Loading...Sermon August 14, 2016
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Track 2 Proper 15
Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! Luke 12:51
It’s funny the things you remember in your life. Recently, I reconnected with Taqiyya, a young woman I knew as she was growing up. She’s now an artist and one of the things she does is paint parties. I had her come and work with my granddaughter and her friend on painting. Taqiyya told my granddaughter and her friend that one of the things she remembered most about me was how I’d make the best strawberry jam and always give her family a jar. That’s not something I remembered.
However, there are lots of experiences that have been touchstones in my life and have stayed with me as if they occurred yesterday. One I thought of as I read this Gospel for today occurred over 25 years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties. The church I belonged to was holding a series of regular meetings to explore and address racism in our community. We partnered with another nearby church. My church was predominantly White and the other church was predominantly African-American.
One meeting we were talking about the Harrisburg City School District. My children attended the District and I was a member of the school board. A woman who was African-American and a retired school teacher started talking about the challenges she saw in the District. I piped up and told her she was wrong and that it wasn’t like that. All I can say is that I’m grateful she remained a friend and mentor to me after my impertinence at not even acknowledging her views and her experience.
I’ve remembered that experience, because it reminds me to listen better. It reminds me to not deny another person’s view or experience. It reminds me about patience and love. She was sharing her experience and wisdom, because she loved me and wanted to help me learn and grow. I was uncomfortable and reacted out of that discomfort in a way that was hurtful and denigrating.
Jesus’ words, teaching, and actions must have been so hard to hear for those in the mainstream of the society during his time. I imagine they must have felt freeing to the many who could not thrive in the rules of the society of his time…women and people who were poor.
I do experience Jesus’ teaching as uplifting, bringing in a world and way of life that is amazing and freeing and fun and joyful. I think today’s Gospel reminds us that getting there is often uncomfortable. That living in Jesus’ vision can create disturbance, upheaval and challenge.
A modern-day example of that disturbance is our challenging efforts to address the legacy of slavery and the creation of racism. I know we say that we didn’t own slaves or so much of that happened so long ago, but the science of epigenetics is demonstrating how things that happened long ago change our genetic code and create behaviors passed down for generations. So, my ancestors who came to this country from Germany and worked as indentured servants for 7-8 years, did something in their minds that allowed them to enslave a woman who was African-American and include her as property in their Will. Whatever mental gymnastics they used to justify that action, changed not only them, but all of us who are their descendants.
And just this past week, a story in The Nation had the headline “The Average Black Family would need 228 years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today.” The story reported on a new study of the racial wealth gap conducted by The Institute for Policy Studies and The Corporation for Enterprise Development. Yes, the legacy of oppression and slavery continues to affect all of us today.
I’ve also been following the Black Lives Matter movement. For many, just the name is tough to hear. We want to say, “All Lives Matter.” Yet, as the report I just mentioned and many, many other statistics show, Black lives do not matter in this country at this time. How else do we justify not only the significant wealth-gap, but so many other disparities based upon race?
Just this week, the US Justice Department issued a scathing report on the police department in Baltimore. The story from The New York Times opens with this paragraph:
"The Justice Department has found that the Baltimore Police Department for years has hounded black residents who make up most of the city’s population, systematically stopping, searching, and arresting them, often with little provocation or rationale."
And on Sunday, there was a shooting by police of a man in Harrisburg, with conflicting accounts from the DA’s office and the mother of the victim.
Yet, for most of us, we feel the police are here to protect us…that they abide by and enforce the laws. We’re glad to use our tax dollars to pay for a police force. We find it hard to hear different viewpoint from ours…that there is something systemically wrong with how our officers are trained and how they enforce the law. We find it hard to hear the stories and pleas from the Black Lives Matter Movement.
In the past couple of weeks, the Black Lives Matter movement issued their platform. The platform was written by “more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people.” There are six areas of demands. Each demand lists very specific actions as solutions to addressing the demand. Statistics are used to illustrate the problem. Actions for federal, state, and local action are listed. How they believe the solutions will work, especially for the most marginalized people who are Black are listed. There are resources, model legislation, and research papers. It’s an amazing document.
And it’s challenging to read. It’s hard to read the statistics about the reality of what it means to be Black in America. It’s hard to read some of the solutions suggested. I want to debate them or change them. I do think it’s a very important document for all of us to read and to discuss.
And I hear Jesus’ words: Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! Luke 12:51
And I hear the words of the prophet Micah:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8
Following Jesus Christ will be very uncomfortable at times. Living in Jesus Christ will be challenging and very uncomfortable at times. Yet, we are called to do justice. We are expected to do justice. This requires us to listen to and to act with the voices of those who are marginalized in our time and in our day. That’s what Jesus did and we must do so if we follow him.
Amen
//www.ips-dc.org/report-ever-growing-gap/
//www.pennlive.com/news/2016/08/police_shooting_harrisburg_ear.html
https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/
