November 28, 2020
Myers Park United Methodist Church
Rev. John Cleghorn
There is this photograph I cherish.
I took it earlier this year on a trip with a group of pilgrims from Caldwell Presbyterian to Alabama to learn more about the truth of our national history. Richard had taken a similar trip weeks before with the saints of this church and my colleague James.
The photo shows Richard at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, sometimes called the “Lynching Museum.” He is standing amidst three life-size bronze historical statues of Montgomery black housekeepers in the 1950s walking in procession. The statues commemorate those who changed history with the Montgomery bus boycott, walking to work for more than a year after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.
In the photo, Richard stands respectfully amidst his sisters from another era in the struggle, his face to the morning sun,.
Anyone who knew Richard knew what that spot meant to him. He would gladly tell you his uncle roomed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in seminary and how much King meant to him.
The civil rights movement began, of course, with the Montgomery bus boycott. Having just been recruited to lead the boycott, Dr. King found his voice on a night in 1955 at a rally at Holt Street Baptist Church.
“And I want to tell you this evening,” Dr. King said that night, “that it is not enough for us to talk about love. Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which would work against love.”
“If we are wrong,” King added that night, “Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth If we are wrong – justice is a lie.”
I’ve only known Richard for the past decade or so. But I know that to be the truth Richard clung to. That is the Jesus on whom Richard centered his entire being. A God come into the world in flesh, a God of both love and justice.
Richard Harrison navigated life according to those two poles – love and justice.
He loved and he loved openly, vulnerably and passionately. He loved his family. His heroes were his parents, who prioritized faith, education and service.
He loved his friends and he made friends across our city. Like the Apostle Paul, he traversed differences in race, class and neighborhood. He built bridges and invited others to walk those bridges with him.
And he loved – so deeply – his faith and the church.
Amidst our sorrow this week, James and I have chuckled that Richard loved the church so much that just one wouldn’t do. When he asked us both if he could be a member of both our churches at the same time, both James and I looked the other way in regard to church polity. We knew, you see, that even half of Richard is more than an average full-time member.
Richard loved everything about the Lord. He loved to study the word and participate in small groups and Bible study. He loved to sing and lead the praise and worship of God. And when Richard prayed, he left no doubt that he knew how to talk to God and that he had God’s ear.
Out of these loves, Richard made the church his profession. Whenever I called Richard to take an assignment or bring wisdom to a leadership group, he would say, “Preacher, you know I will say ‘yes.’ I’m a churchman. You know that. I’m a churchman.”
When life didn’t make sense, which happened with Richard, the church always made sense. When the world grew too bitter and divisive, the church offered mercy and restoration. When the shroud of hopelessness closed in, Richard mustered the strength to shake off his despair and reach for the church and its people.
Richard loved in all of these ways because God first loved him.
And, as his hero Dr. King said that night in 1955 in Montgomery, “standing beside love is always justice.”
Richard’s solid-rock foundation of faith held the full weight of his passion for justice, the public face of love.
It made sense that both James and I reached for the words of the prophet Micah today, which call God’s people “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
To be around Richard was at least a little of what it must have been like to know the prophet Isaiah. Richard breathed his own life and meaning to those words of call to Isaiah, which read:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!
Got sent Richard.
And so Richard loved to ride and sing in the Caldwell float in the annual parade on the MLK Holiday … even though he hated the cold February weather.
And he was just as proud to ride and sing about God’s inclusive welcome of all people in the annual Pride Parade in August.
As an elder at Caldwell, he helped shepherd our journey to learn the ways of anti-racism, what it means to tear down systemic and institutional racism whenever we see it. He knew that journey would need to take time and he cautioned us not to go too fast, not to read a few books and check the box as if we were done with what, for some of us, may take the rest of our lives in unlearning the dangers of our whiteness.
And he loved to talk about what it meant to get into “good trouble,” that phrase from another one of his heroes, John Lewis. In 2016, he and I went to hear Congressman Lewis speak here in Charlotte. We slipped through the crowd to introduce ourselves to the Congressman and say a few words. It was a day neither of us would ever forget.
Perhaps most of all, Richard became an advocate and activist for his neighbors, his friends and his flock, the residents at the McCreesh Place supportive housing community, where his neighbors called him the mayor and where Richard served as the informal chaplain.
The other day I met a neighbor there named Joe. Joe explained that he was Richard’s right hand man whenever Richard used his contacts to get something the neighbors needed. Since the pandemic, hunger had lurked the halls at McCreesh more than before and that bothered Richard a lot. With Joe’s help, Richard set up a food pantry to ensure his hallmates had enough to eat, along with masks and sanitizer, all delivered with a good word of encouragement from the Lord. Joe said he had never gotten to know someone so deeply so quickly as Richard. That was how Richard made friends.
And it’s true that in helping so passionately at McCreesh, Richard might have stretched the rules there a bit to do what he thought was right. But then he would just look at me with that wide, handsome grin, what one church member called a “God wink,” and just say, “Sorry, preacher, just getting into some good trouble.”
So it made perfect sense that Richard helped lead the team at Caldwell that is working to build supportive, affordable housing on our campus in a city lacking 50,000 affordable housing units. We plan 22 apartments and Richard was to be our first resident, the standard bearer for what that community will look like. He still will be that. Only in spirit. As our patron saint.
As an Army ranger and Korean combat veteran, Richard loved his country. He had clear opinions about what has happened in America in recent years.
I happened to notice that Richard had not been through the Pearly Gates for more than a few hours that President Trump, after weeks of stalling, finally said he would start cooperating in an orderly and peaceful transition of the White House ….
My theory? Richard found a stash of God’s lightning bolts and aimed a few down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just for effect.
“And standing beside love is always justice.”
Richard was also a teacher. At Boys Town High in Nebraska and for many years as a tutor here in Charlotte. Just a few weeks ago, a teacher from his high school tracked Richard down. Richard, it turns out, was the first black person to graduate from Iroquois High in Elma New York in the early 1970s.
A student there had looked him up and worked with the teacher to have Richard speak to the class about what it was like to integrate an all-white school. That day on a Zoom call, Richard used measured language to convey the highs and lows of being a 3-sport star and successful student … while being othered on a daily basis. Always gracious and gentle, but unwavering about the truth, he described how he suffered the slings and arrows of hate and bigotry, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, sometimes behind his back, sometimes in his face.
It was, he told the students, a formative time, for his faith and for his call to bear witness to a more just nation.
“Some of the students made it clear they didn’t want me there,” he said in his typically understated way. “But my parents had grounded me in faith and taught me before I got there to love everyone, whether they loved me or not.”
“And standing beside love is always justice.”
As James has said, our shared loss is devastating. And I have taken too long and indulged a bit too much to talk about my friend.
Tomorrow we begin Advent, the season of preparing to celebrate God’s coming into a broken and hurting world.
And we will work our way toward the manger, keeping Richard in our heart and God’s call to love and justice as our compass. For after God called Isaiah to prophesy to a nation that had lost its way, God also gave Isaiah these words we will hear none too soon.
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned ….
6 For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Amen