 |
| Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC |
Fourth
Sunday after Pentecost/ 21st June 2015
This morning I feel a little like
Jon Stewart. The host of the Daily Show
on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart is the anchor of a fake daily news show that
reports on current events. He’s funny
and brilliant and insightful. He has a
marvelous way of giving witness to what’s happening in the news, cutting
through all the fluff and lunacy and sensationalism of the 24-hour news
networks, all of them. Here’s the irony,
this fake news show has become the chief way many actually get their news. He has the courage to say what others in the
media should be saying (but aren’t) and he keeps us honest and real and helps
us to laugh. Stewart is about to leave
the Daily Show, which will be a very sad day for many, including me. Stewart helped to keep me sane post-9/11 and
during the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Several years ago Stewart had Jim Wallis on his show. Wallis is the founder and editor of Sojourners, a Christian evangelical
& social justice magazine. Wallis hailed
Jon as one of our contemporary prophets because he has a way of helping us see
the truth and to laugh. I would agree.
On Thursday evening Stewart began the
show in a somber tone. In light of the
massacre this past week at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Charleston, Stewart said, “I have no jokes tonight. I have nothing for you. Nothing but sadness.” That’s a little how I feel this morning. It’s
how I felt Friday afternoon while I was working on the sermon. I have nothing. Nothing but sadness.
What can one say? What
is there left to say that hasn’t already been said countless times before? We’ve been down this road. Then why are news network anchors and the
politicians they interview still so shocked and appalled that something like
this could happen in America?
Stewart said to his audience, “So I
honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer
into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus
of a just gaping racial wound that will
not heal, yet we pretend it doesn't exist… I'm confident, though, that by
acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still
won't do [a damn thing.]” His language was actually stronger here. “Yeah.
That's us.”
Yes, we’ve been down this road
before. Mother Emanuel Church in
Charleston, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church south of Baltimore,
sadly, has been down this road many times before. Prior to this week, I wasn’t aware of this
church’s extraordinary witness (to my shame).
 |
| Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC |
Emanuel church then went underground
and worshipped in secret. At the end of
the Civil War, missionaries from Baltimore were allowed past the Union blockade
at Hilton Head, made their way to Charlestown and reorganized the church.[2] Vesey’s son rebuilt the
church on the site where it stands today, dedicated in 1865. (The present
building was constructed in 1891.) The
minister, the Rev. Benjamin Randolph (1820-1868), served as a chaplain in the
26th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops during the
war. Several years later he won a seat
in the State Senate. In 1868, Reverend
Randolph was assassinated by three men in broad daylight as he boarded a train
in Abbeville County, South Carolina.
Emanuel’s pastor who died on Wednesday, the Rev. Clementa Pickney, was
the latest in a long tradition of pastors serving in public office, both in
South Carolina and in Congress.
Nine people murdered on Wednesday
night at a Bible study—a Bible study. Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, the Rev.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, the Rev. Depayne
Middleton Doctor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons, Myra Thompson, the Rev. Clementa
Pickney. Extraordinary people of
faith. Leaders, counselors, mentors.
What do we do with this? How do we make sense of this? Like so many other tragedies we have faced
lately, it’s beyond comprehension. But
this is different. Truly innocent people
were slaughtered in a church, in what should be a safe place. This hits us a little too close to home.
There are no easy answers. There will be—there already are—people who will politicize this event or direct our focus away from what really happened in Charleston. It was a hate crime. It was about hate. It was a terrorist act. And it was blatantly racist. It was about racism. It wasn’t an attack on faith or the church. It’s not about treating the mentally ill; although the shooter was very ill, there’s no evidence of mental illness. It’s not about gun violence, although this horrific act involved violence with a gun. There’s nothing ambiguous about this. It’s there for us to see, that “gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend it doesn't exist.” There’s no avoiding it. And, yet, we would rather avoid it, pretend it’s not there, believe we live in a post-racial society. That’s just delusional. The pain of the past and present are real—and it’s more real in black than in the white communities. The sin of our racist past is real and it continues to play itself out from generation to generation. Racism needs to be removed out from the shadows and brought into the light of day. It needs to be acknowledged and confessed, publicly, honestly, for what it is: sin. Individual sin and corporate sin. Yet, why are we so reluctant to name as such? I watched a news show on Saturday morning with a panel of guests discussing what occurred in Charleston. The question was asked, “Can we say racism is sin?” One person avoided the answer. Later I discovered that he was a pastor.[3] Why are we afraid to say racism is sin? Confession is required in order for grace and healing, forgiveness, and, ultimately, reconciliation to occur.
