Agents, Not Assistants

Sermon for June 28, 2020, Pentecost 4A

Video can be found at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Matthew 10:40-42

[Jesus said:] “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

I used to think that the question, “What would you be willing to die for?” Was the one that would get to the deepest level of personal values. 

For example, I might answer that I would die for my children. I thought that question would get to what theologian Paul Tillich called your “ultimate concern.” 

But I do not think so anymore. With the death toll from the global pandemic, that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts will reach up to 150,000 Americans by July 18, l see that people are willing to take great risks for the sake of things of no greater value than an ice cream cone. 

Recently I had to wait in line for a heartworm test for my dog. I was wearing a mask, but the person behind me, way too close behind me, was not. Thankfully, we were outside. 

Neither was the vegetable-seller at the farmer’s market masked.

Better Questions

So, if asking what people are willing to die for does not get to deep values, perhaps another question might: “What would you be willing to live for?” What would you be willing to spend each of your irreplaceable days on, as your life goes by?  

I think our answer has a lot to do with how we perceive ourselves. Maybe the question, “What would I be willing to live for?” depends on the answer to the question, “Who am I, in this world?” 

What are the options?  If I am a “consumer” as we are constantly being called, then I guess my role in life is to consume. I indeed do a lot of consuming: food, electricity, entertainment and so much else. But the idea that being a consumer defines me seems to be about as empty a life as I could imagine. 

If I am a solitary individual then maybe self-fulfillment should be my quest. But I’ve never heard anyone being eulogized at their funeral as a brilliantly self-fulfilled person. 

I believe we must have something bigger than ourselves to live for; something greater than our own personal good.  

It’s Only Me

But here we come up against a dilemma. I’m just one person. I’m not a powerful person. I’m neither rich, like Bill Gates with a Foundation behind me, nor an Elon Musk that can build rockets and electric cars. What can I possibly do that would make a difference?  

This is where this text from our scriptural wisdom tradition, the gospel of Matthew is so powerful. The key is the cup of water. Jesus, according to Matthew’s version, says, 

“whoever gives even a cup of cold water…will [not] lose their reward.”

Do you want to win the prize of a life that had meaning? Do you want to do something significant with your irreplaceable minutes? Think about a cup of water; not a stream, not even a full pitcher, just a cup. I want us to think about this briefly.

First, why only a cup? Because it is precisely small enough to be something that everyone can do. It does not cost much. It is not a cup of wine, nor even soup; just water. 

But offering that single cup is powerful because it answers two other questions that go to the root of who we are and what we are doing in the world. They are the questions, “Who needs that?”, and “Who does that?”

Who Needs That?

First let’s ask the question: who needs a cup of water? Originally, these words were penned in Palestine. It’s arid. Modern irrigation has made much of it farmable, but in those days, grazable was about as good as it got in most places. 

But everyone knew that back in Jesus’ day, so no one would set out to walk or to work without a skin of water. 

And there were wells. You could ask permission to draw water at a strangers’ well, and expect to be given permission. Unless there was a reason not to give you that permission.  

So who needs a cup of water? Maybe it is someone who is desperately thirsty, has run out of their own supply, and has been refused permission at the wells. Maybe he is a foreigner. Maybe his ancestors had blood on their hands. Maybe his people refused water, or safe passage, or some other needed benefit to your people long ago, and now, the shoe is on the other foot. 

Or maybe just being foreign is enough to be refused the well water. Tribal animosity often needs no rational justification. 

Who needs a cup of water from your hand? Someone who has been denied it from the hands of others. Maybe nobody in your tribe is willing to extend help. So, should you break ranks and hold out the cup? Would that be a risk to you among your people?  

Who Does That?

So, who would do that? Who would offer the cup? Someone who knew themselves as a person of compassion. 

The person who would offer that cup of water would do it because human suffering meant something to them, and they could not turn away. 

The person who would make that offer would be the kind of person for whom doing the right thing, the merciful thing, the good thing was more important than merely getting along within the tribe. 

