Sermon from June 28, 2015

You’ve no doubt noticed that this is no ordinary Sunday - I’m preaching from a manuscript in the pulpit.  This doesn’t usually happen.  But, today it does because I want to be sure that I deliver the message that I feel, down to my very core, is the one that God has for us today.

I grew up in the Deep South’s southwest corner - the furthest extent that the slave-fueled, plantation economy reached before the Civil War.  I grew up where cotton and sugar cane were the biggest crops grown, in a town named for a plantation where Dixie Drive and Plantation Drive intersect.  I grew up knowing I had ancestors, on one side of the family, who fought - and even died - for the Confederacy.  I owned a Confederate flag, a gray Civil War soldier’s cap, heard all of the old family stories from life in the rural South…and insisted that none of it, none, had to do with racism or white supremacy.  The war had been about states’ rights, not slavery; the flag was a symbol of our history and heritage, and had only been co-opted by some hate groups.  Because I didn’t feel any conscious-level prejudice, I assumed that racism must have just been something that old rednecks off in the deep woods of East Texas did.

In 10th grade, I read a novel whose main character was African American.  The character discusses, at a few points, what being black in America was like.  He says, at one point, how he’s become used to the fact that, as a black man, every white person he walks by on the street instinctively clutches their purse tighter or puts a hand down to touch their wallet (depending on their gender).

A few weeks later, good old non-racist me was putting gas in my car, perhaps appropriately in Lee County, Texas.  A minute or two later, an African American man pulled up at the next pump and got out of his car.  I realized a few seconds later where my right hand was at.  Wrapped around my wallet.  It was the moment that my eyes were opened to the fact that racism is not just what they used to do in the Old South before Martin Luther King had his dream.

We have had the reality of racism thrust back into the public spotlight this week.  Regardless of one’s feelings about Trayvon Martin, or Ferguson, Or Baltimore, or the blacklivesmatter and IcantBreathe hashtags, it is impossible to deny that the murder of nine African American churchgoers in Charleston was all about racism and its continued existence in our society.  It is also impossible to paint it as a one-time exception; in the years 1995-1999 alone, 827 government investigations were launched into cases of church arson, mostly of predominantly black churches.  In the last week, several black churches have been victims of such acts, completed or attempted.

In the ELCA, we have a special connection to the Charleston shooting.  Two of the slain, including Pastor Clementa Pinckney, were not Lutheran but were educated at our Lutheran seminary in Columbia, South Carolina.  However, most importantly, the alleged shooter was an active member of an ELCA congregation.  He was one of us.  He was baptized and confirmed in a church like this.  He sat in the pews of a church like this.  He heard sermons, sang hymns, and took communion in a church like this.  He nurtured hatred and sin in his heart in a church like this…and he went and murdered nine people because of the color of their skin.

We have to let go of the belief that we are somehow immune to the sin that we see in the world around us simply because we come to a church like this on Sunday morning to pray and worship.  So did Dylann Roof.  We cannot persist in the belief, however well-intentioned, that we are not a part of systems like racism - racism does not have a geographic boundary or an age limit.  We have to do the hard, uncomfortable work of self-reflection, prayer, and repentance because it is what Christ calls us to do.

There has been a lot of confusion about just what that means.  For some, repentance has come to mean something like “feeling bad and apologizing.”  I feel guilty that this bad thing happened, so I’m going to apologize.  But…that’s not what repentance is about.  Repentance is more than issuing an apology, or making a sympathetic Facebook post, or taking down the old Rebel flag bumper sticker from your car…or having a special worship service one Sunday.  The word repentance means turning around, going down a different path - not just feeling bad and apologizing.  Christ didn’t begin his ministry by saying “Apologize, for the Kingdom of God is drawing near.”  He invites us to repentance - to experience his powerful presence in the work of rejecting sin and death and finding forgiveness and new life in him - resurrection, even, a rising again from the death that sin places upon us.

