Moyers on America A Journalist and His Times

Two New Essays from the Paperback Edition "A Time for Anger" We arrived early at New York's Riverside Church one recent morning for a memorial service in tribute to an old friend. In the quietness of the hour I picked up a Bible from the pew and opened it randomly to the Gospel of Matthew where the story of Jesus of Nazareth unfolds chapter by chapter: The birth at Bethlehem. The baptism in the River Jordan. The temptation in the wilderness. The Sermon on the Mount. The healing of the sick and feeding of the hungry. The parables. The calling of disciples. The journey to Jerusalem. And always, embedded like pearls throughout the story, the teachings of compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation: "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." "Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also. . . . And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two." "If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." "Judge not, lest ye be judged." In these pages we are in the presence of one who clearly understands the power of love, mercy, and kindnessthe "gentle Jesus" so familiar in art, song, and Sunday school. But then the tale suddenly turns. Jesus' demeanor changes; the tone and temper of the narrative shift, and the Prince of Peace becomes a disturber of the peace:Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers . . . and he said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.'" No cheek turned there. No second mile traveled. On the contrary, Jesus grows angry. He passes judgment. And he takes action. I closed the Bible and sat quietly, turning the text over and again in my head, absorbing the image of Jesus striding through the holy precincts, excoriating strangers (who earlier in the day had been asking, "Who is this man?"), upsetting their transactions, scattering their money across the floor, bouncing them forcefully from the temple. Indignant at a profane violation of the sacred, Jesus threw the rascals out! Anyone who happened down the aisle at that moment would have found me smiling. It was good to be reminded there is a place for anger in the world. Good to remember some things are worth getting mad about. Here's one: Under a headline stretching six columns across the page, theNew York Timesreported on March 10 that tuition in the city's elite private schools, kindergarten as well as high school, would hit $26,000 for the coming school year. On the same page, under a two-column headline, theTimesreported on a school in nearby Mount Vernon, just across the city line from the Bronx, with a student body that is 97 percent black. It is the poorest school in the town: Nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of ten lives in a homeless shelter. During black history month this past February, a sixth grader who wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes could not find a single book about Hughes in the librarynothing about the man or his poems. There is only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass. None on Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Leontyne Price, or other path breakers like them in the modern era. Except for a few Newbery Award books bought by the librarian with her own money, the books are largely from the 1950s and '60s, whMoyers, Bill is the author of 'Moyers on America A Journalist and His Times', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400095360 and ISBN 1400095360.