Sermon By Mr. Tom Reynolds
Juneteenth Sunday
June 18, 2023
The Third Sunday After Pentecost
Year A – Track 1
I was asked to speak today for Juneteenth. I would assume the purpose not lost on anyone who can see me as to why that might be appropriate. And in preparing for today, I got lost in a line of Matthew’s Gospel, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few…” We will come back to that, but first, I thought I would tell you all a bit about myself.
My name is Tom, Tommy if you’ve known me long enough. Thomas Lorenzo Reynolds was the name my father gave me. My father was Isadore Moretimer Reynolds. And when your name is Isadore Mortimer, the last thing you want to do is be called Isadore Moretimer. So he adopted the name of his favorite grandfather, Thomas Joseph Reynolds. So it was only fitting that he name his first and only son, Thomas Lorenzo after his favorite grandfather and uncle, Ferdinand Lorenzo. My father was born in a small house in Jamaica where the bauxite of the earth will stain your clothes red, the nectar of the sweet cashew fruit will leave a blotted stain your clothes and the variety of mangos are so sweet you yearn to pick them fresh from the tree. My grandfather, another with a fantastic name, probably some Reynolds trait, Romney Renaldo Reynolds, came to America in search of work and a life other than being a tailor and farmer. And when the time was right, and the money enough, my grandfather sent for my father and uncles. My aunt was already here when they came. She was the oldest.
Trauma has a way of engraining its way in your mind. I have one memory of my mother from my childhood, it was an evening sitting on the bed in my parent’s room, I was crying as the crashing and yelling of my parents happened outside the room somewhere. We lived in a 2-family house in Montclair. My grandparents, uncles and aunt upstairs, and my parents and myself downstairs. I remember clear as day my grandmother coming in, grabbing me and sitting in the stairwell with me trying to sooth me, the way she would always do for many years, holding me close in her chest and humming a hymn, most likely Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine. That was her favorite. My father had my mom pinned to the wall, my grandfather attempting to intervene. The police arrived and that was the last I saw of my mom for many years.
My father remarried to Dorothy Johnson and that relationship was one that seemed most like a relationship to me. As I understood it, they met at church, Trinity Episcopal Church. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t go to church, and that was our church home. Dorothy was the one that I called “Mommy.” Then the naming system gets a little weird. She called her mom “Mother,” so I called her “Mother.” She called her grandmother “Granny,” so I called her grandmother “Granny.” Something that continues to this day. Mother, Velma Johnson, has always been an influential part of my life. She’s the one who helped guide me through the death of her daughter. In 1989, Mommy got sick. I didn’t know what was going on fully, I was 5 going on 6 years old. Mother helped me say my goodbyes as mommy’s weight dropped and then went to the hospital for the final time. What I came to find out years later, Dorothy was a nurse at the Catholic Hospital in Jersey City. She had gotten the job after graduating Hampton University, a proud sister of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and making more as a registered nurse than Mother had at the height of her career. Everything was looking up. She was attacked by an AIDS patient at the hospital and contracted HIV. It was the 80s, and our understanding of the virus was limited and carried a significant amount of stigma to it.
My father remarried. As I’m told, Donna McMaster was starting a new job and looking for her supervisor. As I’ve already mentioned, my dad didn’t go by Isadore, but at this job, went by Izzy. Donna was, and is, notorious for sticking to her first assumptions. She saw her new supervisors name Isadore and assumed Isadora and that it was a woman. Eventually, directed to my father and somehow, that was it. They married. We moved across Montclair, out of the two-family house and into this 4-square colonial house with a long narrow backyard and a large oak tree in the center of it. Now, I had to mow the lawn. My father had decided that the house needed an addition. My father was an electrical engineer, but because of uncle Ferdinand Lorenzo Reynolds, or Uncle Ferdie, he and his brothers knew construction. So, my father designed this addition to the back of the house, and his brother Danny and he began the permitting and construction of it. Two brothers arguing with each other pretty regularly at every step of the way. I’m not sure if the addition to the house lead to the addition to the family or the other way around, but February of 1996, my sister was born. And 6 months later, we were burying my father as HIV had turned to AIDS and his liver and kidneys shut down. Mother was there to guide me through that death as I said my goodbye.
