Blog Posts
Meeting Grief and Hopeful Longing
Earlier this week, 13 speakers and creatives gathering virtually to enflesh the meaning of grief and hopeful longing and homegoing during Enfleshing Witness 2022. This is a collection of some of our favorite quotes.
Earlier this month, 13 speakers and creatives gathered virtually to enflesh the meaning of grief, hopeful longing, and the practice of homegoing during Enfleshing Witness 2022.
While we know that so many of us are tempted to move beyond the grief and heartache of the past in general, and the last several years in particular, the planning team felt it necessary to gather to attend to this grief because, as the planning team wrote earlier this year, grief can be funded by a hope for new life.
Time and again during this year’s gathering that is what we heard: hope-filled longing. Yes pain, yes restlessness, yes discouragement, but also hope, and healing, and defiance.
Here is a list of some of our favorite quotes from the gathering:
Every time we lament, we refuse to take dispair as the final word.
Grace Imathiu
Culture and community…I’m giving you immunity from the pain and the sorrow given to you inhumanly.
YaNi Davis
Without our wound, where would our power be?
Jared Alcantera
In the midst of grief, in the midst of struggle, in the midst of trauma…when we are with our kin-folk we can still say, “I am ok.” This is a word of hope, a word of joy, an ethic, a practice for the people of God. May it be so in your life!
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
For me homegoing has really been about being grounded and touching the soil and touching the earth as a way of re-centering after going out into the city that’s a concrete jungle where it can be hard to find life.
Kimberly Jackson
Enfleshed witness is scarred witness.
Amar Peterman
When we experience tragedy and trauma it can be hard to stay present in our bodies and spirits. We often times will have stress responses where we go into flight, fight, or freeze. And it makes it difficult for us to stay courageously and compassionately socially engaged with our friends and our family and people that we care about. We get sucked into this trauma vortext where we are overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions. But I feel that the scriptures invite us to stay down…the sacred texts allow us the space to dwell in the word - to breathe in sweetly and breathe in deeply the breath of the most high.
Joe Davis
I think of the words from Wiz,
“Everybody look around
there's a reason to rejoice you see
Everybody come out
let's commence to singing joyfully
Everybody look up
And feel the hope that we’ve been waiting for
Can't you feel a brand new day?”
Can I confess something?
These words are haunting me these days.
When I hear these words…they tease me!
Candace Simpson
What if in a world that idolizes certainties and fundamentalisms - progressive or conservative with their “right” opinions - what if they’re revealed to be the sham building materials and shaky foundations that they’ve always been?
Jeff Chu
What grabbed your attention? What spoke to you during Enfleshing Witness?
Haven’t had a chance to watch yet? Purchase on-demand access for yourself or your organization here.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Juneteenth 2022: Once You See
Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash
As we approach Juneteenth this Sunday, we share this post again from Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman in the hopes it will inspire and challenge you and your communities. This post was originally written and published in June of 2020.
They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, Jesus asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”
Mark 8:22-26
One of my mother’s most notable sayings for me growing up was, “Once you know you can never not know; once you see you can never un-see.” When I was young, we received a kid’s magazine, Highlights, which always had a page of hidden images, i.e., pictures that had animals or some object hidden within a mundane scene like a living room. There were always prompts as to how to find the hidden object. “Look for a cat,” “look for a broom,” and so on. Sometimes, I would find the hidden object or animal quickly; sometimes it would take so long I would become frustrated. But, once I saw the object, I could never un-see it. After I had seen it, my eyes would land on an object whenever I looked at the picture, even when I wasn’t looking for it. I often wondered how I missed it in the first place.
Recently, I was asked why I thought the uprisings since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have shaken so many [white] people. What is the difference? I said, “Some people had 8 minutes and 46 seconds to encounter blatant anti-black racism for the first time.” They couldn’t turn away. Up to this point in their lives, they had been able to look away or ask infuriating questions like, “Well, what was he doing to be killed, choked, shot in the back while running away, sitting in his own apartment eating ice cream, etc.?”
As a black woman, born in the South in the shadow of Bull Conner’s Birmingham, I had become so tired of those kinds of questions. I had begun to say to my white friends—co-conspirators most, some just allies—that until white people could see that anti-black racism is their problem and not just a problem for black people, nothing would ever change. Until the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative[1] is taken in, seen, viscerally and empathically experienced, nothing would change in this country. What happened is that during the shelter-in-place and isolating for this novel coronavirus pandemic many white people who never had to see, saw 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
“Can you see anything?” Jesus asked the blind man in Bethsaida. People brought the man to Jesus and “begged him to touch him.” On a hygiene note, the story is gross. I mean, spit on the eyes, Jesus? Really? Jesus takes the man out of view of the village people, perhaps beyond view of the people who expected him never to see, and put saliva on his eyes and touched him. “Can you see anything?” The first answer is instructive. “I can see people, but they look like trees.” I can see people, but not as people. I can see black people, but they are not humans to me; they are a part of the landscape. I can see people, and they are walking around, but they don’t look like anyone I would interact with. I don’t see them as human.”
So Jesus did a second laying on of hands. This time, the man “looked intently.” That phrase also gives me pause: he looked intently. That is to say, he TRIED. He WANTED to see the people as more than trees. And his effort, along with Jesus’ touch, brought him to fully restored sight, “and he saw everything clearly.” I wish the text had said, “He saw EVERYONE clearly,” but I’ll take it. At least he began to see people as people, as human, and I hope that it also means, as important, as valuable, and as of worth.
