2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Looking at Sin in the Mirror
06-28-15
My heart broke, my soul cried, my mouth fell open when I
heard that 9 people were shot, in a church, during a Bible Study in Charleston,
SC. I was sitting in the living room
when of the house we rented for Annual Conference when Alycia got notified on
her phone that there was a shooting in Charleston and 9 people died. I remember saying, “That is horrible,” but
then I continued doing what I was doing.
This is going to be a very honest sermon and it is a tough
sermon but it is needed. I need to
preach it and I feel people, you, need to hear it. I continued to do what I was doing because it
is all too common these days. My first
December as the minister here was marked by the tragedy at Sandy Hook
Elementary. In the two years since there
have been over 100 school shootings.
That is one shooting a week at either K-12 schools or higher education. We
are surrounded by violence. We are
surrounded by hate and we don’t take notice anymore.
When Alycia shared with me that 9 people were shot in
Charleston my heart took a millisecond to grieve but then I moved on, like I
always do. I have a feeling I was not
alone in that moment. However, then I
learned more about it on Thursday. I
learned that a white 21-year-old, Dylann Roof, sat in on a Wednesday Night
Bible Study at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. There were 13 people at this Bible study,
including the shooter. During the Bible
Study he started to disagree when they started discussing Scripture. He soon took out a gun and when asked why he
was attacking churchgoers, he said, “I have to do it.”
He yelled racist statements the whole time as he shot 9
people and left only one person alive to tell the story. Two others survived by playing dead. All
over the news we heard about the search for the suspect and we know his name,
Dylann Roof, who stopped at an ATM in Charlotte and then was arrested in
Shelby. We know the shooter but do we
know the victims?
I wanted read the names of those 9 who came to Church to
learn more about God that day but then found themselves face to face with our
Lord.
·
Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd (54) – she was a
manager for the Charleston County Public Library System
·
Susie Jackson (87) – she was a devote church and
choir member
·
Ethel Lee Lance (70) – the church custodian
·
Depayne Middleton-Doctor (49) – a pastor who was
also employed as a school administrator and admissions coordinator at Southern
Wesleyan University.
·
Clementa C. Pinckney (41) – church pastor and
South Carolina State senator. He was
also getting his decorate at Wesley Theological Seminary.
·
Tywanza Sanders (26) – he was the nephew of
Susie Jackson and when it was obvious that the shooting was going to start he
dove in front of her.
·
Daniel Simmons (74) – a pastor who also served
at Greater Zion AME Church
·
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45) – a pastor,
speech therapist and track coach
·
Myra Thompson (59) – Bible Study teacher
All of this came out as I sat in on the Plenary Sessions at
Annual Conference. We prayed and the
bishop sent a letter on behalf of our conference to the AME’s bishop in that
area. Later the Bishops of the South
Eastern Jurisdiction crafted a statement.
They said, “The College of Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the
United Methodist Church stands with our Methodist family at Emanuel AME Church
in Charleston, with our brother Bishop Richard Franklin Morris of the Seventh
Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and with our
colleague Bishop Jonathan Holston, of the South Carolina Conference. We condemn this act of violence in the house
of the Lord. We commit ourselves anew to the work of reconciliation in the
midst of hatred. And we lift high the cross of Jesus Christ, as God’s witness
to the violence and division that is our human condition. Please join us in acts of prayer, compassion
and justice on behalf of our Pan-Methodist sisters and brothers.”
I know many pastor left Annual Conference early to return to
preach to their congregation last Sunday and to speak about this tragic
event. I wrestled with that idea but I
knew the work that Connie and Leslie put into their preparation. I also knew the rarity of being able to
worship with my family and have my kids next to me. I also knew I didn’t have the words yet and I
needed to worship first.
God laid a grip on my heart and I wrestled with what to preach
today. Should I stick with the
lectionary or forget it and preach about what weighed heavy on my soul. My soul won out. The Holy Spirit, which has not let me rest
yet, won out. Today I feel we need to
have a conversation about reconciling ourselves to God and to each other. Today we need to follow the Bishops’ advice
and commit our own work of reconciliation in the midst of hatred. Today we need to “lift high the cross of
Jesus Christ, as God’s witness to the violence and division that is our human
condition.”
If we look at the text in 2 Corinthians we see that the
process of reconciliation is to understand that as we become followers of Jesus
and let the love of Christ control us we will change. We will no longer stay the same. We will move beyond ourselves and into the
likeness of Christ. Original sin, Adam
and Eve disobeying God, happened because humanity wanted to be like God. In Jesus Christ, God shows us what it is like
and how to become like God and now we aren’t interested anymore. Yet, if I am to be a follower of Jesus then I
have to give into the change God’s love and grace does for me and in me. I have to change my ways because I am no
longer the same. This thought consumed
me as I read articles and blog posts, while I listened to sermons and read
scripture. As I learned about the hate,
the evil and the sin that occurred in Emmanuel AME Church, I knew that Christ’s
love and grace is the answer…but how do we get there.
