

After being AMEs for thirty-five years, we finally no longer have to explain our denomination or its name, or ask people whether they’ve heard of it. Sadly, the church shootings in Charleston took care of that.On June 17, 2015, nine African Americans were shot and killed in Charleston, South Carolina, during a Bible study session at one of the nation’s oldest African-American churches, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting (accessed 4 March 2023). There’s nothing like a fatal shooting of nine people at a Wednesday night Bible study to capture the world’s attention and teach people who you are. What we didn’t expect after the church massacre in the summer of 2015 is that people would care. Care isn’t a feeling black folks typically experience in the world, even if they are believers. So Dan and I lap up the words of a trolley car driver in Key West, Florida, when he calls an ex-slave his beloved.

Let’s get off this trolley, we decided, and just sit for a minute with that.

Getting loved is a hard, hard thing. It means you have to see the person offering it, to acknowledge the effort they are making, and more than that, to understand what John the apostle meant when he said folks who love you have “been born of God” and, moreover, such a person “knows God” (1 John 4:7, ESV). That’s a tough thing to contemplate, especially when love comes from people who haven’t loved you before. And especially when you’re just on vacation.

Husband Dan and I needed a good break, for certain, after the events of 2015. No need to recap the year, but it was nasty for many reasons—including the atrocity in Charleston, because with that, ironically, came more of that odd love. After the Charleston shooting, our AME church in Denver was packed for Sundays afterward with white visitors showing support. One white pastor brought his entire congregation one Sunday, jamming his parishioners into the sanctuary overflow, each of his church members carrying gorgeous white roses, which they handed out to members of my church as we filed out of the narthex after the service. Beloved?

I didn’t know how to respond exactly. Not in my church in Denver. Not on TV, as I watched the citizens of Charleston mourn and march and together take down the Confederate flag. For sure, I don’t know what to do about love while vacationing in Key West. We’re only here because Dan and I decided, on the occasion of our fortieth anniversary, to look for a short, cheap, getaway cruise and take a break from the Colorado cold. When Dan found a cruise to the Bahamas, with a one-day stop in Key West, I hesitated for half a second.

Key West? Isn’t that the overpriced, trendy, gay-friendly place—all of which, for believers, should make stopping there a problem? Oh, the mind-hoops one has to jump through these days if you call yourself a Christian—and if you are African American, too? I couldn’t resolve any of it, so I just told my husband yes. Book the cut-rate cruise.

Now here we are on Whitehead Street, looking up at the Cornish Memorial AME Zion Church, but feeling connected to it anyway. And this connection feels like a deep, beautiful gift of God for two people who badly need it. Because being black is tough work and, while being Christian helps, it doesn’t existentially neatly take care of everything involved with it. Already on this cruise, a white couple had refused to sit with us in the ship’s fancy dining room.

Approaching our table, the husband gave my husband and me a hard look when the waiter tried to seat him, backing away and telling the waiter, “No. This won’t work.” He gestured to his wife, who had started to sit down. “C’mon. We’re moving.”

Such microaggression, as it’s now called, with which people of color are so grindingly familiar—because it happens pretty much all the livelong day—is demeaning, maddening, and tedious beyond bearing. Yet when it happens in our America, I think of the church—wondering how a nation with churches on almost every corner produces so much racism and hatred, evoking so much pettiness as to render folks on a cheap cruise too self-important to share a table at dinner.

In Key West, of all places, God is asking me to think of other things. To see what it looks like to be not hated, and even not loved, but beloved. And I see some of this in Key West, a town that’s hardly perfect, and which I’m supposed to distrust because, for the record, it is overpriced, trendy, and gay-friendly. Yet on this little island, I learn a few little things about love.

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01.  Get Away

First, when it comes to loving our neighbor, a plain old vacation is a good place to start. When it comes to race matters, and struggling to love each other, we all might just first take a break.

As it is now, we’re all so doggone ornery, ground down and myopic, filled to the gills with our carefully crafted arguments and righteous indignation, we’re too exhausted to love. Might we consider, instead, Jesus? When crowds pressed in on him—contentious, judgmental, and unreconciled—he got away. Often.See Luke 5:16, NIV.

