Black History Month—12 Feb 2023

Our task this month is to unlearn a long practice of forgetting. This practice started with the families who listed these names and numbers in their wills alongside livestock and furniture, forgetting their humanity in order to enslave them. It continued as our congregation left out the memories and stories of these people from our church’s history over the decades and centuries that followed. This month, we turn away from this practice of forgetting. We remember that each name and number on these tiles represents a full, complex human life—someone with a sense of humor, an appreciation for beauty, a spiritual life, griefs and fears and joys. We remember that they were more than names or numbers; they were people beloved by God, fearfully and wonderfully made, as much a part of the history and legacy of this church as we are.

These three windows comprise a triptych inspired by the agricultural parables of Jesus—a particularly appropriate theme for our remembrance today. Moving from left to right the viewer travels from spring to summer to fall and is a representation of both the Passover Meal and the Lord’s Supper offerings of the bread, the lamb, and the wine. The first window, The Sower, reads, “The Seed is the Word of God” in memory of Elder Schenck who was a planter of God’s message in the church. From an agrarian perspective, the seeds grow into grain which will be used to make bread, the Bread of Life given during Communion. The middle window presents Christ as the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, cradling a lamb while a ewe looks on. Christ was sacrificed for us and also the lamb is an integral part of Passover meals. This last window which states, “Go ye also into the Vineyard,” depicts a fieldworker collecting grapes to make wine, symbolic of the Blood of Christ in our Holy Communion. Overarching all of this, the windows’ message becomes an allegory for the lives of those enslaved and their enslavers: birth, life, and death, the seasons, and the labors of God’s people on this earth.  

—— Jane Barber

The Remembrance and Racial Justice Working Group has been researching our church’s historical connections to slavery and racial injustice. This month, we are hanging tiles with the names—or numbers in the cases where names were not recorded—of people who were enslaved by the families who donated our stained glass windows. On each tile is a QR code where you can read stories of these people—and the stories are also reproduced on posters in Fellowship Hall.