I Hope I'm Not Too Late

I am an internal processor. I am a contemplative person who needs time to think before I speak. Unless we’ve been friends for more than a year, you probably think I don’t talk very much. My silence often gets me in trouble because my silence is often interpreted that I don’t care. One group has decided that I don’t care and therefore stand, complicit, with the oppressive force. Others think my silence means I am complacent and don’t care enough to even make a comment. The problem however is that I do care, it just takes me too long to get my thoughts together and by the time I have them ready, it’s too late. But it’s not too late. It is never too late to stand up against something that is wrong. It is never to late to stand up for something you believe in. Over the past week I have done a lot of reading, a lot of observing, a lot of praying, and a lot of weeping. Reading, observing, praying, weeping…

Communities of color don’t need my tears, They don’t need me to stand to the side and observe. They need me to do more than read they need me to put what I've learned from my reading into practice. While I am a believer in prayer, I know that it is not simply enough to pray for God’s action, protection, grace, mercy, love to be revealed. My prayers have to have human action behind them.

At some point, I must make myself stop processing and put my thoughts into words and my words into actions.

Racism is a sin. An entire race of people are being beaten and killed at an alarming rate and it needs to stop. I'll say it again, Racism is a sin.
It is a sin of hatred toward and against individuals and communities of color who are created equally (just like you and me) in the image of God. To stand against people of color is to stand against God.

All lives matter yes.  

Not all police are corrupt.

But until Black lives matter as much as my life matters, we can’t say All lives matter.

Until un-corrupt police call out corruption in their units and precincts, they are complicit, just like me if I stay silent.

Yesterday in my sermon I said;  

“The Spirit is at work in this portion of scripture(Acts 2) trying to bring back together a group of people who were starting to doubt what Jesus had been preaching and teaching and what they had been doing since He sent them out to “make disciples of all nations”. They were falling apart.  We are falling apart, as a country as a society, we sit by and watch brothers and sisters in Christ get beaten and killed, we wait for someone else to act so we don’t have to make the first move. We become keyboard warriors and we hope that our thoughts and prayers will be enough.

But the spirit, the breath of God needs us to be moved, into action. To take our limping, weak, and tired bodies to help those who because of the color of their skin or the language they speak are even more tired and weak, and crawling in an attempt to get things done.

I know this is hard to hear, and I don’t say it to spark anything political. I say is because it IS hard to hear. We white Christians in the united states need to do better. We need to work harder, not to make the Church (and our society) what we want it to be but to make it what God wants it to be. We need to work so that the spirit of God that covers all creation is seen and heard and revealed in the varied and wonderful ways that God created it to be seen and heard and revealed. …If we could see a snap shot of the people gathered on this day of Pentecost that Luke is describing to us in Acts, I think we would be surprised at what that picture looks like. A hodge-podge group of people, trying to figure out- how to make it work. How to live and work and be in the world as people preparing the way for God’s return through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t look like anything WE would picture the Church to be.  But on this day as they gathered, those individuals we now know as saints of the Church, they started to see and understand that what they could achieve together was far greater than what they could achieve individually. The Spirit, an un-explainable force of wind and fire causing some to say- What is this, what is going on? This is unacceptable, this is unbelievable, this can’t be happening. Here we are again hearing some say this is unacceptable, this is unbelievable, this can’t be happening…it’s happening because we have lost (and maybe we never had it) the ability to be in relationship with someone who is different than us. Maybe you are saying “not all of white people” Pastor Andrea, and maybe you’re right. But until things change across the board it is ALL of our responsibility to see that things change…"

My friend and colleague Erin Wathen, processes her thought much faster than I do and I am thankful for that. When I read her blog I think, Yes! That is what I am thinking too. So, I share it with you now. It is entitled  Let It Burn (click the title).

If it upsets you, if it makes you uncomfortable, message me, call me, get in touch with me, let’s talk together about how we can both move from this place of uncomfortable tension into a place of helping our brothers and sisters of color be fully recognized as the creations of God, they are!