Sunday, December 13, 2020
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
"Daring To Hope." A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent
 | ||
| "Peaceable Kingdom," by Edward Hicks. |
"Daring to Hope"
Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12
Here we are, in the second week of Advent.
For a lot of people, there’s so much to do, at home, at church and
everywhere else. There are gifts to be purchased and wrapped...cards to
be addressed...cooking and baking to do...the house to clean... and decorating
to do.
In the
background, we have the news feed of our lives.
Mass shootings. Another child accidentally shooting himself with a gun
he found in the house. Thousands of migrant children separated from their families
and housed in cages. A migrant teenager dying from the flu. Impeachment
hearings. Environmental degradation. Huge economic disparities between the
uber-rich and those who struggle to provide food and basic shelter for
themselves and their families. The list could go on….
In the midst of all of this, Advent invites us to turn our thoughts to what it
means that God came and lived as one of us in our world to show us God’s
way? Advent invites us to wait… to pay attention… to prepare the
way of the Lord… and to live in hope.
In the Hebrew scripture lesson, we heard the prophet Isaiah singing a song of
hope 700 years before the birth of Jesus, in a time when things seemed hopeless. His message must have
sounded as unrealistic then as it does now.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie with down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. . . .
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…
the leopard shall lie with down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. . . .
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…
The prophet Isaiah was probably writing in the period of the Syro-Ephramite
war, when the dynasty of David seemed like a mere dead stump, compared to its
enemies. The nation had been defeated and humiliated by another national
power. Their government was weak and ineffective, and the people were
dejected and demoralized. In the midst of all that, how do you live
in hope? Isaiah’s words
must have seemed terribly unrealistic—as
unrealistic as Isaiah’s words seem to a lot of people today.
Enter the Spirit of the Lord; a new shoot is coming out of the dead stump of
the monarchy. That’s what the Spirit of the Lord does—it brings life where things have been dead. The Spirit brings forth new green shoots of life.
Isaiah sings of a new kind of king—a
king upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests. God’s Messiah will use his
gifts to serve the people with equity and righteousness. What will the reign of
the Messiah will be like? The enmity that dominates the world is transformed
into peace.
A great theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr, once wrote: “Do you
want peace in this world? Then
work for justice.” Until there
is justice for everyone, there will
be no peace. For even a defeated enemy remains an enemy. The only
hope for peace is not the building up of more power to defeat and control—but
power to make our enemies our friends.
Advent invites us-- dares us-- to wait in hope for the coming of a different kind of King, who will use his
power to “rule the world with truth and grace” and transform creation into a
world in which every creature can live without fear.
Can you imagine a world without fear? No fear in Syria or Iraq or
Afghanistan or Yemen… no fear in Bethlehem or Jerusalem… no fear in
South Sudan. No fear in homes from an abusive parent or spouse. No fear
in our neighborhoods where innocent children have died to gun violence.
“They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be
full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” This is the promise and hope of Advent.
But hope is a fragile and fleeting thing.
Fast forward seven hundred years or so. Two
hundred years had gone by since the people of Israel had had a prophet in their midst.
They’re living under occupation, with
the Roman army enforcing the oppression of the Empire.
Suddenly, John shows up in the
wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like Elijah, who was expected to return to prepare the way for God’s coming
Messiah. “Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near,” he
says. “Prepare the way of the LORD. Make his paths straight.”
John’s call to repentance and preparing the way is a call to turn around and
look for and hope in God’s future, which is breaking in on them. It’s a
call to commit to see our world as God’s
world and our future as God’s
future, because that’s what repentance is about.
And yet, more than 2,000
years later, amid the moral, religious, and political crises our nation and
world are facing, we are still waiting and longing.
