“The church was given birth in something like a state of crisis, of mingled joy and terror,
in a moment out of time, as one age was passing and another was coming into existence.”
-David Bentley Hart, Theological Territories
in a moment out of time, as one age was passing and another was coming into existence.”
-David Bentley Hart, Theological Territories
This quote has been on repeat in my brain. Hart’s point with this quote is about how Christians think about history. Historical perspective, he says, is from the vantage of the ones who historians deem history-makers. Historical perspective is the perspective of the powerful, the authorities, the victors, the rich.
But, with what perspective do Christians view history? Jesus blows up traditional historical perspectives. Now the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of a Palestinian Jew becomes the focal point of history, and this is totally new and unprecedented. Christian historical perspective is the perspective of the One who ate and drank with sinners, showed mercy to the diseased and prostitutes, broke the Sabbath, and befriended tax collectors and demoniacs. Ultimately, Hart states, the historical perspective for the New Testament writers was that the moment of Jesus is a moment outside of time, when the end of all things is near and God’s Kingdom is on the horizon, even as it is within them now.
That’s the state of crisis. Everything they knew is coming to an end, and a whole new world and existence was opening up to them. Thus, the “mingled joy and terror.”
It feels like we are in the same kind of moment. I don’t even need to name the COVID-19 crisis. We’re in an economic crisis and an unemployment crisis, and the virus has disproportionately impacted communities of color for a whole host of structural reasons. We have seen the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and last night David McAtee was killed. Cities have been turned upside down, there are protests, riots, and looting.
“The church was given birth in something like a state of crisis.”
I wonder what birth or rebirth our cities and our state need. I wonder what birth or rebirth needs to occur within myself. I wonder what birth or rebirth needs to happen in our church. In the state of crisis within which the early church was given birth, they prayed, lived, and ate together. They shared all their possessions, they eschewed even the idea of private property, and they gave to each person as was their need. They created a way of life that is tangential to the way everyone else was living.
How might we do that in our own state of crisis? How might our church go on a tangent and be a part of creating alternative forms of community and communion?
I believe some of us started that tangent Monday night in a prayer vigil on Zoom. We lamented and grieved together the long history and recent deaths of our sisters and brothers of color. We lamented and confessed our own sins and failures. We confessed our idolatry of whiteness and white identity. We lamented and confessed our indifference to suffering, our judgment of how people respond to tragedy, and our fear to look ourselves in the mirror and ask, “Am I part of the problem?”
It was only a beginning, and the work must continue. I invite anyone reading this blog who wasn’t able to be on the Zoom gathering to join us in our work of undoing and unlearning racism and prejudice and working for justice and peace. Begin with us by praying the prayer we prayed together last night, and then join us in this moment of crisis as the Spirit leads us toward birth and rebirth.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Gracious God, by day and night we pour out our prayer to you. We are crying out for justice, yearning for what is right, longing for your peace. Come quickly to help us, O God; save those who call upon your name.
We lament, O God, the senseless and needless deaths of your children. We lament the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.
We lament that these killings are but the most recent points in a whole history of violence against our sisters and brothers of color. We lament the thread of shed blood: George, Breonna, and Ahmaud, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castille, and Sandra Bland, to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Emmett Till, countless numbers whose names are known only to you, and ultimately your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
And we confess, O God, that each of these killings is an affront to you, for having sewn your very image into them, you created and loved each one.
We lament, O God, the history of racial violence, prejudice, and hatred in our country and our state.
We lament the unjust economic realities that exist because of a history of racial prejudice in our country. We lament the substandard housing and school systems, the healthcare inequalities, and employment opportunities.
We lament and confess that these realities are not accidental but the consequences of slavery, pillaged lands, lynching, Jim Crow, red-lining, and mass incarceration.
We lament, O God, and we recognize and confess our own privilege and our own complicity in systems and structures of injustice and discrimination.
