6/26/30 “Know Yourselves” by Nancy E. Petty
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Gospel of Thomas: Sayings 1-3
The year was 1881. The deacons of First Baptist Church, Raleigh, were given a list of “those absent for three meetings” and instructed to remove from the list the names of people who had valid reasons for not attending. The rest were to be dealt with by the church. John T. Pullen was one of twenty-two men cited to appear before the conference to account for their absence. Records show that none of the men appeared. The deacons were then instructed to work with the absent brethren. On November 6, 1881, the church cited John T. Pullen “to answer to the church for unchristianlike conduct toward the church in that he declined to conform to a rule of the church. Membership in 1881 was no joke!
Our historian, Roger Crook, notes in his book, Our Heritage and Our Hope: A History of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church that it was not specified in the records what Pullen’s “unchristianlike conduct” entailed other than not conforming to “a rule of the church.” However, there may be a hint to what “rule” he was not conforming to in an article published in 1934 in a local publication called The State. Josiah Bailey described Pullen:
He was as a young man living the worldly, self-indulgent life rather than the really bad life. He was a good fellow—the best field-shot in Raleigh, if not in the state, and one of the best at pool. The bar-room and the pool-room in his day were usually one—and the bar-room was his loafing place. He drank but was not a drunkard. He kept late hours, and coming home late, would find his mother on her knees praying for him. She loved him with a mother’s love and would not give him up.
According to Bailey, Dr. T.E. Skinner, pastor of the church, went to Pullen in the pool hall to inform him of the church’s action. From that meeting, Bailey wrote:
He (Dr. Skinner) found him in a saloon playing pool, apprised him of the accusations, and urged him to attend the church conference that night. John, quick of temper and impatient of the minister’s intrusion, retorted with an oath: “I am not going to be there—they can do as they please; I don’t care.”
“Young man,” replied the minister, “you do not know what this means. I cannot compel you to come. But all this day you will have on your mind what you have said, and tonight when the church bell rings, with every stroke you hear, remember what you have said—and you will come.”
That night John T. Pullen did go to the church, he answered the charges, and promised to do better. Under that promise, Pullen became involved in the life of the church. It was his initiative several years later in 1884 that he suggested the establishment of a mission at the south end of Fayetteville Street. The minutes of the First Baptist Church for December 28, 1884, indicate that: On Sunday evening, December 28, 1884 the Fayetteville Street Baptist Church was organized. Thomas W. Blake and J. T. Pullen were made deacons. Trust in God and do its duty is inscribed upon the banner of this little church.
Roger writes in our history book: “The site of the new church was a spot known as ‘the Fayetteville Street Crossing.’ It was located in an area of the city occupied by working-class people. While the other churches of Raleigh would not have admitted that they were “class” congregations, few people from that area were in any of them. [John] Pullen intended this church to evangelize a group who were not being reached by anyone else. At the time of his death the editor of the Biblical Recorder wrote of him and of Fayetteville Street: ‘He was at the heart of it, and all the poor felt at home there in a degree that they would not feel in any other…They could be neither pitied nor patronized there.’”
The Kingdom is within you and it is without you. If you (will) know yourselves, then you will be known and you will know that you are the sons [and daughters] of the Living [God]/ But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty.
The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 3
America, and the Christian church in America, does not know itself any longer. And if you don’t know yourself then you are in poverty and you are poverty. This week we came face-to-face with our poverty as a nation. Not a physical poverty—such poverty is created by systems of injustice. I’m speaking of, and the Gospel of Thomas is speaking of, a spiritual and moral poverty. Friday, the highest court in our land, The Supreme Court of the United States, ended the constitutional right to abortion, saying it should be left to the states. On Thursday, just one day before, this same court imposed a constitutional right to concealed carry firearms, saying it shouldn’t be left to the states. And now, we the people, live in a country where guns have more rights than women.
We are a nation of leaders and citizens who do not know themselves any longer as defenders of democracy and justice. We no longer recognize ourselves as the America that the poet described when she wrote: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” I’m not trying to say that America has ever been a perfect union—a true democracy—a land of equality for all. And yet it does seem that there have been times in our history when, as the young poet Amanda Gorman suggests that we are a nation “striving to forge a union with purpose.” In weeks like this past, it sure feels like this “unfinished America” has lost sight of its purpose. Collectively, we the people, no longer know ourselves—our dream to be the land of the free, a place where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is afforded to all people regardless of the color of one’s skin or the person they choose to love and marry is dying on the vine. While we have never been that perfect union, it is clear today that in America our spiritual and moral poverty is deepening. Our “striving to forge a union with purpose” is slipping. If you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty.
Likewise, the Christian church in America has never been the radical community of love and justice that Jesus came to established here on earth. The history of the Christian church is just as damning and flawed as America’s history, especially when it comes to racism. In his book, White Too Long, Robert Jones sets out to prove that “American Christianity’s theological core has been thoroughly structured by an interest in protecting white supremacy.” “According to him, white Christianity has not merely been a passive bystander in the construction of this nation’s racial caste system, it has been the primary cultural and religious institution creating, promoting and preserving it.” (The New York Times, Is the White Church Inherently Racist?) And it’s not just white supremacy that the white Christian church in American has promoted and preserved. You can add to that list sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Isalmophobia, and anti-semitism just to name a few. And we wonder why the church is dying, or at the least not relevant any longer. If it ever did, the Christian church in America surely today does not know itself—to be that place in the world that proclaims freedom and equality and love and unity and a justice love that lifts the lowly. It, too, has become spiritually, morally, and ethically impoverished. If you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty.