There was a new dynamic introduced to my life. My stepmom is white, Irish decent, flaming red hair. Montclair is probably the best place for that to happen, but there were times when someone would not know which child she was at school to pick up. Her family came with new experiences, a second home in the Catskills and weekend getaways to places like Cape Cod. I remember a trip to the Cape with some friends where we decided to go biking early one morning to a diner. We got to the diner after what felt like a long ride, and 4 black boys asked for a table in a nearly empty diner, and were told none of the tables were ready. We sat and waited and chatted. Some regulars came in, took a table and got service. Then another. We got up and asked again about getting a table, and were told there weren’t any available for us. This time the subtext was not lost on us. 12 to 14 year old boys outside our element, and with a lifetime of being told to mind our manners, we left back for the house in silence. This was before cell phones so we couldn’t shoot a text to the group of white mothers with black boys to come sort this out. So, when we got back, and told the moms what happened, there was an uproar, to say the least. Into the car we all piled and down to the diner we went, not to eat, but so they could speak to whoever they needed to about how they will never be back at this establishment again. It was the first time I remembered that being black meant something was different about how I would be treated. Prior to that, the only different treatment I got was from my own people. I was too Caribbean for the black kids, but could codeswitch my way into the white circles. Mother made sure that if there was someplace the white parents were sending their kids, I was to be there as well. Often I found myself the sole black face in an afterschool program here or there. One time being in the Supreme Court conference room with my class on a trip seated with about 50 white kids, 2 Asians, myself and listening to Clarence Thomas talk about his originalist interpretation of the constitution and his job as a justice. Then afterwards asked to tell the class what it was like as the only black person there. Having to translate the hypocrisy sitting what felt like face to face with the person who took the seat of Thurgood Marshall and defiled it to a bunch of white people.
It was about this time I was getting my drivers license. Just before my 17th birthday, Mother had sat me down to talk about how to handle being pulled over by the police. Throughout my time learning to drive with her, she taught me every trick she knew for being able to spot a police car waiting to pull someone over. She was proud of the police in her family which gave her access to the PBA shield in the windows of all her cars, the PBA cards she dolled out to me and my friends like treasured gifts we needed to always keep on us. She sat me down with her brother, a retired cop, and in a conversation that reminded me of being a child told to be seen and not heard, explained how to be small in the face of cop. Engine off, license, registration, insurance and PBA card at the ready, window down, hands on the dashboard or somewhere very visible, no sudden moves. Always saying “yes sir,” “no sir,” “I’m sorry sir.” Because my grandmother knew what it meant to walk this earth 64 years at that point with black skin, I had not yet known what it meant to face the police outside of the DARE program at school. My grandmother’s father, Andrew Jackson, had a history that was never fully known. He had left the south under cover of darkness for Passaic, changed his name and never looked back. She never knew he left a family in the South until he was on his deathbed and there was a man at his side who she came to find out was her older half-brother. I nodded, listened and excitedly was ready for the keys to drive.
And then she played a cruel trick on me. You see, after mommy died, my grandmother had her car, an 87 Buick Century Limited that she kept in pristine condition. Then she had her Infiniti and a Chrysler Town and Country. One retired senior citizen had no reason to keep 3 cars, in the mind of a know-it-all teenager. So, she told me I could have the Buick. But right before I got my license, she said, there are two other cars, sell the Buick, we’ll put the money toward college. So, when I got my license, ready to grab those car keys, I was informed those were her cars and I sold mine. Next lesson, always read the fine print.
There was, coming home from my first college job, getting off 46 by Montclair State, when I took the exit hard and was letting the uphill climb slow my car down, doing maybe 50mph on Clove Road, when a Little Falls cop pulled up behind me, and the lights went on. My heart raced as I ran down the checklist – engine off, license, registration, insurance, PBA card, window down, hands on the dashboard. Wait – how did I leave the insurance in the glovebox? My hand is already on the dashboard, what to do now? “Do you know why I pulled you over” (uncle Andrew said never to give them an extra reason to put on your ticket) “No sir.” The rest of his words drowned out with the lack of instructions in between. Have you ever had to do the exercise where you have to write instructions to how to make a PB&J for someone who’s never had one? You’ve made the sandwich enough times that you skip steps. “What are you doing here?” “I’m heading home, sir” “Where are you coming from” “From work, sir” “Where do you work” “In Parsippany, sir.” “Where is your home?” “in Montclair, sir.” Then the part of the PB&J exercise I was not ready for… “License, registration and Insurance card” the phrase rolls off the officers lips, as though he’s said it 1000 times but I’ve never heard them before. Was it a question, a statement of fact? I respond the way I was told to “Yes, sir.” Now we’re both confused “Can I have them?” “Will I get them back, sir?” “are you being smart with me boy?” “No sir” I hand them to him, I did forget the insurance card, I reached over to get it and was told to stop there. I told him I left the insurance in the glovebox and then asked if it was ok to get it, which he nodded. And like some sign, the skies opened up and it started to rain. He didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t know what to do being there. He told me to be a little more careful getting off the highway and sent me on my way. Again, I didn’t know what to do, I sat there for almost 5 more minutes waiting for some sign to tell me its safe to go again before turning the car back on and driving off. With the radio off, driving exactly 25 miles per house, I went home, sure I messed that one up.