Every
Advent John the Baptist shows up, because God loves us enough to hold us
accountable to be who and whose we. We are living in a
broken, hurting world. The people of Palestine
still live under occupation in a conflict that looks hopeless to a lot of us. Children in Flint and their families continue
to deal with the long-term
effects of lead poisoning. In our own communities and communities around
our nation, a parent can work 40 hours a week and still not be able to afford
nutritious food and other basic necessities for their children. In our nation,
consumerism and individualism rule. Our political system is broken. The
gap between the very rich and the poor continues to widen.
And so, we still long for a time of righteousness and justice and peace.
For a long time, I’ve felt drawn to the images painted by Edward Hicks, a
Quaker preacher and artist, who was so inspired by the vision in Isaiah 11 that
he painted at least 66 “peaceable kingdom” paintings.
A “peaceable kingdom.” Can you imagine it?
A time when broken creation becomes the completely harmonious creation God
intended. Predators-- wolves, leopards, lions, and bears will live in
harmony with the domestic animals like lambs, calves, goats, and cows.
Lions will eat straw like oxen, and a little child will play over the holes of
poisonous snakes. The earth will be filled with the “knowledge of the LORD.”
Jesus has come to live among us, full of grace and truth, and called us to follow
him, living God’s way of love.
So… how are we to live? How are we to live as a community of faith? Do we give in to
hopelessness and despair?
Do we dare to hope? Can we
trust in God’s promises? Can we
imagine a better world? Can we
believe in the possibility that injustice and oppression can be overcome, with
God’s help?
Jesus came and “proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor
and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the
children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with
outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”[1]
To those living under the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire, Jesus taught
and embodied a different way of being in the world that allowed even the
marginalized and the poor to reclaim their identity as children of God. To people whose identities
had been shaped by centuries of living under exile and oppression of conquering
empires, Jesus demonstrated that the empire doesn’t have the power to
define who you are.
What Jesus proclaimed as a transforming message of hope has been spiritualized and
individualized and distorted. Jesus didn’t come to be a personal savior
for individuals, but to be the way, the truth and the life, to show us all a way
to live into God’s dream for all of
God’s people. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.
When we repent—when we turn away from the ways of the world and the empire-- and
turn toward God’s way of
righteousness and justice and peace, we find our lives changing. As our lives are being transformed, we
can no longer be content to exist under the old ways of the world.
Our faith teaches us that God’s intention is for us to live in Beloved
Community together, in righteousness and justice. But we look around, and
we see there is still a gap between
the vision and reality.
We wait and hope for the time when God will fully bring in the Kingdom… the kin-dom. In the meantime, we live
into
the Kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of justice and peace, as we work for
a better world that more fully embodies God’s dreams.
Sometimes it’s hard to see how things can be different… or how the little
things we do can make a difference. But sometimes new life emerges
from the most unlikely places, emerging as a tiny green tendril out of a stump
that looked dead.
We live into hope in big and small ways when we change the life of a family by
providing them with a goat or a flock of chickens with a gift to the Heifer
Project. When we shop ethically and buying locally as much as
possible and stop using single-use plastics, we make a difference in peoples’
lives and the environment. Making choices to care for the environment and
giving to aid global and domestic causes all make a difference, and they witness to our hope.
When we engage the powers and principalities by contacting our elected
officials about issues that matter, we are daring to hope that we can make a difference.
When we volunteer in our local schools, when we tutor a child or teach an adult
how to read, we are living into hope.
We live into hope because the Christ’s reign is among us now as we live into
God’s dream for us, working for justice and peace for all of God’s beloved people.
In this season of waiting, God comes to us and nudges us: “Look! Look -- there
on that dead-looking stump. Do you see that green shoot growing?”
Can you see
it?
Rev. Fran Hayes
December 8, 2019
[1] “A
Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf
Sunday, October 27, 2019
"Hope in Troubled Times"
Luke 18:9-14
In late October, a lot of people
are celebrating Halloween. But in the
church, many Christians are more focused on Reformation Day.
Five hundred and two years ago, on
October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and theology professor in
the university town of Wittenberg, published his Ninety-Five Theses by nailing them to the door of the Castle
Church. In those days, the church door
served as kind of a community bulletin board.
