In his book Fatherneed, Yale University child psychologist Kyle Pruett notes that children whose fathers are deeply involved in their lives do better in school. Toddlers with involved fathers are better prepared to handle the stresses and frustrations associated with schooling than children whose fathers are less involved. And young men need dads who are present as they embark on their own life’s journey.
In other words, society benefits in real and measureable ways when fathers have the time to invest in the lives of their children.
So thank you and Happy Day to every father, every person who has served as a father to his or other children, to every person who has given of himself, his time, his energy, and his love to help a child grow into the fullness for which they were created by our loving God. The world needs people who are willing to give themselves in love for others.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our gathering together for worship and prayer is, this day, both an offering of praise and a show of courage. We come to this sanctuary mindful that even sacred spaces are not necessarily safe spaces. We bow our heads remembering our brothers and sisters in Christ whose last earthly act was prayer. We give thanks for the lives of your faithful servants: Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Daniel Simmons and Depayne Middleton Doctor. Comfort their families and friends and strengthen them in the difficult days that are ahead. We pray, too, because Christ commands us to, for Dylan Roof and his family. Bring peace, transform hearts, show us again your resurrection power in places we cannot imagine it can come.
You tell us, Lord God, that perfect love casts out fear and the families of the victims of Mother Church and the people of Charleston have shown us what loving fearlessness looks like. Forgiveness has been extended, hands have been held, hymns have been sung, prayers have been lifted, unity has been demonstrated. The storm of hate and racism has not and will not win.
Today we remember and proclaim: Violence and hate do not have the last word. The love of God made known to us through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, always has the last word. The Spirit’s crop of goodness and love and joy and peace and gentleness will not stop growing. Now is the time for us – people of faith, brothers and sisters of every race and background – to recognize these unshakable truths and in the midst of the storm, trust the power of the One in the boat with us.
We yield ourselves to you, Triune God, knowing you bring redemption, reconciliation and resurrection. Make us your witnesses. May your perfect love in us and shown through us, cast out fear and help transform the world.
Amen.
“O teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” These were words from terrified disciples. They had been asked by Jesus to get into the boat and “go across to the other side.” To get around in Galilee, it was often more expedient to cross the lake. And Jesus and his 12 disciples, some of them fishermen, had gotten into a boat to go across to the other side. But then a storm had come up. The waves tossed the vessel and it appeared that the boat would be swamped and they all would be thrown into the sea where they would have certainly drowned. But when the disciples in fear looked for Jesus, he was sleeping soundly in the back of the boat, his head on a pillow. They cried out to him in anguish, “Wake up! Do you not care that we are about to drown?” Jesus wakes up and offers peace to the wind and waves and immediately they quiet. And then Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
We come together today in another week when people whose skin color has cost them their lives. Last Wednesday night, as a group of faithful members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church completed their time together in prayer and Bible Study, a young man who had been welcomed as a guest into this group, stood and began spewing words of hatred as he systematically murdered nine people. He murdered the 41 year old minister of the church. He murdered a 26 year old young man who tried to protect his 87 year aunt. He murdered people who had been a part of this church for many years and whose lives reflected their faith. They were a coach, a speech therapist, a librarian, a sexton at the church, a retired minister, the wife of a priest, a counselor. [1]They had come to church to listen to the words of scripture and then carry these words into the world to love and serve God and their neighbors.
But a 21 year old man had other ideas that night. He planned and carried out a crime so vicious that it is almost unspeakable. It is a crime that is so filled with malice and hate that it is almost unthinkable. But as Christians, it is imperative that we speak and think about what happened last Wednesday night. As Christians we are called to go across to the other side with Jesus.
This was an act of hate committed against nine people who simply because of the color of their skin were murdered in the house of God. It was an act of hate that was meant to send a message of terror. This young man chose a church that had stood for almost 200 years as a symbol of freedom and hope. It had stood as a place where people could come and worship God who saw them as immeasurably loved. It had seen violence before when slavery ruled the land. It had been burned to the ground by angry white people who wanted to put an end to any hope of liberation by enslaved people.
The young man who killed 9 people last Wednesday night with such pleasure had determined that because his hatred was so defensible these people had to die. But, tragically although this crime is one of horror, it is not one of isolation. Over the past year we have seen almost weekly the killing of unarmed young people who were simply walking home with a bag of candy, or playing with a toy gun or driving while black. We see a young black girl attending a swimming party in Texas celebrating the end of the school year, thrown down and held with her face to the ground and threatened with a gun by a police officer simply because she was present at the party.
These violent events are not isolated or unrelated events. Though they may not have been planned by a committee or developed by a task force, each violent act is rooted in the same soil. Racism is a disease in this country and we are all infected.
The Presiding Bishop of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)[2] two days ago shared the news that Mother Emanuel’s A.M.E. pastor the Rev. Clementa Pickney as well as the Rev. Daniel Simmons, the associate pastor of Mother Emanuel were graduates of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. The young man who is accused of murdering the people in Charleston was a member of an ELCA congregation. This only highlights the interconnectedness of this disease. Each of us suffers from the plague of racism that contaminates us all.
As a white woman, it has taken me a while to come to this realization. Raised in the south, I heard my share of jokes and comments made against the dignity of people who are black. People from my family, in my school, and church told stories about black people as if they were not God’s children. I was always deeply offended by these jokes and comments and I did protest against them when they occurred in my presence. Because of my actions, I held myself above those I saw as contributing to this scourge that continues 150 years after the end of the Civil War, 150 years after people who had been held as slaves—as property—were made aware on June 19th that they were now free to live apart from their defined role as property. Fifty years after marchers in Selma Alabama marched to the statehouse to demand their right to vote as citizens of this country.
