Worship from Sunday, June 21, 2015, 4th Sunday after Pentecost
at Ascension Lutheran Church, Shelby, NC
Introduction
Today we gather together as the body of Christ,
and, with our brothers and
sisters, we mourn the nine people who were killed Wednesday night in the
shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
As you probably know, the
suspected 21-year old shooter was arrested during a traffic stop here in Shelby
by our city police. What you may not have yet learned is that he also was a
member of an ELCA congregation in South Carolina, and two of the people killed
were graduates of the ELCA seminary in Columbia, SC. As Presiding Bishop Eaton
wrote in her response to the tragedy, “One of our own is alleged to have shot
and killed two who adopted us as their own.”
During worship
During the summer children of
all ages are invited to listen as we read from children’s literature.
Today, I am going to read from Birmingham
1963 written
Carole Boston Weatherford.
This
story tells what happened in a Birmingham, Alabama church on a Sunday morning
nearly fifty-two years ago. [After the reading] I
wonder where God is in the story.
Let us pray:
God
of our ancestors,
History
shows us that even when evil, hatred and violence cloak our lives in darkness,
you
remain Emanuel, God with us.
We commend to you the lives of the saints who were
killed on Wednesday night as they gathered in your house:
Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41;
Cynthia Hurd, 54;
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45;
Tywanza Sanders, 26;
Ethel Lance, 70;
Susie Jackson, 87;
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49;
Myra Thompson, 59;
Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74
Holy God, we pray
...for
their families, and all who love them, that they will know the comfort of your
abiding love in the midst of their pain. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
...for the congregation of Emanuel AME Church
whose
sanctuary has been desecrated that you would bring them to safety and restore
peace to them; that
they can find rest from their weariness and sorrow. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
...for
our enemies, including the suspect Dylann Roof, that you will bring him to
repentance and grant him forgiveness.Hear
us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
…for
his family and the congregation of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Columbia, and for
their pastor, that they will know your presence as they struggle to make sense
of the incomprehensible. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
God,
our refuge and strength, we give you thanks for the sanctuary we find here this
morning, and we pray for your Holy Spirit to shine light into the darkness of
our sin and our world, and guide our steps. We pray in the name of your
crucified and risen Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
From the pulpit
Let us pray…
May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our
strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Last Sunday, we heard how Saul fell
from favor and young David was anointed in his place, but he isn’t king yet.
He remains a court musician and a
shepherd.
The youngest of Jesse’s sons, he is
an errand boy,
delivering lunches and supplies to
the Israelite soldiers
who are perched on a mountaintop,
staring across a valley at their enemies.
One the other side of the valley,
the Philistine army is poised to attack.
But nothing happens.
For either side to advance, they
would have to cede their privilege and go into the valley. They would have to be
vulnerable.
A Philistine infantryman, larger
than any of the other soldiers,
a giant of a man named Goliath,
offers to fight one man from the
Israelite army to put an end to the battle.
And no one steps forward.
As David is greeting his older
brothers at the army camp,
Goliath repeats the words he had
said before,
and David witnesses the deafening
silence of the Israelites.
But David breaks the silence and
speaks up, telling the king,
“Your servant will go and fight…”(v.
32)
Saul offers objections:
“Yes, but you can’t really do that,
you’re only a boy and he’s an experienced soldier.”
“Yes, but you cannot go as you are;
you will need armor and weapons.”
But David goes, armed with his
staff, five smooth stones, and a sling.
And he slays the enemy soldier.
Some would say David was naïve, or
foolish, but
David saw what no one else in the
Israelite army could see;
sure, they knew the history of
warfare and had battle plans drawn.
They could see the terrain and
Goliath’s physical stature.
Even after Samuel told them not to
pay attention to appearances,
they still based their
decisions on what they could see and touch,
whatever was in plain sight,
and they let their fear bind them
into doing nothing.
David alone, saw that this was not a
battle between two armies of men.
This was between an historic enemy
and “the Lord of hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel.” (v. 45)
His courage was grounded in his
knowledge of the God who we worship,
and the steadfast presence of God in
the face of our enemies.
Four nights ago, nine bullets rang
out in a church meeting room in Charleston, South Carolina, and pierced the
sides of nine black bodies − mothers, grandmothers, sons, fathers and
grandfathers. [i] Sadly,
as I said earlier, and doubtless as many of you remember in your lifetimes,
this was not the first attack against black people in a church.