The 95 Theses were in the form of an invitation to debate about
traditional church doctrine and practice, that, in Luther’s mind, needed to be
re-examined and reformed. Luther was
advocating for reform within the Roman Catholic church, but before it was over
Luther would be excommunicated from the church and branded an outlaw by the
Holy Roman Emperor.
As John Buchanan describes it,
“violence ensued, wars were fought, martyrs on both sides were tortured and
executed. Luther’s followers and their
churches were called ‘Lutherans’ in derision, but during the next century large
portions of northern Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, all the way to
the Italian Alps and the Scottish Highlands, separated from Rome and organized
themselves into Reformed churches.”[1]
Five hundred plus years later, as we commemorate Luther
and the Ninety-Five Theses, it’s a good time to remember that the Protestant
Reformation was a development that took place slowly, over time, and that it was
and is
an ongoing process.
As a former representative of the World Alliance of
Reformed Churches has written, “Luther and Calvin did not just fall from
Heaven. Other people had worked the same field, and people at that time were
aware of earlier reformers.” By earlier reformers, he was referring to Waldensians,
Hussites, the Czech Brethren, and others.”
So, with this in mind, I think it’s a good thing to
observe “Reformation Sunday” in late October, but to focus on what Jean Calvin
called “the many resurrections of the church,” which include the earlier
reformers, and Luther and Calvin and Knox, and other examples of the Spirit’s
reforming, rejuvenating work in the church throughout history and to our
present time.
The gospel lesson we heard today is a brief and
straightforward parable Jesus told his disciples. Earlier in the 18th
chapter of Luke, Jesus had told them a parable about their need to pray always
and not to lose heart. In this parable, a widow kept going to an un-just judge
“who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Eventually, because the
widow persisted and kept coming back
to the unjust judge, he said, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for
anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”[2]
Jesus said to his disciples, “Listen to what the unjust
judge says. And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones
who cry out day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to
them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
That’s the context
for the parable we heard today, which Jesus told to “some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and who regarded others with contempt.”
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee
and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying
thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this collector. I fast twice
a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even
look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to
me, a sinner!”
Jesus said, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
"Nobody is more dangerous
than he who imagines himself pure in heart,” wrote James Baldwin, “for his purity,
by definition, is unassailable.”
Such people clothe
themselves in religion while creating hell for others. They see everything
but their truest selves. They hide their vulnerabilities and practice spiritual
dishonesty about their own shortcomings.
Jesus is addressing a crowd
of people who “trust in themselves,” but who really can’t see themselves. They
can point to the flaws in others and avoid seeing their own shortcomings and
sins.
This parable gives us a
window into this particular Pharisee’s mentality, through the words of his
prayer. He embraces the insider-outsider politics of institutional religion.
His public prayer creates a firewall between him and those who are
“other.”
When Luke says Jesus’
listeners “regarded others with contempt,” the Greek word for contempt suggests
treating other people as nothing. This kind of spirituality lets people pursue
their idea of holiness and morality, while they treat those they see as “other”
as sinful or unworthy or without value.
As the Rev. Willie Francois
III writes, this culture of false perfection betrays the truth of the gospel: “that
God loves us with our scars of disobedience, markers of mistakes, and wounds of
worry. Such a culture creates myriad communities of throwaways, of people
perceived as disposable.
Even churches consecrate
categories by which they effectively label people disposable. When we fail to
see ourselves as we are, we tragically fix our eyes on others—and we live with
spiritual blinders on. This derails our journey to wholeness and
transformation.”[3]
The
Pharisee in the parable isn’t guilty of any of the specific things he names—but
there are many other sins he wasn’t willing to name. The tax collector avoids
narrating a long list of his own virtues or sins to God, but he names his condition: he confesses that he’s a sinner, and he pleads for mercy.
We live in a tumultuous
time—a time of great change and polarization and anxiety— in the world and in
the church. But it isn’t the first time.