Such solitude, wrote the lovely Parker J. Palmer, “is not simply physical isolation.”Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 28. Instead, to be in solitude, whether in your own backyard or on a cut-rate cruise, “means to be in possession of my heart, my identity, my integrity.”Palmer, 28. The solitary, added Palmer, “is someone who, to paraphrase Merton, is able to give her heart away because it is in her possession to give.”Palmer, 29. You made space for it, that is. So husband Dan and I took that cruise.

But what did we encounter? While trying to flee crowds and break bread? While trying not to solve racial problems for a change? We met fear anyway. Seeing it in the eyes of another, I immediately got a reminder where godly solitude carries us—to God’s perfect love, which thankfully casts away fear.See 1 John 4:18. When it comes to race, instead, we’re terrified. Indeed, we’re fearful scaredy-cats. That’s what I saw in the eyes of the white couple on the ship. Eat with black people? Their reaction was sheer horror.

It’s that tiresome crossing-the-street behavior so familiar to black men. Or the reaction I evoked when a white woman, seeing me at the end of her aisle at Target, told the older woman with her: “Watch your purse!” (Or my pet peeve—when white parents reach for their children when they see me, as if I’d actually want to steal somebody’s child, even one who is well-behaved.)

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02.  At the Cross

Whatever we fear, John teaches, leave it at God’s gracious feet. In a prayer, such a surrender might sound like this: God, release me. As it is, our stranger-danger world has managed to turn every other person into somebody to hate and fear. Combine that with sermons by category, warning believers against people as groups— pick your poison—and the result is a social atmosphere despoiled with irrational fright and ignorance.

The late Dallas Willard addressed this challenge with candor but also compassion in The Divine Conspiracy. Said Willard:

 

We must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us—through gritted teeth—as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core— which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word love.Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), 64.

 

On our vacation, what I appreciated in imperfect Key West was the absence of the gritted teeth—and the fear accompanying it. I didn’t take time to learn how the Bahamian/African American residents who live in Key West feel. But for me, an African American taking a short holiday, to be treated with basic courtesy, not anxiety—even if it’s because I’m a tourist—felt like a gift from heaven.

Once, as a tourist in otherwise-friendly Houston, in contrast, while visiting our daughter and her family, my husband and I worshiped at a very large, white Baptist church because of its proximity to our hotel. The people were nice, but leaving the sanctuary we got the coded questions: How’d you find us? Are you from Houston? Think you’ll come back?

For a refreshing change, it would’ve been revolutionary to hear: Do you know Jesus?

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03.  Live in God

Only one way gets us, racially, to such revolution: to live in God.See 1 John 4:16–17. Celtic soul singer Van Morrison implored such an existence with his song “When Will I Ever Live in God.” As the Belfast-born artist pointed out, everything lives in God—great writings and paintings, great cathedrals, even little boats moving slow in “the flashing light” of a sunset’s glow.

And us? “When will we ever learn?” pleads Morrison. We’re stubborn. We seek to control. We’re pounding our laptop keyboards, arguing our points, making our marks, taking no prisoners. Living in God, when it comes to race, means yielding—and certainly not worrying so much about the degree of melanin, or lack of it, in somebody else’s skin.

In 2016, it’s regretful we’re not there yet. Even if some of us are farther along than others—comfortable and competent in multicultural situations—we still appreciate the point of Morrison’s rather humanist, not-necessarily-Christian song. There’s an open-minded beauty, in other words, to adopting Jesus’ way of being in the world. Sitting at a dinner table with tax collectors and harlots, the diseased and the disagreeable, but also the buttoned-up Pharisees and teachers of the law, we’re still able to eat.

These days such fearlessness in the church might be a loving thing, but it’s still countercultural to a fault. My pastor at our AME church in Denver has forfeited not a few members who abhor such open Jesus ways, especially our pastor’s declaration of Matthew 11:28 (KJVScriptures marked (KJV) are from the King James Version of the Bible and is in the public domain in most of the world.) that “all ye that labor and are heavy laden” are welcome at our church. And he means all.

