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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is a third in a series, "Give My Regards to Broadway." Number three, "Fences." Let us give Reverend attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded

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in the first letter of John, chapter 2. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 1. "My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins

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of the whole world. And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says, 'I know him,' and disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him. He who says he abides in

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him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment which is true in him and in you, because the

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darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and in it there is no cause for stumbling. But he who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not

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know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. And may the same spirit which inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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August Wilson, Pittsburgh's best-known playwright, is presently engaged in writing a cycle of five plays, all of which are set here in our city and which concern the growing up of a black family across 50 years, from the time when they come north in the early 1900s to the present day. One of these five plays,

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Fences, won for Wilson the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and also the New York's Drama Critics Award Prize. Now Fences tells the story of a black man named Tony Maxson, who is the abused son of a black Southern shareholder. He runs away, is put in jail, and in jail he learns to play baseball and play it very well,

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indeed play it at professional caliber, but in those days blacks were not permitted to play in professional baseball. And so he ends up being a garbage man. And you from this city will remember how in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s all of the garbage men in Pittsburgh were black men. Troy has a

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wife, Rose, two sons, he has a brother who is limited mentally, he has a friend, and he has a running conflict with his employers. He feels in many ways that he is fenced in. Some of these fences have been forced upon him, and some of these fences he has built himself, either to keep certain people out or to keep

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certain people in. He is a tragic figure in the mode of the classic Greek tragic figures. He is poor, illiterate, discriminated against, unhappy in his home, and drifting toward alcoholism. And he sees no progress in race relations across the years, and this frustrates his sons who do believe that some progress

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is being made. Troy Maxon is at one in the same time a hero, a victim, and a victor, a villain as well, and all because he is caught in the cycle of racism. Wilson has done a remarkable job in presenting to his audiences Troy Maxon and his family, displaying them very much like a butterfly that might be pinned to

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an exhibition board. But this butterfly is still alive, and the thin pin which holds it to the board extends from the stage into the heart of every person who watches the play with serious intent. When I watched it, it dragged me out of the darkness. It made me see people like Troy Maxon in a way I'd never seen them

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before. It led me for at least a little while to experience the agony of such ones. Fences, first of all, led me to understand that there are still very high and difficult racial barriers in our society. You know the statistics. Let me mention just a few. CBS took a poll not long ago in which two-thirds of

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those interviewed, all whites, said that they felt that significant progress had been made in race relations in this country in the last few years. But interestingly enough, one-half of those responding to that survey went on to say that they would not want a black living in their neighborhood. The average

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lifespan of a black man is ten years shorter than a white man. The black man you see lives in the ghetto with all the pressures attendant thereto. Most white men live in the suburbs. Blacks are lower on the economic scale in 1980 or 1990 than they were in 1980. And 57% of the young black men in this country are

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unemployed. Not only that, but there are more young black men in this country in jail than in all of our colleges and universities. But beyond these statistics, I was led to consider, as I watched this play, that prejudice is, interestingly enough, much higher amongst evangelical Christians than it is amongst most

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groups. Dr. Richard Bube of Stanford University, a Christian and a distinguished scholar, in his very important book, The Human Quest, says that there is a significantly higher racial antipathy amongst conservative evangelicals when compared with other groups. Now this is so, I think, for three

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reasons. First, because many conservative evangelicals are from the South. But secondly, and more importantly, our conservative theology often is a moral heresy. What I mean by that is this. We talk a great deal about the love of God. We know that it is taught throughout the pages of the Old Testament as well as

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the New. None of us question that. Yet, interestingly enough, if you look at the shorter catechism of our Presbyterian Church, you will find there that 11 attributes of God are listed, but love is not one of them. If you go to the longer catechism of our denomination, you will find there that 21 attributes of God are

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listed, but love is not among them. The addition of the works of John Calvin's Institutes that I have in my study shelves is 1268 pages long. Out of all of those pages, our theological progenitor, John Calvin, devotes only seven to the love of God. And Charles Hodge, who is known as the greatest of all

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Presbyterian interpreters of Calvin, his book on the subject is 2,352 pages long and he mentions the love of God only twice. It's part of our theology, you see, but it has not moved out and taken a place in our practice which equals our orthodoxy, and that is a moral heresy. But more serious than that, we have never

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developed in our church, and conservative evangelicals in general have not developed, what we might call a "poorology." We have a theology and a soteriology and an eschatology, but we have no poorology. There are more than a thousand verses in the Scripture which refer to poverty, more than on any other

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subject discussed in Scripture except one. There are more verses concerning idolatry. Yet somehow we have come to the conclusion that while Jesus is very concerned about lying and adultery and honoring your father and your mother, he's not at all concerned with political or economic matters. We've divided the

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world very conveniently into the sacred and the secular, into the personal and the social, but I ask you, is adultery a personal sin or a social sin? Is pornography a personal sin or a social sin? Is a crooked politician engaged in sin in the sacred realm or in the secular realm? You see, the fact is, feeding the