The Scottish reformer
John Knox felt compelled to leave the British Isles after the Roman Catholic
Mary Tudor rose to the English throne in 1553. Eventually he joined a
fellowship of religious refugees from
across Europe who had thronged to Geneva, Switzerland.
Geneva’s most famous resident, the French lawyer and humanist John Calvin, was
himself a Geneva immigrant. Calvin helped create an atmosphere in Geneva
that was welcoming to outsiders. They established a hospital for refugees, as
well as an academy for their education. Knox ministered to a congregation of
English-speaking refugees.
John Knox marveled at his time in Geneva, calling it ‘the most perfect school
of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.’”
Calvin’s emphasis on placing full trust in God, as opposed to any earthly
ruler, aimed to infuse life in Geneva with gratitude and faith and to ease the anxieties of a people living
in an age of plague, war, and dislocation. For Calvin and for Knox, growing in trust of
God and love for God enlarged a community’s ability to respond to God’s call to
love and service-- no matter where its residents came from.
Five hundred years after the Protestant
Reformation, we’re living in a difficult and challenging time to be the
church.
We need to re-learn how
to love and recognize the image of God in one another. We need to learn how to live more and more
fully as beloved children of God… and become more and more fully the Beloved
Community.
And nations, like
individuals and the church, struggle to look in the moral mirror. At the Democratic National Convention,
Michelle Obama said, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by
slaves.” That’s a historical fact about the White House and our national
capitol building—one that’s often relegated to a footnote or simply omitted.
Yet many found the statement to be controversial. The institution of slavery
funded the greatness of America—and more than 150 years after the signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation, the American check still bounces.
Long
ago, biblical prophets like Jeremiah expressed the national need for
repentance. The nation needs mercy. For over 400 years, black people have been
dehumanized in America—from the trafficking of African persons from their
native lands through years of slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes and predatory
sharecropping, unchecked lynching, red-lining and residential segregation, mass
incarceration, under-education, mass criminalization, and police violence.
The
church also needs mercy for the ways it supported the institution of slavery
and structural racism and poverty or failed to resist them…for the Doctrine of
Discovery which the ways it gave permission, even encouraged colonialization
and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
Reverend
Francois challenges all Americans when he says, “To change—to be redeemed—America
has to actually look at itself. We
have to stand squarely in front of the moral mirror, beat our chests, name our
sins, and be justified.
On
Reformation Sunday, we are reminded that we are justified by God’s grace,
through faith.
The
question of the day is: how shall we live, in response to God’s gracious
gift? That’s where sanctification comes
in. “Sanctification” is a theological word for how we grow in the Christian
life, as we are taught and led further into the truth and empowered by the Holy
Spirit.
Sanctification is a life-long process, as we are
gradually freed from our fears and doubts and brokenness-- to love and serve
God and our neighbors as Christ does. As we grow in Christian faith, we open
ourselves to be surprised and transformed by God’s word.
One sign of growing in the Christian life is maturing in
love for and solidarity with all of
God’s children-- especially with those who are poor and marginalized and those
who are different…those we see as “other.”
The early Protestants
believed that they were not only creating a new church-- but they were creating
a new world, one that would resemble
more fully God’s desire for humanity.
The original Protestant impulse was to resist powers of worldly
dominion and domination, in favor of the power of God’s spirit to transform
human hearts and society. They felt a deep discomfort and discontent with
the status quo. They knew things were not right, and they set out to change
the world.
Today, we live in troubling
times—a time of great change and anxiety, in the church and in the world. In 2019,
the world groans under flame of wildfires and floods caused by global warming,
as families are left shattered by sprays of bullets and the devastation of war,
in this time of broken human relationships and extreme political partisanship
and structural racism and poverty and corruption in governments. Things are not
right. But I believe God is working to
do new things in our time.
I believe we are living in a prophetic
time—a time of new reformation. I believe that God is working to create a new
church, in and through us. I believe
that God wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in our
communities… in our nation… and in the world.