And what does that resurrection look like?  I think it might just look a lot like the responses of the families of the nine people slain in Charleston.  These are people who have had their loved ones murdered in an act that I’m willing to call a domestic terrorist attack - people slain because they were black by a white man who believes that all black people should die.  Yet, these families spoke powerful words of truth and forgiveness to the face of the one who killed their loved ones, and who would have killed them if given the chance.  Grace.  Forgiveness.  Truth.  These are the hallmarks of God’s Kingdom; these are things that flow down from God in that mighty tide of justice and righteousness that will come down upon us from God, ready or not.

This is not an easy word to preach, nor an easy one to live out past the church door.  I can tell you that from my own lived experience - committing to the path of repentance, especially when it connects to such a fundamental part of life in our society, is a difficult journey.  Following Christ has meant looking into some of the ugliest, darkest corners of my own being, and some of the ugliest, darkest corners of my own family, and some of the ugliest, darkest corners of my own nation’s past and present.  This work of repentance will break your heart.

But resurrection is the reward.  The richest, most profound sense of forgiveness and new life you can imagine is the reward.  Discovering how Christ is at work in you, in others, in the world is the reward.  Experiencing the rivers of living justice by which God is renewing and refreshing this weary world - and getting lost in their mighty tide - is the reward.  New community, built upon the fundamental truth that we are all one in Christ Jesus, regardless of where we’ve been or what we look like, is the reward.  Resurrection into God’s Kingdom - that’s the reward.

This is the promise that sustained the faith of Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Myra Thompson, and Daniel Simmons.  That this life and its ugliness is not all there is, and that God’s Kingdom is drawing near to remake the world in justice and peace - this the promise.  In our baptisms, this is the promise to which we are joined….and this is the promise which we are invited to live out.  By turning from sin where we find it in our hearts and lives, and seeking not just forgiveness, we find not only that but new life…new life that is already there, waiting to be born in us that we might grow into a new creation, one people of God discovering the amazing grace that alone can transform our hearts and this world.

Confession

When I was a 7th grader, I bought a Confederate battle flag in Grand Gulf, Mississippi.  I also got a gray kepi and a cassette tape of Bobby Horton's "Homespun Songs of the CSA, Vol. 1."

Growing up in a part of Texas that legitimately belongs to the Deep South more than it does to the spreading plains of central and northern Texas, I grew up hearing again and again things like this:

-The Civil War (usually "The War Between the States" or even occasionally "The War of Northern Aggression") was about "states' rights" and trying to uphold the 10th Amendment.  

-The Confederacy weren't the aggressors, even though they fired first at Fort Sumter.  They were merely defending their right to secede from Yankee tyranny.

-Slavery, and its abolition, was only an issue when "preserving the Union" fell apart in the face of Confederate military victories in the Eastern Theater of the war.

-Confederate symbols in post-bellum Southern society were about heritage and a remembrance of the fallen; race and racism had nothing to do with it.

I wore my Southern gear proudly.  My gray kepi made appearances has been seen on my head at Grand Gulf, Vicksburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness/Spotsylvania.  I don't think I had it with me when we went to Chickamauga, but it may as well have been on my head there, too.  I always played as the South when playing games like "Civil War Generals II."  I was a minor expert on military history related to the Civil War, always willing to talk about how the South could have won if only they'd (fill in the blank).  I wrote an article on young people that made it into the e-mail newsletter of the (thankfully now-defunct) Southern Party, a group of new-school secessionists.  I advocated an independent Texas; I once expressed a desire that George Wallace's campaign for the presidency in 1968 hadn't foundered.  I defended the likes of Strom Thurmond.  I remember once "man-splaining" to an African American teacher why it was that the Confederate flag wasn't, in fact, a symbol of racism, but just a part of "our Southern heritage."

The moment it all started to change for me was in 10th grade.  For Bible class at my small, private, Christian secondary school, we were required to spend the first 15-20 minutes of class reading.  Our teacher offered up a pretty wide array of devotional literature, spiritually edifying fiction, and the like; every quarter, we were to have finished at least one book.  To help us out, we could check the books out from her and read at home, too.  For one quarter, I opted to read a novel called Dominion by Randy Alcorn.  Its protagonist is African American, and there's a lot of reflecting on the realities of race and racism in society throughout the novel.

