When our kids were little, the Harry Potter books arrived on the American literary scene, much to the dismay of Evangelical Christians who urged parents not to buy the books for their children because Harry Potter was a wizard, a vocation specifically prohibited by the book of Leviticus, which also forbids touching the carcass of an owl, so Joan and I didn’t take their concerns too seriously. In fact, when the boys were a bit older, Joan began reading them the Harry Potter books for their bedtime stories. Shortly thereafter they cast a spell on us, turning us into toads.
As riveting as the books were, I found the movies even more fascinating because of the special effects and storytelling. I remember especially the first scene of the first movie when the door on a small closet underneath the stairs was unlocked and opened, and we found Harry confined in that little space, placed there by his aunt and uncle who begrudgingly adopted him after the death of his parents. His confinement illustrated the contempt in which he was held. I don’t remember much more of the movie. It came out in November 2001, and we saw it at the Royal Theater in Danville, but that was 24 years ago, and we toads have such poor memories. While I’ve forgotten most of the movie, I’ve never forgotten that opening scene, so whenever I hear someone say, “so-and-so came out of the closet,” I think of Harry Potter and his closet.
When I was a kid, my big brother warned me about monsters in my bedroom closet, then hid in there right before bedtime. I would turn off the lights, and lie in the darkness, then before long hear heavy, labored breathing and scratching on our closet door. Monsters were in our closet. But I eventually learned there were other things in closets. I discovered my aunt and uncle had been married for ten years but had an eleven-year-old daughter. I was told not to tell anyone. Thus learning that in addition to monsters, there were also skeletons in our closets. A few years later, my little brother realized he was gay, so in the closet he went.
Today I want to talk about the things we put in closets, the people we shut away, the uncomfortable topics we hide from the light of day. I’ve been reading a book called The Barn, written by Wright Thompson. It is about the murder of the 14-year-old boy Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Shortly after his murder by racists, the pastor of the nearby New Hope Presbyterian Church, a man named Maynard Fountain, gave a sermon on race relations. After Fountain spoke to a fuming congregation, a U.S. congressman in attendance, Representative Jamie Whitten, stood and said, “I think we’ve discussed this issue quite enough. I move we adjourn.” And the whole congregation stood up and left. They put the brutal murder of that child in the closet. If you visit Washington D.C. today, and walk by the Department of Agriculture, just off the Mall, you’ll notice it’s named the Jamie L. Whitten Building. Have you ever thought about the names we make public and the names we hide away?
When our own Jackson Napier was interviewing at a local Quaker meeting, he was cautioned not to speak about social issues after mentioning his gay uncle. This is the same uncle who provided a home for him after his mother died when Jackson was still a teenager. They wanted that kind gay man kept in the closet. “Don’t talk about social issues. I think we’ve discussed this quite enough.” There are all kinds of ways we keep people shut up and shut away.
The powers-that-be shut Jesus away. Have you ever noticed it’s always the fascists who accuse the Jews of killing Jesus, because they want us to forget it was their own political predecessors who did the killing. It is today’s Herod’s propping up yesterday’s Herod.
The powers-that-be jailed Susan B. Anthony when she voted in 1872. Locked her away in a cell. That same spirit of intolerance is with us still. Doug Wilson, the Christian Nationalist pastor of Pete Hegseth, said giving women the vote was a “bad idea.” There are all kinds of ways we keep people shut up and shut away. Friends, there’s an easy way to test someone’s morality. Listen to their words. Watch what they do. Pay attention to the people and principles they follow and admire. They are telling the rest of us who should speak and who should not, who deserves a voice and who does not, whose names should be on buildings and whose names should be forgotten, who should remain in the closet and who should walk free.
Even as this administration scrubs every mention of American genocide and cruelty from our national museums, even as they strip our military of female leadership, even as they dismiss every person of color as a DEI hire, know that what they’re actually doing is silencing the voices of those whose voices have been too long silenced. They are perpetuating the worst of America and not the best, changing the mosaic of America into a monochromatic and docile people. They are demanding our collective amnesia, not only demanding we deny our full and checkered history, they would also have us deny the shining dreams of our Constitution. Finally, they will demand we deny our Christian faith. They will demand we place our conscience in the closet, never to see the light of day again. Shadows and gloom are their friends; scrutiny, illumination, and honesty their enemies. They want us kept in the dark.
In the book, The Barn, the author spoke with a high school teacher in Drew, Mississippi where Emmett Till was murdered. She said, “All we do here is hide the history. The older generation doesn’t want the younger generation to know what their parents and grandparents did. I once mentioned the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the students asked me, “Who was that?” We hide the history.
Do you know what it means to be a Christian? I don’t need to tell you this because you already know. But I’m worked up, so I’m going to say it anyway. Do you know what it means to be a Christian? It means you do not hide history. It means you look carefully for the closets in which people have been hidden away. This is what Jesus did. He opened the closets for the lepers, opened the closets for the women, opened the closets for the sexually different, opened the closets for the mentally ill, for the weak and impoverished, for the slave and imprisoned, for the foreigner, for the stranger, for the children.
When anyone, any political party, any president, any leader, any official, any pastor, any church, is determined to shut someone away while they remain free, it is the good Christian, the good Jew, the good Muslim, the good Hindu, the good Buddhist, the good atheist, who stands and says, “NO,” who does not rest until the mighty and massive power of government operates equally and justly for all, until justice rolls on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!