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hungry may not save their souls, but Jesus Christ told us to do it, and if we disobey Christ, we may very well be losing our own souls. James Earl Gray, James Earl Jones, who originally performed the role of Troy Maxson on the stage, has a great speech in the first act in which he says that because he is

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a black man, he can get no credit. He has to borrow from loan sharks who charge exorbitant rates of interest. The best job his son can get is loading bags in an A&P, and he is a garbage man whose most significant accomplishment is that at long last he has worked himself up to the position where he can drive the

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garbage truck. And as I listened to him sharing that in an agony of affirmation, I thought to myself how many times those same words must have been said in Pittsburgh and many other cities across our country. What we're talking about is not only of yesterday, it is also of today. Dr. Benjamin Carson is one of the

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world's best-known neurosurgeons. He is chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. He gained international fame several years ago when he performed the first successful separation of Siamese twins who were joined at the head, and he is the developer of a brain surgery procedure called hemispherectomy, which

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is saving countless lives. Dr. Carson is a black man, and he tells in a recent article of how when he goes into hospitals, even to this day, people tell him what to do as if he were an orderly. And why? Well, because they see a black man, and black people aren't supposed to be internationally known neurosurgeons.

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Black people are supposed to be orderlies. My friends, the fences are still high. Equality is a dream deferred, a promise unfulfilled, and many who are in the church and think they're in the light are in the darkness because they hate their brothers. Fences also demonstrated to me that many of the

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things that we have tried to do to alleviate the racial situation in our country have been failures. Our welfare system, for example, has been the major contributor to the breakdown of the black family. We will give welfare money, you see, only to a family in which there is only one parent. So father leaves the

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house, the real male role model disappears, and mother is left alone with the children. The family is fractured because of the system. We have an affirmative system, an affirmative action procedure, and it's done some good, but many times it has led blacks to feel inferior and whites to feel superior,

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which creates nothing more than a new kind of bondage. Let me give you just one illustration. As you know, many of our colleges and universities give preference to black students who seek to be admitted to their schools. They can do lower-level work and still be admitted. Now what has been the result of that?

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Well, most black students who come in under those terms will confess to you that they feel a decided inferiority on the campus. Our Penn State University rewards any black student who improves his grade with a cash prize. Now that's kindness, but that's the kind of kindness that kills, because it is so

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paternalistic, it is so superior. White students, thinking that all black students who come in are below standards and therefore given preference, that's the only way they could get in, tend to ignore the fact that many of those black students who come in are in every way their academic equals, but simply because

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they come in under this preference program, they are seen to be inferior. And this has contributed to the increase in racial incidents on our campuses. There have been 160 serious such instances in the last two years. Beatings, cross-burnings, one fraternity painted all of its pledges black and had

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a slave auction, racial jokes on campus radio stations, graffiti. When the black students see these things, they draw back and they say, "We don't want to live in the same dorms with the white, we want black dorms. We don't want to be a part of the student union, we want to be a black student union. We want to have our

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own Afro-American society to which only black young men and women can come." And the very integration that we have been trying to accomplish is totally frustrated. Black young people today suffer from the memory of the victimization of their people across the years. Many times this is quite

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unconscious in them, they are not aware of it. But because this is so, black young people have a tendency to always want to stay in the group because in their group there is safety. But you see, if you stay in the group, you never risk stepping out into whitey's world and making the accomplishments that are possible to you

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there. One psychologist has said that black young people today have developed what he calls an anti-self. And he explains that to mean that because they expect to be rejected by the white world, they decide we will reject whitey before he can reject us. So what do they do? They have rap music, which is exceedingly

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violent. They have ghetto blasters. They speak jive talk. They have a tendency to be rowdy and noisy. And by all of these things, what they're saying is, stay away whitey. This is a new kind of slavery, my friends. They are so convinced that they have to stick together that when someone moves out of the pack and into the white

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world and makes a success of himself, he's called an Oreo or a hunky or an Uncle Tom. He has ruptured the collective of race. He has betrayed his race. And you see, that kind of an attitude utterly destroys personal initiative. In Fences, there is a character who gets together some money and starts a restaurant near

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the Brady Street Bridge. And it's very successful. But the other blacks in the community do not applaud his success. They attack it because, you see, he has broken ranks with them. Now, make no mistake, I am not excusing white iniquity. This problem is essentially ours. We are the ones who have, across the decades,

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looked down upon them. What I'm saying is that as a result of that, a subconscious feeling of black inferiority has been inserted into black people. And they therefore retreat instead of advancing. And this confuses the white world. And both sides, claiming to be in the light, are actually in the dark because they

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hate their brothers. Troy Maxson is so convinced of this that when his son Corey, an outstanding young football player, is given an opportunity to be recruited by a major university, here's his chance for a college education, Troy Maxson, remembering how things were years before, refuses to allow his son to take

