 My dear friends,
I long to offer you all some word, some bit of Scripture, or some piece of our faith tradition that would ease our collective and individual fears, that would help to make sense out of the chaos we see around us. I so want to say something—anything—that might comfort you at this time. Uncharacteristically for me, and to my chagrin, such words fail me right now. I’ve been trying for the past four days to put some thoughts together and get then down in writing, so I could offer to all of you that word of comfort I would so love to speak. And yet … And yet, perhaps now is not a time for us to seek comfort. On the Monday before last, May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African American man, was murdered by a police officer. Another unarmed African American man. Let’s take at least a moment to consider how horrible it is that I have to add that descriptor. How many have there been? How many times have we seen this very pattern play out? How many have we not seen, because there didn’t happen to be any video cameras about at the time? No, I do not think we ought to feel comforted just now. We need, in fact, to be uncomfortable right now. But why? We here at All Saints are a majority white congregation, in a majority white denomination, in a majority white region, in a majority white country. And it is absolutely worth noting that, of all the places that saw massive demonstrations and protests around the state and especially around the country in the past week after the murder of George Floyd, the marches and protests in Appleton have stood out starkly as having been peaceful, truly peaceful, from the outset, and for having remained so thus far. Even in neighboring towns not too far down the road from here, things have tended towards the tense, the confrontational, the violent. Not here, so far. We ourselves are not beating or killing people of color. We ourselves are not rioting in the streets. Why should we have to be uncomfortable right now? Why? Because we have been baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and accepted Him as Our Lord and Savior. In Holy Baptism, we swore oaths before God and in front of witnesses—or else our parents or other representatives swore those oaths on our behalf, and we ourselves took responsibility for fulfilling them at Confirmation. These promises are not the empty phrases of some mere ceremony that got us into some cool or posh club. Not something to which we can just give lip-service and forget about. On the contrary, these oaths are binding. In them, we renounce evil on the cosmic, the cultural, and the personal levels: Question Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Answer I renounce them. Question Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Answer I renounce them. Question Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Answer I renounce them. Those renunciations are not one-time things. They require a lifelong commitment continually to repent, continually to resist, continually to renounce evil, whenever and wherever it emerges—in the depths of our own individual hearts, and in our communities and society. At all times and in all places. And in the Baptismal Covenant itself, we reaffirm that lifelong commitment in even more specific terms: Celebrant Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? People I will, with God's help. Celebrant Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? People I will, with God's help. Celebrant Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? People I will, with God's help. Celebrant Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? People I will, with God's help. None of these obligations is optional. These responsibilities are fundamental to our very understanding, as a Church, of what it means to be Christian in the first place. What’s more, I hope that reacquainting ourselves with the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the sacrament by which each of us was made a Christian, will make it absolutely apparent that our need to address the sin—the evil—of structural, institutional racism in our culture is not in any way, shape, or form a matter of partisan politics. No, my sisters and brothers, it is nothing of that kind. It is, rather, a biblical imperative. It cuts across all lines of political preference or party allegiance. For baptized Christians, it is non-negotiable. It is difficult for us, as 20th and 21st century Americans, reared as we’ve been in a culture that emphasizes “rugged individualism” to a fault, to grasp fully the degree to which the Hebrew and Greek cultures that gave us our sacred Scriptures were communal cultures. The Old Testament is adamant that if anyone in your community is suffering an injustice, then there is injustice in your community, and that’s everybody’s problem. (Go all the way back to the story of Cain and Abel: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer to that question is supposed to be yes!) The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously asserted that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”[1] Dr. King and his people were attacked as “outsiders” when they traveled from Atlanta to Birmingham in 1963 to take non-violent action against segregation. They were accused of stirring up trouble and meddling in matters that were none of their business. Dr. King countered that they were “in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.” Moreover, he adds, as citizens of the United States, we are all members of one community, anyway, and cannot ignore the suffering of our fellow citizens in other cities or states. The Old Testament, indeed, takes it even further than does Dr. King, going so far as to say that there is no justice in your community at all unless everybody in your community has justice. The modern translation of that sacred principle in our immediate circumstances today is that no lives matter until black lives matter. Now, it may be tempting to respond to the assertion that “black lives matter” with something like “all lives matter.” Don’t. For one thing, “all lives matter” is a statement that is true but is not helpful. Imagine your house is on fire, and you call the fire department, and they show up and start spraying your neighbor’s house instead of yours. When you politely (or not so politely) ask them to take care of your house, which is actually burning, they tell you coldly that “all houses matter.” True, but not helpful. But more to the point, remember Jesus’s parable in Luke’s Gospel about the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in order to find and retrieve the one sheep who has gotten lost, the one who is in danger. Does Jesus suggest that the good shepherd doesn’t care about the 99 sheep, the vast majority of the flock? Of course not—but the 99 are not in immediate danger. The one is. And if the shepherd is willing to throw that one sheep to the wolves so as not to inconvenience the 99, then how much do the lives of any sheep really matter to that shepherd, after all? Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing for the 99 to be inconvenienced a bit. For them to be made a little less comfortable, in order to save the life of the one. My brothers and sisters, let me say once again that these are not matters of party affiliation or political preference. They are matters of biblical imperative and baptismal promise. Please do not let anyone suggest to you otherwise. Structural, institutional racism is a sin. It is a collective, communal sin. It affects us all, and it involves us all. As Christians, especially, we are bound by our baptismal vows to repent—and to call our communities to repent—whenever we fall into sin, and to return to the Lord. How exactly we do that, here in this place, at this time, is a multi-faceted question and one not easily or quickly answered. It will require that we work together as a faith community actively to discern God’s will for us as the Body of Christ here in Appleton. Chaos is scary, but it can also sometimes be holy, as the Spirit stirs us up, shakes our foundations, and tears down old structures that have become harmful in order to clear the way to new life, to renewed life, in Christ. One thing we know: Christ Jesus is with us, in all things, always, even unto the end of the age. So please continue to join me in prayer, lifting each other up to God and encouraging each other to listen for the voice of the Spirit, even as we learn to listen to the anguished voices of those who have gone unheard for far too long. May we seek not so much to be comforted as to comfort, in this time when comfort is so desperately needed by so many. [1] The quote and the information which follows is from King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which you can read in full here: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html Comments are closed.
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