Lent in Lamar brings healing after dark history

Pictured from left are the Rev. Marion Cooper (Mount Elon and Sandy Grove UMCs), Dr. Reginald Lee (Hartsville Cooperative Parish), the Rev. Emma Jones (Zion and Newman Swamp UMCs) and the Rev. Rusty Crimm (Lamar UMC).

By the Rev. Rusty Crimm

On March 3, 1970, the small town of Lamar made history. The school system had just integrated and, in response, a group of White people turned over two school buses carrying Black students to their new schools.

Armed with axe handles, bricks and other implements, the rioters’ actions prompted a response from not just local law enforcement, but from SLED, the National Guard and even U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew. It remains, to this day, a stain on the town’s history—a town that, as of the 2020 census, has a population of 862.

Fifty-five years later, March 3 happened to be Shrove Tuesday. And on that evening the members the United Methodist churches local to Lamar—Black and White—sat down to a pancake supper to mark the beginning of the Lenten season and had so many folks show up, we nearly ran out of food. Children ran and played in the Newman Swamp UMC sanctuary and colored Alleluia posters in the schoolhouse for their Easter services. Adults from four different charges sat around tables and talked, laughed and reconnected. Pancakes were eaten, stories were shared and the Kingdom of God—if only for a moment—descended in Lamar.

The following day, Ash Wednesday, members from at least five local United Methodist churches worshiped at two different services: a noon service at Lamar UMC presided over by myself and Rev. Emma Jones, and an evening service at John Wesley UMC presided over by all the Lamar area United Methodist pastors: Dr. J. Elbert Williams, Dr. Reginald Lee, the Rev. Emma Jones, the Rev. Lyndon B. Alexander II and me. Community and congregation members came together to remember our need for repentance and forgiveness and joined together, again, for a time of refreshment around the table.

As Lent continued, we met again for Maundy Thursday at St. John UMC in Oates for a service presided over by Lee and myself and, for a final time during the Lenten season, came around the table to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and wash one another clean. It was a powerful way to end the journey to the cross as we were reminded of Christ’s redeeming work and the way in which that final meal was extended to all people across all of time.

As Lee (of the Hartsville Cooperative Parish) noted on Shrove Tuesday, healing happens around the table. We are under no delusions that pancakes and bacon erase the stain of racism and violence but, to borrow the words of Michael Twitty from his book “Koshersoul,” “It hit me that this is why we cook for one another, share food and talk and food and beyond—we just want to be family to one another. That desire is almost destiny, even when we disagree and put one another in various states of pain. There is some redemption in coming to peace over a moment of comfort and satisfaction, and sometimes the comfort and satisfaction are precisely what we need to sustain that peace.”

May the peace we sustain not be an absence of tension but represent the presence of justice. May Christ redeem us from the sins of our past as we continue to come around the table in remembrance of his mighty acts of salvation. And may we all continue on to perfection with God’s help.