I can’t stand up here and call others out. I cannot jump on the bandwagon to bash other
people. The only thing I can do today is
to make a confession. I confess that I
thought we as a culture and me personally had moved past racism. I saw what I thought were remnants of it in
conversations I would have with people or the way others talked. I chalked it up to an older generation or an
outdated way of thinking. I was born in
Detroit, MI back when whites were only the slight majority at 55%. Sure, when I moved to Charlotte in 3rd
grade the majority of my classmates in Elementary school were white but that
was because we lived on the outskirts of town.
When I went to Ranson Middle School our demographic changed and there
were more black students then in my elementary school. At West Charlotte High School I was one of
the minorities where only around 35% of the school was white. I grew up in diverse schools so I thought we
had moved past all of this racism simply because I was in close proximity to
people of other races.
However, as I looked back at my life growing up this week I
confess it wasn’t always the case. My
close friends were 99% white. My Boy
Scout Troop was 95% white. My church was
99.9% white. My schooling may have been
diverse but outside Middle School and High School, I lived in white
America. Not only that but I realized
that many of my friends were extremely racist.
In middle school we would tell each other racist jokes and say horrible
things about getting out of school for Martin Luther King Day. I look back at those moments and I am
completely humbled by shame and grief.
This is not how God wants me to treat people.
I confess that in the culture I grew up in I was taught to
see non-white people as different and to be scared of them. I can’t place why or where. This is not something my parents taught me on
purpose. This is not something that I
remember having a lesson in or a special class on. No, it is something that was ingrained in my
white culture that told me to be more scared of a black man than a white
man. I am sure it is because of media
and news coverage. I am sure it is
because of the movies and TV shows I watched.
I am sure it is because of the people I grew up with and the
subconscious decisions I made along the way.
I confess though that still to this day I view people of other races
differently. This is not how God wants
me to treat people.
I confess that I did not realize the level of racism that is
ingrained in our history and culture of our church. In 1844 the Methodist Episcopal Church split
into the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South
because the south wanted to keep slaves.
After the Civil War and the freeing of slaves the church still remained
split until 1939, 95 years later. When
this church was founded on September 21, 1902 it was named, Indian Trail
Methodist Episcopal Church South. We
were part of a system that wanted to keep a race of people enslaved. This fact is in our name itself.
When we look at where this tragic event in Charleston
happened we also get a picture of our racist past. Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
was founded 199 years ago. It is part of
the AME denomination, which is one of the Pan-Methodist denominations. The reason the AME denomination exists is
because of acts of racism, segregation and discrimination. In St. George’s church in Philadelphia
Richard Allan was a slave who purchased his freedom and started the Free
African Society. He lead prayer meetings
among black members of the church. But
the people of St. George’s didn’t like the movement. They segregated the sanctuary and cast the
black members to the gallery upstairs.
Finally after two black worshipers were pulled out of the church while
they were praying, Allan had enough and started Mother Bethel Church and the
eventual start of a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Both AME and the AMEZ denominations were born
out of the discrimination and racism of the Methodist Church and movement here
in America.
I say this not to bash us on the head but for us to
recognize that this is in our country and our culture’s past. We have not escaped it and we can’t ignore
it, like I did for much of my adult life.
To do so is a sin. This week I
recognized in myself how much racism has played a part in my upbringing, my
culture and my country. I wrestle with
this fact and I hope you will too.
Yet there is good news.
It can stop with us. Nelson
Mendela said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his
skin, or his background, or his religion.
People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be
taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its
opposite.” He is correct. A child doesn’t see someone and focus on the
color of their skin or their socioeconomic make up, they see another
person. We, as their parents, their
church, their fellow citizens, teach them how to view that person. Do we or will we teach them to hate, to judge
or to love?
1 Corinthians 5:21, “God caused the one who didn’t know sin
to be sin for our sake so that through him we could become the righteousness of
God.” God knows our human tendencies and
our need for that saving Grace. We are
in desperate need because sin abounds in our world. Sin is everywhere and we need to be
reconciled to God and each other for it.
The 3rd verse of the hymn, Just As I Am, we are
about to sing sums it up wonderfully. It
says, “Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt,
fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” If we are going to actually move past our
racist history, reconcile with one another and live as on earth as it is in
heaven, then we need to come to Jesus.
We need to recognize the racism and the sin inside ourselves and say,
“This stops with me. I won’t pass it on
to the next generation.”
As I have grappled with how I see others that are different
than me I always pause and say to myself, “How does God see this person?” Does God see them as their race? Nationality?
Sexuality? Language they speak? Political party they vote for? State they were
born in? No! God sees them as one of his children; someone
who has the image of God imbedded into their souls.
May we reconcile ourselves to God and be given this sight as
well. May we move into the future not
repeating the sins of the past. May we
reconcile ourselves to God in order to be the people of God to this world.
And all God’s people said…Amen.
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