A Reflection on Race Following the Shooting in Uvalde

June 3, 2022

(Yes, there is a significant lag time between when I wrote this observation and posting it.)

A couple years ago I wrote and shared a reflection on my observations of my social media feed following the Super Bowl halftime show when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez performed. Now, my social media feed has friends and contacts from different parts of my life who live around the world. Yet, there was a noticeable difference in the responses of my friends who are BIPOC (Biracial, Indigenous, People Of Color) and my friends who are White. A couple people pushed back on it, both of whom are White. Among those who affirmed what I wrote were both Whites and BIPOC.

I noticed something during the week after the shooting in Uvalde. Both on social media and in person, I observed that my colleagues and friends who are Black (not just BIPOC, but specifically African-American/Black) were not as shocked and devasted by the shooting in Uvalde as White and even Brown people seemed to be. It seemed to affect Black people differently; their response seemed more muted. They still grieved, because it’s a horrible thing that happened. However, they didn’t appear as surprised that a horrible thing happened.

I checked this out with one colleague and friend, who is Black, and he agreed that my observation was accurate, at least for him. He expects bad things to happen; that is just life. That's been his experience as a Black man in an unjust, racist world. There was still grief over the lives lost, and he offered me care and support, which I appreciated. But I could also tell it hadn’t affected him as much. I wonder if this is because Black people know much better than White people that the world isn’t fair, that nothing is off-limits, that the systems in power do not value life, any life.

I haven’t heard anything said on any media outlet, but I wonder about race. The children who died were Brown. Would the police officers have been quicker to go inside if the children were White? 

I wonder if Black persons feel that the response to Uvalde outweighed and was noisier than the response to Buffalo, not just because the victims were children instead of older adults but also because they were lighter skinned. I wonder about the response I saw and heard about stricter gun laws after Uvalde that I didn’t hear or see after Buffalo. On the racial hierarchy scale, do we value Brown children more than Black adults?

I wonder if, while my friend expects bad things to happen, and other Black individuals seem to well recognize that society does not value their lives, White individuals seem to still think that their lives matter, that bad things should not happen or be expected. We (White people) often still live under the illusion that we have some measure of control over our lives when reality is that we do not have as much control as we think we do.

 

A Reflection

 

May 27, 2022

“I looked for comfort, and found none.” (Psalm 69:20)

One place I looked for solace on Wednesday was in the sermon I wrote after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School almost 10 years ago. I had already written my sermon for that Sunday, but on Saturday, found myself completely scrapping it to write a new one. The title was “The End of the World as We Know It: Exile and Hope.” It was an Advent sermon, the 3^rd Sunday in Advent, 9 days before Christmas. My oldest child was not quite 3 months old. I held her tight while I grieved for children who were killed. 

I am no longer in the pulpit, but I found myself wondering what I would say if I were preaching this Sunday. I looked up the lectionary Scriptures and found out that yesterday was Ascension, which means that this Sunday I’d most likely use those Scriptures instead of the 7^th Sunday of Easter. While I wonder how we can still be in the season of Easter when it feels like we’ve been thrust back into Lent, I’m mindful that this Sunday is the last Sunday of Easter. June 5 is Pentecost, when we celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit being poured out on all people.

I worded that last phrase of the previous sentence a little different than how I normally would, because the word POWER is what jumped out at me from the Ascension Scriptures. Acts 1:8 says, “You will receive POWER when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” In Ephesians 1:19, Paul prays that you may know “what is the immeasurable greatness of the POWER for us who believe, according to the working of his great POWER.” And even in the assigned Gospel, Luke 24:49, Jesus’ last recorded words in Luke’s Gospel, (because the words of the blessing he gives are not recorded), Jesus proclaims that “you will be clothed with POWER from on high.” 