But then one day I was sitting in a meeting with a group of colleagues. It was the day after Trayvon Martin was murdered for walking in a neighborhood wearing a hoodie—which was the favorite outfit of my sons—and I had a conversation with one of the women whose son was in my class on the Old Testament. She and her son are black. Her son was one of the finest students in the school—polite, intelligent, thoughtful, quiet, focused, etc. And she in tears began to tell me that she had to have “the talk” with Bryce. She had to talk with him about how he must act when he leaves the house because she was afraid for him. Now Bryce already said, “Yes mam” and “No Sir” without prompting. He had always in my presence remembered to say, “Please” and “Thank you.” No, so he was not someone who would be belligerent or rude. He would just be a young black man—and that to my ignorant horror could be very dangerous. It was at that moment, I realized that I was blind. I had no idea what my brothers and sisters who are black face every day. I was convicted and I realized that I had turned away—I had stayed on the safe shore much too long.
All people will find themselves caught in storms with high winds and waves—caught in the turmoil of illness or losing our job, ending a long term relationship, or losing someone we love in death—these moments form distinct moments of our lives, but we know that in time, with God’s help and the love of others, we will return safely to shore. But our brothers and sisters who are black spend most of their lives in the deep water with the waves up to their necks. They spend most of their waking hours not knowing whether they will drown or make it home safely. They do not know whether in trying to get to and from school or work or out for a night to dinner—they will suffer humiliation or suffering or danger or worse—simply because they are black in this country. They may be the best student in school, the best athlete on the team, the owner of a successful company, a neurosurgeon or best selling author, teach children to read and write, lead a thriving congregation as a minister, be a loving father or mother or grandparent—but this will not keep them from disrespect, harassment, or even bodily harm.
And I believe that this must stop. And it must stop here and it must stop with us. Jesus calls us to go across to the other side. The other side is almost always a place that scares us—or at least we think of it in that way. There is always a boundary that we are taught not to cross. We are taught that the boundary is there for a reason: to keep us safe, to keep us pure; to make sure everyone knows their appropriate place. We may feel ill equipped to cross boundaries—to talk about racism. We may believe that because we have grown up white and insulated from the experiences of our African American brothers and sisters that we are unqualified to speak out about racial injustice. We may know that we will never experience anything resembling what the Rev. Pinckney and his wife and children or Trayvon Martin and his family or anyone who is black in America has experienced. That we might in our attempts to speak up actually do harm—hurt someone unintentionally out of our naiveté. We may think that others are much better qualified to speak—it is not our voices that need to be heard.
You may be thinking this, because I certainly have. How can I as a white middle class woman have anything important to say about racial injustice? But I must be honest. I was afraid. I am still afraid that anything I say will not be worthy of the issue to be addressed. That I will be found out to be blindingly white.
But this is not a time for cowardice or silence. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step, even when you cannot see the whole staircase.” And more importantly he said, “The ultimate tragedy is not oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
We are church! We are called by Jesus to go to the other side. Even if wind and waves threaten to upend us, Jesus is with us in the boat. As followers of Jesus Christ who reached out to everyone, who brought all into the bounds of his love and care—staying on the safe shore is no longer an option.
In the Gospel of Mark, the sea is a metaphor for chaotic or demonic forces that stand against the Kingdom of God that is even now at hand, and it’s a literal and metaphorical boundary between the Jewish and Gentile people. But Jesus knows that we must cross this sea because the Good News of the Gospel cannot be contained. The Good News of Jesus Christ is never for just one type of people—one race or one gender or one age or one socio-economic level—the Good News of Jesus Christ is never for those just on one side of the sea.
Jesus is sleeping in the middle of the storm, not because he does not care about his disciples, but because he trusts God working through these imperfect people to weather storms, to make decisions that will allow them to cross safely. Jesus calls the disciples to follow him and that means he believes that they have what it takes to be like him. This includes us.
Jesus is in the boat with us. We believe in Jesus enough to worship him. We trust him with our lives and we can trust his power working in us. We are not called to stand by safely on the shore. We are called to heal, to witness, to bless, to serve, to speak truth in love, to live as if the Gospel is really true. We are asked to have faith in the power that Jesus promises whether that is spreading some seed and letting the power of God go to work while we sleep or rebuking the waves and the winds in the name of Jesus while he sleeps.
Jesus is in the boat with us. Jesus calls us out from our safe harbors to grieve alongside our black brothers and sisters, to search our own hearts to see whether there is fault in us, to stand with our brothers and sisters as they demand the dignity bestowed on them through their birthright, to be in solidarity with them as seek to live into the fullness that God has promised each of God’s children.
This will mean crossing over to the other side. This may mean that we will get into deep water where the winds come up and threaten to swamp our boat. But Jesus is in the midst of the storm. He’s standing there next to those who have been weathering it for a long time. And our job, plain and simple, is to follow Jesus.[3]
[1] Lizette Alvarez and Alan Blinder. Recalling nine spiritual mentors, gunned down during night of devotion. New York Times. June 18, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/us/nine-victims-of-charleston-church-shooting-remembered.html?_r=0
[2] The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. God’s work. Our hands. http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/long_season_of_disquiet_letter.pdf.
[3] I am grateful to Emily Scott, the pastor of St. Lydia’s, a dinner church in Brooklyn for her thoughts in Preaching while white. http://sitandeat.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/preaching-while-white-this-sundays-lectionary-and-emanuel-ame.html