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this route of escape, as it were, this opportunity for education, this chance at excellence. He says, "Whitey will never really let you get anywhere." And sometimes that's tragically true, but sometimes it's tragically false. And it defeats the efforts of black young people to move ahead in the world. This is a kind of

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thing that requires not only white repentance, but also a growing respect within the black community for its own capacity. And maybe you can't have one without the other. Fence has also made very clear to me that the ultimate elimination of racial barriers in our nation is only going to come about as

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the result of a religious revival and social activism on the part of Christians. And when I speak of a revival, I am speaking not only of a conversion of the heart, but also of a commitment to service. What I'm saying is that the darkness of prejudice cannot stand in the light of Christ. So we need more

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people to be brought to Christ and to gain the love which comes to them from him. This is the kind of repentance that results in aggressive goodness. I'm not talking about this kind of conversion which you find like a surprise at the bottom of a cereal box. I'm not talking about some decision that's made in 10

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seconds and you jump up and run down the aisle. I don't think these kinds of decisions that involve the direction of an entire life are wisely made in seconds. I'm talking about what the Scriptures mean by conversion, an entire reversal of one's life, and not just for the day, but for all of one's days. Now

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that's a long, hard choice. I'm talking about the kind of conversion which holds up the Word of God written as having authority in every area of life, both personal and social. This is the reason I can't understand why some people have left our church because our denomination has been debating the question of human

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sexuality. And yet those same people sat in this church for decades and never were the least bit upset by the fact that we were doing nothing to help one of the worst infant death rates in the world, which exists in the Hill District of this city, worse than many third world nations. If the misuse of sex is a sin,

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and it is, then certainly the misuse of an entire people is a sin, and it is. We need to become involved as Christians, underscore that, as Christians, in legislative and political action. We need to insist on fighting crime and the drug traffic which is growing in the streets, especially in the ghettos. We need to

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insist on good schools in low-income areas. The Rand Corporation has demonstrated that the single road which is most available and most important to black seeking upward mobility is the road of education. We must never settle for bad schools for poor people. We must seek to empower the black community

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through things like the private ownership of public property, tax incentives for companies that will locate themselves in low-income areas and thus provide more jobs, getting behind the concept of urban enterprise zones, and do all of this making it very clear, because we are the servants of

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Jesus Christ, we need to strengthen the black family by changing that welfare system and bringing black male role models back into the black community. We need to have preferential treatment in colleges and universities, but not on the basis of race. Rather, we will admit preferentially those who have economic

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need and academic excellence, and those of us who are alumni of colleges and universities are in a very unique position to write to and influence our schools to do exactly that. And we must also encourage black evangelical churches. The greatest strength of the black community across the centuries has

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been its church. The earliest cries for freedom for the blacks came from the black church in the early 1800s. People like Bowen and Paul and Garnett, Tanner, King, Booker Washington, Abernathy, these greatest leaders that the blacks have known in our society all came from the ranks of the church. And we must

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encourage these churches not simply to social involvement, but always clearly and decisively to a social commitment which is built upon and announced as being an expression of our service of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Liberal humanism has failed in dealing with racial issues within our society. I believe only the

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people of Christ, filled with the love of Christ, can truly succeed. Troy Maxson's wife, Rose, has led a hard life. She's known grinding poverty, but she still has within her a deep hope. She belongs to the church. The minister is Reverend Harold Tolliver. He's named in the play, and he was a Presbyterian minister

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here in Pittsburgh for many years. It was my privilege to know him. She's involved in her church on every level, from baking cakes for the bake sales to the saintly spirit which she displays in her life. In Act 1, Scene 2, she is out in the backyard hanging up her clothes to dry. And as she does this, she sings a song.

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And the song that she sings is this, "Jesus, be the fence around me every day. Jesus, protect me as I travel on my way. Jesus, be the fence about me every day." The only way the fences of racism will come down is if people who are strong in Christ, fenced in by his love, will move out in the power of his spirit and set

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themselves in obedience to Christ to building the brotherhood of humankind under the fatherhood of God. So may it be. So, O God, may it be. Let us pray. Father, do you remember the day when riding in that taxi in New York City I

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saw the church that was called the Church of the Heavenly Rest? You know my goings in, my goings out. Nothing is forgotten by you. All things are foreseen by you. Surely you recall that day when I saw the Church of the Heavenly Rest. So moved by thy spirit in me.

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[silence] I never think of that church as being the church on earth, for we are not to be in heavenly rest. That is stored up for tomorrow. We are to be in militant conflict, Father. By your instructions, most perfectly through your Son and also

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through your Word written, we are to be in battle with everything that dishonors or degrades, that humiliates any person. We want to walk in the light. So by your Spirit, drive all hatred of our sisters and brothers out of us, that there might be no more darkness, and that we will see because of the lived and proclaimed

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gospel, the light shining more and more unto the perfect day. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [silence] [BLANK_AUDIO]