Anna Alexander: Teacher and Christian Witness

 

I list the First reading and the Gospel assigned, but really I didn't go to the readings as much as the history of Anna Alexander...and me, too, to craft this sermon. I had the benefit of listening to my bishop preach about her on Tuesday evening, which gave me a couple more details to include, and our clergy conference spent quite a bit of time thinking and talking about what it means to be a Christian witness. 

See what you think.

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Texts: Deut. 6:4-9, 20-25; Matt 11:25-30

Probably like most of you…I have had a lot of schoolteachers in my life.

Some good. Some not so good.

But the ones I remember the most were those men and women who took the time to see me…and really work with me to help me accomplish the sometimes painful and arduous task of getting me through the school year.

I’m thinking especially of one of my math teachers: Mrs. Cronin.

Donna Cronin taught at the junior high school in my hometown.

I never had a class  with her as a math teacher while I was in seventh or eighth grade.

Instead…my eighth-grade math teacher was…well…we had three during the year.

And as a result…my class never learned much of anything because each teacher started at a different place.

The following year…I was enrolled in a New England prep school.

An unforgiving…highly-competitive…learning environment.

My lack of understanding the concepts of Algebra was simply treated as I was clearly an incompetent product of public schooling…and I would always be at the bottom of my class.

That’s where Donna Cronin entered the picture.

My mom called the principal of our public junior high school…and he arranged for me to come back to my old stomping grounds during my spring break…and receive tutoring from Mrs. Cronin.

Now…I was scared to death.

First of all…I was already feeling like a failure…because I was literally failing my Algebra class.

And then I knew that Mrs. Cronin had a reputation for being tough as nails.

Now she would be dealing with a math dunce like me.

I met with her after school in her classroom.

And before we began…she wanted to know what was happening in my math class at school…what did I know about Algebra?

I basically told her I had no idea.

I didn’t understand anything.

I didn’t get why we were doing math with numbers and letters. It didn’t make any sense.

Then she asked me who had been my math teacher last year in eighth grade.

“Well, we started with Mr. Schumacher…”

She put her head in her hands.

“Oh, no…We were worried what was going to happen to you kids. I’m so sorry. We let you down.”

It was amazing for me…as a struggling 15-year-old struggling in math…to hear a teacher admit that the school had failed me.

And now she was going to do her best to make up for that during the three-week break I had from the prep school to fix this situation so I could at least finish the year.

I went to see her every afternoon.

She would pick out problems and we would work through them.

Then she assigned me to do some more on my own and we would go over those the next time.

She helped build up my confidence enough that I was able to at least finish that school year with the understanding that I would have to repeat Algebra.

But now…I could figure out how to solve for “x.”

Good teachers…those caring and considerate people who help children to learn and grow…are such a vital part of our communities.

That’s what made Anna Ellison Butler Alexander an extraordinary and exemplary saint of the church.

Because Anna had to accomplish the task of educating the children of Pennick and Darien with very little to no help…save for her faith in God…and trust in the rightness of her mission.

She was born to former slaves of Pierce Butler’s Plantation on St. Simon Island…right at the end of the Civil War. Her love for schooling and learning came from her father…James or Aleck as he was called by the Butlers.

Aleck was self-taught. Pierce Butler’s wife…the British actress Fanny Kemble…broke societal rules to teach Aleck how to read the alphabet. He then learned to read and write from the Book of Common Prayer by memorizing the prayers.

He picked up skills as a carpenter. And he used what he had learned to help his neighbors as they established their newly freed lives in Pennick.

Anna was the youngest of eleven children…and she took to studying like a fish to water. She initially started a school at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in Darien with her two sisters.

It was a 40-mile trip from Pennick to Darien…and she would make the journey on foot and by boat down the Altamaha River.

It was when she attended a service one Sunday at St. Athanasius in Brunswick and met a lay reader named Charles Shaw that a dream was born: Anna would establish The Church of the Good Shepherd in Pennick…and from this place she would build her own school…teaching the children of her community using the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible…much like her father had learned.