Of course, since I "wasn't racist" because I never said certain slurs out loud (I merely thought them), I figured I was not the person the novelist needed to address, until one day when I was putting gas in my car.  In the novel, the protagonist describes the experience he's had, as a black man, of watching women clutch their purses closer when he walks by, and of watching men check their pockets for their wallet - all done instinctively, without any conscious effort.  Naturally, I thought this was interesting, but assumed I'd never do such a thing.  An African American man pulled up to the pump next to me.  The next thing I knew, I felt my hand wrapped around my wallet.  I froze and felt a cold, hard chill settle over me.

It was the moment I realized that I am racist.  Not by choice or by conscious design; simply because it is virtually inescapable in U.S. American society as a white person.  We're programmed, for the most part, to treat people of color (especially people who are black) like threats and react accordingly.  

Much of my adult life has been spent trying to come to terms with my "Road to Damascus" moment at a gas station, fittingly in Lee County, Texas...yes, named for *that* Lee.  I wondered if I was defective.  I tried to figure out ways to qualify my own attitudes held within me, to make me out to be "just" a little prejudiced, ya know, like everyone else.  I toned down my "moonlight and magnolias" rhetoric and started distancing myself from some of the hardcore right-wing ideas I'd once considered.

As a college student, I made a conscious decision to force myself to deal outright with whatever prejudices I had burbling under my surface.  I chose to spend a semester in Ghana, where I would have to confront the reality of my whiteness, the legacy of slavery, and learn how to live and function in a world in which I was the minority.  I researched the articles of secession from Confederate states in the 1860s, and discovered that "states' rights" is only an accurate assessment of the rationale for secession if "...to preserve slavery" is added on to the end of the phrase.  Every state explicitly cited maintaining slavery as its reason to leave the union.  I lived in a house with two African American roommates.  I made my peace with the fact that the voice in my head, that tries to label people of color with derogatory terms and stereotypes, will always be with me - a reminder of where I come from, a thorn in my flesh.

I've committed myself to the work of anti-racism as a recovering racist.  Like an addiction, my racism never goes away.  The voice is always there.  However, I can be conscious of it and choose not to listen to what it says - by the grace of God, I am free to change my behavior even if I can't change immediate thoughts.

In my old childhood bedroom, that Confederate flag and gray kepi still hang on a pair of deer antlers, a stereotypical Southern scene reflecting the world which helped form me.  On my next trip to Texas, they're getting thrown out because, in a world where racism has ripped its mask right off and revealed its ugly face, they serve no purpose other than to antagonize.  "Heritage, not hate" is as gone with the wind as Scarlett O'Hara.  The problem is that the heritage can't be held separately from the hate it's incubated and nurtured.

To those whom this has shocked or offended, I offer my apologies.  More importantly, to those who have been offended or hurt by own actions and attitudes stemming from the racism which for too long informed by interaction with the world, I offer my apologies.  To those who are struggling with how to be a white U.S. American in the face of racism, or who are fighting hard against a sense that they, too, might be racist, I offer my prayers and an open invitation to talk with someone who knows those roads too well.

"There is no future without forgiveness," says Desmond Tutu.  The journey to forgiveness begins with confession and repentance.  I make my confession, I express my own journey of repentance, and I ask God to help and guide me along the way.

Pastoral letter to Grace Church regarding the shooting in Charleston

6.18.15

Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

 By the time you have received this letter, it is likely that you will have seen and heard the news from Charleston, South Carolina today.  At a prayer meeting last night, June 17^th, a 21 year old white man entered a historically black church (Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal).  This was on the anniversary of an attempted slave revolt by one of the original founders of Mother Emanuel AME Church; the suspected shooter (who is now in custody) has an established history of deeply racist beliefs and statements.  After sitting for an hour in a prayer service, he opened fire on those gathered, killing nine church members, all African American, including the church’s pastor.

