If you don’t know by now, we hung a three foot by six foot banner on the front doors of All Saints emblazoned with the phrase, ”Black Lives Matter.” We also posted a picture of the banner on the All Saints Facebook page with the heading, “If we can’t be in church, we can be in solidarity.” The internet post has gone viral. It has been shared over one hundred fifty times. I’ve received comments from all around the country, literally, the vast majority of which are positive, even celebratory. Many respondents seem surprised that a white Christian church would be so bold. I’ve even had people ask how they might join All Saints! It is important for you to know that I didn’t do this on my own. Your vestry sanctioned this with unanimous approval.
I don’t need to tell you; you know this: Jesus spent his life and ministry advocating for the poor, and those abused and disenfranchised by the system. He preached compassion and empathy for the stranger, the “other.” He followed in a long and venerable line of prophets who proclaimed that our xenophobic tendencies would be our undoing. The focus of Jesus’ ministry was the particular lives of the outcasts, the left out. And he called out the oppressive hypocrisy of the powerful who made it so. It may well be argued, if we take Jesus seriously, that our own healing is intimately connected to our love of our neighbor; being vulnerable to their needs, empathetic to their plight, in solidarity with their resistance and activism related to power. This is not merely our moral civic duty; it has everything to do with our spiritual health.
Racism has been coined as “America’s original sin.” I think that is true. For over four hundred years the white power structure of this country has perpetrated arbitrarily all manner of violence and shame upon a people just because of the color of their skin. It is an injustice of mythic proportions. Black Americans have suffered in ways we privileged can’t imagine, physically, mentally, emotionally, and yet the system of white supremacy persists, and all of us white people have, in some way or another, to greater or lesser extent, been complicit, at least owing to the easy and passive way of indifference.
Our Church, All Saints, has chosen solidarity with our Black brothers and sisters. Many of you work tirelessly for justice and equality and mutual regard. You endeavor to practice the promise in our Baptismal Covenant of “respecting the dignity of every human being.” You say I’m bragging… maybe; but we have paid a price for our activism, our very Christian witness. Some whom you know have chosen to leave our fellowship. There are those who choose “comfortable church.” We’re not comfortable church. Judging from the comments on Facebook, some people know about us, but there are many who do not. We need to be more intentional about telling our story, letting people of good will and conscience know who we are. Some may be offended at what we profess, but many will come. There are many who have written off the church at large because of its hypocrisy when it comes to serving the least among us. They have good reason. But there is an emerging thirst for justice in our culture, and the Gospel of Jesus is a way to articulate that yearning, and it is also a way to collectively do something about it. So, tell our story, good people. Invite the seeker who you know would find a home at All Saints. Invite them to join us in making some “good trouble” (and good worship!). The world waits for the likes of us. The world waits for simple justice, and not so patiently. That is what Jesus was about. That is what we are about… is it not?