I give thanks that “we’ve come this far by faith”—that we’ve
been hearing a new word from God over the past few decades about human
sexuality and some of the other things that have consumed so much of our energy
and focus in the church. I give thanks
that this seems to be freeing the church to focus on structural
racism and poverty and other forms of injustice. I give thanks that we have been gifted with
strong and faithful and diverse leaders in our national Presbyterian church and
the ecumenical and interfaith communities who are leading us to act more faithfully
and more boldly.
I give
thanks for the prophetic witness of Bishop William Barber and the Rev. Dr. Liz
Theoharis and other leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign around the country as
they work to bring about justice for all.
I give thanks for Rabbi Alana Alpert and the Detroit Jews for Justice
and their work for water justice in Detroit and their work with the Poor
People’s Campaign. I think that part of
this new time of re-formation is how we’re learning to work together as
ecumenical and interfaith community.
Two
weeks ago, we gathered in this sanctuary to celebrate 100 years of mission and
ministry at St. John’s. The Rev. Dr. J.
Herbert Nelson reminded us of the way things are changing in the Brief church and in
our society and said we are living in a prophetic time. The mission field is here around us, and we
have work to do.
This
week, especially, we have mourned the passing and given thanks for a prophet of
our times, the very Honorable Congressman Elijah Cummings, and we have been
inspired by the witness of this man of faith and humility…integrity and courage
and compassion.
I was moved to hear that
Congressman Cummings quoted a poem by Benjamin Mays during his very first
speech on the U.S. House of Representatives floor on April 25, 1996 while
noting that he recited that poem up to 20 times a day:
“I have only just a
minute. Only 60 seconds in it.Forced upon me, can’t refuse it. Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.
But it’s up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it.
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny minute, but eternity is in it.”
Elijah Cummings was living
with a serious, life-threatening illness. But he was passionate about working
for justice. He lived with a sense of urgency,
conscious about being effective with every minute
he was given. His life can inspire and
challenge us.
We are living in a time of
new reformation. God is working to create a new church and a new world, and
wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So—on this Reformation
Sunday and in the coming days, as we look around at the world and see things
that are not right, let us be praying that we may respond to the challenges of
our time with courage and hope.
In the
words of our Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith:” “In a
broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries
in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work
with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”[4]
Thanks be to God!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Guest
Preacher
St. John Presbyterian Church
Detroit, Michigan
October 27, 2019
[1]
John M. Buchanan, “Values Worth Fighting For,” at his blog Hold to the Good. https://jmbpastor.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/values-worth-fighting-for/
[2]
Luke 18:1-5
[3] Willie Dwayne Francois III, at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-09/october-23-30th-sunday-ordinary-time
[4] “A
Brief Statement of Faith,” 1990. Book of
Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Sunday, August 25, 2019
"Why We Can't Wait," a sermon on Luke 13:10-17, preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Detroit
"Why We Can't Wait"
Luke 13:10-17
The story we just heard goes straight to the heart of Jesus’ mission as proclaimed in Luke’s gospel. Earlier in the gospel, in chapter 4, Jesus was also in a synagogue on the Sabbath when he first announced his mission, describing it in terms of human liberation and justice and abundance: “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.” (Luke 4:18-19).
In
today’s reading, the theme of liberation resonates strongly. When Jesus sees
the woman, he calls to her and says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
Later, when Jesus debates the leader of the synagogue and asks, “Should not
this woman be set free from her bondage on the sabbath day?” he is drawing directly from Deuteronomy 5,
the version of the commandment that connects Sabbath rest to Israel’s liberation
from slavery in Egypt.
The
synagogue leader was indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, and
said, “There are six days for work. So, come and be healed on those days—not on the Sabbath.” But Jesus remembers that the Sabbath law
commemorates Israel’s liberation, so he interprets it to be a day for enacting
liberation in the present. To those who
want the woman to wait, he says, “You
hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the
stall and lead it out to give it water?
Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham…be set free on the Sabbath
day from what has bound her?”
In his 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait, Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr writes about 1963 as a pivotal year in the American Civil Rights
movement. He includes his famous “Letter
from Birmingham Jail,” which is a call for urgency.
Dr. King wrote the letter
as a response to eight local white clergymen who had criticized his
activities in Birmingham and appealed for a more patient and restrained
approach to advocating for civil rights. The "Letter" expresses
King's deep disappointment with "the white moderate," who
"paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's
freedom."
The
gospel story we heard today is not just a healing story. Luke doesn’t really
include details about the healing itself. I agree with one of my colleagues
that, at its core, it's a story about what God intends. It's about the urgency
of seeing God's intentions brought to pass without delay.[1]
The
primary argument of Dr. King’s “Letter” still speaks to us today, which is why
in 2018 the 223rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) began
a process toward amending
the Book of Confessions to potentially include the letter.
The
synagogue leader in today’s gospel story objects to healing this woman on the Sabbath. Her condition isn’t life-threatening. She’s
learned to live with it over almost two decades. So he doesn’t see why she
couldn’t just wait a little while longer. The synagogue leader has misunderstood the
basic intention of observing the Sabbath.
But Jesus reveals a deep logic for why the woman should
be restored now. According to
Deuteronomy, the Sabbath offers a weekly reminder of how much God values freedom and detests injustice:
“Observe the Sabbath day and keep it
holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all
your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not
do any work -- you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave,
or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in
your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of
Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and
an outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the
sabbath day.”[2]
The
original intention of the Sabbath, according to Deuteronomy, is to
provide relief, even if only temporary, from any system that would deny a
person -- or any part of creation -- a share of rest, peace, wholeness,
dignity, and justice. So, when the synagogue official says,
"Wait just one more day." Jesus answers, "No. The Sabbath is a good day for setting people free. In
fact, the purpose behind the Sabbath -- the value God places on wholeness – makes
it necessary that I do this now.
We can't wait."
In
Luke 13, Jesus reaffirms what his scriptures have taught him. As Matt Skinner puts it, “to perpetuate
injustice is to defile the holiness of the weekly Sabbath day that
God ordained. To deny freedom is to offend the God of the Exodus. It's because of who God is that
Jesus can't wait.”
Now, the white religious leaders whom Dr. King addressed
in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” reflected the views of a majority of
American society at the time. One survey from 1964 found that 63% of Americans
agreed that “civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast” and 58% agreed
that the actions of people of color have, “on the whole, hurt their cause.”[3]
Dr. King
criticized white faith leaders and churches that perpetuate injustice by hiding
behind theologies that expect God’s blessings to come only in the future. What’s the old saying, “There’ll be pie in the
sky, in the sweet by and by, after you die:
So, why
do some people have a sense of urgency
about working for justice, while others just don’t? Why
are some people ready to confess and repent of what the Rev. Jim Wallis calls
“America’s original sin,”[4] while
others refuse to acknowledge any ways they may benefit from privilege? Why do
some react with defensiveness, silence, or argumentativeness when the
conversation makes them feel uncomfortable?
I think
much of the resistance comes from fear. In the church, whether it’s local
congregations or presbyteries or denominations, some are afraid of causing conflict…or alienating people,
who may leave the church or withhold financial support. Some are afraid of change and becoming a different kind of
church that they can’t yet imagine.
Twenty
years ago, when I was fairly new to the presbytery, I was part of the
Presbytery’s Anti-Racism Team, which was commissioned and went through a lot of
intensive training, to try to deal with structural racism in the presbytery, in
response to some events of the time. Over the years, there was pushback, and
eventually we no longer had a Presbytery Anti-Racism Team. Our Presbytery is struggling again…still with racism. It’s time to do the work that leads to
liberation and healing. We can’t wait.