I imagine I would have found this tragedy deeply disturbing even if I were not a pastor, but especially as an ordained minister, this is the sort of violent event that shakes me to my absolute core.  We consider our churches places of peace and safety; to have this peace and safety destroyed in such a horrific way is a truly unsettling matter for all of us in Christ’s Church regardless of our denomination, our geographic location, or our racial and ethnic identities.

It would be easy to dismiss this horrible event as a one-time tragedy – something so far removed from the happenings of daily life that it is viewed in isolation from history and context.  To do so, however, would be to ignore its place in a broader narrative of racism and violence that has been a theme in our nation’s life and history since the early years of European colonization.  It is true that many great strides have been made toward the full inclusion of people of color in our society and institutions.  In the living memories of many people, we have seen the dismantling of Jim Crow and end to segregation, the extension of voting rights and greater access to societal participation to all people, and even the election of a person of African descent to the presidency.  There is much to celebrate as we have come closer to God’s vision of a just society in many ways.

However, we are reminded today that these things do not equal an end to racism in our nation.  Our nine sisters and brothers in Christ were not killed randomly or accidentally; they were gunned down in a deliberate act of domestic terrorism precisely because of the color of their skin.  We cannot, as Christ’s Church in our day and time, afford to turn a blind eye to racism and the violence and injustice it creates and fuels.  If, as we heard last week, we worship a God who does not look on the outward appearance, but on the heart, then our call as the ambassadors of God’s Kingdom is to learn how to do likewise while working for justice and peace.  Ours is the ministry of reconciliation, the Apostle Paul tells us; as we have been reconciled to God in Christ, so we too are called to invite all people into reconciling lives and communities.

As we consider, as a community of faith, how best to respond, I lift up these suggestions as your pastor.  First, let us commit ourselves to praying for the family and friends of those killed; for all members of the Mother Emanuel AME community; for the perpetrator as well as his family and friends; for the city of Charleston; for all people who are victims of racially-motivated violence.  Let our prayers fill the air like incense, rising up to God ceaselessly.  Let us also consider signage, pursuant to Illinois state law, that clarifies our commitment to the peace of Christ’s reign by asking people to refrain from bringing concealed weapons into our building.  Let us also be vigilant in “calling the thing by its name,” as Luther would have us do, and naming instances of racism, violence, and injustice for what they are – sin and radical departure from God’s will.

Perhaps most importantly, let us begin a conversation as a about how we can live out a call as an anti-racist congregation, and as peacemakers in our community.  Anti-Racism is not principally about learning how to move ourselves past personal prejudice, though that is one component.  It involves some very challenging discussions around racism as a societal and systemic reality and how we can be not just “not racist,” but actively engaged in resisting racism as a power at work in the world.  Similarly, the work of peacemaking is not just about personally refraining from violence, but about actively cultivating the attitudes and conditions necessary for peace in our congregation, community, and world.  These are not things we will do overnight, and they must be done appropriately and intentionally.  I encourage you all to be in prayer for how you might be led to engage with this work, and invite you to talk with me about what this might mean, or about any concerns you might have.

In closing, let us never forget that we worship a God who, in Christ Jesus, has himself experienced a violent, unjust death.  Luther always pushes us to look to the Cross for our revelation of God in the world.  In the cross, we see Christ asking God to forgive even those who are crucifying him and mocking him, for they know not what they do.  Look to the Cross today – find hope of salvation there for all who die in Christ Jesus, even those gunned down in acts of senseless violence.  Look to the Cross today – find the promise of forgiveness even for those we would rush to label hopeless sinners.  Look to the Cross today – find the Living Christ, present in Charleston and in all of our lives, reconciling us to himself and to each other with a boundless love that does not look upon our outward characteristics, but upon our hearts.

In Christ,

The Rev. Kevin Patrick Baker

Pastor, Grace Church – Elmwood Park, Illinois

...but the Lord looks on the heart.

My friends, it's time we dispense with the small talk.

