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JACKIE AND PEE WEE #2

GOOD ANGER IN CINCINNATI

Can you remember back to the last time you were absolutely boiling, white-hot, fist-clenchingly mad . . . and for a good cause? I mean, something really WRONG was going on out there — and you were good and angry with righteous indignation. Maybe it was when you saw the photo of that fireman as he was bringing the body of a small child out of the Alfred P. Murrah building there at Oklahoma City. It was such a monstrous crime, so evil, so Lucifer-like, that you were properly incensed.

It’s interesting that the Bible predicts and even extols the appropriateness of your good anger. We’ve used this verse before, found in Ephesians 4:26:

“In your anger,” Paul writes, “do not sin.” And then he adds: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”

But notice: “In your anger do not sin.” So there IS a kind of anger that is not sin. I like The Message’s paraphrase of that powerful verse:

“Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry — but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.”

Do you remember the pickup-truck-dragging death of Mr. James Byrd, Jr. not too long ago? That was pure evil, raw, undiluted sin. Mr. John William King was guilty, the jury decided, and they didn’t take very long to do it. When a reporter asked the defendant right afterward if he wanted to say anything to the victim’s family, this racist killer responded with a vulgar sexual epithet too lewd, too low to even hint about here on this program. And we boil when we think about it again. Not long after, a New York City disk jockey made a racial joke about the tragedy, directing it at Grammy Award-winning singer Lauryn Hill. And many viewers kind of celebrated when the radio station rose up and instantly fired the man. BOOM! And we were glad in our anger.

Well, friend, yesterday, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we told a rather simple story. A young man, just 29 years old, is warming up to play shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers in a game against the Cincinnati Reds. Crosley Field. A Wednesday afternoon. And over at first base is the first black player to ever wear a major-league uniform: Jackie Robinson. We shared yesterday how, in the midst of a torrent of catcalls and obscenities, racial taunts and X-rated language from both dugouts, this fresh-faced ballplayer, Pee Wee Reese, a Southerner, walked over and put his arm around Jackie Robinson. They just stood there together, a black ballplayer and a white ballplayer, and faced that thundering wall of sin-filled hatred. We’ve recently seen Sports Illustrated pictures of a white Mark McGwire and a black Sammy Sosa with their arms around each other, while adoring crowds in city after city cheer their brotherly-love tour, their chase to hit home runs. But it was nothing like that at Crosley Field. Pee Wee Reese stood there at shortstop and felt angry. He felt pure, raw, righteous wrath. But in his anger, “he sinned not.” Instead he took that long walk from short to first, and defied the forces of prejudice and hate.

Roger Kahn, who wrote the sizzling bestseller, The Boys of Summer, had some memorable things to say when this giant named Pee Wee Reese passed away 2 yeras ago last August. But I take special note of this soundbite:

“Reese detested bigotry,” Kahn wrote, “hatred against blacks or Jews or Latinos, whatever. I never knew anyone whose life was a more towering example of decency.” And then Kahn takes us all back to another clarion-call moment, this one coming from a much taller hero than Pee Wee Reese. “‘With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. . . .’ The words are Lincoln’s. The character that comes to mind is that of Harold . . . Henry . . . Reese.”

Well, that is generous, moving praise. But let’s go back to those three words: “Reese detested bigotry.” He HATED it. It made him fill up with anger. Good anger. And the question for all of us to wrestle with, today and every day, is this: How much do we hate it? How much detestation do we feel when someone tells a racially motivated joke? Or when we hear a casual, humor-laced stereotype? Do we enter into it? Do we politely chuckle, just to get the awkward moment to pass? Or do we fill up with enough anger that we do like Pee Wee Reese and walk over from shortstop to first base, so to speak? And fight back.

I recall with a flushed face an organizational meeting that happened right here at our Adventist Media Center a number of years ago. All of us were there: TV and radio people, department heads, ministry CEOs. And one leader in the organization, leading out up front, inadvertently ad-libbed his way into a foolish anecdote with an ugly racial color to it. It certainly wasn’t in his notes, but you know how the mind sometimes just wanders into the swamp. And this nasty little story just sat there in the air.

Well, there were a few awkward titters around the room. Fortunately, it was a dumb enough joke that half the group didn’t even catch on. But it was just a tense, bad ten seconds. And I’m sorry to say that not one person in the room rose to his feet to make a speech like this: “Brother X . . . that remark was completely out of order, and you’re going to have to apologize for it right now, before we can continue.” Someone should have; I should have — but the moment passed. We didn’t detest bigotry ENOUGH. We didn’t get angry enough.

Just a few months ago, Newsweek magazine ran a story about a doctor named Elmo Randolph. He’s a young, successful dentist living in New Jersey. He commutes from his home in Bergen County to Newark every day, a drive that generally takes 40 minutes. But this 42-year-old professional doesn’t always get to the office on time. Do you know why? Because in the past nine years, state troopers there on the New Jersey Turnpike have pulled him over more than FIFTY times! Not for speeding. Not for weaving his car in and out in traffic. Not for appearing to commit a DUI offense, driving under the influence. No, these officers simply pull Dr. Randolph over to search his car. Maybe they’re suspicious about something; they’re never sure what. And the fact of the matter is, this man is being pulled over for a “DWB” offense: “Driving While Black,” they call it. That’s right. Newsweek puts it this way:

“Troopers routinely park alongside the turnpike and shine their headlights into passing cars, looking for black drivers to pull over. They then radio fellow officers to let them know that a ‘carload of coal’ or group of ‘porch monkeys’ is heading their way.”

That’s the story in Newsweek. In all this time Dr. Randolph has never once gotten a ticket. Because he’s not speeding. He’s not weaving. He’s not drunk. He’s just black. That’s his only crime. Which is enough for cops to pull him over and ask him: “Hey, do you have any drugs or weapons in your car.” “Racial profiling,” they call it . . . and apparently, in nine years, no one detested bigotry enough to blow the whistle.

In 1998, a van was pulled over, and the police fired shots at three African-American men inside, wounding two of them. The victims were handcuffed and thrown into a ditch until paramedics got there. “They were speeding,” the officers said, “and we got it on radar.” The only problem was, the police didn’t even have a radar in their cruiser. But apparently those three men were “driving while black.”

Well, friend, we don’t pass along a story like this to try to tell Governor Christine Todd Whitman what to do. There are stories enough like these all over the places, and running in all directions of the racial rainbow. Instead I ask myself: Where is MY heart? When I have anger, is it the right kind? Is it God’s kind? Do I walk over from shortstop to first base, take my stand for truth, and then seek to forgive and release my anger to the Lord before sundown, so that I will “sin not”?

There’s a wonderful “Pee Wee Reese” kind of story found in Mark chapter three, and it features another Hall of Famer named Jesus. There was a man with a crippled hand there, and the Pharisees were in the bleachers and in the dugout, just watching to see if Jesus would help him on the Sabbath. Here’s the play-by-play in a paraphrase called The Message:

“He [Jesus] said to the man with the crippled hand, ‘Stand here where we can see you.’ Then He spoke to the people: ‘What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?’ NO ONE SAID A WORD.” (Ring any bells?) “Jesus looked them in the eye, one after another, angry now, furious at their hard-nosed religion. He said to the man, ‘Hold out your hand.’ He held it out — it was as good as new.”

And it was very quiet in the stands.