Photo of the Orthodox Christian feast of The Holy Fire, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, Israel.
Over the past few days, friends and people I know have reached out to me expressing their frustration and anger with me around the events of the past few days. Namely the death of George Floyd, a black man, in the hands of four white police officers. Friends also shared their hope, dismay, and mixed feelings about the peaceful protests in major cities amid the coronavirus pandemic. They shared their sadness as protests turned violent, sometimes their understanding at those riots, and their horror at the police and National Guards response to them.
As our country country contends with police brutality and racism, with anger and violence, with peaceful protests and compassion, with fear and numbness…we wonder where God is in all of it. I know I do, even as a person of faith. Maybe especially as a person of faith. Just because I work for a mainline religious denomination doesn’t give me any more faith or grace than any other of God’s children.
This morning I was spending time with the Old Testament book of Isaiah and 26:5-6 says,
"For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy."
How apt. It is so easy for me to see my own country’s sinful history of oppression, subjugation, and colonialism in those words. The ongoing economic divide. The ongoing racism. The seemingly unending campaign against the poor and marginal.
Also, it causes me to pray, "How long oh Lord? How long?" How long will God allow us our racism, our increasingly violent military and police, our income inequality, and our lack of compassion, love, decency and tenderness to anyone who in not exactly like ourselves. How long!
Sometimes I am asked by people, why I go to church. What is the point they say? Why bother? A church service never seems to have much to do with what is going on in the world. Sometimes I wholeheartedly agree.
But Church is not about me as an individual, about my singular problems, or my personal agenda. No matter how needed or vital those things are in the world as a whole. Church is the opportunity for us to come together and worship God. To remind us and God of God's goodness and God's love. To thank the Holy One for the blessings in our lives. To remind us that we do indeed have blessings, even as our cities burn. Even amidst a global pandemic.
Also to remind God and ourselves that there is still so much work to be done by us to bring the kin-dom of God to earth. We cannot do the work of the Loving One, which is the work of the church on earth, without the grace, power, and love of God. The Compassionate One must be at the center, or we risk all the work we do becoming our work instead of God's. Indoor church helps keep us centered.
On Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit, we bring ourselves to worship God who is the source of all goodness, power, and mercy. When Jesus had risen from the dead, he told his Apostles that he would not leave them alone. He was sending his Spirit, as a friend, a counselor, a bringer of power to aid them. To let them do the work of Jesus on earth.
So it is with Pentecost. This feast reminds us that even in the middle of our cities on fire with protest, burning with racial injustice, boiling with state violence, that we are not alone. Pentecost reminds us that the Holy One has sent us a bringer of Power, an Advocate on our behalf: the Holy Spirit.
This Spirit gives us the gifts of grace to live out our kin-dom vision: peace, compassion, mercy, equality and humilty for all people in all places. As Jesus taught us to prayer, “On earth as it is in Heaven.”