You may very well recognize the source of these words - 1 Samuel 16:7, as God is directing the prophet Samuel in his search for who will become God's new chosen person to rule over Israel (spoiler alert: it's David).  As we enter the second week of our summer worship series focused in on David, these words stand at the center of the reading we'll hear in worship at Grace...and at the center of my own thoughts as I try, as Karl Barth said, to live with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

The whole verse: "But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (NRSV)

The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance....but the Lord looks on the heart.  Even taken in relative isolation, the verse draws a stark contrast between how view the world, and other people in it, and the way that God does.  

This is probably most clearly seen in the two topics which have filled up my Facebook newsfeed for the past week or so - Caitlyn Jenner and McKinney, Texas.  My friend group on Facebook is split more-or-less evenly around both matters, so I've had the opportunity to hear quite a bit of the conversation from some very different angles.

I'm, frankly, too tired emotionally to make some sort of bold, prophetic declaration about racism or discrimination against people whose sexuality or gender identities do not match up neatly with what has traditionally been seen as normative or morally upright.  I am not a warrior; I'm a scholar.  I'm a bookish, nerdy pastor whose preferred pastimes include praying the hours, reading and writing, working with biblical texts in their original languages, and playing dorky historical simulation/strategy games.  I admire, deeply, my friends who feel called to march and speak loudly, but I've made my peace with the fact that my own call looks and feels a bit different.

That said, in all of my praying and meditating, I cannot escape the clear truth laid out in God's words to Samuel - "but the Lord looks on the heart."  We fixate on the outward - the person who we label a freak or sinner, the skin color of someone who we've been trained by society to view in certain ways because of their appearance.  We give ourselves over to a smug sense of superiority that *we* are better, that *we* have it all figured out, and that *they* don't and just need to shut up and sit down.

...but the Lord looks on the heart.

The truth that cuts through all of it is that our human systems of conveniently packaging people into neat, little census-style check boxes are rooted deeply in our humanity, and thus our own sinfulness, rather than in any sort of divine mandate.  It's no wonder that our very worst actions and instincts come out to play when these issues of identity come up.  I am of the opinion that racism, and all other forms of identity-based hatred and discrimination, are, at their core, blasphemy, because they are an active denial that God actually *did* call the creation good.  To call anyone not good, or less good, because of identity factors inherent to their being is to say that God lied, that they are not made in God's image.  I believe this to my core.

If we want to talk about sin, then let's talk about this one first and foremost.  After that, let's talk about compassion - feeling with, and even suffering with, those who are suffering.  It's what Christ is depicted as doing multiple times - my Greek-loving nerd-self must point out here that a verb used 12 times in the three synoptic gospel (splagxnizomai) describes Jesus feeling so deeply for the plight of others that it's literally gut-wrenching.  It's not a hand-wringing, "Church Lady" conservative sense of moral superiority...or a smug, NPR-listening liberal one, for that matter.  It is genuine love for all people.  Black and brown people, white people, transgender people, cisgender (look it up) people, all people.  Because the Lord looks on the heart and sees right past whatever stigmatization we try to attach to outside realities, and is so moved by what he sees that he allows NOTHING to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

We need, and should have, conversations about what that love of God looks like, for us, in concrete terms as we try to live out what we've first received.  That may be difficult, as there are clearly different perspectives enough to go around, but we are invited (nay, called) to look and act with compassion toward those around us who differ or even offend us...because the Lord looks on the heart, and invites us to listen to his voice as he teaches us to do the same.

Sinners Anonymous

I've wondered some, lately, about the relationship between the language of addiction and the language of sin.  I'll say from the get-go here that I am not professionally trained in addiction studies or counseling, so please take this as a theological reflection.

Perhaps the place I find my mind most going to is how often both the behavioral patterns of addicts, and the behavioral patterns of "sinners" (more on the quotation marks in a bit), are criticized along the same lines.  It always comes back to a simple matter of personal choice - you choose.  If you are an addict, it is because you chose that path.  If you are engaged in behavior perceived (rightly or otherwise) as sinful, it is because you chose that path.  It is a critique of others that is primarily intended to cause shame on the part of the addict/sinner.