The one offering the cup would be the one who knew that they were only one person, but that they could make a substantial difference to one other person. 

In other words, they would be functioning as agents of God’s work of healing the world, “Tikkun Olam.”  

Barbara Brown Taylor has said it best: we are not here to be God’s assistants, we are here to be God’s agents. We are the means by which God gets things done in the world. 

We are the agents who get compassion done, who get mercy done, who get forgiveness and reconciliation done, and who get justice done. To know ourselves as God’s agents, to own that identity gives us the answer to the question: what are we living for?  

Who would do that, part 2

But I would like to suggest we think even further about the question, who would do that — offer that cup of water? Because, some people are not in a position to offer water. Some people are so desperately thirsty themselves that they have no cup of water to spare. 

If you are dying of thirst, you are not in a position to hand out water. To be able to bear the cup of water to the world, we have to be people who have learned where to find the well, and how to get to the water in it. 

We must be the kind of people who have quenched our own thirst. To try to do the work of compassion, mercy, or justice from a thirsty soul is what leads to anger, resentment, and eventually even to violence.  

But for those who know where to find the water the soul needs, who have learned not only where the well is, but how to get to the water out, for those who have adopted the regular practices that quench the thirst, the work of offering others that cup is a joy. 

So, we are people of both “contemplation and action,” as Richard Rohr likes to say. We are people who take long, deep, quenching drinks from the river of life often enough that when the need shows up, we are ready, willing, and able to meet it.  

We are each only one person, but we are agents of the Kingdom of God; in fact, agents of God, to a thirsty world.

BLM

In these days of national turmoil, we are becoming acutely aware of a particular kind of thirst; the thirst for racial justice. 

We have become newly aware of the depth and breadth of the suffering racism has caused in our country for so many years. 

We keep hearing story after story of people who have known nothing but fear from the authorities. 

I just re-watched Spike Lee’s movie “Do The Right Thing” which was filmed thirty years ago. It is uncannily prescient. Nothing substantial has changed. It is hard to find anyone in that film who does the right thing. No one is offering a cup of water. In fact, everyone in the film seems desperately thirsty. No one has been to the well, so no one has even a cup to offer.  

Who needs a cup of water today? Those who have been shut away from it. I believe we need to look no further than the people of color in our society that have been systematically excluded from the wells that we enjoy.  

Structural Racism, Not Personal Bigotry

But there is a huge danger I have become aware of as we consider the problem of racism in America. The conversation that many of us white people want to have is a conversation about personal bigotry. 

We are not personally bigoted. We would never personally exclude black people from any of our privileges. We are happy to swim with them, bank with them, work with them, cheer the team with them — we have no personal ill will.  

That is great, but that is not the question. The question is, why do so many of them still feel terror at the idea of being pulled over for a traffic violation? 

Why are they followed by policemen on the road — I personally have heard that story more than once. 

Why are their incarceration rates so disproportionately high, and their conviction rates so disproportionately high, and their sentences so disproportionately long? And, why is getting killed by the police the sixth leading cause of death for black males? Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. (source: https://news.umich.edu/police-sixth-leading-cause-of-death-for-young-black-men/). 

This is not about personal bigotry, this is about a system that has allowed this, hidden it, excused it, and covered it up, until the ubiquity of cell phone videos has made it undeniable. 

The cup of water has been knocked out of the hands of the thirsty for years, and now it is on us to change it. We will change it, not just by our personal efforts at reconciliation, but by our determined involvement in actions that make a difference.  

One by one, we will cast our votes. One by one we will show up at meetings where these issues are addressed. One by one we will show up, and speak up, at meetings of the city government, and at public events, at PACE, (Police and Community Engagement, Fort Smith, AR). 

One by one, we will sign petitions, make phone calls, and act like the people we are: agents of God, bearers of the one cup of water we possess, in a country thirsty for the justice we believe God wills for everyone.

The Conflict We Accept

Sermon for June 21, 2020 Pentecost 3A

Video is here

Matthew 10:24-39 

“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

It is uncanny again, as it often seems to be, that our lectionary text readings that were selected years ago, are so relevant to this moment in history. We are in a time of serious conflict. The text came from a time of conflict, and its subject is conflict. We will look at the text, and then see how it addresses us again today.

