A Window Looking onto All of Us
Remembering what we are called to do
Sunday morning, September 15, 1963. Birmingham, Alabama.
It’s late summer weather, warm, but not as humid as it was just weeks before.
Sunday School is over at the 16th Street Baptist Church. As described at the Southern Poverty Law Center, this scene unfolds:
Four girls are chatting nervously as they straighten their fancy white dresses in preparation for Youth Day. Addie Mae, 14, and Denise, 11, are preparing to sing in the church choir. Carole and Cynthia – both 14 – are going to be ushers. Addie Mae is helping Denise tie the sash on her dress. But before she can finish, a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klansmen outside the ladies’ lounge explodes, instantly killing them and injuring 20 others.
Who were these girls?
Addie Mae Collins was an outgoing, artistic girl who – as a Black teenager in 1963 – happily went door to door in the white neighborhoods of Birmingham, Alabama, to sell aprons and potholders that her mother had stitched together to make ends meet.
Denise McNair performed in plays, dance routines and poetry readings to raise money for muscular dystrophy research. She befriended Condoleezza Rice, a fellow elementary school student who later became U.S. secretary of state.
Carole Robertson was a good student who loved reading and dancing. She sang in her elementary school chorus, played the clarinet, and was a member of Jack and Jill of America, a civic-minded youth and family organization.
Cynthia Wesley was raised by a single mother but stayed with her adoptive parents so she could attend a better school, where she excelled in math, reading and band.
The lives of all four girls intertwined and tragically ended at 10:21 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963.
Just two weeks before, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement.
But following that speech, on the 5th of September, the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace ordered schools in Birmingham to close and told the New York Times that in order to stop integration, Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals.”
The Klansmen delivered.
News of these vile and callous murders elicited global condemnation, and stirred the heart of John Petts, a stained-glass artist at his home in Llansteffan, Wales.
His reaction, as reported by the National Library of Wales:
“The news on the radio … left me sick at heart … as a father … I was horrified by the death of the children; as an artist-craftsman, hearing that the stained-glass windows of the church had been destroyed, I was appalled … and I thought to myself … what can we do about this?” “Could not some of us … join together in a positive gesture of Christian sympathy in the face of destructive evil, and, as a token, put back at least one of those windows?
To raise funds, a national campaign was launched by the Western Mail with the headline: ‘Alabama: Chance for Wales to Show the Way’.
It was agreed that individual donations would not exceed half a crown (12½ p). “We don’t want some rich man … paying for the whole window. We want it to be given by the people of Wales.” The £500 target was reached within days and the fund closed at £900.”
Work on the window began immediately and this magnificent artwork, now called the Wales Window for Alabama, was unveiled in February 1965 in the 16th Street Baptist Church:
It depicts a crucified, dark-skinned Jesus with his arms symbolically holding up the church.
Beyond the brilliance of the design, most striking to me is the Scriptural reference from the Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 25, verses 31-46 (from the English Standard Version):
The Final Judgment
31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”
40 And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
The passage goes on, to those who do not do these things, Jesus declares:
45 “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
As Christians, we often fight over how we interpret the bible. On occasion, churches pettily split over arcane doctrinal differences and personality clashes.
We interrogate and dissociate from each other over questions like:
Are you a pre-, post- or a-millennialist?
Do you believe infant baptism is sufficient, or does only adult full immersion qualify?
Can we involve women in church leadership?
We strive to get our theology right, and so we should, but I’m not seeing any of us being quizzed about our theology on Judgment Day.
Go read that passage again.
The call for followers of Jesus is to show mercy, kindness, and generosity to these, the least, the lost, and the lonely amongst us.
May we, on this most solemn of days, Good Friday, act on what He has called us to do.
A beautiful telling.
Amen dear friend.