After his sight is completely restored, Jesus tells the man not to go into the village. How odd. Except I think I do understand that for some white people, it’s hard to go back into their village, the place where they couldn’t see at all. I think complete sight, and the ability to never un-see is radical healing and revolutionary change. You can never go back to “business as usual” or “relationships the way they were.”
Maybe it was the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a knee on the neck of George Floyd.
Maybe it was seeing Ahmaud Arbery hunted down and killed by vigilantes;
or thinking about Breonna Taylor riddled with eight bullets, dead in her house in Louisville, and the police report saying she had no injuries.
Whatever moved people from “seeing black people as trees” to seeing them as human, as if our lives matter, something happened. And my mother’s words are the gospel truth: “once you know you can never not know; once you see, you can never un-see.” And if the truth sets us free, perhaps the church will squint more intently, and with a second touch from Jesus, never return to the village where not seeing is just the way it is. I certainly pray it is so.
[1] Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876, https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/. Accessed June 18, 2020.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is the founder, president, and CEO of WomanPreach! Inc., a non-profit organization that brings preachers into full prophetic voice regarding womanist approaches to issues of equity and justice. She is the Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and also an Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible. Dr. Bridgeman is also an esteemed author and editor who has written and contributed to many published works, including “Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (2016), The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Fortress Press, 2009), and more.
Twitter | DrValerieB
Facebook | valerie.bridgeman.3
Blog | Poetry & Life Stories
Website | WomanPreach!
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Two Years Later: Racism In America
National visionaries, professors, and pastors provide biblical wisdom to help make sense of the world today.
Two years ago today George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. We continue to mourn his death and the racism that permeates this country. We offer the following words from our network of contributors shared after Mr. Floyd’s death in the hopes they would continue to provide a witness for your proclamation and our living together in a more just and peaceful world.
We are currently collecting thoughts from our contributors regarding the mass shooting in Uvalde, TX and will be sharing those shortly.
Sincerely,
The Church Anew Team
Dr. Walter Brueggemann
Professor Emeritus
Columbia Seminary
The church is in the “Love Business.” That is what we do. We dare make the claim that “God is love” (I John 4:16). Our come back to that wondrous passion of God for the world is to love back…love God…love neighbor. Indeed the way we love God is to love neighbor. When we receive the love of God and act it out toward God and neighbor, we are not afraid. We are not afraid because
Perfect love casts out fear! (I John 4:18)
That is the strategy we use with our young children. Our love for them overrides their fears. We may pause over this stunning statement. When we are secure in a long reliable faithfulness fear, has no power over us; we are free to live grace-filled, unencumbered lives without looking over our shoulder. As we face this immediate brutality in our midst, it seems that the gospel proposition in the epistle is completely reversed:
Perfect fear casts out love.
What a mouthful! “Perfect fear!” Fear that is totalizing, all encompassing, redefining everything! Our society is now occupied by perfect fear:
The virus lands us in fear;
The disabled economy leaves us in fear;
Elementally we may be fearful that the old familiar which is precious to us is evaporating before our very eyes. The old certitudes don’t count for much.
Fear mongering has become a political strategy, because frightened people are easier to manipulate.
And of course there is always the old fear of the other, fear of everyone who is unlike us, fear of people of color.
Fear makes love impossible. Love moves us toward the other; fear draws us away from the other. Fear turns to anger under threat. Fear turns to hate; fear easily morphs to violence. Anger, hate, violence are forms of fear that we imagine will make us safe.
The community in the love business might well pause over fear, name it, pay attention to it, notice it, and dissect it. We might do well to have prayers and litanies that name, in dramatic ways, the fears that summon us and notice their power for us. It is our work in love to outflank fear by greater evidence of love, by outrageous gestures and policies of love, by foolish give-aways of life’s resources with nothing held back. Love is “the great give-away” that can be acted out in terms of health, wellbeing, education, and housing.
We are in a contest between love and fear. It is counter-intuitive for us to bet on love but that is the bet we have made in baptism. The epistle ends with an admonition:
Keep yourselves from idols. (I John 5:21)
Idols are false forms of assurance. To trust such false forms of assurance is to live in fear because we know the idols cannot keep their promises to us. Every day we are in process of deciding whether love or fear is the order of the day. Now is the time for love to make a stand against fear. We make that stand by implementing our baptism in neighborly ways. Fear cannot win against love that is bold and wise for the neighborhood.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Pentecost Sunday easily is one of my favorite days on the Christian liturgical calendar. The pageantry of fiery red banners and glorious music to remind us of the Spirit among us always encourages me. But as it has approached this year, I have not been excited. We are not going to gather in person for the pageantry, so we will not be able to reenact the spilling out of hiding into the full light of God’s grace and the boldness of witnessing the great power of God. We won’t be able to practice that pageantry that reminds us we are empowered and prepared to tell the story of God in Christ. But though I will miss the pageantry, that is not really why I’m not excited. The level of grief and rage that has encompassed me and so many justice seekers and workers I know has made it hard to turn toward the festival. What can we say about the power of God “fully come” to the gathered disciples in a season of sustained and increasing racialized terror? What can we say about spilling out into the streets, empowered beyond fear, in an age of sheltering in place and hunkering down? What can we say about rushing wind and little fires when Minneapolis is burning?