The text we read, from Matthew, is odd, in fact, painful to read, even upsetting. Jesus talks about breaking up families, bringing swords, and calling us to denial and crosses. I think this upsetting text is meant as a wake-up call.  

More than a Greeting Card

Of course, there is exaggeration for effect here, but there is also a reason to use it. The issues are serious. I think that Richard Swanson got it right, saying: 

“Just for the moment, imagine that the Bible is more substantial and interesting than a greeting card.” 

He argues that the text is meant to provoke us.  

Why would Jesus say such things? Let’s put this in context. The context is Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom, and sending out his disciples to conduct the mission of kingdom-announcement in his name. His entire mission is compassion-based.  

At the start of it, Jesus noticed that the people were suffering, he said, like “sheep without a shepherd.” His mission and the mission he sends the disciples on is a response of compassion. 

But the sheep metaphor is political. The Hebrew Bible often refers to the political leaders as shepherds and the people as sheep. It is often critical of the bad shepherds who harm the sheep. 

So, a message of compassion addressed to “sheep without a shepherd” is a message to people suffering from bad political leadership. And, it is a text about conflict. 

The Trouble with Jesus

Jesus is not embarrassed about the fact that the call of the kingdom will make trouble. It always has made trouble, where the kingdom has been taken seriously, and it always will, even in families. 

It is not accidental that the different generations of a family end up on different sides in Jesus’ hypothetical scenario:

“For I have come to set a man against his father,
  and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

The two generations in the family see things differently. Why? We are not told. Often times, in my experience, the older generations are less willing to demand change than the younger. 

Whatever the reasons, the fact is that Jesus acknowledges that there may be conflict, and that he has caused it by his message of the kingdom of God in the context of current politics.  

Some people, in my experience, think that the goal of being a Christian follower of Jesus is to make a person polite and well mannered. 

That is a gross misreading, in my opinion. Jesus was intentionally confrontational — just think of how he chose the Sabbath day so often, on which to heal, knowing the trouble it would cause. He was non-violent, but nevertheless, confrontational. And he accepted the trouble it caused. 

The last public action he took, we must remember, was organizing a march to the temple — the symbol of the center of the system — which he led on a mocking donkey, and shutting down that temple, at least temporarily. 

Jesus was not Miss Manners. He was non-violent, but he was not passive. Abuse and injustice had to be confronted, even at great risk.

We have experienced the trouble that seeking justice can cause in our country. Families were split apart during the Civil War over the issue of the abolition of slavery. Families were split in the Civil Rights movement too. Seeking the kingdom of God and its justice does not come without costs.  

Try to stand with minority or oppressed communities today and watch what happens. Jesus, in Matthew’s telling of it, makes the point that his followers who take the Kingdom seriously should not expect to fare any better than their master, Jesus himself did. 

He said, “A disciple is not above the teacher” There was a lot of blood on the floor before it was over. Standing with the little people against the powers of empire entails the possibility of becoming a victim of the use of deadly force: crucifixions, in those days. There is nothing greeting-card-ish about it.  

The Racism Conversation

These days, as we are yet again having the conversation about racism, I believe we need to consider what it is we are talking about. Where is the conflict? Who are the parties to the conflict that we are willing to have for the sake of justice? 

Are they the Derek Chauvin’s of this world, the lone bad actors with their knees on the necks of unarmed black men? Or the 3 others who assisted in the murder? Or is the problem in our country bigger than that?

Principalities and Powers

At the funeral of George Floyd, Rev. Al Sharpton dipped into biblical language that we do not hear much, at least in our context. He used the language from Ephesians 6, the language of “principalities and powers,” and “spiritual wickedness in high places.” These, the author of Ephesians says, are what we struggle against, not “flesh and blood.” 

