Biography
Dr. Renita Weems earned a bachelors degree at Wellesley College and worked as a stock broker in New York City before entering Princeton Theological Seminary to pursue a career in the ministry. Ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal church, she is one of the most respected clergy women in America and is in great demand as a speaker to audiences across the country. Dr. Weems is the author of several books, including Just a Sister Away. Her book, Listening for God, won the Religion Communicators Council 1999 Wilbur Award for excellence in communicating religious values to the secular media. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.] 

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"Sincerely Wrong"
Sometimes in our attempt to do the right thing, we do the wrong thing. We cause more harm than good. Sometimes our zeal to do right blinds us to our own evil. Sometimes believing we are right, time passes and we discover that we were sincerely wrong.

Take Jephthah in Judges 11 for example. In what can only be described as a rash and reckless vow, Jephthah, a Gileadite and mighty warrior, promised God that if God granted him victory over his foes, as a show of his gratitude he would make a sacrifice of the first thing that came out of his door to meet him upon his return from battle. Jephthah defeated his foes in that battle. And guess who dashed out the door of his home to greet him upon his return, eager to celebrate with him his victory? His daughter, his only child, his unnamed, unmarried, unsuspecting girlchild. The sight of his exuberant daughter with tambourine in hand horrified Jephthah and caused him to cry out. A foolish, reckless vow a father made to win the respect of his clan and his peers cost him the life of his only child.

At some point in our lives we have all been wrong—painfully, tragically, embarrassingly, sincerely wrong. At the time we were convinced that we were right. We were—at the moment—prepared to risk everything on our convictions. But time passed. We found out that perhaps it was not as simple as we thought, they were not as wrong as we thought, we were not as right as we thought.

For years I kept on my desk the photograph of a young black girl dressed in fifties clothes, head up, back straight, shades over her eyes, walking resolutely through a crowd of angry, jeering faces. She is the only one wearing shades in the picture. Why the shades, one might wonder. The date below the photograph explains everything: September 4, 1957, Little Rock, Arkansas.

The young black girl in the photograph is Elizabeth Eckford, and the photograph was taken of her on her way to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Elizabeth Eckford would be remembered in history as one of the first black students to integrate Central High. The photograph of her and the angry, jeering, white faces in the background would become a symbol of race hatred in America. In fact, it’s not Elizabeth Eckford’s solemn stride along the streets of Little Rock that has captured my imagination all these years. Instead, it’s the twisted expressions of hate and contempt on the faces of the whites looking on that has made frames this photograph. How many times have I looked at the now infamous photo in American history and wondered what was going through the minds of the men and women on a beautiful September morning more than forty years ago.

Every time I look at the picture on my desk of Elizabeth Eckford I am saddened. What words the tormentors hurled at the back of the pretty, young woman I can only imagine. Where are the angry white faces in the photograph now? Do they still hate black people as they did back in 1957? How does it feel to you see a snapshot of an old rage, an old prejudice, and an old ignorance? What does it feel like to see an ugly picture of an old self, an unhappy self, a sinful self from the not so distant past?

Imagine my surprise in September 1997 when I received in the mail from people who knew of my interest in this story a news clipping that had recently appeared in an Arkansas newspaper. It was the story of a woman named Hazel Bryan Massery, mother and grandmother, in search of a way to ask forgiveness for the angry, white fifteen-year-old teenage girl she once was. Hazel Bryan was haunted by and hostage to a picture taken of her forty years earlier with her teeth bared and face twisted with hate. After years of soul searching and months of anguishing over where to begin, Hazel Bryan Massery found and met Elizabeth Eckford. The new photograph is of the two of them standing together in an embrace on the steps of Central High School in September 1997 forty years after first encountering each other over a racial divide.

Forty years later, no longer girls, both are changed women. Wounded but stronger, Elizabeth Eckford, fifty-five, was no longer terrified of white people’s hatred, though no doubt permanently scarred by the memory of that September 4 morning. Hazel Bryan Massery, fifty-five, was no longer fascinated with hate, could no longer recall what she was afraid of, wants to offer history a picture of a changed self, though she doesn’t and can’t deny that the photo captured a girl she once was long ago. I’m sure Hazel Bryan Massery—and others like her—have asked herself many times over the years, "How could we have been so wrong, so filled with hate, so overcome by evil to have said and done any of the things we did back then?"

I am reminded of a favorite popular song from long ago, The Way We Were:

Are any of us the same people we were forty, twenty, ten years ago, hating the same people, loathing the same things, afraid of the same things, swayed by the same demons? Hopefully not. Is it really possible forty years later to rid one self of demons from the past? Absolutely. Where do you start to make amends for the things you said or did which you no longer believe in?

The Bible never says whether Jephthah lived to regret sacrificing his daughter. We never know whether he lived long enough to admit that he was wrong in equating his will with God’s will. We can only hope. We can only hope. But it is possible to change. Change your mind. Change your thinking. It is possible to be changed. The desire for the approval of others drove Jephthah to make a rash vow to God. In his zeal to prove that he was a man of honor he convinced himself that sacrificing his daughter’s life was the right thing to do. Presumably Jephthah kept his vow, and in so doing, broke his daughter’s heart, broke our hearts as readers, and I dare say, broke God’s heart.

