Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

How Will We Be Known? - February 7th, 2021

How Will We Be Known?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, February 7, 2020, fifth Sunday after the Epiphany. “Tired Feet, Rested Souls” series.

      Texts: Isaiah 40:27-31, Mark 1:32-39

Let’s talk about demons. What comes up in you when you hear the word? Perhaps it’s an image from a story or movie. Perhaps it’s a feeling of fear or anxiety. Maybe it’s a particular person or group. Perhaps the word “demon” raises curiosity or maybe a description or explanation of what a demon is from previous study. I imagine that many will understand that things we now explain through medical science may very well have been called the work of demons in the 1st century. 

In verse 32 of our Gospel text, people bring to Jesus “those possessed with demons.” To be possessed is to be influenced or controlled by something. Demons—or fallen angels—are generally understood as spiritual beings who are against God, literally “anti-Christ.” The Greek word in verse 32 is daimonizomenous, meaning to fall under the power of a demon. So one way to think of demon possession is a person who willingly or unwillingly has a malevolent spirit in their lives in a way that controls or influences them. As a result, these persons do harm to themselves and others. I wonder what comes to mind as potential current examples or experiences of this… 

The same word daimonizomenous, can be translated “demonized.” Consider: to “fall under the power of a demon or fallen angel” may also be understood as a life owned, curtailed, damaged by anti-God beings outside the self (beings acting upon you, not within you). Hear the story with this way of translating the word: “That evening, at sundown, they brought to Jesus all who were sick or demonized…” Those who are “demonized” may have been named as evil, or worthy of contempt or blame. Why? Well, why are people demonized today? Because of who they are, what they look like, what they have, what they’ve done, what they’ve said. Scapegoating, blaming, tribal hatreds, prejudice, all of this is both ancient and ever new. Right now there’s a lot of demonization going on. I wager many if not most of us will have a person we could slap the word “demon” on right now. 

In any and all the ways we think about demon possession, make no mistake that it affects the whole of a person’s life. In the culture of Jesus’ time, both illness and daimonizomenous meant separation from community, exclusion, isolation, and often harsh treatment. 

For those who find the whole idea of “demons” hocus-pocusy or simply distasteful, let me suggest that you don’t have to buy in to the notion that there are angelic beings who serve Sauron or Voldemort or Satan in order to acknowledge that evil is real and a powerful force that affects human lives and relationships. Wherever it comes from, there are powers that take hold of humans and lead us to do terrible things. This is not to say that we have no culpability for the harms we commit—in “a devil made me do it,” get-out-of-jail-free-card kind of way. But it is to simply be honest about the forces that tempt us and that bind us.

Here’s a personal example. Over the years, I have grown increasingly aware of and angry about the way that as a white person I’ve been soaked in ways of perceiving, thinking, assuming, acting from the moment I was born—ways informed by white supremacy. 

And let’s pause a minute for some definition of what I’m talking about when I speak of “white supremacy.” (with thanks to Dr. Izetta Mobley for sharing her expertise and resources) “While most people associate white supremacy with extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, white supremacy is ever-present in our institutional and cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group while casting people and communities of color as worthless, immoral, bad, inhuman and ‘undeserving.’” Legendary scholar Barbara Smith writes, “Toxic as such beliefs are, white supremacy is not merely the individual delusion of being superior to Black people. Institutionalized white supremacy does not need individual bigotry in order to function, because it is a universal operating system that relies on entrenched patterns and practices to consistently disadvantage people of color and privilege whites.” White supremacy is “baked in” to our political, economic, and cultural systems and fuels widespread ideas of white superiority and entitlement—both consciously or unconsciously.

Being completely unaware or intentionally denying this state of things leaves a person like me like a bull in a china shop, bound to break and destroy and do harm. But here’s the thing: awareness of the reality and power of white supremacy doesn’t mean that I automatically can stop the behaviors or the assumptions or micro- or macro-aggressions against my siblings of color, no matter how much I desire to. The last thing I want to do is harm. And even when I’m trying to be a good ally, I hurt people I love, honor, and admire. And it makes me angry that I didn’t get any choice about being formed in a white supremacist culture, it is simply the water in which we all swim. I am bound by it, scarred, and stained by it. It is a power that is not of God, that is directly opposed to the love of God and of neighbor, that is directly in conflict with the Kin-dom of God that is the heart of Jesus’ proclamation. 