Most of us here, including me, do not share the same worldview as that author. We do not believe in spiritual demonic forces behind the events of the world. But there is a serious point here that Rev. Sharpton was making. Civil Rights is not about this or that “flesh and blood” individual, but rather about unseen systems.  

It is about the social systems we grow up in — segregated white suburbia or urban ghetto. It is about the educational systems that we are the products of; well funded or totally broken. 

It is about the systems of justice, as we call them, that disproportionately arrest, convict, and sentence black bodies, splitting up families, leaving children to be raised without two parents, without two incomes, and without any reason to believe they have a future with hope in this country. 

It is about the bail system that lets people with money go home, but keeps incarcerated poor people — and remember, this is before they have been found guilty of anything.

It is about the kind of system that Amy Cooper grew up in and understood full well. She knew, that when a black man who was bird watching asked her to leash her dog, which offended her, that she could threaten him with a 911 call, pretend to be under threat of a black man, and that the full weight of the law and the courts would come crashing down on him and leave her to get on with her life. 

The only thing that made that horrible scenario not go her way was his calm, disciplined, videoing of her phone rant. What videos are revealing about interactions between blacks and whites horrifies us all. 

But remember, Amy Cooper believed the system would back her up and condemn that man — and she had reasons to believe it. 

The topic of civil rights is about the systems of protection built around law enforcement, including especially police unions, systems which are so strong and secretive that police feel free to do everything we have been watching them do these past weeks. 

It is not just one bad apple here or there that puts a chokehold on a man until he dies. It is not just a random bad cop that drives his cruiser into the crowd of protestors. 

It is not just a single racist that marches up to an unarmed protestor, pulls down his mask, and shoots pepper spray into his face at point-blank range. 

It is not just an unhinged individual who knocks a man off his bicycle and then repeatedly pummels him. 

I have been horrified by watching all of these events this past week, as have we all. But none of these men is working in isolation. They are both the products of the systems that employ and protect them, and they are the system in action. 

As they teach in business school,

“your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.”

The Promise of a Meaningful Life

Our invisible systems are producing the results that we are getting. So, let us get back to Matthew: there is a real conflict going on, and we must accept that there may be trouble before it is solved. 

So what is the implication here? It the message here just to grin and bear it? Is it to have a kind of Stoic, teeth-gritting endurance until it’s over? Not at all. 

There is a beautiful promise included in this teaching about conflict that upholds us as we take on the unjust systems. The promise is that it is just exactly this kind of struggle that leads to a meaningful life.  

Jesus said, 

“Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” 

This is a deep teaching, so what I am going to say about it will barely scratch the surface. But if we read this teaching in context, in a text that is all about conflict, it must at least mean that engaging the conflict, instead of avoiding it, is how you “save your life.”  

I heard an overly-rhymey poem that makes sense here:

“Some folks die in battle,
some folks die in flames,
Others die by inches
Playing silly games.”

I don’t want to die playing games. That, to me, would be what it means to lose life. To find life, to find meaning, is to engage the purpose we were created for: to answer the call of the kingdom, to work for justice, to be informed allies in a world that is not going to make that easy. 

To find life is to know that our lives can make a huge difference for other people’s lives: people like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor, and the list that is so, so long. It does not have to be this way. 

But the systems we have in place, are perfectly designed to produce this result we keep getting. Let us be people of the kingdom of the God who calls us to

“stand with those on the edge, and choose to live, by the Spirit, for God’s new community of hope.”

Iona Community, Scotland

God and Bodies

Sermon for June 7, 2020 Trinity Sunday, Year A

Audio will be here for several weeks. Video is at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

During this pandemic, I have been posting a video Thought for the Day, often reading a poem by Mary Oliver. Here is part of one that I believe is perfect for this day, Trinity Sunday. It is from a poem called Bone. 

Mary describes a walk on the beach in which she finds a piece of whalebone. The whale may have lived many years ago, and now all that remains is this bone.

 Thinking about what remains after life led her to consider the soul; what it is, and where it is.

 So, she looks out at the sea, reflecting on what we can know and what we cannot know with certainty about such things.