Why shame?  Why do we want to shame those who are caught up in these behavioral patterns that we rightly find some troubling?  I can speak less for the addiction studies side of things, but I do have some theological ideas as to why that I think may very well apply:

-We shame others because we are ignorant of their struggles.  Simply put, it's a lack of empathy.  Since we don't understand what another person is going through, and since their behavior disturbs us precisely because we don't understand it, we rush to condemn it and attach a stigma to it.

-We shame others because it deflects attention from our own sinful behavior.  You could call this throwing stones in a glass house.  It is impossible, as a follower of Christ with any interest in orthodoxy, to discount this - "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23).  I would contend that religion provides a safe haven for those who do not wish to admit to their own sinfulness and fallen nature in that it enables people to hide from themselves by focusing their attention on the sins, real or imagined, of others.  We have all likely encountered this phenomenon, of "Sister Bertha Better-Than-You" (to make a Ray Stevens reference) terrorizing others with her moral authority...when in reality, the accuser is just as guilty of wrongdoing as the accused.  Their superiority isn't a moral one; they're merely better at covering their own tracks.

-We shame others because it makes us feel better about our own failings.  Not everyone is ignorant of their sinfulness or at a stage where they desire to hide it.  We might simply prefer to justify it as not right, but at least not as bad as what others are doing.  Never mind the fact that Isaiah reminds us that even our good works are "like filthy rags" in the sight of God (Isa 64:6).  If that's our good works, you can imagine God's estimation of our not-so-good ones.  There's not much room for moral authority here.

The first reality is the easiest to fix; ignorance is, at least, a temporary condition cured by knowledge.  You don't understand what another is going through?  Letting them tell their story for themselves is a quick way to discover that, just maybe, we have more in common than meets the eye.  We might discover that addiction is every bit as much about being trapped in systems of dependency that rapidly spiral out of our control, and that it is as much disease as it is personal choice.  We might discover that the person we labeled sinner is not really different from us at all.  We might all have quite a bit in common.

And what is that commonality?  It's not that we all drink uncontrollably, or gamble excessively, or swear like sailors, or wrestle with uncontrollable lusts...it's that we are searching for wholeness.  So often, the word used in the New Testament for "to save" is sozo, which carries with it a broader meaning of "to heal" or "to restore to wholeness."  Mark likes this word a lot, actually, and the notion of healing in Mark is usually a holistic relationship of body and spirit.  To put it plainly, what we all hold in common is that we stand in need of the kind of saving that makes us whole again - all of us, all of who we are.

We also hold in common an inability to make that happen on our own.  No one is righteous - no, not one.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  This is the core of what we're all about...well, at least what those of us who are Lutheran are all about.  We are saved, made whole, only because of the intervention of a "higher power" on our behalf - Christ, who saves us by grace.  Not our being better than other people on a moral scale, or "less of a drunk" than the other guy in the room, but simply because of who Christ is and what Christ does.

The living out of the salvation we receive - well, it's tricky, but reconciliation and sharing the liberating Good News of Christ stand at the heart of it...along with the honest admission of our own imperfection and own our likelihood to stumble.  To fall back into old ways of being.  To struggle each and every day as we learn to live in God's grace a day at a time.  We are invited not to shame others or be ashamed, but to live in community and support each other as we struggle, together, toward the full realization of the wholeness we receive by grace.

What would it look like if churches took this to heart and saw themselves as "Sinners Anonymous" rather than holy spaces for holier-than-thou people?  How would our role in society change?  How would we be perceived differently?  Most importantly, how might grace abound even more deeply and richly, how might justice and mercy reveal themselves more fully, if we walked a bit more humbly with our God?

A Balm in Gilead

This has been a rough couple of weeks, even without current events and world goings-on factored in.

It seems like death and loss have been a very present reality, both at Grace and in my life beyond my pastoral call.  Within three weeks, I will have helped lead two memorial services, attended a funeral as a mourner, and now am mourning the loss of two members of the congregation in Iowa where I spent my internship year who died as the result of a car accident.  In the midst of all of this, I went back through the past year or so of obituaries from the small Iowa town where I lived that year, discovering in the process that several other members from the congregation have passed away.