Anna felt that the children were better served getting a Christ-centered education.

Her efforts caught the attention of Bishop C.K. Nelson of the diocese of Georgia…and in 1907…Anna Alexander became the first African American set aside as a deaconess in the Episcopal Church.

But while Bishop Nelson looked upon her and saw what he called, “A devout, Godly, and respected colored woman,” things were soon to get complicated for Anna.

Because in that same year…the diocese of Georgia split.

There was now an Episcopal Diocese of Georgia and one for Atlanta.

Bishop Nelson went to Atlanta…and a new bishop…Bishop Frederick Reese…became the fourth bishop of Georgia.

Under Bishop Reese…the diocese denied the black Episcopal Churches any representation at the diocesan conventions…and refused to set aside funds to support black schools.

This was the era of Jim Crow laws…lynchings…and general terror for blacks in South Georgia.

And it was into this world that Anna Alexander was living…ministering…and teaching.

But her focus was not on the hate that surrounded her every single day. She kept her eyes on Love. And she ministered to all the people of Pennick…both black and white.

In many ways…her devotion to teaching and treating everyone she met as a beloved child of God did as much to unify Pennick as anything could.

Her ministry faced the challenges not only of the racism of her day…but of the Great Depression as well.

In addition to the school…Good Shepherd became a source of private and government aid to the community. She kept meticulous records of what was distributed.

And with what could be thought of as almost a loaves and fishes ability…she managed to keep many a person in body and soul at that time. She helped a motherless boy…an elderly woman. Her example became infectious in the community…with white neighbors delivering rations to a black farmer unable to make the trip to Good Shepherd himself.

With her life…and her labor…Anna Alexander became the type of Christian witness needed for her time…as well as ours.

To live in love…and to put that love and empathy into practice.

This is what it means to be a Christian witness. Through our actions…when we help one another and build each other up…we show the love of God…and we touch and transform lives in our community.

Anna Alexander’s efforts…her devotion to the children of Pennick for more than 50 years…helped spur them on to attend college and have lives that would have been less full if it hadn’t been for this teacher. Thanks be to God for what her life shows us about living into God’s witness in the world.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.  

 

Jesus and the Comfortable Words: A Sermon for the Feast of St. Anna Alexander

 

September 24th is the Feast of St. Anna Alexander; however as a patron saint of the diocese of Georgia, churches are encouraged to celebrate her feast day in place of the normal Sunday liturgy. I'd like to believe I had a small hand in that...having asked the bishop last year in front of my congregation on his visit if it would be OK for us to make that switch. Our diocesan convention accepted the resolution put forward by Racial Justice Georgia to make it a diocesan-wide practice. Anyway...here's what I had to say about this remarkable woman and her witness in southeastern Georgia in the first part of the 20th century.

Text: Matthew 11:25-30

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We just heard in Matthew’s Gospel:

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

This beautiful statement is one that I remember from my childhood…although phrased a little differently.

This passage is among what we Episcopalians know as “the comfortable words of Jesus.”

I have vivid memories as kid hearing these words…and the other short “comfortable word” snippets of Scripture…read right before the priest would lead us in the Eucharist.

This particular one from Matthew has been one of those touchstones in my life.

I have returned to it often…whether I was feeling particularly burdened or not.

Even at times when I wasn’t attending church…I could still hear the voice of one of our priests reciting this passage.

These truly are comforting words when we think of Jesus offering us respite from the burdens of the world…shouldering the load…stepping alongside us when we need him most.

And they were necessary words…given what Jesus had been offering up to his disciples in the verses before.

This was a way of giving them this blessed assurance for their souls.

Prior to this passage… Jesus has given a very detailed description of the dangers of discipleship…

To follow him will be a hard…and arduous path…a perpetual struggle.

