MARY LEE TALBOT
Staff Writer
When was the last time you were challenged — not just influenced, but the ground shifted under your feet and you had to decide what you would not yield, the Rev. Zina Jacque asked the congregation at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Jacque’s sermon title was “Put to the Test,” and the scripture readings were Mark 7:24–30 and Philippians 1:6.
“Tests get your attention. All that keeps us comfortable goes away, and tests strip us of our support, our ability to stand up straight,” Jacque said. “We are reduced to what we really believe, what we would not trade or deal away. Tests define us, and in this time and place, we have to know where we stand and on what we stand.”
Jacque shared a photo of a painting by artist Amy Sherald titled “Trans Forming Liberty.” Sherald painted the official portrait of Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery. In 2025 she was set to have a retrospective, “American Sublime,” at the Smithsonian Institution, and the show was to include “Trans Forming Liberty.” Jacque said, “Sherald has a gaze that the world did not know it needed.”
The Smithsonian wanted to remove the painting to appease the current administration. They proposed replacing the painting with a video of people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues, an idea Sherald rejected. The Baltimore Museum of Art stepped in to host “American Sublime” as the artist envisioned it.
The painting is of a transgender Black woman posed as the Statue of Liberty. Sherald knew what she would not make a deal on. Jacque said, “Sherald stood on the words of Emma Lazuraus at the bottom of the statue. She refused to show liberty for only some; she did not yield, and she rewrote the test.”
Jacque continued, “Another woman put to the test was the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24–30. “She faced a test of institutional arrogance by Jesus.”
Jesus had gone into the territory of Tyre; he was tired and he thought he could hide. The woman who approached him “stood on the wrong side of everything — gender, ethnicity and religion,” said Jacque. Her daughter was sick and the test got her attention; she needed Jesus’ help, and she knew that what she stood for was her daughter’s healing.
“She begs, and this is where the test got real. The disciples in the gospel of Matthew tell Jesus to send her away, that she is a distraction. ‘Not here, not her, not now,’ they say,” Jacque said. “Jesus tells her, ‘it’s not right to give food to dogs.’ Jesus sounds like he needs a Snickers bar. He makes her the other. This is a new test with no grace.”
Jacque continued, “She takes Jesus’ framing of the question and answers in a way the test administrator never expected. She drew on what she knew to be true. Jesus responded in Matthew that her faith had made her daughter well, but in Mark he says her words have made her daughter well.
Sherald and the woman in Mark faced the test. “We are being tested. You, I, we, are tested to choose the truth over misinformation, to find leaders who lead or who just spin courage, an Earth we treat as entrusted to us or an Earth we think is owed to us,” Jacque said. “Do we rise up and be living ancestors or spend down the inheritance and call it progress? Do we trade someone else’s dignity for our own ease? Are we compassionate only to those who live and love like we do?”
She continued, “Do you know on what you will not yield, what you stand for, what you stand on? We can’t stand strong if we don’t know what we stand for. We need to be prepared.”
The spiritual practice Jacque gave the congregation was a fill-in-the-blank statement: I stand for ____ and will not yield.
Jacque said, “It is simple to speak and simple to read, but is it simple to live? Thanks be to God, that when we leave this place we are not responsible to hold on to our statements with our own power. As Paul said, God who began good works in us will bring us to completion. The only power to fail is you. Pencils down, the test is done.”
The Rev. George Wirth, long time Chautauquan and retired Presbyterian minister, presided. The Rev. Tracy Hartman, host at the Baptist Headquarters with her husband and a pastor in Richmond, Virginia, read the scripture. “Sicilienne” by Gabriel Fauré was the prelude, played by Sonya Subbayya Sutton, interim director of music, on the piano and Owen Reyda, organ scholar, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir, under the direction of Sutton, and singing a capella, performed “The 23rd Psalm” by Bobby McFerrin. Sutton played “Postlude on ‘Aberystwyth,’” by Brenda Portman. Support for this week’s preaching and chaplaincy is provided by The Robert D. Campbell Memorial Chaplaincy and The Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy.