Acts 2:14 and following, where Peter—the one who had denied Jesus on the night of his arrest—found his voice to interpret the clamor the people in the streets were seeing arrested me while I was pondering those questions. “These people are not drunk.” Drunk didn’t make sense, especially since what was happening was that the people from the upper room, the once-hiding disciples were emboldened to speak about God’s deeds and more importantly, the people heard “in their own language.” Jerusalem was about as multinational and multicultural as they come, but these disciples were not. And maybe Pentecost in the midst of my sorrow can remind us that this gift is not nationalistic; it does not belong to one place or one people. For me, trapped in an North American nightmare, today that thought helps me say, “come, Spirit, come!”
The other piece that has me struggling is that Peter quoted the prophet Joel. “All flesh.” It’s the “all flesh” that I’m struggling with today, too. The Spirit comes and blows upon and ignites “all flesh.” That would mean that all flesh is holy, touched, anointed, called—no matter their gender, ethnicities, or economic status. It would mean that, like the scene to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, we are compelled to love our flesh. The spirit comes to “flatten the curve” of inequalities and differences in flesh, so to speak. But today—sitting in my living room, wondering about the fires alit in Minneapolis or the broken hearts of family members who have lost loved ones to COVID19, I want to both hold hope that that flesh is empowered, too, and scream to the top of my lung.
The Day of Pentecost in Acts is a hopeful scene. Today, I hope beyond the raging fires of frustration, the Spirit will blow on our embers and remind us what power we have to change the world for good.
Dr. Eric Barreto
Associate Professor of New Testament
Princeton Theological Seminary
On a Pentecost Sunday far too reminiscent of far too many Sundays for African American communities, I would start preaching this weekend by first going back to Jesus’ commission of his disciples in Acts 1:8. There, Jesus calls his followers to be witnesses, to bear witness to what Jesus has done until our feet reach the farthest extent of our imaginations. Before the gifts of Pentecost, a crucified victim and resurrected conqueror of imperial violence teaches us to witness, to see, to speak, to move, to be.
Witness, you see, is not just a verbal activity. Witness is not characterized solely by words or speech or language or even a tweet.
Witness is a bodily act. Witness walks alongside the oppressed. Witness looks into the eyes of the dying, not as a spectator but as if our lives are intertwined, for they indeed are.
Witness notes the thin, capricious, unjust line between the living and the dying. Witness marches on the streets. Witness votes with love.
Witness says, “Enough,” but then does something about it with the power some of our hands wield, the persuasion some of our voices are given, the places where privilege lets some of us stand without the threat of state violence.
The kind of witness Jesus calls for here includes our mouths and our eyes, of course, but also our ears. Witness trusts the testimony of those who have been oppressed, even without video evidence. Witness trusts those who have been harmed.
Such witness is necessarily costly. Such witness makes demands upon our lives. And let’s be clear: if we seek to be witnesses of what Jesus has done and experienced, the burden of witness is amplified.
For in the Gospel of Luke, we bear witness to an innocent man hung up on empire’s arrogance, sacrificed at the altar of law and order, vilified for the cause of the Pax Romana, executed because the powerful can get away with murder, killed to preserve the perception of social safety and economic prosperity. And in his innocent death, we ought to see that if we happen to sit in the shadow of empire’s protections, that shadow is fleeting as the whims of empire shift. And if that protection is something we never assumed, then we are reminded that Jesus lived that trauma right to a Roman cross.
My friends, hear Jesus say to us, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” And now hear him say, “You will be my witnesses in Ferguson and and Waller County, Texas; Baltimore and Staten Island; Cleveland and Louisville; Falcon Heights and Minneapolis; and to the ends of the earth where we imprison the masses and cage children because of profit and fear and the nation’s collective complicity in racial injustice.”
Before the flames of Pentecost, the call to the disciples was already clear: witness, see, speak, move, be.
That ancient clarion call could not be any clearer today.
Rev. Paul Raushenbush
Senior Advisor for Public Affairs and Innovation
Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)
There is a demon in this land. A demon, whose name is legion, who has infected our collective soul since even before our birth, a demon whose logic, whose power, whose method is degradation, subjugation, death. The demon possessed souls throughout the land, well dressed, respectable, scientific, religious, passing lies as truth to make profits for a few. It is a demon that quotes scripture to mimic divine sanction, that is taught, like Gospel, passing one generation to the next, delighting in the crucifixions of innocents that need no cross to make their point.
There is a demon in the land, its power is fear, its weapon is violence, its method is lies, its name is racism. This demon has passed from generation to generation taking new forms, resulting in the same violence. “I am legion” the demon warns, “I am slavery, I am lynching, I am prisons, I am policing. You cannot kill me, for I am with you always.” The demon is certain of its survival, because we, as a country, refuse to name it, refuse to expose the demon for what it is, refuse to do the spiritual and reparation work to cast it out. Until we do, it will throw us again and again into the fire, until we are consumed.
Will we cast out this demon of white supremacy? Will we send this demon into the herd of pigs to be drown? All things are possible with God. I believe Lord, help me with my disbelief. The Lord calls to this sinful generation: Repent of the racism that corrupts your body and repair the destruction of slavery that has been rent for the centuries. Cast out this demon, and be saved.
Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
Christian Theological Seminary
On Monday, May 25, 2020 a police officer asphyxiated Mr. George Floyd.
As one of the human body’s reflex processes, breathing seems to be one of life’s most natural abilities. I heard one yoga instructor say that our bodies were made to breathe. Nevertheless, a police officer cut off Mr. George Floyd’s airway and denied him his natural ability to breathe.
On Memorial Day officers of the peace stood by as their colleague strangled Mr. George Floyd. On the day many paused to remember those who breathed their last breath in military service, those charged to protect and serve the citizenry suffocated Mr. George Floyd.
Breathing is so critical to human life that medical technologies have been developed to aid those who have trouble breathing on their own. Asthmatics and those who suffer from bronchitis, or emphysema know quick-relief inhalers and medications can ease restrictions to a person’s airways. Under extreme cases, breathing machines or ventilators blow air into the lungs, helping a person breathe when they are unable to do so on their own.
On May 25th, anyone with access to social media or network television heard Mr. George Floyd plead that he could not breathe. He could not breathe because his lung function was compromised. Lung function is important because, according to the American Lung Association, alongside our heart, our lungs pump oxygen-rich blood to all the cells in the body. The lungs move breath through our bodies.
This important work of moving breath through a system is not new. According to the biblical writers, when The Divine began to create, “the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters” (Gen 1:2, Common English Bible).
The Hebrew word translated “wind” in this verse may also be translated “spirit” or “breath.” The verse may therefore read: God’s breath swept over the waters. Before God spoke and there was light, God’s breath moved. Before there was Sky and Earth, God’s breath moved. Before there was sun, moon, or stars, there was the breath of God. It seems in the beginning, the one thing active was God’s breath.
The American writer and civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson renders a poetic account of the origin of humanity and offers that breath is what makes us living.
“This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.”[1]
God blew God’s breath into a lump of clay formed in God’s own image. On May 25, 2020 a police officer denied that same breath to Mr. George Floyd who (though formed in God’s own image) lay on the ground like a lump of clay. How is it that one human can so callously undo what which God has done?
Gen 1:2 reminds the reader that even when darkness covers the face of the earth—God’s spirit, God’s wind, God’s breath moves. And when God’s breath moves, chaos acquiesces to order. When God’s breath flutters light appears in darkness. When God’s breath moves without restriction, humanity transforms. We become living souls again. The question for believers is, “Will we move with God’s breath or will we restrict God’s breath?”
[1] James Weldon Johnson’s poem “The Creation.”
Rev. Angela Denker
Minnesota Pastor and Veteran Journalist
Did we lock the front door?
Where’s your mask?
Are the sirens far enough away?
My son looked out his window last night and said he saw a dark orange light, and his dad told him it was the sun, setting, but then we realized it was fire.
Flames engulfed our city of Minneapolis last night. Angry fire, purifying fire, destructive fire, devastating fire.
In the midst of a fire, the smoke gets so thick that you cannot breathe.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breath keeps us alive.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Don’t breathe my breath, or I could give you Covid, or you could give me Covid, and we both could die.
People who die of Covid often die because they can’t breathe, the virus engulfing their lungs and suffocating them. Sometimes a machine breathes for them, for long enough that their lungs can heal and gather strength again.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Shove a tube down his throat, he coughs, saliva enters the air, the virus doesn’t care: it comes only to kill and destroy, using the breath that gives us life.
George Floyd couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t the virus but a knee, a white police officer’s knee, kneeling onto tall, strong, dark-skinned George Floyd with the full weight of racial anger and prejudice and corrupt systems and segregated neighborhoods and institutions built in liberal Minnesota that weigh heavily on all our chests.
It all came to bear on George Floyd that sunny day.
George Floyd was big, strong, black. But in Minnesota we don’t have problems with race. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We support African-American rights and privileges. Just not in my neighborhood. In theory we love black people. We wish they’d come to our churches, sit in the back and sing our white hymns and not make too much noise.
In reality we choose a different park. We ask if they have a permit for that barbecue. We say it’s about “good schools” and “crime” and “drug abuse.”
We love diversity. Below a certain percentage. Talking a certain way. Staying in our sanctioned box.
The air we breathe itself has always been racist and contaminated and threatening death and destruction. Now we can’t ignore the death in the air any longer. It burns bright orange.
Fire needs oxygen to burn. First the fire then the air clears, and you can breathe life again.
This weekend is Pentecost: the day the church celebrates holy fire, flames that brought understanding and unification and new hope.
The flames of Minneapolis these past few days signify death and destruction. No neighborhood deserves to be destroyed. George Floyd did not deserve to die.
Only God can take flames of death and transform fire into new life and hope for the future.
First Jesus enters into a locked room filled with fear. He enters into a people who have begun to give up hope, to ask if all they believed was merely a mirage.
He breathes on them. The Holy Spirit is fire. It’s also breath. Breath is life.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The Holy Spirit is among us.
