ANNOUNCEMENTS
– Communion next Sunday
– Keep checking the private FB page for prayers.
– No news on opening yet, so please be here next week
Centering for Worship
~ written by Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Holy One,
breath of the big bang,
idea of creation,
you who make spring come forth,
who make life out of nothing,
breathe yourself into me.
Create me.
you are the flame,
I am your light. You are the nerve,
I am your muscle. You are the Word,
I am the story. You are the song,
I am the singing.
I am one with you
and one with all Creation. One Spirit,
one flesh, many forms. In your Spirit
I am we.
Holy One, live in me;
I am your body. I remember,
and I live.
Happy Pentecost! Red! Look at some of the red from St. Michael’s! Hear from Acts the wonders they experienced:
Acts 2:1-21 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
SERMON: Racism & Covid-19
I don’t know anyone who is racist. Not a one. Let me explain… there ARE almost no racist people.
Dr. Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, explains that in our culture “a racist is an individual, always an individual, not a system, who consciously does not like people based on race, they must be conscious, and who intentionally seeks to be mean to them. Individual, conscious, intent. If that’s your definition of a racist, then your suggestion that anything I’ve said or done is racist, or has a racist impact, I’m going to hear that as you just said I was a bad person.”
In my understanding, that means a racist would be an individual who wakes up and says, “I hate black people. So I’m going to go out today and knife the tires of every black person I come across.”
A racist would not be someone watches the riots in the country right now and saying, “I have lost all respect for these people and their cause. They should have made their point peacefully.”
That’s because our definition of racism requires someone to be an individual conscious of their bias and intentionally acting on it.
So when I say anyone watching the riots saying things like…
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd”
Or
“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”
Or
“This is bothering innocent people and business owners.”
When I hear things like this, using our definition of racism, I can’t say these are racist comments.
By our definition, none of these comments are intentionally painful and conscious they’re against Blacks.
Yet, Dr. Robin DiAngelo, and anti-racists like myself, feel otherwise. These are quite racist comments. Let me explain: we are raised in a racist society. Everything we breath, we eat, we learn, we know is racist. And it’s REALLY comfortable for me as a white woman to live in this racist USA. I know the cops will give me the benefit of doubt. I know if I follow the law, I won’t be pulled over. I know I will never be declined a job because of my race. I’m not even aware of the other benefits I get — such as better interest rates, not being tailed in stores as a potential shop lifter, being able to find Band-Aids that match my skin tone. All benefits. It’s beneficial for me to NOT challenge the system. The system works for me. It’s beneficial for me to NOT notice race.
When I don’t notice race, I can say this world we live in treats all people equally. I can say things like, “I don’t see race. I only see people.”
“We’re all a melting pot.”
“All lives matter.”
These phrases let me put on blinders. Things are good for me. Why aren’t they good for you?
Why are you playing the race card?
You – yourself – must be racist. Anti-racist even. You hate white people.
You hate me because I’m white and refusing to buy into the Black Lives Matter movement. You hate me because I think standing for the flag versus kneeling is important. That Colin Kaepernick is disrespecting the flag.
You hate me because I refuse to see race. You hate me because I refuse to be racist!
Do you see how badly this definition of racism works? It makes white people… fragile. Easily offended.
Saying I am acting racist is like you’re saying I’m a bad person. By saying I am racist by wearing race blinders, and not challenging the system we live in, says I am a bad person. I am a bad person simply by existing.
This definition doesn’t let us have any sort of conversation. It immediately makes this a competition of morality. Who is the good person and who is the bad?
Remember, Jesus tells us that the Way for us the narrow, the less trodden. The harder way.
By racism being an individual versus individual battle of moralities… we get no where. This is a cultural issue. A cultural sin. Not individual, but one of those sins we are gifted, and one we will gift to the next generation unless we stop and examine ourselves.
Pause a moment here. Think back. When was the first time you remember seeing someone of another race? … When did you first become aware of race?
For me? It was 2nd grade. We had Black History Month with Martin Luther King Jr. A whole month just for the Black kids (of whom we had none in my class.) I was furious. I went home and told my mother I wanted White History Month. She laughed and agreed.
I didn’t realize that every other month of my year we studied white presidents, white settlers, white history. It was 11 months of White History and 1 month of Black History. I didn’t realize it because racism is our culture. Our society. White is default. White doesn’t need more attention. I was a fragile white kid easily insulted at the implication that Black was somehow more special and needed its own month.
Now imagine if I were black. I didn’t choose to be black. Why must I suffer for it? Imagine I was born with disadvantage and from before my birth to this very moment every day I face passive racism by just existing. 11 months of seeing no one like me. Imagine if I say something about this, about how uncomfortable I felt, then the whites around me will react with anger. One month wasn’t enough for you? Next you’re going to want First People’s History month!” My experience will be minimalized. The person I speak with will feel I called them evil and bad. And I’ll lose the relationship. So I learn to be silent. I learn to accept the constant hurts.
White fragility is how we whites control society. Silence voices. And removes race as something we can talk about.
A better idea of racism is to understand racism is systemic. It is made of individual actions, but any individual person is usually not racist — not evil. They, instead, are like me — comfortable. Our society is pretty comfortable for a white Christian like me. It is NOT comfortable to talk about race.
