First of all, our thanks to Bishop Andrew for inviting us and the people of the Diocese of Iowa to join with you, the Cathedral of St Paul, and the people of the Diocese of Brechin, in this gathering to stand in solidarity with the pain, hurt and outrage of black lives matter – prompted by the horrendous murder of George Floyd at the hands of police sworn to protect and serve.
Demand for police reform – even their defunding – are a strong part of the marches across the United States. But above all, the rage is about more than four hundred years of systemic racism and white privilege. And it’s about refusing to let well-meaning white folk get a pass for being well-meaning, or being content to “show up in support” (actors) while ignoring that racial discrimination and oppression is a system white privilege has built, and it is our responsibility as we partner with people of color to work towards its dismantling. Nor do we who are white get to be the ones who say when it is dismantled!
The collect from Morning Prayer for a Sunday reads: “Give us this day such blessing through our worship of You; that the week to come may be spent in your favor.”
Well, Micah the prophet, in our reading, tells us what God favors: “and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
And where is God walking? God is walking with those who have taken to the streets these past few weeks. God is walking with those calling for reform – abolition of choke holds, stripping of police immunity for criminal acts in the line of duty, the expectation of colleagues to step in when an officer is using excessive force.
God is walking in the exposed places of neglect and discrimination in our health system, and in the economic disparity made all too clear by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which people of color make up 60-65% of those who suffer the most dire consequences. God is walking with and in the young people who instinctively know that we have “hollowed out our democracy” (as George Packer writes in The Atlantic), and that our religious institutions have grown less relevant. They see complicity in all institutions with power brokers consumed by greed and power, and a desire to own people and the planet for their own ends. (Even as Bishop Budde, who had been so outspoken only a few days earlier when troops had forcibly cleared Lafayette Square in front of St John’s Episcopal Church to give the President “his moment,” returned to that very same spot to invite a prayer vigil, she had to engage the skeptical young protesters in conversation rather than in prayer as they raised concern that the Church was taking the public focus from the protest).
So, in the words asked of us by the leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015 after the killing of nine African Americans attending bible study, “After the vigil, what about the vigilance?” After the blessing of this day, where is the week taking us?
Well one response is that we have to let it take us where the young black leaders of this movement want to lead us, or tell us to go. That’s a hard expectation for a white privileged person like a bishop, for example, to assume. And those young people are telling us to “get our stuff in order” so that justice and equality can prevail, though to be clear, they don’t simply use the word “stuff.”
These are young people mostly born into a world where the guiding frameworks set up since World War II are increasingly irrelevant; and who are living in a nation that’s been at war with someone for their entire lives; and they have come of age under a government that is reckless with all the resources of this place and its people except for a few. They see politicians as “bought” and they see us line up in opposition to each other because a partisan approach to politics is easier to navigate than one which might engage fairly the complexities and diversities of a world, brought globally before us in this digital age of social media.
Today, as we gather here, we make a little step to turn this around. Today people from two dioceses, Brechin and Iowa, can shrink the distance between us and join our prayers together, seeking common action and resolve. We can all commit together, before each other and under God that we seek to be followers of Jesus who certainly grew up and confronted the corrupt powers of His day.
There are choices before us. The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, connects the two crises of pandemic and racism with a simple symbol – the mask. “I put it on,” he says,” to protect you, and you put it on to protect me. It’s the Way of Love.” He is fond to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words that we learn to live together as family, or we shall all die as fools. It is going to be a matter of chaos or community.
This is time to listen to politicians of color too, like Cory Booker, Senator for New Jersey, who speaks the same language of love as the Presiding Bishop. Senator Booker calls us to a deeper love. He says that this is a “test of us”—of who we are as a people. We don’t beat cruelty and name-calling and callousness with the same. We don’t assume the tactics of the oppressor. “This season of America is a referendum on our soul, asking, who are we to be with each other.”
Your gathering tonight helps us reflect on this. The beauty and power of the prayers, songs and readings you have chosen really help. We need this, and we thank you.
Tonight however I don’t have the last word. That belongs to my wife, as she speaks to us from her walking humbly with God.
From Donna Scarfe
Thoughts and prayers alone are not enough now.
In the US it is 400 years of living with societal oppression and personal accommodation to it for People Of Color to be able to live and work.
These Mothers, Fathers, Grandmas and Grandpas only want what every parent wants – that their child can exist without fear of bodily harm or social discrimination.
These Protests are not new – but they continue because of the lack of Collective Will to really look at and understand the Systemic Racism which underlies our Institutions.
Change must come legislatively at a local, state and national level. Many such bills for change have been proposed in the past 100 years but have been ignored or later dismantled by those entities whose benefit has been in keeping the status quo.
Now is the time to make the necessary changes in policing, employment biases, real estate redlining, political gerrymandering and governmental indifference to requests by People of Color who are demanding to be seen as EQUAL CITIZENS and not something OTHER.
This week has shown us that this call for justice is felt world-wide as protests have sprung up around the globe.
My awakening to this connectedness came in 1982 – the film Gandhi.
In 1930 Gandhi and his followers made the Salt March to Dandi. The British government had put a tax on salt and the people were walking to the sea to make their own salt. Met by British police, they persisted moving forward as line after line were beaten and hundreds of nonviolent protestors were injured. I felt deep in my soul– “This is what happens to MY people. Beaten down but we get up and continue to fight for what is right.”
Prayers are needed because prayer puts us in touch with God who changes hearts. And God invites us to be the change we want to see in the world.
