Daniel Payne got angry. It wasn’t 1955, but rather closer to 1835, when he was asked to get up out of his seat on the train. He was 70 years old, a distinguished bishop and professor at Gettysburg College, but he was black.
Sixty years earlier, he had been there as Absalom Jones, an ordained Methodist preacher at St. George’s in Philadelphia – also a black man – began to lead a prayer. A white deacon who saw this got angry, interrupting the prayer and telling them, “You can’t pray here! If you don’t stop, I’ll have you thrown out!” Jones protested, asking that they could finish the prayer, but the deacon kept shouting. Finally, unable to continue, Jones said, “We will finish, and then trouble you no more.” And, he was true to his word. That day, he left the Methodist church and began a new one in old blacksmith shop – now Mother Bethel Church –the first African Methodist Episcopalian Church that gave birth to all the others.
Daniel Payne reflected on that as the conductor demanded he move. He said, “You’re going to have to throw me off before I’ll dishonor men like that.” The train stopped, Payne got off, and began walking down the tracks with his bags.
At the sight of this seventy year old man struggling to move along the tracks, the conductor relented and tried to put him back on the train. But Payne refused.
120 years later, at an AME church, Rosa Parks’ same action had exposed the need for a boycott. Looking for someone to lead it, they asked a young black Baptist preacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the rest, as you know, is history.
So, when you get angry, do something - Sit there! Be SLOW about it, but don’t stop! Search the Scriptures and expose the injustice for what is – either an offense against you, which can be forgiven, or an offense against God that should be handed over to him.
It’s way more than angry – it’s leaving it up to one who always makes things even. By no means will he clear the guilty. Thank God for his mercy.