The system, the culture, we’re in is racist. Our current coronavirus makes this super apparent. At the beginning the virus was hitting all people seemingly equally. No one was safe. As we have enacted social distancing, lock downs, and only essential workers out, we have seen the conflation of race, and class, reflected painfully in who is catching the virus, and who is dying.
Blacks are more likely than whites to be born poor. Oh there’s poor whites and rich blacks — but we’re speaking of the USA system. Not individuals. In the system, across the USA, more blacks are poor than whites per capita. Our system, from slavery to now, has never been good at redistributing equally the wealth whites amassed from slavery. And poverty is generational.
Blacks are more likely than whites to be working poor jobs. If you’re born into a poor family versus a rich family, your school will likely be underfunded from lack of taxable income. You may have to skip school to help out at home while both parents work. You’re not as likely to be medical doctor after all that as you are going to be working 2 or 3 part time jobs to make ends meet.
2 or 3 part time jobs don’t have health insurance benefits. Or sick leave. So you must work sick or get fired. You don’t go to the doctor because without insurance it is extortionate. There are free clinics, but the wait is 6 or more hours. 6 or more hours which if you miss at your job, you get fired.
I speak from experience. I’ve been to charity clinics. Praise God how they helped – but I was privileged to have a day off.
No preventative medical care, only emergency hospital care, means that you don’t go in unless something is very wrong. So other medical issues that aren’t immediately life threatening – blood pressure, borderline diabetes, asthma — aren’t treated.
And in enters COVID-19. This person must work at 2 or 3 jobs as a cashier being constantly exposed. They don’t have health insurance so lots of little ailments have piled up. They don’t go in for a cough because it means missing time, getting fired, going hungry. They wait as long as possible – finally go to the hospital – (this has meant bankruptcy for some of my friends. Ambulances without insurance are NOT charities, unlike some hospitals, and can cost $2,000 for a ride. Pray you don’t need life flighted!) And by then, this working poor person is near death. And they’re likely to die.
Statistically, blacks and other racial minorities, immigrants, the poor, are dying much more often than whites and the affluent.
It is a privileged to be able to quarantine. To be able to order food from home. To be able to get preventative care.
This is not to make anyone feel guilty or ashamed. That is going back to the bad definition of racism! Having privilege does not make anyone a bad person! Not having privilege doesn’t make you a saint. This is to let us begin to see how our system, our culture, is racist. Our system, our culture, is killing people.
We, the People of God, are certain God does not make mistakes. All colors are beautiful. We, the People of Christ, know that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For [we] are all one in Christ Jesus.” There is no longer race, nor citizenship status, nor gender. This means there should be no death gap between races; no education gap among citizens and immigrants or refugees; and no wage gap between genders.
When there are these gaps, as there are in our society, it means we have work to do. The Reign of God is close, but not yet here. Who will make the inbreaking spread and the justice, peace, unity and wholeness spread?
We. It’s our job.
I don’t put a lot of stock in the idea of THE Original Sin. To me, babies are born sinless. But I wholly believe we are born INTO sin. We live in a sinful world.
The riots going on right now are a reaction to this sin. The sin is murdering people of color. The sin is enabling white people to be comfortable, and when we’re challenged, enables us to call on cops to enforce our comfortableness. The sin is the very air we breathe.
Jesus told us the Advocate would come and fill us with a holy fire. Enable us to speak prophetically. To speak truth to power. To demand justice and mercy.
The Holy Spirit is burning brightly this Pentecost.
You might be one of the good Judean neighbors who thought the Disciples were full of wine and stupid. Making a mess of a peaceful time.
You might be one of the good white neighbors who think the protesters are drunk and stupid. Making a mess of a time we don’t need more messes.
But Peter was full of the Spirit. He proclaimed the nearness of God’s reign. God came with fire and wind. A roar! Tongues that would not be stilled! Burning, demanding.
The peaceful protests of kneeling. Of sitting. Of calls to address racism were met with more murder in the streets, with white fragility, with denials, with bad definitions of racism that turn it into an individual problem that cannot be addressed from a societal sin that IS solvable.
And so… here we are.
The Prophet Amos proclaimed, (Amos 5)
7 There are those who turn justice into bitterness
and cast righteousness to the ground.
10 There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.
11 You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.
21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
The prophet Micah 6:8
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
And so there are protests. Peaceful protests. But the peaceful protests were met with anger and ignored. So now larger protests. Louder cries. May we protest and demand justice as long as it takes for our system to change. May we never value money over lives. May we look long in the mirror and confess our white fragility. May we stop thinking of racism as an individual, conscious, intentional act but a system of inherited sin that we are passing to our children. May we not! May we hate evil and love good! May we be full of the Spirit.
Look at the new thing the Lord is doing! We have been pushed out of our churches. Just as the disciples were. We have been fueled with creativity and prophetic speech and the vision of a new world. Just as the disciples were.
St. Michael’s – we live in a time when our church is being reborn anew!
Join in praise of God for the work God continues to provoke and inspire in us! Educate yourself! Become anti-racist. Lose your fragility and be able to speak, painfully and awkwardly, but speak about race.
When we ask the Spirit to be in our speech, when we listen with the heart of God, when we act as Jesus acts – then we can live God’s peace.
Amen.
Sources: Why “I’m not racist” is only half the story / Robin DiAngelo / Big Think.
United Church of Christ / Disciples of Christ / United Church of Canada anti-racism trainings.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 