You see I am at some level possessed by—under the influence of—the demon of white supremacy. Unchecked, this leads to daimonizomenous, demonizing, blaming, belittling, silencing, excluding people of color. It can also, frankly, lead me to demonize those I blame for fueling and continuing to sustain the white supremacy I was born in to. It makes me sad and angry that there’s so much daimonic power at work in and around me! //

Thanks be to God that Jesus is more powerful than the demons and that Jesus loves me and loves you. Thanks be to God that Jesus shuts down the demonic voices. Thanks be to God that Jesus proclaims in word and deed the good news of the Kin-dom—setting captives free, removing blinders that keep us from perceiving, and giving us freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in any form they present themselves. 

You see, we do have free will. You can choose, I can choose, whose influence and control we will surrender to. If we choose Jesus, our priorities will begin to reflect the love, compassion, and justice of God. And when we inevitably fall or push someone else down, Jesus will be there to forgive and help us all get back up and stay on the journey. Under the influence of Jesus, you will find yourselves being honest about the state of your own life and willing to call out that which is doing harm in yourself and the harm being done to siblings’ bodies and spirits. When we are possessed by the love of God through Jesus, we will be willing to risk much in our resistance of evil in the world. We will be willing to try and to keep trying.

I’m painfully aware that truly moving toward both awareness of white supremacy and the concrete changes such awareness inspires may be easier for individuals than groups. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, “Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.” He asks, “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?” That remains a very “live” question. From where I sit, King’s assessment of the American church has shifted little. He wrote, “So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.” He goes on, “So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.”

Foundry has been known over the years to at least try to be headlights that lead to “higher levels of justice.” We take pride in this piece of our identity and call. We take every piece of our call to love God, love each other, and change the world seriously and seek to put it into action concretely. We do speak up and speak out. We do show up and stand in solidarity. We try and keep trying.

And at the same time, we (as a whole) are possessed by—under the influence of—the white supremacy daimonion that took up residence in the body of our nation from the beginning, the demon that afflicts the United Methodist Church and every faith community. As a group, our comfort, privilege, loyalties, and familiar ways of being create their own obstacles to really breaking from the status quo. And we are not immune from the temptation to demonize those we believe are doing harm. “Wokeness” doesn’t get rid of white supremacy. Sometimes it even creates a playground for new little demons to gather.

So what do we do? Dr. King writes, “I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.” In other words, in our desire to create change, to bring justice, to clearly name and rebuke the powers of racism and white supremacy, we must not allow ourselves to be possessed by hatred or violence. Our “means” must be aligned with the way of Jesus, a way that is always the way of love and compassion. AND we must also be acutely aware of how easy it is to fall back on rationalizations, existing (immoral) laws, loopholes, and perceived obstacles that keep us bound in the white supremacy-soaked status quo that fails to do justice. In short, we are called to try to do what’s right for the right reasons in the right way. I honestly believe that’s what most folks are yearning for—not a community that’s perfect, but one that is honest and trying in every way to have integrity as followers of Jesus. 

And, make no mistake, this is exhausting. It takes a lot of energy, resources, and time. Dr. King lifts up inspiring examples of those who were, as he called them, “the real heroes” in the South, those who faced “jeering and hostile mobs…with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer”; the “old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, [Mother Pollard] who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: ‘My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.’… the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake.” These heroes are remembered because they did what they could, they acted with integrity, they faced the daimonion of white supremacy without returning hate for hate, blow for blow, and they kept going…

How will we be known? How will we be remembered, as individuals and as a congregation? Will we go down in history as a people who did all in our power to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to lovingly, peacefully, and courageously resist and dismantle the powers of white supremacy in our lives and congregation and nation?  I pray we won’t let the privilege of wealth or whiteness lull us to sleep or convince us this has nothing to do with our lives. I pray that all of us in the Foundry family will remember that we, like Jesus, can wait on the Lord in prayer and let God renew our strength, so that even when our proverbial feet grow tired from the long journey, our souls will be rested in the knowledge that we are marching upward to Zion, to the Kin-dom, to the beautiful city of beloved community that is promised by the God whose power is second to none. 

https://foundryumc.org/

It’s Time - January 31st, 2021

It’s Time

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, January 31, 2020, fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. “Tired Feet, Rested Souls” series.

