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“Just Hanging Out”
February 26, 2015
Kay Spiritual Life Center
Kay Spiritual Life Center
American University
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Fifty-five years ago, in January of
1960, four college guys were hanging out in their dorm room, just as they had
been doing every night since they’d started as students at North Carolina
A&T University. They referred to their nightly hangouts as “bull sessions”
– unstructured time to bounce ideas off each other, reflect on life, and grow
in friendship. On this particular night in 1960, one of those young men, by the
name of Joseph McNeil, had something to get off his chest. Joseph had spent his
winter break at home in New York, and while returning to school, he’d been
denied service at the Greyhound bus station in Greensboro, NC.
See, Joseph and his friends weren’t
just college students. They were black men living in the Jim Crow South, facing
all of the racism and segregation that entailed. So when Joseph shared his
frustrating experience with discrimination on that night in January of 1960,
the four men decided together that enough was enough. The very next day, on
February 1, they went and sat at the “Whites Only” lunch counter of the
Greensboro Woolworth’s. They sat there for half an hour, until the store
closed.
The next day, they went back, with
twenty other college guys and four college women. And they kept coming back.
Even as they faced heckling, harassment, violence, and arrests, their group
grew and grew:
From four.
To
twenty-five.
To hundreds.
To hundreds.
To
more than a thousand.
Within two months, there were
student sit-ins in 55 cities across 13 states. By July 26th, six months after
Joseph McNeil shared his frustration with his friends during their late-night
bull session, the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC was officially
desegregated. And according to the International Civil Rights Center in
Greensboro – which, by the way, is housed in the old Woolworth’s building:
By
August 1961, more than 70,000 people had participated in sit-ins, which
resulted in more than 3,000 arrests. Sit-ins at "whites only" lunch
counters inspired subsequent kneel-ins at segregated churches, sleep-ins at
segregated motel lobbies, swim-ins at segregated pools, wade-ins at segregated
beaches, read-ins at segregated libraries, play-ins at segregated parks and
watch-ins at segregated movies.[i]
And it all started with four college students. In a dorm room.
Just hanging out.
Don’t get me
wrong. A movement like the sit-in movement required a massive amount of coordination,
planning meetings, and strategy sessions. But isn’t it remarkable that such a
massive movement had its inception in a late night dorm room conversation that,
on other nights, might just as easily have been about sports, or school work,
or – if it happened in 2015 – what was getting the most upvotes on YikYak.[ii]
There is something important that happens when people share together in the
unstructured time of friendship building, joke telling, and idea sharing – the
kind of informal conversations that happen in the dorm room or dining hall or
on the campus quad. Somehow, it’s when that kind of time gets interrupted by
the pressing needs of the day that inspiration can strike and that the seeds of
action can be planted.
Tonight we heard
a passage from the gospel according to Mark. Biblical scholars have often noted
that in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is on the move. There’s a word used in Mark’s
gospel that’s usually translated as “immediately” or “right away.” That word
appears about 40 times in Mark, though we miss it because translators use so
many different English words for the same Greek word: “At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness” (Mark
1:12). “Immediately on the Sabbath
Jesus entered the synagogue and began teaching” (Mark 1:21). “Suddenly,
there in the synagogue, a person with an evil spirit began screaming” (Mark
1:23). “Right away the news about him
spread throughout the entire region of Galilee.” That’s a lot of immediacy –
and that’s just in the first half of the first chapter! Jesus, according to
Mark’s gospel, is nothing if not a man of action.
And yet in
tonight’s passage Jesus seems a bit weary of all of the immediately-suddenly-right
away-activity. The disciples have returned from their mission in the
surrounding villages, casting out many demons, anointing many people with oil
(as we’ll do later in this service), and healing. They are sharing stories with
Jesus, telling him “everything they had had done and taught.” And the text says
that they kept getting interrupted by people coming and going, so much so that
there wasn’t even time for a snack. So Jesus says: “Come by yourselves to a
secluded place and rest for awhile” (Mark 6:31).
What follows is a
story that’s familiar to anyone who grew up going to Sunday School, and probably
even to a lot of people who didn’t. From just five loaves of bread and two
fish, Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people. It’s one of the few
stories that appears in all four gospel narratives. Matthew even tells it
twice. And each time this story is recorded, it’s preceded by Jesus taking his
disciples and withdrawing from the crowds, from all the frenzied activity of
healing and preaching. Perhaps, in the midst of the stressful and dangerous
work of being a disciple, Jesus felt that some unstructured time was needed.