“Beside me the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors, 
unfolding over and over its time-ridiculing roar; 
I looked but I couldn’t see anything
through its dark-knit glare; 
yet don’t we all know, 
the golden sand is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts—
certainties—
and what the soul is, also I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly, through the pale-pink morning light.

Oliver, Mary. “Why I Wake Early”. Beacon Press. Kindle Edition. 

Knowledge, Certainty, and Experience

What do we know with certainty? We “play at the edges of knowing” so many important things. 

What is love? 

Where does courage come from?

 And of course, what is God like?

I agree with Mary. Our part is not to know, but to look, touching, with the heart’s fingers, and loving. 

We know best what we learn from our experience. We know something about what love is because we have been loved, and we have loved. We know something about what courage is because there have been moments in which we have needed to act courageously, and we did.  

Experiencing God

We know something about what God is like, because we experience God in beauty, in wonder, and awe at the vastness and complexity of creation. We go out of our way to visit places of vast beauty just to experience it again and again. 

That is what took me again recently to Mount Magazine to see again the view from the cliffs, overlooking the valley below and the green that stretched to the horizon. 

The idea that God is the Source of the vastness behind the very Being of the universe is common to many religious traditions; ours is not unique here. 

Sometimes we experience God as a spiritual presence. There are the trees we are standing under, but sometimes we are aware that more than trees are present. We close our eyes in meditation and sometimes feel that we are not just breathing oxygen in and out, but more than that; something is with us that feels like a Presence, beyond the material. 

We get stirred deeply by music, in a way that goes beyond the melody and harmonies. We read a poem that arouses us, or we see a piece of artwork or architecture that speaks to us, and we know that something spiritual is going on. 

Experiencing God as Spirit is not unique to our tradition either.  

The Christian Contribution: Incarnation

So, the unique contribution that Christianity brings to the conversation about God is not that God is Creator, nor that God is Spirit. Those two parts of the Trinity are widely affirmed. Many traditions can speak of God as Source, or traditionally, “Father,” and God as “Spirit.” 

The Christian contribution is the idea of incarnation; that God would take on human flesh. 

This idea is powerful in ways that matter, even to this very moment of pandemic and protest. We will look at how it matters in a minute. 

But first, how did we get here? There are several ways, but we have time only to explore one of them on this Trinity Sunday. Remember, we started with a poem about what we can know, which led us to consider the role of personal experience in our knowing.

About Jesus 

Let us start with this: When Jesus walked the earth, people around him experienced the presence of God. They were drawn to Jesus, even though he was completely unauthorized — he was not a priest, nor even from a priestly family. He did not consider or call himself a prophet. 

Nevertheless, people came to him. They came to listen to him teach about God. He taught with the confidence of someone with personal experience of God. They brought their children to him to be blessed. They experienced healing from him. 

They felt included and accepted by him, even experienced forgiveness as he told them of God’s forgiveness, regardless of their past mistakes. 

So, in Jesus’ presence, people experienced the presence of the Divine: of God.  

After Jesus’ days on earth, communities of his followers continued to feel that he was present among them. In fact, he had said that they would. He told them that “where two or three gathered” in his name, he would be there. 

Jesus said, according to the text we read, that he would be present to his disciples even “to the end of the age.” So, communities of Jesus’ followers tried to understand all of these experiences and concluded that Jesus was a manifestation of God. 

Eventually, after a lot of philosophical processing, they came to think of Jesus as God’s son, and eventually as equal to God, the Source, or Father/Mother, and God the Spirit, so the doctrine of the Trinity emerged. 

Not everyone agreed, in fact in those early years, many people did not. But the doctrine of the Trinity has become the teaching of the church. People experienced God as Source, or Father/Mother, as Spirit, and finally as Son.  

Greek and Roman Theater Masks

Anyway, in those days, they spoke of the three “persons” of the Trinity. But they did not mean three individuals as we do when we use the word “person.” Rather, they used the word “person” that came from Greek and Roman theater. Actors wore masks in those days, to represent different characters. The word for “mask” is the source of our word “person.” 

