Former President Barack Obama in his eulogy for John Lewis today called the late Congressman "exceptional" for "redeeming" our "faith in our founding ideals." If our journey towards achieving the "more perfect union" takes another 200 years, Obama said, then Lewis "will be a founding father" of that "fuller, fairer, better America."
Obama once was asked whether he "believed in American Exceptionalism." His nuanced answer displeased a large swath of the country that thinks "American Exceptionalism" means "We're number one!" What makes America truly exceptional was one of the ideas that emerged from the celebration of Lewis's life at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
Obama put the finish on a theme that had run throughout the service. Opening with remarks about Lewis's suffering violence during peaceful protests, Reverend Rafael Warnock had quoted scripture, "By his wounds we are healed," a phrase about "the suffering servant" in Isaiah, originally identified with the Jewish nation, later identified with Jesus by Christians. Here, Reverend Warnock suggested that Lewis, with his cohort, by the pain they accepted in standing for truth against the pervasive sin of racism, pushed forward the process of healing this nation. Reverend Lawson, a mentor to Lewis, quoted Martin Luther King Jr.'s promise that non-violent Black protesters, taking the pain and death from their enemies, would "transform" America "and the world."
Including Blacks in the Mt. Rushmore version of history, these black theologians turn the national story into one of redemption for the whole world. In this revised version, the Founding Fathers made the promises of freedom for a new nation that they then built on the backs of forced black labor. Four score and seven years later, Lincoln used those promises in the middle of a civil war to give America a "new birth of freedom," admitting in his second inaugural address that justice might require white people to suffer to redeem the years they made black people suffer. King's teacher Howard Thurman wrote in the 1940s a powerful analysis of Jesus's approach to redeeming his people, making a case for how black people in the American 20th century needed to play the role of Jesus in American society (read about Jesus and the Disinherited 12/2015). King developed that theme in sermons collected in Strength to Love.
In short, the agency of black people -- exemplified by John Lewis -- risking their lives to stand up for their dignity -- has been a force to make America grow into its promises. What other nation has struggled so long and so openly with this dissonance between its ideals and its treatment of a minority? This struggle, not the strength of our military or the influence of our economy, is what makes America exceptional, the best hope for the world.
Let's recognize the inadequacy of Black history month, and the eleven other months when black history is a sub-category. Black history is as much American history as any face on Mt. Rushmore - or Stone Mountain.
Other speakers at the funeral portrayed the man as courageous activist, delightful uncle, devoted husband and father, generous boss, and effective politician. Former President Bill Clinton told us what Lewis carried in that back pack in Selma (fruit, toothbrush, a study of American culture, and a memoir by Catholic monk Thomas Merton) because the young man expected to spend the night in jail. Former President George W. Bush repeated the story about Lewis's preaching to chickens, but added that Lewis refused to eat one that the family cooked, "His first non-violent protest." Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got choked up telling how she visited him one last time and how, after he lay in state, a double rainbow appeared over the Capitol, though no rain had fallen.
Obama looked at the familiar story of Lewis's beating at the bridge in Selma from the unusual perspective of the troopers: "They thought they had won that day." But the world had seen the ugly truth that "law and order" here meant degradation and violence, and the world changed.
Obama told us a story new to me, that Lewis and a buddy named Bernard bought two bus tickets and sat in the front of an interstate bus to test the Court's desegregation order, weeks before the freedom rides organized with protective entourages. "Imagine the courage!" Obama said. "He was all of 20 years old, and he pushed those 20 years to the center of the table" in a gamble for the benefit of others.
Exceptional man, offering his life to make America exceptional.
[Photos: Lewis, in a very bad spot, has a little smile for the mug shot in Jackson, MS for riding a bus and using a white-only men's room. Top: the Selma march with the backpack.]
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