He’s warned the disciples that he’s sending them out like sheep among wolves.

He’s announced that families will be divided on account of his name.

He’s even announced that there are cities that face a massive downfall…worse than what happened in the story of Sodom’s destruction in the Book of Genesis.

With all that as the set up for today’s Gospel reading….we get the idea that Jesus is not only wanting to offer comfortable words….he’s also saying to those who are feeling especially worn out by the world…those who have been among the disinherited and the pushed aside:

I see you.

I am with you.

And I’m promising the heavenly gifts will come to the tired and weary who turn to the Source of Light and Love for help.

Realizing all of that…there couldn’t be a more perfect Gospel lesson to have on the day when we remember St. Anna Ellison Butler Alexander and all that she did living at time and place where there were many obstacles set up in her path.

Y’all have the biography of Anna Alexander in your bulletin insert with the readings.

So you know that she is the daughter of former slaves on the Butler Plantation, which was a huge tract of land along the Georgia coastline.

You know that she became the first and only African American to be set aside as a deaconess in the church…and it would only be later that deaconesses would gain recognition as deacons.

We know that she and her siblings built churches and schools in Darien and Pennick and that she taught school in and around Brunswick for more than 50 years.

But what makes this Gospel lesson…and these comfortable words of Jesus… such a perfect reading for her saint day is that they reflect her reality when we remember the times in which she lived and did her work of Christian witness in the world.

It was the turn of the 20^th century.

The Civil War was still a relatively fresh memory for people who were still alive.

Jim Crow laws were well-established throughout the southern United States. And there lynching and attacks on Black communities happening across the South and Midwest. The area known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been destroyed by white violence.

The whole town of Rosewood, Florida, which was a predominantly Black town was wiped out by vigilantes when a white woman claimed she had been assaulted by a black man in  January, 1921.

Here in Valdosta, we remember the horrific killing of Mary Turner and her unborn child in 1918.

Our own Georgia diocese had split in 1907…and the new bishop of Georgia excluded Anna Alexander and all Black churchmen and women from participating in the diocesan conventions…a wrong that would take more than forty years to correct.

Knowing that this was the reality in which St. Anna was placed to live out her calling as a teacher and moral guide to children in Pennick…we can imagine that she might have earmarked her own Bible to return to these comfortable words of Jesus.

We can appreciate that for St. Anna Alexander… having to persevere and find ways to fund her church and school under such circumstances… she needed a Jesus who both forewarns his disciples that discipleship comes with a cost…but not to lose hope… and to remember that Jesus would be there to comfort and sustain them through their trials and tribulations.

These words…penned for Matthew’s community reeling from the Roman Empire’s destruction of the Temple in 70 CE… were likely just as important for St. Anna Alexander to ponder and consider as she helped lift up the hearts and minds of black children in Pennick in the early 1900s…while living in a world full of violence and danger.  

Even today… in September 2024…I can believe there are many people both here in this church and outside our red doors who the need to hear Jesus say, “Yes, child, it is tough to be my disciple. The world makes it hard. But don’t give up. I’m with you… my teachings…my yoke…will keep you afloat amidst these storms of life. The time is now. Believe…and spread the love.”

We are fortunate to have this mediator and advocate that we have in Jesus.

We have his example of living in Love…even as people walked away from following in his footsteps grumbling that the demands to love were too great.

Jesus demonstrates what it means to stick close to that source of love…speak truth to power… and even when rejected… even to the point of death.

And yet…he still was able to rise again.

In these times when we are seeing people turn against each other… even within families… we have these comfortable words of Jesus to keep reminding us that we are not alone.

If we will accept his teaching… a teaching grounded in love for each other… no obstacle… no rhetoric… will grind us down.

Go to Jesus…go to that source of Love…all you who are weary and heavy laden. Close your door… or shut your eyes… and ask for that rest your soul needs.

Seek that solace and receive the strength you need to keep going.

In the name of the one holy and undivided trinity.