We lament the conditions that create rioting and looting; we lament the looting and theft from communities of color that goes unnoticed, ignored, and too often passes as normal and good business. We lament and confess our rush to judge the actions and responses of the oppressed without first judging our own violence, indifference, and culpability in unjust systems of racial oppression.
We lament that we have served other lords besides you. We lament and we confess that we have not realized that racism destroys all of us. We lament and we confess that we have hoarded our riches, gloried in our privilege and power, and looked out for our own interests over those of the poor and weak. We confess our own weakness and fear to acknowledge our own prejudices. We lament and confess that we have all too often imagined ourselves to be white and not called ourselves disciples of Jesus.
We lament and we confess the church’s failure to live into the beloved community of the Kingdom of God. We lament and confess the history of using theology to suppress and oppress people of color. We lament and confess how we have used Scripture to justify racial segregation, slavery, violence, and killing.
Help us to grieve and weep and to be angry with our sisters and brothers who are grieving. We pray for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more families who have had to grieve the loss of a father, sister, brother, mother, uncle, and aunt. We pray for the children who fear not only for their own lives but for the lives of their parents just because of the color of their skin. We pray for the mothers and fathers of little boys and girls as they carry the weight of teaching their children that their skin color will mean they are treated poorly and looked down upon and seen with suspicion.
Help us to commit ourselves or recommit ourselves to the cause of justice and peace. It is hard work, O God, and the answers are never simple and they don’t come quickly. Help us to be diligent in the work of justice, grant us perseverance when we feel fragile, and continue to convict us and prod us so that we will not leave the work of unlearning racism behind us.
Help us to listen and pray, but do not let us stop there. Help us to look at ourselves and to speak to each other and our families and to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and lives for the prejudice and racism and violence within us. Help us to do justice peacefully and fearlessly and relentlessly; help us to refuse the call to return to “order,” that old “order” is so tempting but so destructive to our sisters and brothers of color and also to us and it is not what you desire.
Help us, against all odds, to be hopeful and joyful.
Gracious God, keep us working and praying for the day when your justice will roll down like waters, and your righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Replenish our strength and stir up our hope as we look for the signs of your coming reign. And fill us with the peace that passes understanding--the deep peace of Jesus Christ our Savior, the one who was crucified on the cross unjustly, and in whose name we pray. Amen.
Peace,
Brandon
But, with what perspective do Christians view history? Jesus blows up traditional historical perspectives. Now the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of a Palestinian Jew becomes the focal point of history, and this is totally new and unprecedented. Christian historical perspective is the perspective of the One who ate and drank with sinners, showed mercy to the diseased and prostitutes, broke the Sabbath, and befriended tax collectors and demoniacs. Ultimately, Hart states, the historical perspective for the New Testament writers was that the moment of Jesus is a moment outside of time, when the end of all things is near and God’s Kingdom is on the horizon, even as it is within them now.
That’s the state of crisis. Everything they knew is coming to an end, and a whole new world and existence was opening up to them. Thus, the “mingled joy and terror.”
It feels like we are in the same kind of moment. I don’t even need to name the COVID-19 crisis. We’re in an economic crisis and an unemployment crisis, and the virus has disproportionately impacted communities of color for a whole host of structural reasons. We have seen the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and last night David McAtee was killed. Cities have been turned upside down, there are protests, riots, and looting.
“The church was given birth in something like a state of crisis.”
I wonder what birth or rebirth our cities and our state need. I wonder what birth or rebirth needs to occur within myself. I wonder what birth or rebirth needs to happen in our church. In the state of crisis within which the early church was given birth, they prayed, lived, and ate together. They shared all their possessions, they eschewed even the idea of private property, and they gave to each person as was their need. They created a way of life that is tangential to the way everyone else was living.
How might we do that in our own state of crisis? How might our church go on a tangent and be a part of creating alternative forms of community and communion?
