John Robert Lewis: Memory & Legacy

Memory and Legacy

Representative John Robert Lewis died on July 17, 2020.  There have been multiple memorial services remembering his fine deeds and exemplary character.

Rep. Lewis was one of the six principal organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, a peaceful demonstration demanding civil rights for people of color.  Rep. Lewis was the youngest speaker on the platform the day of the protest.

As time passes protests have a way of becoming “marches.”  In this change of language we can domesticate the past and enable ourselves to avoid drawing direct connections between the past and the present.

Rep. Lewis was on the front line—literally—of the orderly peaceful protest on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, and was a victim of police violence on that day.  The orderly protest became disorderly when the forces of order began to beat the demonstrators.

In 1986, Lewis was elected to represent Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, where he was known as the “conscience of the House.”  He served there until his death.

One could go on quite a while cataloguing the accomplishments of Rep. Lewis.  That is all memory.

How is memory different from legacy?  Memory is rooted in what was but is no more.  Legacy is what we leave behind that lives on after we are gone.  A legacy has lasting consequences and shapes the future. It is like planting seeds in a garden we will never see.

Jesus on Memory and Legacy

The difference between a memory of the prophets and their proper legacy was a point of conflict between Jesus and some of the religious leaders of his day.

Jesus and these religious leaders went round and round about the prophets.  They both thought the work of the prophets should be remembered and honored, but they remembered that work in different ways.  They assign differing legacies to it, as well.

Jesus reminds these leaders that their ancestors killed the prophets.  He then goes on to say the present generation is not unlike their ancestors:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous,  and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’  Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets…Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town… (Matt 23:29-31, 34).

These religious leaders did not want anyone messing with their comforting memories of the prophets.  Thus they found Jesus rather aggravating.

Jesus saw himself as building upon the legacy of the prophets: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17).  His opponents wanted to construct a different legacy.  Jesus responds to their shaping of the prophetic legacy with:  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others” (Matt 23:23).

This argument is about differing legacies.

The Legacy of Rep. Lewis

It is important to maintain the memory of Rep. Lewis not just as “the conscience of the House” with a lyrical prosaic voice but also as an unsettling conscience that often discomforted America, aggravated people, and at times drew violent responses.  He carried in his body scars of the cost of his conscience.

We need also to ask how we will build on Lewis’s legacy.  How will the seeds he planted come to bloom in the garden of our nation?

It is easy when a great person dies to put them on a pedestal and admire the memory.  Rep. John Lewis’s legacy, however, will be built in the classrooms, in the courtrooms, in the jails, in the legislatures, in the board rooms, in the living rooms, and in the streets of our nation.  A legacy is a living thing, not a monument set in stone.

We truly honor people not just by remembering them but also by nurturing the seeds they planted into a living legacy of their lives—in Lewis’s case by getting into “good trouble.”

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State