Dr. Shively T. J. Smith
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Boston University School of Theology
This Sunday, I am seated before a mirror viewing the Paradox of Pentecost. Today should be a Sunday that reflects back on us a fresh vision of hope, expectation, and power. But, for many, we stand before our mirrors trembling with other emotions:
FRUSTRATION… because yet another white person feels entitled to censure a black and brown body in a public, open space
FEAR… because attacks on Asian and Asian American communities and individuals are on the rise
HELPLESSNESS… because protecting inmates and employees within incarceration facilities from the virus is low priority since African Americans and Hispanics comprise approximately 56% of all incarcerated people, though we collectively constitute only approximately 28% of the U.S. population
RAGE… because of George Floyd’s death when law enforcement took a knee on his neck.
This 2020 Pentecost Sunday, I am not in the upper room receiving an infusion of the Holy Ghost and power. Rather, I find myself returning to the foot of the cross on “Long Friday,” standing alongside Mary Magdalene and other women “looking on from a distance” (Mark 15:40) as Jesus “breathed his last” (vv. 37, 39).
This past week, we have lived our own modern version of that ancient crucifixion story. We watched the story replay again. We viewed the spectacle of death created by the racist actions and proclivities of those living under the delusion that they are the most powerful, chosen, and righteous of us. Yet, in our faith story, those most chosen are not the ones inflicting pain and death, mocking and blaming the victim as life leaves his innocent body.
Standing as one among the Marys and Marks of today, watching helplessly as “they” kill again, I see Jesus crying out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani; My God, My God why have you forgotten me” (Mark 15:34).
When the Bible ceases to be sufficient for capturing my lament this week, I reach for the Prophet Marvin Gaye when he crooned “Inner City Blues” in 1971:
Oh, make you wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
This ain't livin', this ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'
Be clear, my friends. Though we ask, “My God, why have you forgotten us?” or we bellow Marvin’s declaration, “This makes me want to holler”—this week is NOT God’s doing. This moment is the theater and pageantry of empire that stares in the face of God’s creation and destroys anyway.
When I think about all the Floyd’s—male and female—who breathed their last and the countless witnesses that have watched in despair with little hope of recourse or justice, I return to today’s Paradox of Pentecost. During this day in which I am supposed to feel most powerful and hopeful as a person of faith, I instead feel powerless. Yet, I am animated by the random outbreaks of mixed emotion and the cacophony of sounds rising from within me and outside me. Today, I hear Jesus’ cry. I hear Marvin Gaye’s song. I hear Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.”
I stand enveloped by the sounds of protest from every color, creed, and class challenging censorship, erasure, dismissal, divestment, and slaughter. People cry out in many forms to be seen, heard, and counted as human beings with the right to justice, equity, and flourishing. Today, I hear clearly. I see plainly. I feel deeply. Perhaps here is the Pentecost moment.
I also sense the lamenting vibrations of my ancestors running through my head, heart and hands. When they had no words, they sang a lament of truth and questions, facing death-dealers who wielded rhetoric of God and state for their own perfidious ends. Theirs is a song bubbling up from a grieving, yet defiantly resilient people. When I sing it, I remember that together, there is more than just watching we must do and my ancestors showed us the way… “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Ooh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble …
Rev. Meta Herrick Carlson
Minneapolis Pastor and Poet
Bethlehem Lutheran Church
Now when Adam and Eve knew each other, she conceived and bore a son they named Cain, which means their sum (to produce). Cain grew up to be a farmer who cared for the land. His brother Abel watched over the flocks of animals. When the young men made sacrifices to God, Abel's was regarded but Cain's was not received with the same appreciation. And this was deeply disturbing to Cain.
While Cain knew how to produce and strive, he did not know how to feel or fail or ask for forgiveness. This lesser appreciation for his sacrifice was enough to unravel his sense of self, his loyalty to kin, his faith in God, and his stewardship of creation. You see, when you are named for what you produce, your output can become confused with your identity and inherit value.
Cain internalized God’s silence and decided that Abel was the problem. Scripture says he acted out of his mind.
So the LORD said to Cain, “Why is your body so angry, your face downcast, your mind keeping score, your spirit justified by fear? Evil waits where your insecurities fester. Turn away from these things and live.”
But Cain’s paranoia outweighed his fear of the LORD. He lured his brother to the fields and murdered him in a jealous rage. Cain chose being right over and against being in relationship while Abel’s blood soaked into the earth.
When God asked after Abel, Cain told the LORD “I am not responsible for my brother. What does his suffering and death have to do with me?”
And God wept. God wept for the brother whose breath and beats were stolen. And God wept for the brother whose breath was wasted on violent apathy and lies.
The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. You will toil and wander and struggle to produce in this land that knows your brother’s blood.”
Unacquainted with confession and empathy, Cain defended his actions and played the victim. His only concern was protecting his own breath and beats from revenge. And so he wandered away from family and farm and faith, marked by the curse of his own insecurity and isolation for generations.
Some say he still wanders, still seeking salvation without repentance, reparations, and reconciliation for the murder of his brother Abel. The fear is still breathing. The hatred is still blowing. Violence still swirls in the air between blood soaked earth and heaven’s banner.
Ms. Rozella Haydée White
Owner, Coach, and Consultant
RHW Consulting
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:21-22
Peace be with you.
I send you
Receive the Holy Spirit.
In these two verses, Jesus provides a framework for people of faith to embody life-giving and justice-seeking faith.
The Promise: Peace.