It just feels like too much.  Too much mourning, too much grief, too much death.  Loss and grief - they feel like weights, a lead vest for the soul.  On Wednesday night (even before the tragedy yesterday), I was praying vespers at Grace, and just felt overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Jeremiah's question at the end of chapter 8 has rung in my ears - "Is there no balm in Gilead?"  Where is the comfort, the peace, the healing love of Christ in the midst of what seems like nothing but pain and turmoil?  It has felt more elusive than I'd care to admit.  Perhaps there's some reluctance to say this as a pastor, but it merits being said - sometimes, future-oriented promises of hope and resurrection don't quite treat the immediate, acute pain of loss.  Death's sting feels a lot sharper to those of us left to deal with death's ugly aftermath in this life.

Much of our language around death, as a society, is so incredibly poor at really naming the reality for what it is.  Death is painful; there's not a way around that.  Instead of embracing the pain, though, so often we try to flee from it with our words.  People don't die; they pass away, or we lost them, or they're no longer with us.  We mask over the "d word" and politely substitute in something else that soften the blow.  Our explanations around why people die are even worse - phrases like "he's in a better place," or "God needed another angel," or "she's at peace now" have elements of truth in them in some cases, and can even be very lovely expressions of God's mercy (well, except that second phrase)...but how often do they simply feel like a quick, flip explanation to a serious question?

None of that is to dismiss the very true, very fundamental truth of eternal life in Christ.  That's essential because it gives us hope *beyond* where we are at right now, directing our eyes up to the fulfillment of all of God's promises of new life.  The truth of resurrection can't be turned away or diminished, but solely focusing on the post-death aspects of eternal life only offers us a promise that Christ will be with us someday in the future.  What about today?

Maybe some of the gracious balm we're offered comes not through the dismissal of death as a real thing, or in putting all our focus on the glorious day when we all see the fullness of God's Reign come to pass, but rather in discovering Christ present even in the mess and the pain and the loneliness and the grief.  Christ's cross is precisely a place of messy, painful, lonely, grievous death - and through that cross, we find Christ present precisely in all of our spaces of loss, pain, and death.

That's the comfort I've been able to find.  I think Job says it best - in the midst of incredible loss and pain, he still dares (in Job 19) to say that "I know that my redeemer lives," and that the day is coming when we will see our redeemer in the flesh, with our own eyes, and experience the fullness of God's salvation.  In the meanwhile, I look to the cross, and what I see is a sign of Christ's abiding presence, even in the hurt and the loss and the sadness - God's saving grace poured out on us like a healing balm, inviting us not to pretend like nothing's happened, but to celebrate that Christ is with us through it all.

One Little Word Subdues Him

For the Lutherans in the house, you probably know where the title of this entry comes from.  For those who don't claim "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" as their liturgical fight song, it's a line from said hymn, which was written by Martin Luther sometime between 1527 and 1529...we think.

The third verse of the hymn, the whole of which tells of how Christ (God's champion) defeats sin and evil on our behalf, is where the title line comes from.  The whole text of the verse:

"Though hordes of devils fill the land, all threatening to devour us,
We tremble not, unmoved we stand; they cannot overpower us.
This world's prince may rage, in fierce war engage.
He is doomed to fail; God's judgment must prevail -
One little word subdues him!"

I've always been partial to this part of the hymn, and it's been brought back to my mind today as I've watched some events unfolding at my seminary alma mater - one of the places nearest to my heart, and where I'm still known to show up for chapel once or twice a month, or meet friends for lunch or coffee.  To call the thing by its name, a pretty provocatively racist incident occurred involving the striking out of "black" from "black power" on the community message center and replacing it with "white."  I don't know much in the way of details beyond that.

First, I should say up front that I don't understand the phrase "black power" to be one that advocates anything other than what Wikipedia so nicely describes: a phrase "emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values."  It's not a call for anything other than what white people have enjoyed in the Americas since the colonial era, if we're really being honest - it's fundamentally about having a place of equality at the institutional and cultural table.  Perhaps I'm wrong, and I don't mean to explain the concept from the outside looking in...but this will become important, I promise.  Stick with me a few minutes.

