Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
- Aug 9, 2015
- 7 min read
Today, August 9th,
in fact, this very hour,
is the one-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown.
Brown, an African American teenager who lived in Ferguson, MO,
shoplifted a box of cigars from a local market,
and was shot and killed by Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson.
Afraid that Brown had a gun,
Wilson fired twelve shots at him,
six hitting him, including one in his head,
the one that killed him.
In the end, Brown was unarmed.
In the days and weeks that followed,
you might remember that Ferguson exploded.
People demanded to know:
Why had Brown been killed?
What had Officer Wilson needed to fire 12 shots?
Why had Brown’s body been left on the street for over 4 hours?
They joined a growing movement of people across the country
who were asking why so many black men, most of them young men,
were being killed by police:
Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. John Crawford. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray…
And why, they asked, in most of these cases, were the police officers involved acquitted?
This movement has come to be known as the Black Lives Matter movement.
It has sought to draw attention to the insidious forms of racism
that still plague our society.
Racism that is woven into the fabric of our nation.
I’m not talking here about individual instances of prejudice.
I’m talking about racism that is baked into our laws and policies,
our police forces, our schools and universities,
and yes, even our churches.
What’s called institutionalized racism or systemic racism.
Racism that is much bigger than one person’s choice not to make a racist comment.
Now some people, maybe well-meaning,
have misunderstood the Black Lives Matter movement.
They’ve said, no, ALL lives matter.
Everyone matters equally, black or white.
This sounds nice, but in reality, is it actually true?
I mean, can we say, in a nation where black men are six times
more likely to be incarcerated than white men
that all lives actually matter equally?
Can we say all lives matter when black men
make up over a third of prison inmates in America,
despite African Americans making up less than 12 percent of the total population?
Can we say all lives matter when over 25 percent of black women live in poverty?
Can we say it when black mothers are more than twice as likely as white mothers
to lose a child in the first month?
Can we really say all lives matter when a dozen black churches were burned last month?
Can we really?
One writer says that saying “all lives matter” to black people is like
sitting down to dinner with your family,
and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal,
you don’t get any.
So you say “I should get my fair share.”
And as a direct response to this,
one of your parents corrects you, saying,
“Everyone should get their fair share.”
This sounds nice, but it doesn’t fix the problem of injustice here.
What you meant in asking for your fair share
was that you should get a fair share too, just like everyone else.
But what your parent heard was that
only you should get a fair share.
To say that Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that only black lives matter.
It means that black lives matter too.
That Black lives matter just as much as white lives.
Which in practice, is not something that all of us believe in this country.
So what does Black Lives Matter have to do with the Gospel story today?
Or more importantly, what does the Gospel story have to do with Black Lives Matter?
Because, of course,
the Gospels always call us to deeper faith and conversion.
Well, our Gospel story today from John is part of what is sometimes called
the “Bread of life discourse.”
You might remember, there’s no last supper story in the Gospel of John.
What we have instead is this story,
this story about Jesus breaking the loaves and distributing them,
along with fish, to hungry people,
and calling himself the bread that has come down
from heaven to give life to the world.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,”
he says.
At its heart, this is a story about the Incarnation.
It’s a story about God’s decision, in Jesus,
to come among us as a human being.
To become one of us.
To take on our flesh and blood.
To live and die as we do.
As one translation of the prologue to the Gospel of John says,
in Jesus, “the Word was made flesh and blood
and moved into the neighborhood.”
“The Word was made flesh and blood
and moved into the neighborhood.”
Or as we say in the Nicene Creed every Sunday,
“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven:
and by the power of the Holy Spirit,
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary
and was made human.”
This is what Jesus is talking about when he calls himself
the bread that has come down from heaven to give life to the world.
Now I believe that Jesus came for everyone.
For all people.
That he wanted to give life to the whole world.
That for him, all lives truly mattered.
But I also believe that he came especially for people
who’d been told they didn’t matter.
That their lives didn’t matter.
That they were somehow lesser human beings.
That they were disposable.
Women. Poor people. Sick people and people with mental illness.
Disabled people. Foreigners.
To such people as these, Jesus preached Good News:
You matter too.
You who are women: you matter as much as men.
You who are poor: you matter as much as those who are rich.
You who are sick or struggle with mental illness: you matter as much as those who are well.
You who disabled: you matter as much as those who are able bodied.
You who are foreign: you matter as much as those who are part of the house of Israel.
You who are black matter as much as those who are white.
In spite of what people have always told you
and the way they have treated you, your lives matter.
Yes, Jesus came down from heaven for everyone.
But these were the people he prioritized.
These were the people at the heart of his ministry.
These were the ones to whom he came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
These were the people for whom he struggled and stood up to power.
It was a struggle for which he gave up his life.
But of course, the story and the struggle didn’t end there.
After Jesus had died and risen and ascended into heaven,
something amazing happened.
The Holy Spirit came and filled the hearts of his followers.
And it transformed them into his Body in the world.
Even though he had died, he was alive in them.
And as his Body, they were called to continue his work in the world.
Especially the work of struggling and standing up to power
on behalf of those who had been beat down.
Those who had been told that their lives didn’t matter.
This, I think, is part of what Paul means in his letter to the Ephesians today
when he tells the Christians living there to be “imitators of God.”
This doesn’t mean imitating a God who sits on a heavenly throne in the clouds surrounded by angels playing harps.
It means imitating a God who in Jesus struggles with us here.
A God who gets angry at injustice.
A God whose heart is a heart made out of flesh.
A heart that breaks when all lives don’t matter.
This was the calling of those very first Christians,
to be Jesus’ Body.
And it’s also our calling.
By virtue of our baptisms,
our calling is to be Jesus’ Body in the world.
But being Jesus’ Body means more than just calling ourselves Christians
and coming to church on Sunday.
It means much more.
It means making his priorities our priorities.
It means making his anger at injustice our anger.
His struggles, our struggles.
It means making his heart our heart.
Now, for some of us,
especially those of us who are white,
this might not come naturally to us.
Jesus’ priorities might not automatically be the priorities we would find ourselves gravitating towards.
For those of us who know privilege,
especially white privilege,
it would be perfectly easy to go on with our lives.
Not to think about our privilege.
To keep ourselves numb from the suffering of our black sisters and brothers.
To keep living in our safe, little white bubbles
where we don’t have to think about unpleasant things.
Where we cry more about a lion that was shot in Africa
than a Black teenager who was shot in Ferguson.
This, my friends, is where repentance is necessary.
This is where, if we are truly to be Christ’s Body,
we have to name the privilege we enjoy at the expense of others for what it is.
We have to name the racism and inequality that black people
face at every level of society for what it is.
And we have to name the violence and brutality
that is committed against black bodies everyday for what it is:
Sin.
This is where we have to ask for God’s mercy,
which,
thanks be to God,
is infinite.
This is where we have to pray,
through the grace of God,
for the will and commitment to change.
And this is where our hearts must be broken,
so that they might be reformed as the heart of Jesus.
I close with some words
from the 16th century mystic Teresa of Avila,
words that maybe familiar to you.
She wrote:
Christ has no body but ours.
Not hands and no feet on earth but ours.
Ours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on the world.
Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Ours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
May we be given the grace and strength and courage
and perseverance we need
to be Christ’s Body in the world.
Amen.
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