Our imagination of peace has to expand beyond a state that is defined as the absence of conflict or a sanitized, surface level understanding that doesn’t fight to create a new reality. In the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”[1] The promise of peace to always be with us; the peace that surpasses human understanding; peace that flows like a river all point to peace that is marked by justice. That which is just is that which breeds life. We have no peace because we have no justice. Lives are being taken because we have not justice. Peace and justice coexist to create a new reality that reflects the promise of God - a world where there is no more dying and no more tears; where there is no more grief and no more disconnection. The promise of peace makes way for us to do the work that God has sent us to do in Jesus’s name - the work of liberation.
The Assignment: Liberation.
I’ve been participating in an online conference this week called The Wellness of We. One of the presenters said, “I am not interested in allies. I’ve erased this word from my vocabulary. I am interested in folks who understand that our liberation is interconnected.”[2] When I heard these words, my spirit leapt and I was instantly reminded of a quote that is credited to Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist from Australia. “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”[3] I don’t need you—White people—to help me. I need for you—White people—to recognize your sinfulness; your brokenness and woundedness, and to repent. I need you to turn away from the sin that is White Supremacy and the lies that fear and scarcity pedal; lies that lead you to continue to invest in whiteness rather than divest from whiteness. I need you to be born again, into your God given humanity, a humanity we share and one that reminds us that we belong to one another. I need you to understand that you have nothing that can help me. Rather, we share a reality that is dependent upon our shared liberation in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven, here on earth. And our ever faithful Creator, the Triune God, has gifted us with the sustenance and power we need in the Holy Spirit.
The Sustenance: Spirit.
Famed Gospel artist, Hezekiah Walker has a popular song, “I Need You to Survive.” The words are simple and straightforward. They speak to our bound liberation and the importance of recognizing that we are inextricably linked. Spirit reminds us of this relationship and empowers us to continually seek out the restoration, healing, and wholeness of our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. Spirit provides the insight and wisdom to engage in the ongoing work of tending to our individual and collective wounds in order to find holistic, embodied healing. Spirit isn’t concerned with our intellect. Spirit is concerned with Knowing that is deeply rooted in our bones; Knowing that is tied to feelings of empathy, compassion, and love. Spirit calls us to nurture these feelings, to practice them, and to live them. We dive deeper until we meet ourselves again, as new beings who can see each other through Spirit lenses, ones that remind us of the promise, the assignment, and ultimately, the sustenance to be the people of faith that God invites us to be.
Our most faithful response is to trust the promise, engage the work of liberation and lean on Spirit. To not do this work is an affront to our Creator and a repudiation of Jesus our Lord.
[1] Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.
[2] Anasa Troutman
[3] Aboriginal Activist Groups, Queensland, 1970s.
Dr. Brennan Breed
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Columbia Theological Seminary
George Floyd’s was killed when a police officer knelt on his neck in plain view for over five minutes until he died. In the church, kneeling is often a symbolic act of worship, of reverence and humility in the face of the divine. But George Floyd's death was caused by someone who knelt in deference to a different authority: he bowed at the altar of white supremacy. To him, and to those who looked on and supported him, it seemed apparent that some lives do not deserve breath. We who have witnessed this brutal act are all now faced with a choice: what do we worship? At what altar do we kneel?
On the Christian calendar, this Sunday is Pentecost. The story of Pentecost as told in Acts 2:1- 41 describes a day of celebrating and witnessing to God's blessing of all the nations of the world. The nations heard the gospel preached in all the myriad languages that together in their multifaceted beauty reflect the glory of the God who created and sustains them all. Peter quoted the book of Joel to explain what had happened: “God says, ‘I will pour out my spirit on all people’” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28).
Pentecost is a day to remind ourselves that the God who created the world inhabits the breath and speech of all of our siblings throughout the entire earth. As Dr. Eric Barreto teaches us, Pentecost reveals that God cherishes our diversities, and that God is present in the gathering of diverse people who love and care for each other.
Pentecost is a day to celebrate God's breath, the spirit, as she renders God present in our diverse midst. In the Spirit, we understand that we are all the manifold, multifaceted image of God.
It follows, then, that Pentecost must also be a day to denounce white supremacy and the antichrist actions that it empowers. George Floyd, like Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and so many other African-American victims of white supremacist violence, cannot breathe any longer. They cannot raise their voices. But like the earth itself (Gen 4:10), we can use our breath to cry out on behalf of the blood of the innocent and demand a reckoning. On the day of Pentecost, Peter told the crowd assembled the story of a man unjustly executed by the state —namely, Jesus—and then pleaded with them to repent and seek forgiveness for their sins, and to strive to separate themselves from the corrupt generation in which they found themselves immersed (Acts 2:38-40). We, too, must take a hard look at our complicity in our own culture’s corruption that time and again manifests in an event of anti-Pentecost: that is, the taking of breath from the image of God.
Ashon Crawley has written a beautiful book on the life-giving and liberatory role of breath and the spirit in the Black Pentecostal tradition that has sustained many individuals and communities who have emerged from this tradition in the midst of a world hell-bent on destroying and subjugating them. It begins with Eric Garner’s dying words: “I can’t breathe.” As Crawley shows us, the whooping and singing and speaking in tongues that one finds in Black Pentecostal spaces create a social space of shared breath and power.