The question arises, then, of why "white power" is an expression of racism.  It's hard to hear "white power" as a call for equality in institutions and culture in a paradigm in which the imbalance isn't skewed against white people.  Instead, its ideology mostly seems to flow from white supremacist and white nationalist groups who have no interest in equality, but rather in..well, supremacy.  If you are wondering why it is that people of color at the seminary are hurt and offended by this episode, just picture in your head the kind of scene in which "white power!" might serve as a rallying cry.  It probably involves skinheads and people in long, white robes with hoods and burning crosses.

But, what has that got to do with us, the "good, God-fearing" people of Christ's Church?  After all, we proclaim (rather proudly) with Paul in Galatians 3 that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus." The entire plot of the book of Acts can be reduced down to "Christ is savior to everyone who believes, no exceptions."  Jews, Greeks, slaves, freemen, women, men, and everyone else - "do not call unclean what God has made clean," Peter hears God say in a dream in Acts 10...and it's clear by the end of the chapter that what God has made clean is people.

We seem to have our theology right, at least on a biblical level...but what about life beyond the words of scripture?  Here is where things get uncomfortable; there's an elephant in the room, and it is racism.  There's not a prettier way to put it - racism is real, and racism makes itself known in ways seen and unseen in the Church just as in society at large.  This should not come as a surprise to anyone who's read Acts; the journey to embracing all people as worthy of God's grace is not a pretty one, and it is FULL of conflict and awkwardness.  The Jewish believers won't serve the Greek believers' community; the leaders of the Jerusalem church are reluctant to grant full communion to non-Jewish believers who don't adhere to all aspects of the Torah.  We struggle with what to do with those who are not like us.

In the context of the ELCA, and mainline Protestantism in general, "those who are not like us" typically means people who are not white or of northern/western European ancestry.  The ELCA is well over 90% white, and the vast majority of its members are not only white, but from five ethnic communities within the white milieu - German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish.  To give credit where it's due, we celebrate (at least in our public proclamation) the grace-filled embrace of all peoples that we hear about in Acts and Galatians.  But...proclamation and practice aren't always the same thing, are they?  Racism finds a way to work, even among those who would reject its most overt manifestations.

Perhaps racism belongs on the roll of that horde of devils filling the land, threatening to devour.  There aren't a shortage of examples of how "racism" and "demonic-seeming behavior" can go hand in hand - Google image search "lynching," if you doubt that.  Real harm is done to sisters and brothers in Christ by racism, not just in society, but in the Church...and not just by overt displays of it (like today at LSTC), but by the subtle undercurrent of it that whispers the lie "you don't belong," as a friend of mine said earlier in his reflecting upon events.

Where does grace show up in this?  In the very midst of the struggle.  Luther wrote in one of his works ("Against Hanswurst," for those keeping score at home) that the "little word" that subdues the devil here is "Devil, you lie!"  In the naming of racism for what it is when it appears; in the difficult conversations; in the suffering of people who've committed no offense other than to be different from the majority; in the gathering together in solidarity to support those whose very worth is called into question; in acts of repentance; in resisting the urge to call unclean what God has called clean - it is here that we get a taste of what God's grace is all about.  Paul says we are called to the ministry of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5; in chapter 6, he fleshes out what that means:

"as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything."

"White Power" - supremacist talk at worst, and ignorant speech that wounds others at best - is not the ministry of reconciliation.  Insisting that no, really, it's not fundamentally different from saying "black power" isn't the ministry of reconciliation.  Calling the thing what it is - a means of showing "genuine love; by truthful speech" - and naming racism where it rears its head...that looks a lot more like what we're called to in Christ.

There will be difficult conversations in the days ahead - certainly at LSTC, probably in other places.  Perhaps, at this time in this place, we have no greater opportunity to witness to the reconciling love and grace of Christ than by speaking that one little word to racism and that which propagates it - Devil, you lie!