    Text: Mark 1:14-28

Next month will mark 9 years since 18 year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered. July of this year will mark 8 years since the acquittal of the man who shot Trayvon and the outcry that spurred the Black Lives Matter movement that continues to mobilize the fight to end State-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy. July will also mark 7 years since I began my ministry at Foundry. My appointment began in July of 2014, the month that Eric Garner was strangled to death by police in New York City. A month after my arrival, 18 year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. In those first months as the Senior Pastor of Foundry, I was reading as much commentary on these events as I could get my hands on, was praying a lot, and was in conversation with the Foundry clergy team—then consisting of Pastors Dawn, Theresa, Al, and Ben—about how to faithfully respond and position Foundry in the struggle. There was so much I didn’t know—I knew enough to know that! 

In November of 2014, 12 year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland. A couple of weeks later, the second week of Advent, 2014, I preached a sermon in which I proclaimed “black lives matter” aloud for the first time in worship. I confessed my own failures as an ally in the struggle. And I encouraged our mostly white congregation to not use our privilege to “opt out” but to engage, to recommit to the concrete work of what we now call anti-racism. 

Over the next year, a new Racial Justice Ministry Team offered regular studies and opportunities to engage in learning and advocacy. In 2016, our first Scholar in Residence was the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard, III, then Dean of Howard Divinity School who challenged and taught us through a series of book studies, films, and facilitated conversations. I mention some of this history in my book, Sacred Resistance, particularly referencing the debate about whether and why to hang a banner outside Foundry—a debate that began in the summer of 2014. As I wrote in the book: 

Some in the congregation wanted to immediately hang a large banner emblazoned with #BlackLivesMatter outside the church building. In an intense moment during a workshop with the Rev. Dr. Alton Pollard, Dean of Howard Divinity School, African American members expressed concern about hanging a banner without the engagement and commitment of the whole congregation. To publicly communicate a commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement without knowing the form our solidarity would take—actions, relationships, money, tangible support—smacked for many of an attempt to “check the box” and say we’d done our work on white supremacy without having to engage the same kind of deep work that had taken place around marriage equality. Dr. Pollard also made it quite clear that if the congregation chose to step out with such clear advocacy for racial equity and justice, there would be negative consequences. “Just get ready,” he said. Stories abound not only of the defacement of signs and banners proclaiming Black Lives Matter, but also the ongoing violence against black and brown bodies and those who stand with them. Foundry’s intentional work of engagement and advocacy continues unabated. But at the time of this writing, there is no banner.

The book was published in 2018. Last summer, we hung a banner proclaiming Black Lives Matter and littered our lawn with signs saying so as well. It was time. It was time because we had both committed to the Journey to Racial Justice and were well underway in the work when the blood of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd cried out from the ground for justice. Today, we have a 21 foot banner across our lawn with the words proclaiming our commitment. We are actively engaged with sibling congregations Asbury UMC and John Wesley AMEZ, and the JRJ is crafting a strategy for meaningful change. I am grateful for the ongoing, unfolding work. And now I’m going to press pause on the Foundry story to shift over to our Gospel story for today.

What we receive in our text is the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry. Right at the beginning of Jesus’s appointment his cousin and partner in ministry—the prophet John, known as the Baptizer—is arrested for calling out Herod to his face for marrying his brother’s wife—a flagrant disregard for the law. We are told later in the story that, while in custody, John is murdered in a brutal way. (Mk 6.17-29)

And also, right off the bat, Jesus encounters a “man with an unclean (akatharto) spirit.” You may hear in the Greek “akatharto” the same root that gives us the English “catharsis.” A catharsis is a purgation, a purification. Akatharto literally means not purged, not clean. There are many ways we might think about this, but at the most basic level, akatharto refers to something that separates from God or is against God or God’s will. Akatharto spirits or energies need to be purged so that a person can freely experience life in God’s love, mercy, and justice. 

The story reveals that Jesus has that “thing” (exousia)—that extraordinary power, influence, and moral authority—that moves people, that changes lives. And when the man with the akatharto spirit encounters Jesus, he knows he is exposed, he knows that Jesus knows—and that Jesus, through that knowing, has the power to literally call out that in him which is not of God. What happens next is that the unclean spirits do not leave quietly or peacefully. They scream and do bodily harm to the one who’d been giving them harbor.

So, to recap: the framing issues of Jesus’ ministry are prophets being arrested by the state, silenced, and killed and akatharto spirits doing damage to God’s children, spirits who, when identified and rebuked, do not leave quietly but act in violent ways, seemingly bent on destruction.

Does this sound at all familiar to anything in our own lives and context? I hope it is not necessary for me to detail the ways that events over the past weeks and months find their resonance in the Gospel narrative—those crying out for justice being manhandled and jailed and those whose hatred, bigotry, and violence is called out reacting with even more vitriol and violence. 

