Prophet Of Hope For The Sick And Tired

This Christmas we will remember again the mystery of the incarnation; that, as Clarence Jordan used to say, "God pitched his tent and moved in with us." We will marvel that the creator and Lord of the universe entered human history as a child born in a barn, not among kings or priests, but among the poor and oppressed. And again we will affirm our faith that this humble event was more significant than all the coronations, coups, or inaugurations before or since.

The good news of the Christmas story is that God is among us, that God loves the world and is bringing it to salvation. And God is at work especially among the poor and marginalized, among those who count for little in the world's eyes.

In this issue of Sojourners, we celebrate Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the great women of the black freedom struggle. Her life is a testimony to the literal truth of the Christmas story. She was born into a family of black sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, which in 1917 was a near approximation of the circumstances of Jesus' birth.

She rose up quite unexpectedly to challenge and confound the rulers of our age. Though some of the projects to which she most gave herself met with apparent failure, her faith never faltered. She endured great hardship and persecution without bitterness. We present her story as a simple reminder that God's light of love and justice shines in the midst of the most terrible darkness.

For too many the memory of the civil rights movement has grown dim, and Fannie Lou Hamer is at most a name half-remembered. It would be tragic for all Americans if the legacy of that movement were lost, but especially so for Christians who are involved in present campaigns for social change. For the civil rights struggle is probably U.S. history's finest example of a Christian-based political movement.

At its height the movement combined the best elements of solid community organizing and carefully planned political strategy with a courageous spirit of self-sacrifice and love even for the enemy. The movement was inclusive, with room for participation by secular people or those of other faiths, but its language, symbolism, and inspiration were always rooted in biblical Christianity.

Its basis in biblical faith made the civil rights movement, at its best, authentically radical. Those who spoke for the movement emphasized that the nonviolent liberation struggle of the black and poor was simultaneously a struggle to free the white and affluent from their bonds of racism and greed. Ultimately, they said, the struggle was for the sake of American society, to remake it into a community of reconciliation and sharing.

It is our hope that in telling Hamer's story, some of the movement's spirit will come through. Hamer's unique gift for expressing the suffering and hope of her people in words, deeds, and songs made her a national leader. But as a leader she was representative of thousands of other black people who paid a fearsome price in the struggle for a more just and humane society.

Fannie Lou Hamer had a little saying that she used so often it became her motto and eventually her epitaph. She used to say, "I have been sick and tired so long that I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." Those words drew a great response from her black Mississippi audiences because they spoke of the people's weariness and frustration but also of their determination to see justice done.

Today many people in the U.S. are still sick and tired of being sick and tired. The small gains toward racial equality made in the last 20 years are being eaten away by an administration whose officials have made it clear that racial discrimination is a tolerable evil. That administration's war-making and callousness, combined with the unrestrained greed of corporations, has left 11 million unemployed with only a badly torn "safety net" to fall back on.

If poor and working people are sick and tired of being sick and tired, then some of us who might come from comfortable origins, but who have begun giving ourselves to the struggle for justice and peace, are learning a little of what that feels like ourselves. Our best efforts are continually thwarted by entrenched power more awesome than we could have imagined. It seems there is nowhere to turn for the sick and tired but to the God who promises wholeness and rest. And that God is with us this Christmas.

God is with us in the presence of Jesus Christ and speaks to us through the poor and the saints and prophets. Fannie Lou Hamer fit all three of those categories. As we remember her life of suffering and courage, we should be strengthened in our faith and hope that the God of deliverance and reconciliation has indeed come among us and is triumphant.

Danny Duncan Collum is a contributing editor of Sojourners.