Fourth Sunday after the Pentecost, June 21, 2015; The Rev. Susanne George
A few days ago, after I contacted a friend on the west coast by email, I received this message back: “Thank God you are OK! The news, and you being in the church has made us nervous here.”
I thought a minute and realized that my friend had put together the fact that I serve at Emmanuel Church Boston, and that I was also in Charleston, recently, where horrific events took place at another Emanuel Church. So I could see how my friend had been concerned.
My immediate reaction to this message was to think: I am not in any danger. I’m perfectly fine. No, that is untrue – I am an optimistic person, but right now I feel the danger around me. I feel sadness and I feel vulnerable.
But I am coming from a place of relative entitlement. I recognize that I need to listen to my neighbors of color describe living with an extreme lack of security, because some neighbors have been singled out as special targets. Racism fuels the violence, even as it makes others casually dismiss its severity.
There are many horrible and sad ramifications about what happened in Charleston this week; We can name them – every single one of them. But the one that presses in upon me this morning, standing here at the pulpit, is the horror of lost sanctuary.
We all have a primal human need for security and safety. Nowhere in this world is it 100% safe – not in a boat, not in a school, not in a home, and not in a church. This has always been true. Even in the places where God is supposed to be, even the spaces where we know God is actually with us, there is no guarantee of our physical safety. Still, Christians believe that if we live or die God is with us. Hebrew for that: Emmanuel.
I think the topic of today’s scripture readings could be summarized as “The Challenges of Faith.” Certainly appropriate readings for this Sunday. Perhaps whatever faith we have brought with us this morning has suffered a severe jolt during the week.
Can we identify with the experience of the disciples? They were having issues with faith. When the storm hit, they knew the boat was not secure. They knew that in the storm their boat could be overturned. In extreme fear, they call out to Jesus.
“Save us. Save us.” We also know the chaos and destruction of storms. To be tossed about, to have no control. Some of us have experienced situations where only the divine could intervene. People still cry, certainly people are crying emphatically now, “Lord, save us!”
In America we live in constant storms of hatred and bigotry. Racism is deeply and structurally ingrained in our nation’s history of state sanctioned violence against, and the criminalization of, African American citizens. We have all have read the statistics. This has created an extreme environment in which people of color can never feel safe, whether standing on a playground, or walking down the street, or praying in a church.
What is asserted in Mark’s gospel today is hope, its context however, is struggle, struggle in the storm. Mark gives us a myth, which can become our hope and our truth. With it, we can possibly survive the raging elements.
Perhaps calling out is all we can do right now. Calling out in spaces where we thought we were safe, and where we know, in our hearts we are, not alone. Evil finds its way in, but our truth as people of faith is that God finds the way out. God ripped apart the heavens and slashed to shreds the temple curtain. So that even those places we assumed were safe, would actually be secure, due of the promise, the promise of God’s presence and our ultimate deliverance thru Jesus Christ, our savior.
We are never nearer to Jesus than when we are in the storm, suffering with the weight of life, engulfed in fear. Without these storms, the soul’s experience of love and compassion is impossible or certainly a poor substitute for the real thing.
Jesus speaks with authority, directly to the storm: “Peace! Be still!” Peace should never be passive, never merely an absence of conflict. In Hebrews 12:14 It is the presence of the Spirit who command us, “Pursue peace with everyone!” The Greek verb to pursue, means to aggressively go after something deeply cherished.
Are we to be paralyzed by these things we fear? Or are we, as my Bible says, “able to do more than we can ask or imagine through the power at work within us.
We must practice a peace that’s more than a calm, status quo. Because God’s peace speaks into the very center of all our old habits, old hatreds, and old fears that block all our best intentions; including, the old racism, that never seems to go away, racism that rebuilds the dividing walls that Jesus demolished with his death and resurrection.
Love is the power with which we can do more than we can even imagine. I am counting on people of faith to put Love-In-Action. Do something, do one thing today, to right a wrong, to communicate a kindness, to help create the world we want. A just world. A world in which every life is precious.
Bishop Charles von Rosenberg of The Episcopal Church in South Carolina has asked that we join in solidarity with the people of that diocese at this time by praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in finding the most effective ways to resist manifest evil, and to be ministers of Christ’s reconciliation in our own communities.”
My prayer is that the departed rest in peace, and the living find healing, consolation, and the strength to continue to pursue a just society. Amen