Resonance is also found with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail in 1963 when he wrote the letter that inspires this series. And it was only a matter of time before he, like John, was murdered. King knew firsthand what happens when akatharto spirits within the human family are publicly named and consistently called out: there is an ugly outcry and bodily harm done to innocent victims. And yet, Dr. King was resolute and clear. Jesus had called him and he followed. He knew that the time was ripe. His naysayers said the actions were “untimely,” that he should “give the new city administration time to act.” King’s response:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation…“Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

There may be some members of Foundry who grow weary of this continued conversation. Some likely know it’s important but just want a break from it at church. Some may be wondering why we keep talking about it, or why we are investing so much energy and resources in the work of anti-racism right now. Some may think we’re already good to go on the topic, some may believe there are other, more important things we should focus on, and still others may feel uncomfortable and judged in the conversation. Some of our members of color might be concerned that we’re doing this work right now simply because it is the issue du jour, just another passing “church program” that won’t have any lasting impact or make real change. 

But I return to where I began, reminding us that the journey to racial justice at Foundry is not a knee-jerk reaction in this present moment, but has been inching and lurching along since before my arrival and certainly over the past six and a half years. The truth is that we have deep work to do in order to accomplish the catharsis, the purgation, of internal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism in our shared life. Wanting to “take a break” from the conversation is understandable for people of color who may be exhausted with grief and exposure, tired of all talk and no change. And we white people struggle with grief, discomfort, feelings of guilt, tension, and confusion… but let me say, as gently as I can, to my white family members: our siblings of color don’t get to “opt out” or “take a break” from any of this. Can we not, as a sign of solidarity and personal and institutional accountability, stay open and connected both to the conversation and the emerging work even and especially when it is painful and difficult? Can we not bear even that for the sake of justice? For the sake of our beloved siblings? 

In 2014 I said, “Racial bias is real and infects our culture like a cancer. It is not a ‘black problem.’ It is a human problem. Racial justice is not a ‘leftist’ or ‘progressive issue.’ It is a Christian issue and an issue of conscience for all people of good will. Racism’s insidious power affects us all.” 

And such entrenched, insidious, deadly power and ways of thinking, assuming, and acting will not be vanquished quietly or easily. Clearly. Again… inching… lurching… and yet so far to go…  Purging systemic racism is not a matter that will simply magically work itself out over time without any tension or forcing of the issue. In response to one who urged waiting because “the teachings of Christ take time to come to earth,” King wrote: 

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. 

Rev. Dr. King said this 58 years ago. 58 years. It was the time then. We had the chance then and look at where we are today. This, itself, is a testament to the power of the akatharto spirits of racial prejudice and just how determined they are to steal from us and the whole human family the life together that is possible. 

Years of study and conversation and consciousness-raising have brought us to this moment as a congregation. There have been moments all along the way when we might have done and said more, when we could have stepped into the work of racial justice and equity in a more sustained and impactful way. But the good news is that Jesus is calling us today to follow. We can choose this very day to receive the power and freedom Jesus gives us to share in the work of catharsis, of purgation, to cast out the soul-staining, body-breaking powers of white supremacy from our lives, our church, our denomination, our nation. We are called to do the work of sustained, tension-bearing public engagement and personal soul-searching. Now is the time to do something; the year 2021 is the time to do something definitive for our congregation for racial justice and equity—as definitive and concrete as the summer of great discernment around marriage equality. Now is our time and we are called to use the time creatively, to be moved by the power of Jesus at work in and through us to move our lives and institutions “from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.” We may be 400 years past time. But the time is always ripe to do right. It’s time.

https://foundryumc.org/

Don’t Run Away From Tension - January 24th, 2021

Don’t Run Away From Tension

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, January 24, 2020, third Sunday after the Epiphany. “Tired Feet, Rested Souls” series.

    Text: Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Considering how much people love a good fish story, it is curious that in the whole of the three-year lectionary cycle, the book of Jonah is included on only two Sundays—and neither of those selections include the fish! Today’s passage is certainly a key moment in the story. But the short book—totaling just four chapters—is such a rich wisdom parable, layered with symbol, satire, and surprises it merits not only a full read, but also repeated, probing reflection. Likely written in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., Jonah, like any good satire, is both entertaining and sharp in its critique. The Jewish people in this period—either toward the end of the Babylonian exile or newly returned—were struggling to navigate how best to relate as a minority population among the nations of the surrounding lands. There were tensions and concerns about assimilation and about losing their cultural and religious identity. These religious, tribal, national tensions are certainly part of the backdrop for the story of Jonah. And the primary characters—the reluctant Hebrew prophet Jonah, the city of Nineveh, and God—all play their parts brilliantly. The tension is palpable from the beginning.