So, here's my sermonette, that I would flesh out depending on the congregation, because preaching is contextual:

We are already clothed with this POWER. While Pentecost is our annual celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, we who are baptized have already received the Holy Spirit and so have received this POWER. The question is, what are we using it for? Have we buried it in the ground, like the servant who only received one bag of gold and was terrified to use it? Are we using our power to ensure the status quo? Are we using it to protect me and mine? Or, are we using it to help the weak and powerless, the orphan, the widow, the disenfranchised? Are we using it to bring about God’s kin-dom here on earth? Are we using it to ease suffering, feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, and visit the sick and those in prison? What are we, who proclaim the name of Christ, doing with this POWER? Do we even know we have it??

In the letter my Bishop sent out this week, she encouraged us to pray and to act. On social media, I saw comments asking what to do, and the only response given (not by the Bishop) was to teach our children better. That answer is incredibly problematic, as only a small fraction of us are actively raising children and it puts the onus completely on us and off of everyone else. Instead, there are so many things you can do now: call your elected representative, go to a march, or a prayer vigil, call a loved one, write a letter, send a sympathy/solidarity card to Uvalde (or to Buffalo, or to so many places – but be careful not to write pithy sayings like “heaven needed another angel.” People do not die because heaven needs more angels.), research the NRA, study how other countries respond to massacres, listen to someone who holds different opinions from your own and learn why they hold them. There are so many possible actions, as many as there are each of us. We are not all called to the same action. But we must act. C.S. Lewis wrote, “The more often you feel without acting, the less you will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less you will be able to feel.” You are not powerless. Pastor and hymn writer Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, “Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore.” That is my prayer for all of us.

We are clothed with Divine POWER. It’s time to recognize it and use it.

Sermon: Again & Again: We Draw on Courage

 

Palm Sunday

March 28, 2021

John 12:1-19

Again & Again: We Draw on Courage

            Charles Albert Tindley was born in Berlin, MD in 1851. His father was enslaved; his mother was a free person. After the Civil War, he moved to Philadelphia where he and family attended what was then called Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church and he became the church janitor. From there he discerned a call to ordained ministry and as an itinerant Methodist pastor he served a number of churches in the Philadelphia area before being sent back to Bainbridge Street to pastor there. Starting around 1901, Rev. Tindley also began publishing hymns that he wrote, five of which are in our United Methodist hymnal. I learned these hymns, and this history, during the two years that I lived in Philadelphia and happened to find what is now called Tindley Temple United Methodist Church. I found them with a phone and a GPS; I was looking for a church home near my apartment. Tindley was the only church that answered the phone when I called, so that’s where I went and that’s where I stayed and worshiped for those two years. I had no idea when I first walked in the doors that it was a historic Black church. One of the Tindley hymns that I learned that is not in our hymnal is called “The Storm Is Passing Over”: 

“Courage, my soul, and let us journey on, 

Tho’ the night is dark it won’t be very long. 

Thanks be to God, the morning light appears, 

And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! 

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!”

            Today is a Palm Sunday for courage. Even more so than previous Palm Sundays. We have been on a journey. The night has been dark and feels long. A year long, to be more precise. Lent has felt short this year, the past 40 days. I think, in part, because we have been in a season of Lent for over 365 days, going on 375 days. We have been in a storm. Verse 2 of the hymn says, 

“Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground, 

Lightning's flash and tempest all around, 

Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves, 

And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!” 

Jesus has been with us in the midst of this storm and knows about courage for journeying on. He did it when he walked on water in the middle of the storm and he did it on Palm Sunday, facing his journey to the cross. Jesus knew what was coming, and still went through with this parade, anyway. He knew the cross was coming and he had tried to prepare his disciples for it. John’s Gospel tells us, “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.” The disciples understood in hindsight; they understood after the fact. Jesus, however, knew as it was happening. It takes courage to participate in the joy when you know that sadness is coming. It takes courage to hold both emotions at the same time, happy and sad, and to be okay with that.