Time to share stories, to encourage each other, to rest. Maybe even time to
tell a few jokes. Time, you might say, for just hanging out.
Of course, Jesus’ planned
time of seclusion and rest doesn’t quite work out. Word gets out, Mark tells
us, and there’s a hungry crowd waiting for Jesus and the disciples when they
arrive at their retreat spot. And yet I find it remarkable that even Mark’s
action-oriented, always-on-the-move, immediately-at
once-suddenly Jesus finds it necessary to look for some time alone with his
friends. I imagine that, even as they “departed in a boat by themselves for a
deserted place,” as the text tells us, they continued to spend time together,
hearing about each other’s journeys, sharing frustrations and joys, getting to
know each other better.
We aren’t given any details
about what Jesus and his disciples talked about during this time together. And
I don’t know much about what those four college guys – whose late-night dorm
room conversation sparked a movement – talked about on all the other nights
that they spent hanging out. I assume that often their conversation turned to
their experiences as African American men living in a city ruled by Jim Crow. I
imagine it was no accident that they allowed their time together to be
interrupted by their calling to enact social change. But I also imagine that they
talked about all sorts of other things, school and relationships and family.
So I wonder: What if there’s
a necessary connection between informal conversation among friends and the
ability to respond with passion and determination to the interruptions of
injustice and human need? What if that’s why the gospel writers tell us that
Jesus withdrew with his disciples prior to this miraculous feeding of the
multitudes? What if there is something important, even for the miracle-working
Jesus, about unstructured time? Something that allows for transformation and
healing to occur, instead of burnout and bitterness? What if there is a link between
sharing a meal together and being able to feed the hungry?
What if there is something
very, very important – something very faithful, very spiritual – about just hanging
out?
Now, American University is
a place that prides itself on activity. Last year, the Princeton Review rated
AU as #4 in the country for Most Politically Active Students.[iii]
There are a lot of things happening here, events and meetings, internship fairs
and job interviews, teach-ins and protests. And many of these things have an
air of urgency about them. You need to get an internship – at once. We need to respond to this international situation – immediately. When you graduate, you’ll
need to find a job – right away.
You can get a lot done that
way. And often, situations of injustice and human need really do call for
urgent response. And yet, I worry. I worry that in the midst of all of the
frantic activity, all of the urgent doing, we can forget how important it is to
just be with each other. Even here,
within the United Methodist-Protestant Community, it’s tempting to over-program
ourselves, to pack our calendars with organizing and events and agendas and
planning meetings.
Don’t hear me wrong. I love
that you all want to do so many good things. I love that you put to shame all
the shallow stereotypes about lazy Millennials that get strewn over various
media outlets. And you can’t do that without planning meetings and agenda
items. But I guarantee you that when you look back over your college
experience, the most transformative aspect of your time here will not be in any
single event or conference or activist campaign. What you will miss the most
about this place is the time you spend just hanging out with each other – in
the dining hall after the our weekly
planning meeting; on the floor of the chapel after a worship service; in dorm rooms and apartments and out on
the quad.
Like Jesus and the disciples
withdrawing together before the miraculous feeding, unstructured time for
informal conversation is not to be confused with apathy or a denial of the
urgent problems of the world. I’m not talking about sitting alone in your room
binge-watching House of Cards. I’m
talking about spending time together, steadily building friendship and
listening to each other’s stories. It’s what we call Christian fellowship. When
we do that, we are somehow preparing ourselves to be faithfully interrupted by
injustice and human need. We are tending the seedbed out of which
transformative action may grow. And in so doing, we are reminded that as followers
of Jesus, what we are seeking for and praying for and hoping for is not,
ultimately, the next big activity or the next successful event. What we are
seeking for and praying for and hoping for is something so much more than that.
It’s summed up in the words of our communion liturgy, which we will share
together in just a few moments: “until Christ comes in final victory, and we feast together at the heavenly banquet.”[iv]
We’re looking forward to a
feast. To a party. There’s going to be great food – way more than a few pieces
of fish and some bread. And you know what? I bet we won’t need a set agenda for
our conversations there. I bet we’re going to get to just spend time with each
other, singing and laughing and sharing stories.
Funny, isn’t it: that the
great, hopeful vision of our faith seems to have less to do with hectic
activity than with – well – just hanging out.
Amen.
[i] This quote, and the information
preceding it, may be found on the website of the International Civil Rights
Center and Museum in Greensboro, NC: www.sitinmovement.org/history/greensboro-chronology.asp