The masks were not to conceal, but to show the character that the actors were playing. So, we could talk about the Trinity as the three persons, meaning the three masks of God, or the three Characters in whom we experience God. 

God is One, but we experience God as Source, as Spirit, and we see, in the character of Jesus, the character of God: loving, compassionate, spiritual, and passionate for justice.  

God and Matter 

This is where the Christian concept of incarnation becomes important. Thinking of God in the character of a human leads us to think deeply about God’s relationship with the material world. 

If we can tell stories about God inhabiting a human, then humans matter to God. Human bodies matter to God. In fact, we can go further. The Christian understanding is that we are all children of God. The Spirit inhabits all of us. Each of us, Paul wrote, is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

From our Jewish roots, we already understood that God, who created this physical world, and called it “good,” created humans in their bodies, and called them “good.” The creation story even says that we humans, in our bodies, are reflections of the very “image of God.” 

So bodies matter to God. It matters how bodies are treated. In the creation story, all humankind descended from one pair. Adam, whose name comes from the word for ground, and Eve, whose name comes from the word for life, are the father and mother of all of us, so in that sense, we are invited to think of ourselves all one human family.

The great, controlling story of the Hebrew Bible, the exodus from slavery in Egypt, is a story about God’s concern for the human bodies of enslaved people. God’s will was their liberation because slavery is inhuman. 

All of these stories about bodies culminate in the story of Jesus as an incarnation of God. God takes on a human body. 

In that body, God suffers as humans suffer. God knows hunger and fatigue, sorrow, and pain, even the pain of torture and death.  

Truth-telling Stories

We do not have to take any of these stories literally to take them seriously. They express deep truths. Our physical bodies matter to God. So what we do with, and for, and to our bodies and the bodies of others matters to God. 

Humans do not live in isolation. We literally breathe each other’s air. We inhabit societies and live embedded in systems. How bodies are treated is not merely a personal matter, it is a public matter. 

Systems, just as individuals, can mistreat bodies, and have done so, and are doing so. So, social systems and their treatment of bodies matter to God. This is why slavery was and is intolerable. This is why torture is such a scandal. This is why brutality is so wrong. This is why Jesus eschewed violence, preferring to die, rather than to kill.  

This is why it is so important that institutions, like the police, and systems, like the criminal justice system, protect the inherent dignity and sacredness of every human body they encounter. 

That is why what happened to George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and all the other victims who proceeded them is such an outrage. But it is not unique. In fact, the opposite. 

Racism is part of our society; the statistics are everywhere available that demonstrate it; statistics about incarceration rates, lengths of sentences, discrimination in housing, education, healthcare and so much more. 

This is not an opinion question. In fact, it is America’s original sin, beginning with Christopher Columbus’ genocide of the Taíno. 

Brutality and intimidation against the bodies of people of color have become endemic, and the anger is now boiling over.  

This Historic Moment

Of course, rioting is wrong. Of course, looting and vandalism are wrong. But that should not distract us from the issue that makes this moment historic. It is time for change. 

We, who tell the story of a God who inhabits human flesh, must take the lead in demanding real systemic change. 

But we will do so in ways that are consistent with these same values. 

We will be peaceful, though not passive. 

We will be non-violent, but not uninvolved. 

We will be respectful and show love, even if people consider us enemies in the process.  

On this Trinity Sunday, we began with the question of how we know what is true. We have highlighted the role of personal experience as a key to knowing, though admitting that experience does not provide certainty. 

We have noted that the experience of God as Source, or Father/Mother, and as Presence, or Spirit, is nearly universal. The Christian contribution to the subject is to suggest that in Jesus, we experienced a person who was an incarnation of God, meaning God inhabiting a body. 

This led us to consider God’s relationship with the material world and specifically with human bodies. We do not claim to have certainty, but we have enough personal experience to lead us to believe that God, the Creator, the present Spirit, and the one we see in the character of Jesus leads us to “stand with those on the edge” with courage and hope. As the Iona affirmation says, “We believe in a with-us God who sits down in our midst and shares our humanity.”