But the time has long passed for the white churches in the United States to stand alongside our African-American siblings and refuse to be complicit bystanders in a system built to suffocate them. We must commit to making spaces for all of God’s children to breathe and exist, even flourish, in peace. This is the work to which the Spirit calls us. We must respond.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
May You Be Brave
In December 2013, I wrote the blessing below and posted it on my social media. I don’t remember the context for this blessing, what made me write it at the time. But as I was reflecting on what I wanted to say to preachers who must stand and deliver this Sunday, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and the Sundays that follow, it seems especially appropriate:
May God Strengthen You for Adversity
A blessing for today:
May God strengthen you for adversity
and companion you in joy.
May God give you the courage of your conviction
and the wisdom to know when to speak and act.
May you know peace.
May you be gifted with deep,
true friendship and love.
May every God-breathed thing you put
your hand to prosper and succeed.
May you have laughter to fortify you
against the disappointments.
May you be brave.
© Valerie Bridgeman
December 18, 2013
On Wednesday, I watched with sadness as the United States Capitol building was overrun by aggrieved citizens. I want to be clear to note that they were citizens. They’ve been called a number of things, including by me: rioters, insurrectionists, seditionists. But they were citizens who believe that the election was “stolen” from them, who believe that the votes of (mostly) black and brown people should be rejected, that there is “proof” that the current president has been wronged. And so, they were there for the revolution and to “take back their country.” For them, those of us who voted against their will are not true Americans. I was not surprised at all. I have found myself weary from all the handwringing and the “this is not who we are” posts from (mostly) white people. I have found myself weary from the “unbelievable” and “shock” from the media and others. Most of that weariness is because no one I know that is an activist/advocate for racial and social justice found it “unbelievable” or “shocking.” It was predictable. I’ve been saying for many years, “we are not safe,” because I have been in conversations with (white) people who have said directly that they can’t wait for a revolution to “take our country back.” It was as American as baseball and apple pie. White grievance and rage are baked into the DNA of this nation. I know what I just wrote is offensive to people whose mythmaking about this country deifies it and demonizes anyone who says such things. Right about now comes the “if you don’t love this country, leave” or “go back where you came from.” It’s all so very predictable.
I turned my television to a station that is consistently sympathetic to the current president and was reminded that there is no Venn diagram between the world I generally inhabit and the world of those who only dwell in that world. And, as I usually pray, I wondered how in the world will we ever know one another since we don’t live in the same universe. And that’s where the blessing I wrote in 2013 comes in. I don’t have anything deep to write in this moment. But I know that those who claim the gospel as our starting point will have to be brave. Bravery requires precision. It requires thinking clearly about what all the issues are. It requires using language carefully. It requires resisting pablum and platitudes. It requires resisting “what about-ism” when calling out wrong. It requires truth-telling, even in the face of rage and handwringing. It calls for wisdom. But it also calls for friendships, love, and laughter. It calls for strength and God-given companionship. And preachers must invoke all of that. So, friends, may you be brave as you prepare to preach in the breach of these difficult days.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio
Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
A Eulogy for John Robert Lewis, “The Boy from Troy”
I was six years old when the late Congressman John Robert Lewis was beaten to near death on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what became known as Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. This weekend I searched for proof that I heard about the march and the violence from CBS’s Walter Cronkite, since that’s from where our family learned all our television news in those days. I could find no footage, but I can hear the story in his voice. I do sharply remember, as a young child, the intent look on my mother’s dignified face as she listened to either television or radio in those days. I could not possibly know the weight of the moments, young as I was, but thinking back, I remember how weighty our house felt in central Alabama with all the happenings around us.
I grew up two hours northeast of Troy, Alabama, in the rural farmlands between Childersburg, where we attended school after desegregation—a story for another time—and Sylacauga, our rural route address. In the summers, we spent plenty of weeks in the blackbelt further south in either Reeltown (sic), where my paternal grandmother lived in a sharecropper’s shack and worked in white people’s homes, or Opelika, where aunts, uncles, and cousins lived “in town.” In Opelika is where I met another boy from Troy, and there we shared, maybe lamented, the world as it was and how dangerous it was for us, even as it was in the 1970s by then. I share these memories only to say that John Lewis’ landscape is the one I know intimately, the memory of walking on hot dirt, picking cotton, drinking from cool creeks are deep in my veins, and being aware of the danger of running into violent white people. We weren’t even trying to “get in the way,” as Lewis would later admonish us. We were just trying to survive.
Over the years, I have been deeply affected by Lewis’ life and commitment, partly because he reminded me so much of my own father, who would be 95 were he alive today, who was also short with a hearty laugh and a twinkle in his eyes, and a fiery preacher. That’s the part about Lewis that I want people to remember. Though he lived his call out in public life, it was the call to the life of a public theologian whose life and legislation and commitments were his primary sermons. He became known as the “Conscience of Congress.” He had a fierce strength that came through, even when he was not speaking. He never lost that country southern lilt to his voice, so I’m sure there were times people thought of him as a “country bumpkin.” I know, because in the past few years I actually heard a much, much younger activist call him that. Hearing it enraged me, but as an Alabamian myself, I know how easy it is for people to dismiss the moral courage and strength of my people. Regionalism aside, Lewis’ dignity was my parents’ dignity; my grandparents’ dignity. I have seen it all my life from ordinary black people. Lewis’s life just called him to a bigger stage, a historic role, but he was of the waft and woof of his landscape.