I believe some of us started that tangent Monday night in a prayer vigil on Zoom. We lamented and grieved together the long history and recent deaths of our sisters and brothers of color. We lamented and confessed our own sins and failures. We confessed our idolatry of whiteness and white identity. We lamented and confessed our indifference to suffering, our judgment of how people respond to tragedy, and our fear to look ourselves in the mirror and ask, “Am I part of the problem?”
It was only a beginning, and the work must continue. I invite anyone reading this blog who wasn’t able to be on the Zoom gathering to join us in our work of undoing and unlearning racism and prejudice and working for justice and peace. Begin with us by praying the prayer we prayed together last night, and then join us in this moment of crisis as the Spirit leads us toward birth and rebirth.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Gracious God, by day and night we pour out our prayer to you. We are crying out for justice, yearning for what is right, longing for your peace. Come quickly to help us, O God; save those who call upon your name.
We lament, O God, the senseless and needless deaths of your children. We lament the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.
We lament that these killings are but the most recent points in a whole history of violence against our sisters and brothers of color. We lament the thread of shed blood: George, Breonna, and Ahmaud, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castille, and Sandra Bland, to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Emmett Till, countless numbers whose names are known only to you, and ultimately your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
And we confess, O God, that each of these killings is an affront to you, for having sewn your very image into them, you created and loved each one.
We lament, O God, the history of racial violence, prejudice, and hatred in our country and our state.
We lament the unjust economic realities that exist because of a history of racial prejudice in our country. We lament the substandard housing and school systems, the healthcare inequalities, and employment opportunities.
We lament and confess that these realities are not accidental but the consequences of slavery, pillaged lands, lynching, Jim Crow, red-lining, and mass incarceration.
We lament, O God, and we recognize and confess our own privilege and our own complicity in systems and structures of injustice and discrimination.
We lament the conditions that create rioting and looting; we lament the looting and theft from communities of color that goes unnoticed, ignored, and too often passes as normal and good business. We lament and confess our rush to judge the actions and responses of the oppressed without first judging our own violence, indifference, and culpability in unjust systems of racial oppression.
We lament that we have served other lords besides you. We lament and we confess that we have not realized that racism destroys all of us. We lament and we confess that we have hoarded our riches, gloried in our privilege and power, and looked out for our own interests over those of the poor and weak. We confess our own weakness and fear to acknowledge our own prejudices. We lament and confess that we have all too often imagined ourselves to be white and not called ourselves disciples of Jesus.
We lament and we confess the church’s failure to live into the beloved community of the Kingdom of God. We lament and confess the history of using theology to suppress and oppress people of color. We lament and confess how we have used Scripture to justify racial segregation, slavery, violence, and killing.
Help us to grieve and weep and to be angry with our sisters and brothers who are grieving. We pray for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more families who have had to grieve the loss of a father, sister, brother, mother, uncle, and aunt. We pray for the children who fear not only for their own lives but for the lives of their parents just because of the color of their skin. We pray for the mothers and fathers of little boys and girls as they carry the weight of teaching their children that their skin color will mean they are treated poorly and looked down upon and seen with suspicion.
Help us to commit ourselves or recommit ourselves to the cause of justice and peace. It is hard work, O God, and the answers are never simple and they don’t come quickly. Help us to be diligent in the work of justice, grant us perseverance when we feel fragile, and continue to convict us and prod us so that we will not leave the work of unlearning racism behind us.
Help us to listen and pray, but do not let us stop there. Help us to look at ourselves and to speak to each other and our families and to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and lives for the prejudice and racism and violence within us. Help us to do justice peacefully and fearlessly and relentlessly; help us to refuse the call to return to “order,” that old “order” is so tempting but so destructive to our sisters and brothers of color and also to us and it is not what you desire.
Help us, against all odds, to be hopeful and joyful.
Gracious God, keep us working and praying for the day when your justice will roll down like waters, and your righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Replenish our strength and stir up our hope as we look for the signs of your coming reign. And fill us with the peace that passes understanding--the deep peace of Jesus Christ our Savior, the one who was crucified on the cross unjustly, and in whose name we pray. Amen.
Peace,
Brandon
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