But don’t worry, I would have more experience.
Since it’s Father’s day, I thought I’d spend a small amount of time talking about my father. My father was the type of father who showed up to every school play with the old camcorder early to set up a position in the front to record every second. He was in school, working and running a business but always had weekends and evening with me. Whatever school project I had, we over engineered it. Probably because he was an engineer, and he wasn’t going to be outdone by some Goldman Sachs parent who couldn’t fully understand Boyle’s law or the intricacies of Newtonian physics. I remember sanding coat hangers to remove the coating that they have so we could get a good electric current through them for a project. And there was this local hardware store my father would take me to where they had this barrel of scrap wires and other things that the proprietor let me take a brown lunchbag full of whatever I wanted if I answered a few math questions right. And my father and I would wire little lights and switches to the town we built around my toy train set. My father gave me a boombox that ran on 6 “D” batteries and my first set of CDs, Blue’s Travelers “Four”, Beethoven’s 9thSymphony performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Bob Marley’s “Babylon by Bus.” I remember my father using his dot matrix printer to make banners we would put on the side of the van for Trinity Church when we marched in the 4th of July Parade. My father was always held in high regard by my grandparents, aunts and uncles. He was an impossible standard to meet for 34 years of my life, and he was only here for 12 of them before the HIV he had been battling compromised his immune system and attacked his liver, and he died. My grandparents might say “why can’t you be more like your father” when I didn’t get the grade they expected of me on a report card. And all I could remember was how quickly my father was to use his hand the try to correct some bad behavior in me. My father worked on guidance systems for rockets at a defense contracting engineering company but I was sure he was testing those guidance systems on me. He could find me in the backseat of the caravan without having to turn around. And phrases like “This hurts me more than it hurts you” and “I’ll give you a reason to cry” are the only times I can remember the sound of his voice. When he was heading into the hospital for the last time, I didn’t want to say goodbye. I have no clue why at the time I was so mad, but I was. I think I knew he was short for this earth. He stopped sleeping in his bed because the stairs were hard to climb. He stayed in the downstairs bedroom. He was a shell of the man he once was, and I, not wanting to face death, hid in the basement, my sanctuary from what was real. With his college programming books and chess board. My grandmother, with a strength I’ve never known where it comes from, told me I needed to say goodbye. He was in the car, I hugged and kissed him, and to this day I don’t know if I told him I love him. That was the last I saw of him. Days later, September 11, 1996, my step mother woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me she got the call he had passed. I didn’t know what to do with that, said something like “ok”, rolled over, and fell asleep.
This moment cemented in me something it took a very long time to come to terms with, that I could be my own person. I had ingrained in my head that I only had 34 years, or better yet, at that point 22 years to be someone who held 3 college degrees, a well-paying job, a business, 2 kids and a house in a nice neighborhood. And as I got closer to 34, the more I felt a disappointment to that vision. I had come to terms with where I was in life, content to just be wherever I was. Life was happening around me, I just was waiting out the clock. Might as well enjoy what I can. About a week after my 34thbirthday, like God had been sitting sidecar the whole time, stepped in front of me and asked, “now what?”
I thought I had accomplished a lot. I was always in positions of leadership, my fraternity, president 3 times, captain of the fencing team, was one of the youngest presidents of an NAACP branch in the country, district leader, zoning board, had a business that was doing ok at the time. But all of it was essentially happening to me. I hadn’t sought most of these. I became president of my fraternity when no one else wanted it, and they were like “Tom, you should do it.” I did the best I could with it, but I hadn’t really wanted to do it. Captain of the fencing team was an accident, all the older guys graduated or couldn’t meet the grades to stay on the team and I was the oldest there, having a 5 year major that took 6 years helped. Heck, even my scholarship was an accident. Each of the coaches assumed the other coach already gave me a scholarship and when the school went from D3 to D1, they had more money so they were going to “up my scholarship.” I said I didn’t have one, so they gave me one. I’m not complaining, trust me, its more a pivotal difference between going for something versus something thrust upon you. NAACP branch president, they have a nominating committee which was stacked with people unhappy with the current president who called me like “we’re nominating you”, zoning board, a councilwoman I knew wanted a black person on the board. District leader, there was a vacancy and the chairman thought having the NAACP president would be a good thing. My business and my friends and church were probably the only things that I had sought and were actively doing in my life. And now I’m closing on 34. A lot happened that year, that was pushing to make way. My grandfather died. My grandfather has always stood in my life as a monument. Like some totem to this is Jamaican, Reynolds, Man. And as he got closer to 90, dementia turned to Alzheimer’s and he needed to be taken care of. You had to make sure he continued to stand, this permanent fixture, and then he died. I didn’t need to be Jamaican Reynolds Man, I could just be Tom. I didn’t have to be “like my father,” I could just be me. I could hear, feel, that call “now what?”