The reason I began with the story of John T. Pullen and the establishment of the Fayetteville Street Baptist Church, now the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, is because it is imperative, even urgent, right now that we know ourselves—who we are as The Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. We have to know that our founder was a man who saw the poor and the marginalized and devoted his time and resources to caring from them while neither pitying them nor patronizing them. We need to know that our namesake and founder went each Sunday to Central Prison to teach Sunday school to the prisoners. When the century-old building of Central Prison was razed in October, 1983, the demolition crew found in the cornerstone a box containing, among other items, the following letter from John T. Pullen, dated July 15, 1885.
For several years I have been a teacher at the Penitentiary Sunday school. I can say from the depths of my heart, that I love to come and tell the prisoners of Jesus and his love. Some people think it a yoke to walk out here every Sabbath. If it be a yoke, I say My God give me more yokes.
We need to know ourselves as the inheritors of this spirit, and of this kind of mercy and compassion, of this kind of strength—to carry the yokes of the suffering in our world.
We need to know ourselves as a church of a free pulpit where the pastor in the early 1930’s preached a sermon based on Jesus’ warning against covetousness, and attacked the profit motive. Listen to this portion of Edwin McNeill Poteat’s sermon. And remember he preached this in the early 1930’s.
Our bravado in defying and our cleverness in rationalization have not saved us from the fate which has overtaken covetousness. The socio-economic order, capitalism, is planted squarely upon the profit motive. And, the church has shared in the whole business by extolling the virtues of thrift while it fattened on the largess of the successful profit-seekers.
The amazing exposures of the munition (military weapons) makers are evidence of the moral insensitiveness that the quest for profit can produce. It is not too much to say, in the light of recent exposures, that in obedience to the profit-motive, there are men who will not stop short of setting the torch to a world conflagration.
Do you hear that, people? From this pulpit in the 1930’s you called a pastor who in his sermons and writings called out capitalism, militarism, nationalism, and private land ownership as problems in our world calling the “private ownership of land an illusion” that must be corrected by the insight of Christ.
We need to know ourselves as inheritors of this kind of faith. A faith that challenges systems that privilege some while excludes others. We need to know ourselves as a people—a community of faith—who are not silent on issues of injustice and privilege. We need to know ourselves as a people who for nearly 138 years has taken risk after risk to not only speak out but take action to right the injustices of our world. We need to know ourselves as Christians who do not tire of this work. Not simply good hearted, compassionate human beings. Although we need to know ourselves that way, too. But we also need to know ourselves from a faith tradition that calls on us to stand and act on the “insight of Christ.”
This is our Esther moment, Pullen Church. God has brought us to the kingdom for just such a time as this. We must know ourselves as the people to whom the mantle has been passed—the mantle that John T. Pullen carried. The mantle that Edwin McNeill Poteat carried. The mantle that W.W. Finlator carried. The mantle that Geraldine Cate carried. The mantle that hundreds of Pullenites—women and men, young and old, gay, straight, queer, binary and non-binary people have carried for nearly 138 years. We don’t have to be one of those churches that are dying.
If we know ourselves, we can be a community of faith that 138 years later is still making a difference in the world. But we have to know ourselves. We have to remember that we are not here to preserve some tradition or traditions that no longer, or never, served the kin-dom. We have to know ourselves as a community committed to taking a risk, to losing it all for a radical justice-love. Thirty years ago, people said that if Pullen blessed same gender covenants and welcomed the LBGT community it would become a gay church and it would lose most of its non-gay members. Some non-gay members left. But others came. They came because they said they wanted their children to grow up in a faith that celebrated diversity. We have to know ourselves as “that church” that befriends the poor, that shares its space with Moral Mondays and the Poor People’s campaign and AA groups and community organizers and non-profits that are trying to support young people aging out of foster care and college students who are dealing with housing insecurity and counseling centers that are helping BIPOC youth from Southeast Raleigh develop resiliency skills and community groups doing racial equity work. And we need to keep asking for a double portion of the spirit of the saints who came before us who has bequeathed to us this great spiritual heritage of doing justice and loving mercy so that don’t die from spiritual poverty.
When Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, he was asking for a double portion of Elijah’s courage in continuing a prophetic ministry. Today, we need to ask for a double portion of the spirit of former Pullenites who had the courage to speak out against the injustices of their day with a prophetic voice. When Mordecai said to Esther, “you have come to the kingdom for just such a time as this” he was asking her to risk it all, even her life, for justice for a people who were oppressed. Our refugee sanctuary may need to double as a sanctuary room for the woman traveling from Texas to North Carolina for abortion healthcare. Or for the trans young person whose family just disowned them. And when Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas that “If you will know yourselves, then you will be known and you will know that you are the sons [and daughters] of the living [God],” he is saying that when we place our identity in being God’s beloved then the kin-dom is within us; and when the kin-dom is within us we do not live in spiritual poverty. How can we deepen our identity in being God’s beloved within and without?
For these last thirty years, we have shared the journey together in the work of knowing ourselves as the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. There have been moments of profound knowing and there have been moments when we have struggled together to know ourselves—as a church, as a pastor and congregation, as God’s people being called into the world to proclaim a radical message of inclusion and love. In the knowing and not-knowing you have blessed me with an unconditional love, a depth of grace that words cannot describe, and an expectation that I serve you as my most authentic self. As today marks the ending of my 30th year with you and the beginning of my 31st year as your pastor my prayer is that, together, we will keep asking for a double portion of the courageous spirit from our spiritual ancestors, risking whatever we have to risk for God’s love and justice in the world; that we will know ourselves as a community that has the heritage and hope needed for just such a time as this in our nation; and that we will know ourselves always as God’s beloved knowing that the kin-dom is within us. To know ourselves is to know that right now the world needs the witness and voice of Pullen Church. To know our past is to know our future. May we go into our future trusting God and doing our duty to be a radical justice loving community.