Ah! It’s possible sometimes for you to be both right and wrong at the same time. We’re like the Gileadite Jephthah: we do the right thing by doing the wrong thing. Sincere, but wrong. We know only so well in our times how easy it is to equate wrong with right, hate with holiness, and murder with faithfulness. We don’t have to look very far. The horrific bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the thousands of lives that were lost in the terrorist takeover of commercial air flights, the bombings, raids, and retaliations throughout the Middle East (Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan) and elsewhere in the world in the name of right, righteousness, justice, holiness...even God.

I am reminded of something Jesus once said to his disciples: They will put you out of the synagogues; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God (John 16:2). Not only enemies, but friends, fellow believers of God will dis-fellowship you from their temples and synagogues, excommunicate you from their churches, turn their backs on you thinking they are doing the will of God. Assassins will assassinate claiming to be following God’s will. Parents will banish their children that are homosexual, they married someone different, because of some perceived wrong, thinking they are doing the will of God. Sincere, but wrong.

It took Hazel Bryan Massery forty years to change. Many of us won’t and don’t have the luxury of forty years to wait. I believe that everyday God sends something along in our path that offers us the chance to pause, to think, to rethink, to change our minds and heart, to repent and start over. For Hazel Bryan Massery it was a repugnant picture of an old self, now archived in American history. For others of us it may be the words of a child or grandchild, who asks us, "Why? How could you all have been so wrong?" Perhaps it is hearing the story of a victim, looking in his eyes, encountering with a stranger who looks and sounds like someone you once were.

I know what you’re asking right now: Is it really possible to make up for the wrongs we committed in the past? Is it really possible to ask and find forgiveness for wrongs committed? Will I be forgiven? Will God forgive me? God never turns away the soul that is truly and earnestly sorry. Will those we victimized, we wounded, we scarred forgive us? We can only ask. If that is not possible? In the meantime, we do what we can to reason with and to change others who remind us of our former self.

Interview with Renita Weems
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Renita, the image of the photograph of Elizabeth Eckford on your desk and the hate-filled face of another fifteen year old in the background jeering racist comments. Tell me something, did you ever feel like Elizabeth Eckford?

Renita Weems: My experiences were a little bit different. At the time that photograph was taken I was three years old, but the world hadn’t changed significantly by the time I entered high school in the late 1960s. So the world had not significantly changed by then. Also, through the years I have felt some moments like that.

Talbot: What kinds of moments?

Weems: It is much more subtle. Not the angry, ugly jeering faces and the nasty comments, but the hesitations, the questions: "How did you get here? Who sent you here?" or "We don’t think you really can make it." Those kinds of things. So I know that feeling of trying to live with dignity in the midst of ugliness and pressure.

Talbot: You began your message with a compelling reminder that despite terrible acts of insensitivity and evil deeds, in fact, there is still the possibility of change and forgiveness. What caused you, what inspired you to develop that theme?

Weems: I think it’s a question that people ask all the time. It’s easy as an African American woman for the attention to be on my lifting up the image of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery. But what I was also trying to point to is that every day in all of our lives we have had occasions to be wrong. If we all look back over our lives—it may not be the grand, national cataclysmic image that Hazel Bryan Massery offered—we can all think back to some things in our lives that were never captured on camera but we know we were wrong and we wounded some people. I believe that we all ask, "How can I make amends? Can I make amends?" I know that people ask that and I certainly have asked that. I believe that part of what it means to be a Christian is to know that when we are earnestly sorry—I don’t mean just saying it, but are earnestly sorry in your heart—your heart breaks and you can change.

Talbot: Have you ever been that sorry for something?

Weems: Yes. I have been that sorry for both small and large things. Again, it may not be anything that national, but we are talking about our own ability to be honest, self-scrutinizing, to be confronted with some things and say, "I was wrong."

Talbot: You are an accomplished clergy woman. You attended Princeton. You were a stock broker before you went to Princeton. Is that right?

Weems: Yes!

Talbot: You are teaching at Vanderbilt. You are the mother of a nine year old daughter, Savannah. What has your journey been like?

Weems: Oh! Which part of the journey?

Talbot: The part that you capture in the book you have written, Listening for God.

Weems: In my book Listening for God, I capture largely the part of me that is a minister. I think I am always captivated by stories about contradiction: my own contradictions, the story of Jephthah and stories throughout the Bible of people who wrestled, and people who on one level were public giants but privately they were paralyzed.

Talbot: You had an itinerant spiritual journey, as you say.

Weems: Yes, as a minister. In being honest in that, I have found that congregations, audiences, readers appreciate your ability to look back over your own life and to reflect on it. Not to stay stuck in your own story, but to be able to step back and say, "Look at what we as humans have done historically." I have the platform of a pulpit in being a minister and when I am at Vanderbilt, being a professor. But I’d like to believe that all of us step back and say, "You know, perhaps I wasn’t completely right."

Talbot: Your family in Atlanta, Georgia must be extremely proud of their daughter.

Weems: On, yes, they are! My father is still living and, yes, he is very proud.

Talbot: Are you the first clergy person in your family?

Weems: Yes, and then since I am also a woman, it is being proud after first being shocked!

Talbot: It’s terrific to have you here, Dr. Renita Weems.

Weems: Thank you.