Reconciliation—that’s the backstory
of Paul’s second epistle to the church in Corinth. Division and dissension,
animosity and distrust torment the Corinthian congregation. The church, the body of Christ, is tearing itself
apart. When a church tears itself apart it’s always an expression of
faithlessness, hypocrisy, and atheism—a-theism,
because it is acting as if God did not exist, acting as if God is not in Christ
reconciling the world to Godself, acting as if love and forgiveness and grace and
reconciliation are all lies. When we act
and live forgetting all of this we become a-theists. If we really knew that the
Reconciling God was at work in us, then our lives would reflect it, our
families, our relationships, our communities, our churches would reflect it.
Reconciliation, this is how Paul describes God’s mission in Christ. Hear what he says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, just before we get to chapter 6: “…if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making God’s appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (5:17-20).
Reconciliation is possible, according to Paul, because we are reconciled to God. When we know that we are reconciled to God, only then can we be reconciled to one another. Theologically, biblically-speaking this is the only way. How can we say that we’re reconciled to God when we are alienated from our sisters and brothers, particularly our sisters and brothers in the body of Christ?
Back in 1967, in the throes of the
Civil Rights struggle, our denomination wrote a confession, known simply as the
Confession of 1967. C-67 addressed the crisis
of the church and society at that time.
The theological theme at the center of the confession is
reconciliation. We have come a long way
since then, both as a church and as a society, but we still have a long way to
go. Listen carefully to these words from
the Confession:
"God
has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In his
reconciling love, God overcomes the barriers between sisters and brothers and
breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference,
real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all people to receive and
uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment,
housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of
political rights. Therefore, the church labors for the abolition of all racial
discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations,
individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize others
however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which
they profess."[4]
After hearing this, it’s easy to become depressed or despondent. Yes, we have come so far and there’s still far to go. I understand why people don’t read or listen to the news these days, because it can be so depressing. There are days when I just want to move to a cottage on an island off the coast of Scotland and I wouldn’t care if it rained every day. It’s easy to give up, to checkout emotionally.
 |
| Apostle Paul, Catacomb of St. Thekla on the Via Ostiensus, outside Rome. |
And, so, if the Reconciling God is
at work in you and me, then don’t be surprised if the world is against you or if
people are out to get you or stand in your way or even try to kill you to
prevent you from giving witness to God’s grace and love. But also don’t be
surprised, when you know that the Reconciling God is at work in you, that is a different
spirit at work in you, a spirit of resilience and confidence and hope (the kind
you find in so many congregations around the world, particularly the Christians
of Emanuel Church that we heard from this week), a determination and energy to
serve and to love and to heal and to forgive, a spirit of patience and kindness
and holiness and genuine love and mercy.
That’s what happens, that’s how we know the Reconciling God is at work
in our lives and in the church: when grace abounds when the world looks like
it’s going to hell all around you. There
is a different Spirit at work within us.
It’s the presence of such a Spirit that allowed Paul to write these
extraordinary words: we are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet
making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor.
6:10). Only a person rooted in the
Spirit of the Risen Christ could claim something like this.
It’s significant, then, that after
making this amazing affirmation of faith, Paul followed, twice, with an appeal
to the church to open wide its hearts.
“Our heart is wide open to you,” he wrote to the Corinthians. “There is no restriction in our affections,”
he wrote to them. The restriction was in
the Corinthian church; they restricted their hearts. And so Paul invites them, “…open wide your
hearts” (2 Cor. 6:11-13).
To know that the Reconciling God loves us, to know that this is the God at work within us and within the world, this is what opens our hearts. That’s what the love of God does. The openness of our hearts is a pretty good indication of God’s presence in us.
Open hearts. That’s what we need today. More open hearts. And in the face of so much pain and suffering
and tragedy it’s critical that we keep our hearts open—more than just a crack,
but open wide. It’s so easy for us to just
close off our hearts, close off the hurt and pain, shut down. Trauma, hurt, events from the past have a way
of closing our hearts, cutting us off from life, making us numb. So we recoil, go inward (not in a good way),
restrict, constrict our emotions—especially empathy—pull
back, pull away, become isolated, alienated, lost.
In times such as these, especially
during times of crisis and challenge, we often don’t know how to pray. Perhaps, then, this could become our simple
prayer. This is my prayer. This is what I have to offer this morning, a prayer to be said again and again:
Reconciling God, open my heart.
Open my heart, Lord.
Open my heart—wide!
And keep it open – no matter what.
Reconciling God, open my heart.
Open my heart, Lord.
Open my heart—wide!
And keep it open – no matter what.
[1] Douglas R. Egerton,
“Before Charleston’s Church Shooting, A Long History of Attacks,” New York Times, June 18, 2015. See also the interview with Egerton in The Atlantic, “The Fight for Equality in Charleston, from Denmark Vesey to Clementa Pickney.”
[3] Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, June 21,
“Defining Racism in America”.
[4] Confession of 1967, Book of Confessions, Presbyterian Church
(USA), 9.44. Inclusive language text. .
No comments:
Post a Comment