            It always reminds me of a “Dr. Who” TV Christmas special from a few years ago.[1] In this particular episode, Dr. Who travels to World War II London and befriends a family whose dad is away fighting in the war.  The mom has just received notice that he was killed in the line of duty, but she does not want to tell her kids yet because she doesn’t want them to associate this memory with Christmas.  Dr. Who talks with her about her inner turmoil as to whether or not to tell the kids yet.  And he says, “…every time you see them happy, you remember how sad they’re going to be, and it breaks your heart.  Because what’s the point in them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later?  …The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.” This is the same thing Jesus knows. Happy now. Sad later. Then happy again, because death does not have the last word. It takes courage to celebrate now and at the same time to grieve what’s coming.

            “Courage” derives from the Latin word “cor,” which means “heart.” When we consider the full Palm Sunday picture, these are frightful times. So much is happening that is both hopeful and terrifying. Tensions and tears are plentiful. And just as we’re talking about that first Palm Sunday, it feels like we could be talking about today: pandemics, mass shootings, vaccines, looking for hope wherever we can find it, looking for that morning light to appear that signals the end of the storm, the end of the night. Yet through it all, the Word reminds us to “take heart.” Again and again, we take heart amid the drama. The script is unsettling, because Holy Week is supposed to be unsettling, because we have not yet reached “The End.”[2] Because God has the last word, just as God had the first word. The third verse of Tindley’s hymn says, 

“The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim, 

My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in. 

I hear the Master cry, "Be not afraid, ’tis I," 

And the storm will soon be over, Hallelujah!” 

If you haven’t heard Jesus say, “Be not afraid, ‘tis I,” or, in modern English, “Have courage. It’s me. I’m here. Don’t be afraid,” then my prayer for you this week is that you hear those words. Now, don’t be afraid. Jesus is with you. Usually, you hear those words in the middle of a storm. But take heart. Jesus has overcome the storm and it will be over soon. So, again and again, tell your soul “courage!” and let us journey on. Holy Week has only just begun.

 

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[1] “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe,” aired December 25, 2011

[2] Much of the first half of this paragraph is from the Sermon Planning Guide for “Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain” by A Sanctified Art

Sermon: Again & Again: We Are Reformed

 

5^th Sunday in Lent

March 21, 2021

John 12:20-33

Again & Again: We Are Reformed[1]

I can’t hear this passage from the Gospel of John without thinking of now Oscar Romero, who became a saint in the Catholic Church in 2018.  Romero was a priest in El Salvador and appointed the new Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977.  He was considered a safe choice, one who would stick to his books and not rock the boat in the already rocky Salvadoran society.  Well, “rocky” is an understatement, if you remember that time in Central America.  Serious oppression, terror, and violence was going on, all sanctioned by the government and enforced by the military.  People were mysteriously disappearing. Elections were rigged. The press was censored. And you never knew if soldiers were about to start a massacre.  Archbishop Romero decided to start speaking out after his good friend, Rutilio Grande, was murdered. Padre Rutilio Grande was the first priest of many to be killed during this time, and while in the U.S. a pastor’s murder may not seem so dramatic, in a Catholic country, priests are sacrosanct.  Archbishop Romero himself was assassinated 41 years ago this week, while celebrating Mass, just as he finished preaching.  His final sermon was on this passage from John that we just read.  “I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life will lose it; those who hate their life in this world will keep it forever.”  One of the things he said about this passage was that “one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently.  If it did not die, it would remain alone.  The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed.  Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest.”[2]

Now, this is something y’all know because we witness it every year in our community. The seeds get planted in the ground. Those seeds apparently die in order to become a plant: corn, soybeans, hay, flowers. Then, the crops are harvested. The seed dies, and is transformed into a plant. The plant grows and is harvested, dies and becomes food. The stalk, eventually, is plowed under to make way for new crops. And it all starts from that single seed. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The seed has to be reformed in order to bear fruit. It can’t bear fruit as a seed. It has to change into a plant.