God calls Jonah to cry out against the wickedness of Nineveh. Jonah’s response was to flee in the opposite direction. Historical side note: Jonah is mentioned in one other place in scripture (2 Kings 14:23-27) as a prophet who supported the Northern Kingdom (Israel) in the 8th century B.C.E. Nineveh is a large city in Assyria, the nation that brutally conquered the Northern Kingdom during that same period. The last place Jonah wanted to go was into the belly of the beast, Assyria. 

But in trying to get away, Jonah lands in the belly of another beast, the great fish provided by God who provides a strange, comic shelter for him within the waters of chaos and danger. In that place, Jonah cries out to God. And after three days and nights, Jonah is returned to dry land, changed. He is now not only a prophet, but fish vomit.

This is where our text picks up. God calls Jonah again and this time, Jonah doesn’t run away. He walks about a third of the way into Nineveh and delivers his prophecy, the shortest sermon on record, just 5 words in Hebrew: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And immediately, in a magical realism kind of way, the people “believed God,” their fasting and putting on sackcloth were signs of their repentance. The king of Nineveh ups the ante, proclaiming that all people and animals will fast and be covered with sackcloth and turn from their evil ways and violence.

And looking upon this rather absurd scene of people and their cows and sheep covered in sackcloth and ashes, God’s mind changed and the calamity Jonah had announced did not happen.

One might think that Jonah would be pleased that his 5 word sermon had such a transformative effect on the people. What we didn’t hear today, however, is that Jonah’s reaction is rage and despair. He goes so far as to say he’d rather die than live with this outcome. Why might Jonah be displeased at God’s mercy upon the Assyrians? We know one reason—Jonah hates them. Jonah wants God to be gracious, merciful, slow to anger, steadfastly loving and ready to relent from punishment with him but not with them. (4:2) Jonah wanted to end the story with his message of judgment being the last word. Instead, the story ends with Jonah outside the city, pouting under a tree withered by a worm (the kind of image that lends itself to a Bernie Sanders meme).

We don’t know if the people of Nineveh’s repentance was sincere. We don’t know if Jonah withers up like the tree or has a change of mind or heart. A good story doesn’t necessarily tie up all the loose ends. It leaves us in the tension of the questions and, ultimately, of our own choices, our own reality. It holds the mirror up in such a way that we are confronted with our own stuff, the ways our image does not yet reflect the image of God.

In this moment we, like the first hearers of Jonah, are in a moment of religious, tribal, and national tension. This story is a prism that shines light in multiple ways upon our lives. I will highlight two.

First, like Jonah, we may struggle to go where God calls us. There will be many reasons for this, but a pretty consistent reason that folk run away is that God’s call requires discomfort, requires us to enter into or even to create tension. And I’m talking about God’s call on all of us through our Baptism. To participate in God’s mighty acts of salvation, to use our God-given freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression, will mean that we’ll be led into situations that are deeply uncomfortable, emotionally fraught, and dangerous because that is what real love requires.

I am in regular conversation with a close colleague, a white man serving in East Texas in a town historically scarred with racist violence. He explains how folks in his area have figured out what it takes to “get along” and so they do what it takes not to rock the boat. My friend has been increasingly speaking out on issues of racial justice. One result of this is loss, not only of church members and money, but friends. As he prepared for one very public act of solidarity in town, he sent his family to grandma’s house out of fear of violence against them. His experience is just one of so many examples of why people—perhaps especially white people—might sympathize with the eight white pastors and religious leaders to whom Martin Luther King, Jr. responded in his “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail.” 

These eight white men were upset by the “boat rocking” of the direct actions in Birmingham. They suggested that the peaceful protests—protests akin to a prophet who walks into the city and proclaims God’s judgment against evil and violence (like Jonah or Jesus)—incited “hatred and violence.” They asked, “Why not negotiate instead?” To this MLK responded:

“You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

Too many persons who claim to follow Jesus are afraid of the word “tension,” unwilling to acknowledge tension as a divine change agent. People of any race, ethnicity, or culture can fall into this trap in various contexts—most folks recoil at the very thought of conflict and tension. But part of the lesson of our scripture with its backdrop of historical brutality against persons of other tribes and ethnicities; part of the call of God in our time as we grapple with the ongoing scourge of systemic racism in our country, is to recognize the ways that white churches, white leaders, white pastors have been and continue to be unwilling to speak and act as allies in the struggle for racial justice and equity for fear of tension and conflict. We have been perfectly willing to let hatred, violence, and tension affect the lives of our siblings of color. But when even a sniff of tension gets close to us, the pattern has been defensiveness and blame directed everywhere but where it truly belongs. Those white religious leaders in 1963 never once acknowledged that the “hatred and violence” they claimed as the outgrowth of peaceful protest were why the protests were necessary in the first place. 