Then our pastor, who is running for bishop in the AME church, asks us to consider what “all” means. “All,” he says, “means gay, straight, black, white, fat, skinny, rich, poor. All.”

“All!” Our congregation repeats the word after him. Pushing aside questions, we will accept that all truly means everybody—or er’ebody, as we say when we’re speaking Ebonics (or AAV, African American Vernacular, in linguists’s terms). Thus, all who run to Christ will, indeed, get a place in the kingdom because Jesus lived out that inclusivity. So says my pastor, anyway.

To this, our call-and-response is on fleek, as the young people used to say, because, as black Christians, we African Methodists embrace inclusivity as the highest natural response to the exclusivity that has marked so much of our black lives.

But have we got this all wrong? Overemphasizing Jesus’ welcome to all as acceptance of all?

The apostle answers like this: “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar. For if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20, NLTScripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Streams, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.). Strong words!

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04.  Getting Smart

In the universal church, in our current racial conundrum, therefore, we must also address our ignorance. As harsh as it sounds, when it comes to xenophobia too many of us simply are running on stupid. We’re totally clueless—or far worse, totally indifferent—about how to cross our racial or cultural boundaries, and not really prayerfully asking God to fix it. Trapped on our own sides of town, we’re stuck to a fault in our own little ways of worship, knowing, being, debating, thinking, and receiving. Simply put, we just can’t seem to bear each other. As a witness, it is a sad moment for God’s church.

Our intransigence was seen recently at Urbana ’15, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s missions conference, where the organizer came under fire for promoting the Black Lives Matter movement, not allowing any time to two pro-life groups. And, oh, the feathers did fly. Taking time one morning to read some of the back-and-forth, the name-calling, the chastising, the finger-pointing, I allowed my attention to shift to another news story—the heartbreaking report that the rebel-held town of Madaya, Syria, was besieged by starvation, with people eating cats and grass to stay alive.“23 Starve to Death in Besieged Syrian Town, Medical Charity Says,” Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2016.

Yet in America, where our bellies are full to bursting, Christians were throwing barbs at each other over race. A better witness? Well, we could stay quiet and hear each other. As Ed Stetzer at Christianity Today dared to offer, “If people feel it necessary to say that their lives matter, isn’t it worth asking why they feel the need to say that?”Ed Stetzer, “InterVarsity, #BlackLivesMatter, Criticism, and Three Suggestions for the Future,” Christianity Today, Jan. 8, 2016.

Great question. It brings us back to Jesus. Our Savior and King asked phenomenal questions, of course: “Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45, NLT), “What do you want me to do for you?” (Matthew, 20:32 NLT),  “Do you see anything? (Mark 8:23, ESV).

Loving by asking questions means putting down the brickbats we’ve been primed to so angrily throw. Says reconciler Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil, “As Christians, because of our fear of saying or doing the wrong things—and our desire to be kind and also not to feel guilty—we rush to say ‘All Lives Matter.’” But that’s premature, she says, because “it doesn’t sit with the pain, the hurt, the collective grieving that we saw (for example) in Charleston. For me to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ doesn’t deny that you hurt, or that all hurt. But right now, I hurt. It asks, Can you sit with me and acknowledge my pain?”Patricia Raybon, “Redeeming the Race Discussion,” Today’s Christian Woman, Sept. 2, 2015.

We’ll do that, indeed, says sociologist Gerardo Marti, if we manage one simple thing—focus first on relationship. In his book Worship across the Racial Divide, he explored what allows a multicultural church to develop a successful choir and found it wasn’t a particular type of music— or even how well it’s sung. Rather, wrote reviewer Michael O. Emerson of Marti’s book in Christianity Today, successful multicultural worship focuses first on connecting, enabling people go to choir practice, learn some songs together, maybe hit a few wrong notes, so finally understanding it’s just “our choir, our people.”Michael O. Emerson, “They’re Playing Our Song: The Secret Multiracial Choirs Know about Music,” Christianity Today, June 22, 2012. Or maybe it’s being crazy enough to stop arguing and sing.