It
was racism: actions against a group of human beings for no reason other
than the color of their skin.
It
wasn’t the first attack, and,
unless
white churches like ours speak up, it won’t be the last.
It was,
what Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has called,
“a
stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism.
The
church was desecrated.
The
people of [Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church] were desecrated…”[ii]
Bishop
Eaton urges us to,
“…to
examine ourselves, our church and our [community]…
to be
honest about the reality of racism within us and around us…”
It would be easy to respond like
Saul, and say,
“Yes, but…” talking about race in
our community and country will be uncomfortable.
It is easy to respond like Saul, and
say,
“Yes, but…” confronting racism –
speaking up in the deafening silence – will be scary.
It’s easy for us to name the reasons
that we shouldn’t confront this
historic enemy
that has been piercing the hearts of
our black brothers and sisters
not only for the past fifty-two
years, but for hundreds of years.
But
now is not the time to say, “Yes, but…”
Now
is the time to echo David, and say,
“Your
servant will go and fight…”(v. 32)
David’s strength is not his own,
but lies in his confession that God
will deliver us from our enemy.
The
enemy is not the people who are calling the Charleston shootings
a
hate crime and racist violence.
The
enemy is racism that, as ugly
as it sounds, is part of our
lives in our country.
It’s
not always blatant; in fact it is nearly invisible,
if we
don’t know people who aren’t white;
or we
don’t listen to the stories of how whiteness and blackness differ.
Bishop
Eaton goes on to urge us to “look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and
overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less
worth.”[iii]
After
internship, I worked in a grocery store deli.
I
heard a woman refuse to buy food prepared by our black cook.
I
heard customers joke about workers’ accents, but,
because
it would have been bad customer service,
I
choked back a rebuttal.
All
too often, we don’t want to offend or upset someone,
make
a conversation awkward, or be accused of being political.
But the
theology of the cross calls us to call a thing what it is. [iv]
This
is racism. And racism is a sin.
And I am complicit.
Just
last month, I parked my car on West Marion Street
and
when I saw a young black man who I didn’t know,
walking
in my direction on the sidewalk, I felt myself tense.
The
irony is we were both going to participate in a monthly meeting
designed
to build relationships across cultures here in Shelby.
It’s
easy here, too, to answer like Saul, “Yes, but…”
But,
no.
Lutherans
don’t believe in a grading system for sin.
We believe
sin is part of our human condition,
warping
our lives and distancing us from God.
The
racism embedded in our lives is sin.
Thankfully,
we also believe in grace,
that
unwarranted and unmerited gift from God that assures me
that I
am a beloved child of God, forgiven for my sins.
Like
so much of life, we aren’t going to do this work perfectly.
We
will make mistakes and say things that someone doesn’t want to hear,
but
we cannot be silent or blind or unaware any longer.
Confronting racism,
this historic, larger-than-life,
enemy is hard;
it is uncomfortable and it is scary.
Racism won’t be taken down as easily
or swiftly as Goliath fell,
but as the Church, we are called to
speak up,
and, confident that God will deliver
us from this enemy,
we must step up and act.
Let us pray:
Lord of Hosts,
We praise you for your promise to
accompany us through the battles we face in life.
We give thanks for your promise to
deliver us from our enemies.
We pray now that our eyes will be
opened to where evil and racism are embedded in our lives.
Gather us and empower us, by Your
Holy Spirit, to do the hard work of dismantling racism in our families, our
workplaces,
and God, yes, in your Church.[v]
Move us to act in justice for all
of our brothers and sisters.
In the name of your crucified and
Risen Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Jennifer
Bailey. “Rolling in Sackcloth and Ashes,” HuffingtonPost.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-bailey/rolling-in-sackcloth-and-ashes_b_7614210.html?1434649529,
accessed June 20, 2015.
[ii]
Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,
Thursday, June 18, 2015.
[iii] ibid
[iv] Martin
Luther. Heidelburg Disputation, Line
21.
[v] Rev.
Mindi, http://rev-o-lution.org/2015/06/18/prayer-a-call-for-justice-for-emmanuel-ame-in-charleston/,
accessed June 20, 2015.
