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Sermon April 18, 2021
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Third Sunday of Easter
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEaster3_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__April_18__2021
Video: https://youtu.be/hzuuf1MqL-M
Many are saying, "Oh, that we might see better times!"
Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O Lord. Psalm 4:6
Have you been as bereft as I have been this week? I guess it is the accumulation of hearing about one assault and killing after another, some by police officers and others by a lone person with a gun killing many people. So many people traumatized like the Army officer in Virginia. So many dead. So many people grieving. So many lives seemingly cut short, their spirits and talents now missing from our life together.
Yesterday, I saw a graph that showed that the United States is the worst of comparable democratic countries when it comes to civilians killed by police officers. We have 33.5 killings per 10 million people. The next country is Canada with 9.8 per 10 million people. Ours is 3 times higher!
You probably have figured out that I love The New York Times newspaper. I have loved it since I was a young adult. I get the digital paper every day and it is one of the first things I read. I like the opinion columnist Charles Blow, who is African-American. On Wednesday, the title of his column was Rage is the Only Language I Have Left. He went through the long history of people who are Black being killed by the police. He says we have become desensitized to these killings and seem unable to find a way to stop them. He says we have fallen into a pattern of reacting to these killings. He also says:
“That is not to say that absolutely nothing has changed, but rather that the changes amount to tinkering, when in fact our whole system of policing must be re-evaluated and fundamentally altered.”
He says these killings have become the norm and it is hard to write about them in a newspaper, because they are all so similar.
“There is no new angle. There is no new hot take. There is very little new to be revealed. These killings are not continuing to happen due to a lack of exposure, but in spite of it. Our systems of law enforcement, criminal justice and communal consciousness have adjusted themselves to a banal barbarism.”
Banal Barbarism, he says….
“A society that treats this much Black death at the hands of the state as collateral damage in a just war on crime has no decorum to project. That society is savage.”
A savage society, he says….
He ends by saying
“I’m sure that pain and trauma are present in me, but I’m choosing to subjugate their import. Rage has ascended to my position of primacy. America scoffed and was unmoved when, for years, we spoke out of our pain. So be it. Now, rage is the only language I have left.”
How tragic that we have scoffed and been unmoved for years when people spoke of their pain? Why couldn’t we listen? Why couldn’t we here? If we were so unheard, wouldn’t we be moved to rage, too, and how would that manifest itself?
So we, too, cry like the Psalmist, "Oh, that we might see better times!" We, too, hunger and long for God to show the light of God’s countenance upon us.
I don’t know if you are like me, but especially this week, I have felt lost as to what to do. It seems like anything I’m involved with is taking so long to produce change. In a Facebook Live piece this past week, Didi Delgado, the radical activist and philanthropist, said we need to work on the local level and organize, educate and agitate.
Do you have some ideas about what it would look like to organize, educate and agitate? I know we have some real skill amongst us. I know some of you have definitely done this work here in our community. Hopefully we can come together and do even more.
In our Gospel today, Jesus appears once again to his followers in his resurrected body. Once again we are reminded that his body continues and will always bear the wounds inflicted upon him by a cruel death at the hands of the government and religious authorities. Through these scars and wounds the resurrected Christ shows us not how to ignore them or wipe them away, but how to transform them and use them to build a new world.
We ask to see the light of God’s face shining upon us to guide us to organize, educate and agitate. We remember Christ’s wounds and are compelled to organize, educate and agitate. We organize, educate and agitate all in an effort to build a community that loves all and works for all.
Amen
Police Killings Rate graph: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124039/police-killings-rate-selected-countries/
Rage is the Only Language I have Left https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/opinion/us-police-killings.html
Didi Delgado Live Video https://www.facebook.com/DiDiDoesThings/videos/4499074976788584
Didi Delgado https://thedididelgado.com/