This
past week, The New York Times
published “The 1619 Project” to re-examine the legacy of slavery in the United
States and timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival in America
of the first enslaved people from West Africa.[5] The project’s essays trace links from
America’s slave-owning history through the Jim Crow era and into persistent
racial inequalities today. The project is an attempt to correct America’s
historical ignorance about the causes of contemporary injustice, to place
“the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the
very center of the story Americans tell ourselves about who we are.”[6]
Predictably,
there has been a backlash from some people who hold onto a particular vision of
patriotism that centers on the ideal of white innocence, who are angry and
uncomfortable with the reporting and insist that structural racism is a myth.[7]
Look
around our region and our nation. Just this
week a candidate for City Council in Marysville, Michigan made national
headlines with her statements about her conviction that their city needed to
remain a mostly white city, and that interracial couples are breaking God’s
law. Does she think she’s a racist?
Our
national government has policies and practices that dehumanize immigrants and
those who seek asylum. We have elected officials who promote hatred and
division for political gain.
Young
people and others around our nation tell us they’re afraid because of gun
violence…and they want to feel safe. The list could go on and on…
Talking about injustice and racism are hard,
but necessary. We can’t wait.
We need to learn how to talk respectfully and
constructively with one another. We need
to learn to listen to one another to build true understanding and empathy.
A lot of white people don’t like to think
that we’ve benefitted from white privilege, or that we do or say racist things
without even being conscious of it. And yet, some of us have committed
ourselves to gather to discuss books like Waking
Up White[8]
or White Fragility[9]
and have felt challenged and encouraged to continue to grow as anti-racists. We
have a number of other excellent resources available that could be the basis of
these conversations, like Ibram Kendi’s Stamped
from the Beginning and Ijeomo Oluo’s So
You Want to Talk about Race.
We need to learn how to be together, to be
honest and respectful and kind with one another, and find ways for the healing
we need to begin, so we can all be set free from whatever has bound us. We need to work together and live further
into Beloved Community together.
We live in such a broken, hurting world. We
look around our cities and the world, and it can feel overwhelming. But we follow Jesus, in his Way of love and
justice. We are called to carry out his mission of healing and liberation.
Part of the good news is that we are not
alone. We have been baptized into God’s
family and are blessed to be part of congregations where we can be nurtured and
encouraged and challenged to grow in love and faith. And we have resources in
the presbytery. For those who are seeking learning opportunities, you might
check out Table Setters groups in our presbytery or the group that’s forming
under the Rev. Kevin Johnson’s leadership.
As a
diverse, multicultural congregation, Westminster Church has some unique
opportunities to practice living into Beloved Community and to embody God’s
love and justice in and for the world.
We can’t
wait. In the words of our Presbyterian “Brief
Statement of Faith,” the good news is that, “in
a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without
ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask
idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.…
“With believers in every time and place, we can rejoice that nothing in
life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.”[10]
Praise be to God!
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Guest Preacher
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Detroit
August 25, 2019
[1]
Matthew L. Skinner, “Why We Can’t Wait,” from ON Scripture. http://day1.org/7456-on_scripture_why_we_cant_wait_luke_131017_by_matthew_l_skinner
[2]
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
[4]
Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin:
Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America. Brazos Press,
2016.
[6] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/20/20813842/1619-project-new-york-times-conservatives-slavery
[7] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/25/1879981/-The-1619-Project-The-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-racist-responses
[8]
Debby Irving, Waking Up White. Elephant
Room Press, 2014. This book was commended to the Presbyterian Church (USA) by
our previous Co-Moderators of the General Assembly.
[9]
Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk
About Racism. Beacon Press, 2018. For a
20-minute introduction to DiAngelo’s work, you can watch the video of her work
with a Methodist Church group: http://www.gcorr.org/video/vital-conversations-racism-dr-robin-diangelo/
[10]
Presbyterian Church (USA), “Brief Statement of Faith” (1990), in Presbyterian Book of Confessions.
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