Jesus came to motivate change

On Thursday night a group of us in Dearborn participated in a conversation led by myself and other members of the Dearborn Area Interfaith Network on the Reconstruction Era, the post civil war years of 1865-1877. We watched videos on the history of that time and talked about how the issues of those years are still the issues of today: how racism is forming and informing everything from family life to church communities to schools, and the government. 

We planned this event last fall, never anticipating the state of affairs we find ourselves living in now. Although the conversation was somewhat of an intellectual exercise, staying in the head instead of the heart, it pointed out the need for white people to know our history, and to do our work to change,  so we can stop repeating our long history of racism and violence toward black and brown people. 

This week Krista Tippet, in her show On Being, interviewed Resmaa Manakem, a black therapist in Minneapolis who studies and treats people with trauma. His work is heart work. He spoke about how trauma influences people in our bodies and emotions, sometimes changing our genetics. He said that research indicates that it can take 14 generations before trauma’s  influence on our genetics is gone. That means the children and children’s children of people who were traumatized from the Holocaust will feel the effects of that trauma in their lives for 350 years. It means that the people who were stolen from Africa and enslaved in this country, and their descendants experienced a trauma that will last another two hundred years. Although it will actually be longer because the trauma of violence against black and brown people did not end with the Civil War when slavery ended, nor did it end with the Civil Rights protests in the 1960’s, it continues and is even escalating today.

Every time I see that video clip of Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd I cringe.  I’m appalled at the police officers who stood by and watched it happen. I wonder what would I have done? 

And I know that if it is painful for me to watch, it has got to be traumatic for every black mother and father who worries about their child leaving home - will they return safe and alive? And it is traumatic for every black or brown child who wonders if they will be next.

Black and brown families have to have conversations about how to stay safe when out in public - and when, not if but when, one is stopped by a police officer.  

It’s this trauma that is stirring people to action, to take to the streets and protest. Black and brown people because they are fed up with the violence. And white people because we have to be the one’s who change the culture that sees black and brown people as criminals before we see them as God’s beloved, the same as you and me. 

Now maybe some people are thinking that this is not a topic for a sermon on Sunday morning. That this is not the Gospel message of Jesus. We come to church on Sunday to find comfort. And I hear you. 

But, let’s consider Paul and his letters to any one of the churches he wrote too. Every one of the churches experienced conflict, and every one of them needed to be reminded of the Gospel, of the teachings of Jesus. 

Let’s consider Jesus’ teachings to the apostles about equality, love of neighbor, and his parables about good Samaritans and caring for the marginalized. Jesus did not come to comfort his followers. He came to motivate them to change. 

What we are living today is a broken world screaming out for the healing love of God found in Jesus. But we can’t do that healing love if we don’t first take the log out of our own eye and see clearly who we are and how we are participants in the racist systems, in ways known and unknown. 

Our reading from Genesis (Unraveled series, A Sanctified Art) begins with the story of the angels appearing to Sarah and Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre. It is here that Sarah hears that after all these years God will in fact give Sarah a son.  God promised this to her decades early, and so much time has passed that all Sarah can do is laugh when she hears it this time. But Sarah does have a son whom she names Isaac. Now remember that before Isaac is born Sarah had arranged for Abraham to have a son with her servant, Hagar, a child that she names Ishmael. But Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and the child Ishmael and the love that Abraham has for them. 

Now think of this story and connect it to the many white plantation owners who raped the black women whom they had enslaved, who then bore children that were considered slaves even thought their father was the plantation owner. 

Then remember the rest of Sarah’s story - she forces Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert and leave them, which he does. Much like white plantation owners who sold their own offspring, ripping children from their mothers and selling them for profit. 

We have a long history in this country, and in our Judeo-Christian faith where people of privilege abuse the marginalized. 

That is the history that Jesus works against - to dismantle systems of oppression in all their forms.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth he is addressing the divisions in that community and calling them to face their brokenness, work through their differences, and find ways to live as God desires. They are not be the same, there is a richness in their differences that God values. 

Then, in the Gospel we hear that Jesus’ last words to the disciples is to send them out into the world to teach others to love as Jesus loves.

Sent out to love. 

I have done  a lot of work to recognize how racism, is embedded in me through the systems and institutions and organizations of this country. It is difficult and uncomfortable work. It is exhausting. And, I still have a lot of work to do. But one thing I know, this is the work that God is calling me to do. 

The Bishop has started a three week diocesan wide conversation on racism which will meet on Wednesday nights for the next three weeks: June 10, 17, and 24 at 8pm. A parish wide email reminder will be sent out. You can also find information on the diocesan website and in a diocesan wide email sent out on Saturday.

A reflection for Trinity Sunday: Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; 2 Corinthians