We Are the Somebodies Who Were Once the Nobodies

 

Recently, my thoughts have been with one of the congregations I served in San Francisco, Bethany UMC. There was a memorial for Dan Johnson, one of the members who left a profound mark on the life of the congregation. I have been thinking often of the people in that church and the ministries we shared.

One my favorite stoles was given to me by the women of the church. They had made a quilt for all the men in the congregation who had died of AIDS, and the pattern of the stole was the border of the quilt.  Whenever I wear this stole, I remember the men who died, and also the women who commemorated them, all of whom have passed themselves.

To be a pastor in San Francisco in the early 90’s, at the very epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, was to be in constant crisis and funeral mode. Yet one more positive diagnosis, one more death. It was a heart breaking experience, holding the hands of young men who looked decades older than their years as they lay dying. Often, parents had abandoned their dying sons. Others chose not to tell their parents they were ill, for fear of rejection. The song that often ran through my head during that time was the spiritual:

            Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrow. 

The men diagnosed in those first couple of decades knew most intimately the anguish found in this song. In those days, contracting HIV made one a social outcast by mainstream culture. Folks did everything they could to hide the signs of the disease. People lost jobs, lost housing, lost their families, if their diagnosis was discovered.

            Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrow.

As a country, as a community of faith, we were guilty back then of being the nobodies. We were the nobodies who averted our eyes from a disease that was ravaging an entire group of people. We were the nobodies who refused to look deep into the sorrow of those who tested positive. We were the nobodies who failed to offer a compassionate response to the sick. We were the nobodies who neglected to offer care. We were the nobodies who allowed the government to turn its back and ignore a disease that would soon spill into other segments of the population.

            Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrow

            But as people of faith, we know that through the grace of God nobodies become somebodies. We are called to be somebody who has empathy with another’s experience. We are called to be somebody who seeks relationship with those who are suffering. We are called to be somebody who is moved to action. We are called to be somebody who is not content with the status quo. We are called to be somebody who challenges not just institutional responses to injustice and oppression, but somebody who challenges the individuals around us to reach out, to serve, to make a difference.  We are called to be somebody who is willing to take risks and make sacrifices.  We are called to be somebody who is committed to removing the stigma of discrimination.  We are called to be somebody who is not content until together we have created a just world.

We are the somebodies who were once nobodies. As followers of Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, we will no longer avert our eyes from the troubles, we will no longer ignore the sorrow of any sibling who suffer.