- a reflection, confession, and call to action for Pentecost 2020 -
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.” Isaiah 1:16-17 (ESV)
Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost. Every year we retell the story of God’s giving Godself to God’s people. The promise of God’s presence. The promise of God’s truth. The promise of God’s justice. The promise that we may be one as the triune God is One.
But we are not one.
I’ve been sitting here this afternoon looking at these faces. Women and men whose lives were ended by wicked men, and whose murders were ignored. #AhmaudArbery #BreonnaTaylor #GeorgeFloyd and hundreds more
We are not one.
These weren’t “individual incidents” or “unique cases”. They reflect a deep sickness in the heart of our culture. A sickness that is allowed to persist because we, because I, haven’t had the courage to speak out – to stand up.
Because, we are not one.
We could be. That’s the promise of Pentecost. God is with us. We are given the promise that God is at work all around us all the time, building God’s Kingdom – a community in which we all belong, together, with Christ.
Yet, we are not one.
Our brothers and sisters live in cages. Our neighbors are denied access to justice. Our colleagues are pushed aside. Our communities are torn apart. And the elite are protected. And the wicked are embraced. And injustice becomes our currency.
So, we are not one.
But God is here, among God’s people, accomplishing God’s purpose. And God is one – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God continues to call me away from my wickedness, from my evil, from my ignorance, from my injustice, from my oppression, from my predation, from my indifference.
That we are not one is a thundering testimony to the intransigence of my heart.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
If we long to be one, if we hunger to join the work of God, if we wish to proclaim the Peace of the Lord – then we have to get up. Platitudes and obfuscation must be set aside. We need to name the evil in our neighborhoods and in our hearts, and then begin the work of healing what we have taken part in wounding – as we say “in thought, word, and deed; in what we have done, and in what we have failed to do.”
And there, in the work of healing, we will find that we have returned our feet to the way of Christ – that if we will choose courage and humility and set our feet on a path that leads to restoration for our neighbors, we will see that this is the very work of God, to which the Spirit’s voice has been calling us all along:
That we may be one.
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:3-7 (ESV)