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05.  That Crazy Li’l Thing

In Key West, on the sandy shores of Higgs Beach, there’s an African cemetery, a truly beautiful memorial—the site of unmarked graves of 294 African men, women, and children who died in Key West in 1860. They’d been rescued by the US Navy from American-owned slave ships bound for Cuba, where the slaves would be sold for as much as $1,200 each. Another 1,138 Africans survived the voyage despite appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions, many barely alive when they arrived at Key West.

Townspeople “cleaned out their closets” for the rescued, local archaeologist Corey Malcolm told ABC News,Adrian Sainz, “African Slaves Found Peace in Key West,” ABC News, Feb. 6, 2013. saying residents provided clothing, shelter, and medical aid to the Africans after the Navy brought the freed captives to their island. Hundreds of the Africans still died from their torment and were buried at what is now Higgs Beach. In the summer of 2002, Malcolm and volunteers from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, working with anthropology professor Lawrence Conyers of the University of Denver, used ground-penetrating radar to confirm that the graves, indeed, were buried in the sand—lined in rows in shallow graves under a sidewalk near the beach.

The city of Key West established the site officially as their African Cemetery, and the site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “These surprise guests were treated graciously,” Malcom noted. In Key West’s seafaring atmosphere, “you would see that diversity and tolerance because there were always people coming in off ships from different places with different values and different cultures.”

As I read over his comments, they evoke the spirit of Christ—who loved the sea, or at least spent significant time there. Teaching from boats, walking on the shore, calling forth his disciples, cooking their breakfast, drawing great catches of fish—he taught, led, prayed, and inspired. Then he changed the world.

What does his sea life teach us? That love is natural, and not an ordeal. So when it arrives, don’t fight it, thinking it contemptuous or impossible. If nothing else, bask in its sunshine and enjoy it. Then once rested, pay the love forward by granting his love—his great “gentleness,” as Dr. McNeil describes what believers can give—to somebody else.Quoted in Patricia Raybon, “Redeeming the Race Discussion,” Today’s Christian Woman, Sept. 2, 2015.

More than all, however, Jesus’ gorgeously balanced life can inspire us to keep shining light, and less heat, on any discussion about race—in the church, or beyond it. Sure, I could argue and pummel folks. Or I could just love my neighbor, doing my small bit to help our nation turn its jagged racial corner. Such a vow, however, requires the oddest thing: the expenditure of hope.

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06.  Follow the Light

I got real-life practice as our day on Key West ends. Town folks were gathering on Mallory Square Dock to celebrate the sunset. The nightly celebration is a touristy kind of deal with street performers, vendors, psychics, and food sellers hawking wares as the sun reliably sinks into the gulf’s horizon.

For camera buffs like my husband, it was a nicely photographic way to end a vacation day. The orb descended and then, in a flash, vanished to applause. Catching the view from our ship, I stood and watch with Dan, dutifully waiting for the sun to disappear. It happened fast.

“Okay, let’s go,” Dan said, packing up his camera gear. But something held me back. With a patchwork of clouds darkening overhead, the blue sky gone to gray, the sunset appeared finished. Yet the promise of something better hung stubbornly in the air.

“It’s not over,” I said to Dan. He squinted and shrugged, already heading back to our cabin.

“Nope. It’s over,” he said, sounding impatient. “We can go.”

Reluctantly, I followed. Back in our room, however, I rushed to the windows and flung open the curtains. And there it was. The evening clouds were aflame in orange and red, reflecting a riot of burnished, shimmery, golden, remarkable light transforming the gulf to brilliance.

“The afterglow!” I said to Dan, whose camera was packed away. So we stood together and watched, gawking and understanding. When an old problem looks irretrievable and impossible, don’t give up on it. Instead, wait for breakthrough. In our churches. In our hearts. In the rip tides, rough waters and swirling eddies of our racial troubles, let’s stop despairing and walk together, maybe stumbling and falling as we go, but showing the world not how to battle, but how to believe. Then something amazing can arrive. Our Light.