When the word came that Lewis died, I was not surprised since news had come a few weeks earlier that he had decided to receive hospice care for stage IV pancreatic cancer.[1] As a former hospice chaplain, I read the news knowing that he had come to death’s door with the same dignity and clear-eyed thinking as he had lived his life. That he would teach us how to die as he taught us to live made sense to me. As Lewis lies in state today, only the second black legislator to do so,[2] I honor his life. He deserves whatever accolades come toward him today and in the future. He really was the best of us as a people and as a nation. An even more deserving tribute to him will be who we will decide to be in the light of his legacy, and whether we will commit ourselves to “getting in the way” (as he often said) of injustice and instead get in “good trouble.” It will be whether those of us who are Christian follow his example for moral integrity, humility, passion for justice, and faithfulness. We still have work to do.
[1]Ralph Ellis, “Civil Rights Icon and Congressman John Lewis Dies,” https://www.webmd.com/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/news/20200718/civil-rights-icon-and-congressman-john-lewis-dies. Accessed July 27, 2020.
[2]Clare Foran, “ Elijah Cummings lies in state at the Capitol,” Elijah Cummings, who died in October 2019, was the first African American lawmaker to lie in state in the Capital Rotunda. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/elijah-cummings-lie-in-state-capitol/index.html. Accessed July 27, 2020.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio
Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3
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Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT
Church Anew has gathered a diverse group of Christian thought leaders to ignite innovation and imagination for leading congregations in a time like this. These keynote speakers will amplify the voices of local leaders from the Minneapolis area, who will share stories of how the church is leading in our own context, particularly in response to systemic racism in our communities.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Juneteenth 2020: Once You See
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio
Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3
They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, Jesus asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”
Mark 8:22-26
One of my mother’s most notable sayings for me growing up was, “Once you know you can never not know; once you see you can never un-see.” When I was young, we received a kid’s magazine, Highlights, which always had a page of hidden images, i.e., pictures that had animals or some object hidden within a mundane scene like a living room. There were always prompts as to how to find the hidden object. “Look for a cat,” “look for a broom,” and so on. Sometimes, I would find the hidden object or animal quickly; sometimes it would take so long I would become frustrated. But, once I saw the object, I could never un-see it. After I had seen it, my eyes would land on an object whenever I looked at the picture, even when I wasn’t looking for it. I often wondered how I missed it in the first place.
Recently, I was asked why I thought the uprisings since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have shaken so many [white] people. What is the difference? I said, “Some people had 8 minutes and 46 seconds to encounter blatant anti-black racism for the first time.” They couldn’t turn away. Up to this point in their lives, they had been able to look away or ask infuriating questions like, “Well, what was he doing to be killed, choked, shot in the back while running away, sitting in his own apartment eating ice cream, etc.?”
As a black woman, born in the South in the shadow of Bull Conner’s Birmingham, I had become so tired of those kinds of questions. I had begun to say to my white friends—co-conspirators most, some just allies—that until white people could see that anti-black racism is their problem and not just a problem for black people, nothing would ever change. Until the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative[1] is taken in, seen, viscerally and empathically experienced, nothing would change in this country. What happened is that during the shelter-in-place and isolating for this novel coronavirus pandemic many white people who never had to see, saw 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
“Can you see anything?” Jesus asked the blind man in Bethsaida. People brought the man to Jesus and “begged him to touch him.” On a hygiene note, the story is gross. I mean, spit on the eyes, Jesus? Really? Jesus takes the man out of view of the village people, perhaps beyond view of the people who expected him never to see, and put saliva on his eyes and touched him. “Can you see anything?” The first answer is instructive. “I can see people, but they look like trees.” I can see people, but not as people. I can see black people, but they are not humans to me; they are a part of the landscape. I can see people, and they are walking around, but they don’t look like anyone I would interact with. I don’t see them as human.”
So Jesus did a second laying on of hands. This time, the man “looked intently.” That phrase also gives me pause: he looked intently. That is to say, he TRIED. He WANTED to see the people as more than trees. And his effort, along with Jesus’ touch, brought him to fully restored sight, “and he saw everything clearly.” I wish the text had said, “He saw EVERYONE clearly,” but I’ll take it. At least he began to see people as people, as human, and I hope that it also means, as important, as valuable, and as of worth.
After his sight is completely restored, Jesus tells the man not to go into the village. How odd. Except I think I do understand that for some white people, it’s hard to go back into their village, the place where they couldn’t see at all. I think complete sight, and the ability to never un-see is radical healing and revolutionary change. You can never go back to “business as usual” or “relationships the way they were.”
Maybe it was the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a knee on the neck of George Floyd.
Maybe it was seeing Ahmaud Arbery hunted down and killed by vigilantes;
or thinking about Breonna Taylor riddled with eight bullets, dead in her house in Louisville, and the police report saying she had no injuries.
Whatever moved people from “seeing black people as trees” to seeing them as human, as if our lives matter, something happened. And my mother’s words are the gospel truth: “once you know you can never not know; once you see, you can never un-see.” And if the truth sets us free, perhaps the church will squint more intently, and with a second touch from Jesus, never return to the village where not seeing is just the way it is. I certainly pray it is so.
[1]Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876, https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/. Accessed June 18, 2020.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.