            Change is hard. Even when planned. Even when we’re in charge of it. Even when change is welcomed, it is still hard. You know why? Because it means death. Something has to die in order for change to happen. If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, then your old eating habits have to die so that you can change to new eating habits. The old way you used your time has to change in order to make time to exercise. Something has to die in order for us to change. And death means grief. It means sadness, it means anger, it may mean feelings of betrayal or denial, it may mean bargaining and all the different stages of grief, including acceptance. We can accept the change and still be sad about it. We can appreciate the weight loss and still be upset that we can’t binge on a bag of chips. This is why change is hard. There are strong feelings attached to it. Maybe it was your favorite seed, perfectly formed, beautiful coloring, but you know that if you hold on to it, then it will not fulfill the purpose for which it was created, which is to become a plant. Change is uncomfortable, and we Americans have made comfort our favorite pastime. But God calls us, invites us, expects us to continue growing, to continue changing, to continue in the process of sanctification.

            Sanctifying grace is one of the three types of grace that John Wesley talked about. The others are prevenient grace, the grace that is there before you even know God, before you’re even aware of God’s grace; and justifying grace, the grace that saves us, the graces that makes us right with God, that justifies us. This is the saving work that Christ did on the cross: saving grace. Sanctifying grace, then, is for those of us who are Christians, for those of us who have accepted God’s love, for those of us who are committed to following Jesus. This is the grace that sustains us, sanctifies us, makes us holy, perfects us, continues to work within us to make us ever more like Jesus. This is because even after we are saved, God is not done with us. The process of sanctification never ends because it’s a process of transformation. “Sanctifying grace is where we figure out that it’s not ‘all about me’ and we begin to participate in God’s redemption in the world.”[3]

            It’s not “all about me,” because it’s about my brother or sister who is hurting and in need of redemption and healing. It’s about the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, of whom we have some in our community, who were on the receiving end of acts of violence this past week. It’s about African-Americans and Blacks, who are also members of our community, who again felt like their lives are valued less than others when the Black Lives Matter sign at Glenwood Middle School, our local middle school, was vandalized last weekend. It’s about the LGBT community, again, some of whom are also members of our local community, who again felt ostracized when Pope Francis reiterated longstanding Catholic doctrine. As Christians, we serve a God who loves, includes, and wants justice for all people. Justice isn’t helping a drowning person get out of the river, that’s relief work; justice is going upriver to prevent so many people falling in the river in the first place.

A colleague and seminary classmate who serves in West Virginia shared a quote this past week from an author and poet in the Midwest, Lori Hetteen: “You keep pairing me with quiet,” Peace said, “but my true companion is the mighty clamor of chains being ripped clean from the wall.” That is a just peace. Peace is not the same as silence, because you can have silence filled with tension. But Jesus came to set the prisoners free. This is what he says in Luke 4, after he spends his 40 days in the wilderness. Then Jesus goes to his hometown, Nazareth, and goes to the synagogue like usual, and he’s invited to read the scripture. He’s given the scroll for the prophet Isaiah. Jesus unrolls the scroll and finds the place where it’s written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            Here’s the good news: the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, too. You are anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. Jesus invites us to join him in releasing the chains that are keeping you and your brother and sister in captivity. Remember, good news to someone who is hungry is a loaf of bread. We do the relief work of providing the bread, and then the justice work of figuring out what systems need changing so that all have access to bread and we’re not gatekeepers of the bread. That changes the world. We are all part of God’s family, by virtue of our baptism, and the family business is working together in the process of transforming our world.

            Again and again, God invites us and calls us to continue in the journey of sanctification, to continually be refined and perfected and more like Jesus. Again and again, God calls us to be in relationship with our neighbor, because that’s how transformation happens. Again and again, God invites us to be uncomfortable so that others can see and feel and know the love of Jesus through us. Again and again, God invites us to continue on the journey of letting the old fall away for something new to emerge, of returning to God’s words over and over, of being drawn into the heart of God, of remembering that it’s not all about us. Again and again, God invites us to participate in his redemption and transformation of the world, for both your sake and your neighbor’s sake. Will you say yes?

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[1] From “Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain” by A Sanctified Art

[2] Oscar Romero, Voice of the Voiceless, p. 191-2

[3] James Harnish, A Disciple’s Path, Daily Workbook, p. 23