What does it take to forgive someone like Dylann Roof? How does one muster the courage, the conviction, the moral fiber to grant such a gift to someone who has already taken so much? To serve a feast of forgiveness to a person who hasn’t even ordered a single serving?
The story of Collier’s astounding forgiveness reminds me of another ancient one. Baking in the sun, an innocent Nazarene named Jesus hangs from a Roman cross. He’s losing blood at a rapid rate. His weeping mother is crumpled at his feet, adding emotional agony to his unbearable physical torment. Jesus opens his mouth to speak, but what will he say? Will he curse his executioners or cry out against those complicit in the broken trial that landed him there in the first place?
Hundreds Sunday packed the pews of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church readying themselves to bury nine beloved members and seek justice on their behalf as part of the church’s activist tradition.
In an energetic and emotional service, the Rev. Norvel Goff assured those gathered that the victims, including the church’s pastor and state senator the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, did not die in vain. Others echoed that sentiment saying that while the city is preparing for funeral services, calls for reforms and social activism would also follow.
Last week Pope Francis issued a blockbuster papal encyclical on the environment called “Praised Be.” It is the Pope’s clarion call to address what he describes as an urgent global environmental crisis. Sweeping in scope, it addresses the many dimensions of environmental degradation and the devastating toll it is taking on people, communities, and nations.
He writes, “It is my hope that this Encyclical Letter…can help us to acknowledge the appeal, immensity, and urgency of the challenge we face.” The Pope pulls no punches and is clear and direct, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
A mixture of thoughtful messaging and imaginative storytelling is what’s made many of Pixar’s films into modern classics. But the studio’s latest release, Inside Out, may include its most poignant theme yet: the complex emotional workings and unique roles of each and every human being.
Inside Out is a film that allows viewers to literally go inside the heads of its characters, and understand why they think the way they do. It’s a clever “what if” exercise, but also an opportunity to deeply explore the specific memories, assemblages of emotions, and detailed thoughts that make us special.
They met to read the Bible, they gathered for a prayer,
They worshiped God and shared with friends and welcomed strangers there.
They went to church to speak of love, to celebrate God’s grace.
O Lord, we tremble when we hear what happened in that place.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” —Matthew 25:40
Working for justice can seem frustrating, hopeless, and insignificant. Despite our work, volunteerism, financial donations, and advocacy, it’s easy to succumb to burnout. Most will never personally meet the people they’re trying to help or witness any obvious changes. They will face the constant cynicism of a seemingly uncaring and apathetic society. But here are five reasons why doing social justice work really matters:
I lament with every person and community, throughout the history of this nation, who, due to the color of his or her skin, had to endure marginalization, silence, discrimination, beatings, lynching, cultural genocide, boarding schools, internment camps, mass incarceration, broken treaties, stolen lands, murder, slavery, and discovery.
The challenge is this: We in our collective American consciousness have yet to admit, much less confess, of the racist underpinnings that our nation was founded and built upon. We struggle with admitting that all of us who are white have racially informed understandings in our spirit that were inculcated in our being from birth. As the Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor said, “Racism in is the water we drink and the air that we breathe.” So then, nationally, when a politician or celebrity says something that is racist in nature, we act like the eradication of their contract eradicates racism. That is not the case.
I invite my Christian brothers and sisters of all racial backgrounds to join me in my prophetic grieving. Our cries cannot and should not be the same. For some of us, who inhabit black skin, our tears will be coated in rage and exhaustion. They will be punctuated by the stark feeling that we are permanently displaced in the only place we have known as home. We know that we fighting for our lives and have no choice but to cry out to God.
For others, particularly white Christians, the choice may not be as clear. Lament for Charleston cannot be separated from a challenge to the system of white supremacy that serves to protect white people and white interests. Prophetic grief requires a confession that the system of white supremacy infiltrates and shapes our worship spaces, theologies, and ethics. I have no doubt that this process will be risky for my white colleagues. Rarely does transformation occur without birthing pains. The reality of power is that while my survival is at stake, my white Christian brothers and sisters have the option to opt-out, avoid the pain, and remain silent.
We are brokenhearted by the murders of nine parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. We join our brothers and sisters in deep lament for the lives lost in this evil act, and our prayers go out to all of the victims, their families and their communities.
Atrocities like this wound the very soul of our nation. We must not merely attribute this horror to the depraved actions of one individual, mourn those we have lost, and move on as if there is nothing more to do. In his statement yesterday, President Obama quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words in the wake of the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama in which four little girls were killed:
"...We must be concerned not merely with who murdered [these girls], but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American Dream."
The deep wounds of racism, America's original sin, still linger in our society, our institutions, and in our minds and hearts — sometimes explicitly, but far more pervasively through unconscious bias. Wednesday's terrorist act is the latest manifestation of this lingering sin. Are there no safe places for black people in our country, even the places where they come together to worship?
We all have the responsibility to overcome both the attitudes and the structures of racism in America. Today we mourn, but tomorrow we must act.