Year A
Numbers 11:24-30
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 7:37-39

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

This past Monday… on Memorial Day… George Floyd… a black man… was apprehended on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20.00 bill… to pay for cigarettes… when he was detained… by three white policemen… and one Asian American policeman… he ended up on the ground… with a knee on his neck…

On June 17, 2015… Dylann Roof… a young white man… murdered nine African-American Christians… at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, SC… he said he was hoping to start a race war… and when he was apprehended… also by white policemen… he told them that he was hungry… and even though he had been placed under arrest… even though he wasn’t on the ground with a knee on his neck… the police took him to Burger King…

George Floyd is dead… Dylann Roof is alive and in prison… and the most egregious comparison between these two crimes… is that they continue to highlight… time after lamentable time… the systemic racism in which we live and move…

In October 1705… the state of Virginia passed a law… saying that… if a Master happened to kill a slave who was being corrected… [that is punished…]  it was not a crime… in fact… the murder would be viewed as if it had never occurred… further… the legislation said that… when slaves were declared runaways… it was lawful for any person… to kill and destroy… by such ways and means as he shall think fit… I wonder if Travis McMichael felt empowered in just this way when he shot down Ahmaud Arbery…

After Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831… one of the most infamous slave rebellions in Virginia before abolition… state legislatures passed new laws prohibiting the education of slaves… even prohibiting the civil liberties of freed black people… restricting their right to assemble… and requiring white ministers to be present at all worship services… afterwards… the ongoing prospect of rebellion was such an ongoing source of fear in the American South… that many of these laws were enacted simply to quell white paranoia… or perhaps even white guilt…

Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper may have the same last name… but they don’t have the same skin color… and on Memorial Day… as Christian videotaped her… Amy threatened to call the police because Christian questioned her letting her dog run free in an area of Central Park that was set aside for birders… Amy chose to weaponize the established relationship between white women and men and the police… against men of color…

I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life… she threatened… not just a man… but an African American man… and as the video spread widely… Amy told CNN that she wanted to apologize to everyone… that she is not a racist… and didn’t mean to harm Christian… or the African American community… in any way… I wonder whether Amy felt the same white paranoia which compelled those in Virginia a few hundred years before… to pass laws against those whose skin color was darker than comfort…

In Matthew 3:11… John the Baptist said: I baptize you with water for repentance… but one who is more powerful than I [am]… is coming after me… and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire… baptism by fire is a phrase commonly used to describe a person who is learning something… the hard way… through a challenging or difficult circumstance… and now… both the figurative and the actual fires of Pentecost… are burning in Minneapolis and throughout this country… now… right now… we are reaping the seeds that we’ve sown over these hundreds of years… maybe not individually… but collectively… corporately… I mean… in the Jewish scriptures… time after time… God spoke against the nation’s sins… not those moral peccadilloes which most Christians these days love to focus on… but on the corporate failures of the nation to ensure justice for all people…

In Minneapolis and Detroit and Chicago and Grand Rapids and other cities… the violence… and the looting… and the fires… and the injury… and especially the deaths of those who are protesting… don’t help anything… don’t further the cause of justice… and I would never advocate for them… but if you feel disturbed by the looting of a Target store… because your idea of our social contract has been violated… then you can also understand what black people feel every day… and The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr… hit the nail right on the head when he said that… a riot… is the language of the unheard… what are we supposed to do when we try over and over again to be civil… and our cries fall on deaf ears… how long O Lord, how long… and too many people of color… have not only been unheard… but we have neither sought justice for them… nor respected their God-given dignity… in too many cases… we have done just the opposite…

Several weeks ago… in response to the pandemic… I began to notice messages of both instruction and hope… which reminded and affirmed… that we’re all in this together… we are all in this racism together too… and this country is being given a golden opportunity… to focus on… to repent of… and to name and acknowledge not only the sins of our ancestors… but the sins which we continue to perpetuate… against people of color… and part of the reason I think… that we fail to acknowledge them… is because these sins are so egregious… so completely against the message for which Jesus died… that among our deepest fears… is that in facing them… we would be crushed…

So much of the national chatter in the last month or so… has been focused on states’ opening up again… returning to business as usual… people are talking about returning to normal… but author… and poet… Sonya Renee Taylor wrote… We will not go back to “normal.” Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal… other than we normalized greed… inequity… exhaustion… depletion… extraction… disconnection… confusion… rage… hoarding… hate… and lack… We should not long to return… we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment… one that fits all of humanity and nature…

According to an article in The Atlantic magazine… in June of 1961… Ambassador Malick Sow of the nation of Chad was en route to Washington to present his credentials to President John F. Kennedy… and he stopped for coffee at a diner along Maryland’s Route 40… the diner’s white female owner greeted him… with the announcement that black people were not welcome there… but when she was asked about the incident by Life magazine… she felt no need to apologize… explaining… He looked like just an ordinary run-of-the-mill –– n-word –– to me… I couldn’t tell he was an ambassador…

Other black statesmen… who were similarly slighted… received apologies… but more than 50 years later… black Americans still haven’t received a state apology for the subjugation and discrimination at the hands of their own country… but this is not because of some stance against apologies…

In 1988… for example… Ronald Reagan signed legislation –– complete with reparations –– extending a formal apology for Japanese-American internment on American soil during World War II… in 1997… Bill Clinton offered a presidential apology for the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study… in which the U.S. Public Health Service purposely infected hundreds of black men with syphilis… in order to study the disease’s effects… while falsely claiming… to be providing them proper treatment…

By contrast… congressional resolutions apologizing for slavery… passed separately by the House in 2008 and the Senate in 2009… but were never reconciled or signed by the president… and far from constituting a state apology… they carry all the weight of resolutions passed to congratulate Super Bowl winners…

But yesterday… New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that gives death benefits to the families of frontline workers who died battling the coronavirus pandemic… he said… It’s the least we can do to say thank you… and we honor you… and we remember you… you gave your lives for us… and we will be there to support your families going forward…

I don’t know how many families… and businesses… and yes… even churches… made unimaginable fortunes on the backs of kidnapped human beings who were seen as soul-less beasts… but if New York can acknowledge the sacrifice made by these front-line workers… why can’t this nation acknowledge the sins of our ancestors… and apologize for them… I wonder if it’s because too many people think that if you apologize… you’ve also got to put your money where your mouth is… and what would be so wrong with that…

But little by little… we must face our egregious corporate sins…and I would echo Moses’ words when he said… would that all the Lord’s people were prophets… and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them… and the words of the Psalmist who wrote… You send forth your Spirit… and so you renew the face of the earth… and the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians… we were all made to drink of one Spirit… and the words of Jesus and the prophet Amos… out of the believer’s heart… shall flow rivers of living water…  and let justice roll down like waters… and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream… Jesus has been glorified… and the Holy Spirit is here… the question of our day… is how in this nation…  do we become willing and able… to drink the waters it brings…