Racism, healing, and providence in the real world

Dear People of Christ Church,
On Sunday in my sermon, I was wrestling with the idea of God’s providence—God has a redemptive plan and will give us what we need—and the idea of our freedom, a crucial aspect of the gift of human life.  The idea of God’s will sometimes can seem like it conflicts with our will.  This came up in the context of the story of Joseph, forgiving his brothers for selling him into slavery, as he ascends to the heights of power and ultimately saves their lives when famine strikes. How does God allow terrible things to happen to people? If God was planning for him to be powerful and wealthy, couldn’t God have just as easily have prevented him from getting thrown into that pit in the first place?   Does the positive outcome outweigh the suffering?

So, too, with our Gospel on Sunday—Jesus behaves terribly toward a Canaanite woman looking for healing for her daughter—he calls her a dog. In response, she bests him—even the dogs get the crumbs, she snaps. BAM.  Even Jesus needs to be converted sometimes.  Was he testing her? Treating her cruelly to see how she’d behave? I don’t think so. Jesus’ encounter with her shows us that even the Son of God can be transformed, that transformation is essential, like freedom, to what it is to be human.

Jesus was transformed—he was pushed out of his previously narrow assumption of what he was called to do. Joseph was transformed—he forgave his brothers for their violence, and saw God’s hand in the world around him.  God was working there, but I reject entirely the notion that God intended the events that lead up to them. Our world is a place where God dances—but it’s not always God’s choreography from the beginning. 

I can point to all kinds of places I need to be transformed, and this week, I’m particularly aware of where our country needs that grace, too.  A study was released on Tuesday  that said that 37% of white Americans believe that the shooting and protest in Ferguson, MO raises important conversations abut race.  80% of African Americans think so. So, just for the record, let me say: The events of the last ten days raise important issues about race. Our country is an amazing experiment of seeking equality, democracy, and fairness (see my July post about patriotic humility). There is a lot that we get right. But the evidence at how we think about difference, and how people of different races are treated in the courts and in law enforcement, makes it clear to me that we’re not all there.

God’s providence means that there will be reconciliation, there will be salvation. But, like Jesus and the Cannanite woman, like Joseph and his brothers, we have to take some risks around vulnerability and truth-telling. What could we do at Christ Church to more faithfully embody God’s healing for this world? Where does God’s providence lead us in fighting racism and confronting prejudice?      

I’ll close with a prayer I found from the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, and their anti-racism work:

God, Creator of all things, we come broken with a heart that has been torn like Jesus on the cross, the cross that draws together your children of many colors.
You know our suffering.
We ask in Jesus' name that you heal your people.
Where there has been unearned advantage because of the color of our skin,
give us courage to repent and to fight the injustice and sin of racism.
Holy God, who created all colors of people, allow us to honor your light in every soul.
Help us to see you in one another, to hear your voice in all people, and to work to end racism in our church, our communities, and the world. Amen.

Blessings, Sara+

Church in the world: Anchored but open

Dear People of Christ Church,

Back from vacation, I'm glad to be settling back in with you, but so aware of how much changes. I was almost to Wyoming, where Jim Hewitt grew up, when I got the news that he died. I was so, so sorry to hear it. Jim was the junior warden (working with Marcia Luce as senior warden) when I began at Christ Church 9 years ago, and his unfailing sense of generosity, respect, and overall kindness covered my many errors in leadership as a relatively new priest. I remember one particularly tough call (the circumstances of which now escape me, so I assume it turned out fine) when, as senior warden, Jim looked at me with a kind of devilish glint in his eye and cheerfully declared, "Well, you're the CEO!" Which of course I wasn't, but his confidence in me made me much more brave than I felt at the time.

That's the magic of church; we are here, not because we are the same, but because we are one. Most of American culture is constructed on the assumption that you want to be with people who are like you; you watch either Rachel Maddow or Glenn Beck, and never the twain shall meet.  In church, we have the latitude to be a bit more creative.    Jim taught me that in a profound way.

Church is changing, the world is changing.  St Paul would have been incredulous at the notion that churches would own large buildings and pay their clergy to preach, teach, fundraise, and run them like non-profit organizations.   In the late nineteenth century, Frederic Fales would have been shocked that in addition to English, we also had services in Luganda (St Peter's Ugandan) and Spanish (Missionary Church of Christ) all held under the same roof, with French thrown in once in a while with Mission Maranatha's occasional rentals.  Fifty years later, Francis Webster would have thought we were crazy to let a secular organization use our east lawn for an environmental education program-you didn't have to create meadows at the turn of the century. Fifty years after that, George Ekwall, rector from 1930-1960, would think that a man on the altar guild was an April fool's joke (nevermind women instead leading the service!).

But church is a living, breathing, recreating thing. It's a thing that's dying and a thing that's being raised.  Churches aren't intended to be fortresses against the scary world outside. Instead, we're called to be as porous as we can-not to say "yes" to every whim, but to look at a broader sense of our mission and our gifts, to look around ourselves and be rooted enough to be open.  It's Episcopal Churches in St Louis holding prayer vigils for Michael Brown and for peace in the city. It's Good Shepherd, Watertown, hosting a kids' craft table at the farmer's market. At the same time as we are anchored in the eternity of God, we are also called to look around us at the world as it is now.  I'm grieving Jim but I also know that he's still part of the same holy Church as I am. He's returned to God's eternity; I just catch it like a hummingbird flitting just out of the corner of my eye.  But I know it's still there.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
(Romans 8: 38-39).

Amen, Amen.

Blessings,
Sara+