As King famously wrote (and I quote directly, using the common parlance of the day), “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

It is here that many receiving these words may be mentally scurrying about to locate themselves as far away from any of those people—the Klan or the “white moderate”—as possible. After all, everyone knows that we are bold and willing to take a stand for the sake of justice! I give thanks to God that the huge Black Lives Matter sign on Foundry’s lawn, and the signs in my yard, my preaching and advocacy for racial justice and equity, my choice to march or publicly stand in solidarity, Foundry’s investment in the Journey to Racial Justice, don’t cause me to lose half my congregation or threaten the financial sustainability of the church or put my family in physical danger of violence. But let’s not pretend that systemic racism doesn’t exist within our congregation or that there is not a word for us in King’s letter. Together, we continue to try (thanks be to God). We continue to directly address issues and create spaces where tension and conflict are bound to emerge among us. This will likely increase over the coming months as we begin to discern concrete tactics to implement change. My prayer is that we will not run away from the tension, but receive it as a sign that we’re really doing something, that we might just be moving toward a “positive peace” with justice.

I also want to say a brief word about “unity.” Unity is a good word and a lofty goal. I hope anyone who truly knows me would say that I deeply desire unity among the human family. But like the “negative peace” of which King wrote, there can be a “negative unity.” Unity without justice, without change, without any accountability is just a word. Wishing for it or trying to manufacture a “kum ba yah” moment will not cut it, no matter how deeply we long to just get to unity already. In our rush to regain some sense of normalcy, a reprieve from daily chaos and intentionally divisive rhetoric, I pray we with the privilege of choice to retreat or to stay engaged, will not be silent when there is a move to release the tension before the work for “positive unity” is done. I pray we will remember that blaming others for sowing division while not taking concrete responsibility for our own role in sustaining injustice and disunity is hypocrisy.

And this leads to the other thing I want to briefly highlight. The story of Jonah challenges us to confront our own hatred and our own tribal, political, ideological, religious, racial, regional prejudices. This is a tension as difficult as any to bear. Jonah didn’t want his enemies to receive the mercy that God extended to him time and again. Perhaps he wanted God all to himself or for only his people, his nation. Perhaps he thought God was only on his side. Can we—you and I—be honest enough to admit our own hatred and prejudice? 

This tension is indeed difficult and painful; because it reveals just how far we are from fulfilling God’s call of radical love and mercy. That is the call upon every one of us, friend and foe alike. It is God’s radical love and mercy that has brought each of us through until this day—whether we perceive it or not. It’s the goal of our living, really, if we seek to be truly human. To love as God loves. To be merciful as God is merciful. This doesn’t mean we have to like everyone. It doesn’t mean we have to all agree on things. It absolutely doesn’t mean “anything goes.” But it will require us to honor one another enough as children of God to not kill each other, to pray for one another, to bear and even create tension in order to move toward the goal of positive peace and unity, and as King wrote, to “rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

God’s not going to let us go, no matter how much we try to run away… a storm, a fish, a call, a joke, a shade shrub, a protest, God will keep showing up, will keep working through the tensions so that we might finally… change. We can throw a tantrum about that. Or we can choose to say, “Thanks be to God.”

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Introducing the AutoParent Podcast - Foundry Family Ministries

You don’t have to be an AutoParent to be a good one. Join Family Pastor and mom of 2, Rev. K.C. Van Atta-Casebier as she openly shares her own hilarious parenting fails, secret cringe-worthy confessions, and some heartwarming parenting wins. If you need some solidarity and hope on this parenting journey, then this is your podcast! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @autoparent!

Guest Preacher Cory Booker - January 17th, 2021

Guest Preacher, the honorable Cory Booker. Introduction my Senior Pastor Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli.

Human Relations Sunday January 17th, 2021. Tired Feet, Rested Souls Sermon Series

https://foundryumc.org/archive/tired-feet-rested-souls