Today’s story in Genesis actually reminds me of this. You see, Abraham was 99 when God entered his life. At 99, he was set in his ways, and I’m sure comfortable that he lived the best life he could. Each new day ahead of him was a blessing, and I’m sure he thought the best were behind him. I know at 34, even looking at it now, we can all laugh a little that, come on, its only 34, you’re good Tom, don’t need to be dramatic. Abraham, 99, no matter what you die of at 99, it’s a natural cause, you’ve lived. But God wasn’t done with Abraham. I imagine Abraham was sitting around watching some mundane detail of this ancient religious site, focusing on a single holy tree, just trying to enjoy that he gets to see this one more time before the clock ticks its final tock. And though the text says what it says, I imagine the experience to Abraham was like “now what? I’m not done with you old man. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Stop staring at these old trees, we have work to do.”
For me, the work was inward. I was in counseling and the therapist worked with me to help me define my purpose in life. To seek love wherever it is, to expect love because I am love. Or as another put it, to live fully, love wastefully and become all that we are capable of being. I think of that because he helps me stay as present as possible when I can. And when I reflect back on these many situations in my life, I can look at them with new eyes. Mommy, when she died, was 25. She barely was an adult. I mean she missed the world wide web by a year. I think back on the blowout fight my dad and mom had, and realize, my mom was 18 when she had me. She was not ready for this. And living in the same house with my family, bless her for making it a year. My dad, 21 years older than me, he did the best he could with everything he had been given. At 21, well, there’s a photo of me in a frat house wearing a toga sitting on a keg, that best sums up 21 for me. And my dad had a whole mini human to raise. My second step mom, Donna, her husband died while she was probably in postpartum depression with a 6 month old and a moody teenager on her hands, I’m lucky I got sent my grandmothers and didn’t try to run away or who knows what.
I’ve probably gone on long enough as is, but want to leave with a call. We are on the eve of Juneteenth. Juneteenth is the holiday of the end of the ultimate gatekeeping. The story is told many ways depending on how much the history doesn’t want you to be offended. One version is the news didn’t make it that freedom had come to the slaves, but on June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for the slaves in Texas. The reality, slave owners across the south refused to acknowledge emancipation. Many barely acknowledged that the government of Abraham Lincoln had any jurisdiction over their lands anyway. Besides, who was to tell them what they could and could not do with their property. For 2 years, 6 months, 18 days, men and women who should have been free, continued in slavery. 250,000 slaves were in Texas at the time. And when Granger arrived to Galveston to proclaim the freedom of all slaves, it came with reformation and reconstruction. The next year, free men in Texas organized a celebration of Jubilee Day.
When Amy was pregnant with Sophia, we were locked in a pandemic. I did not know what we were having, a boy or a girl. I had a poll going online with my friends as to what people thought we were going to have. On May 25, shortly after we just found out Amy was pregnant, a Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Perry Floyd Jr.’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he cried out “I can’t breathe.” I couldn’t watch the video. I had seen so many state executions of black men in public where slave patrollers, on film, repeat over and over, your black bodies mean nothing to me. In a panicked anxiety at 3am, I worried what world am I bringing another black child into? Would this child be a strong black boy who loves the soft feeling of a Nike hoodie on a cool day who gets mistaken for a threat? Would this child have their mothers, and I can’t deny my own, lead foot and get pulled over for doing 100 mph on the wrong country road? Would this child be innocent their whole life but live next to the wrong person and be barged in on with a no-knock warrant executed at the wrong apartment.
Today’s Gospel calls us to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and proclaim the good news. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out the demons. This seems like a high call. My only wand is a plastic one from Harry Potter world at universal and that thing raises no dead bodies. But, when we look at the Jesus story, we have to realize, Jesus was never doing the works in the temple, sure, he went there and had some debates, but his works, acts in which we can see God through him were always with the sick, lepers, demons, tax collectors, those who society looked down on, or thought less of or tried to push aside as being worth less. Today’s version would be our black, brown and indigenous, LGBTQ+, Asian, pacific island brothers and sisters, and especially those that carry more than one of those labels, especially black trans woman who disappear and no one seems to look for them.
As we head into Juneteenth, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as the serpents and innocent as doves.”
And let us remember and say the names of those who’s lives were taken too soon:
Daunte Wright
Andre Hill
Trayvon Martin
Elijah McClain
Breonna Taylor
Jayland Walker
Donovan Lewis
Tyre Nichols
Banko Brown
Marquis Jackson
And George Perry Floyd Jr
