(a sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, 30 November 2014)
Mark 13:24-37
Jesus said to his
disciples, "about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not
know when the time will come. ….And what I say to you I say to all: Keep
awake."
“Keep awake,” said Jesus.
And, indeed, many of us around the country were awake this past
week. We made sure we were awake and watching the news on Monday evening when a
grand jury decision was announced in Missouri, a decision not to indict a
police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man this past August.
Many of us stayed awake even longer, worried and watching,
to see if danger or violence might erupt in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere.
Then, we stayed awake worrying about loved ones everywhere across the country.
Others of us were awake simply worrying about our country.
Has the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, really revealed that race relations are
no better than they were decades ago? Have all our efforts toward racial
reconciliation retreated now?
I don’t like staying awake like that. I don’t like worrying
about police forces across the United States. I would far rather trust them,
because I know that the vast and overwhelming majority of our police do not act
in impulsive and ill-considered ways. I don’t like worrying about young black
men in our country, worrying about their safety, and worrying for myself, and
worried that maybe I continue to harbor unconscious prejudiced attitudes about
my safety. I don’t like staying awake like that.
The decision in Missouri last week was another in a series
of what people have called “Wake-up” calls in our country. “Wake up,” said the
decision. And our country’s various reactions to the decision said the same
thing, “Wake up!” Differently skinned people in our country are indeed treated
differently. “Wake up!” Differently skinned people in our country interpret
actions and decisions differently. Black people recognize and interpret actions
differently than white people do.
“Wake up!” said the demonstrations. The grand jury’s
decision not to indict will be accepted by many across our country, and it will
be criticized and questioned across our country. And around the world, for that
matter. And in churches, so many churches, on this very day. Let those
conversations and arguments occur. And let the demonstrations, the peaceful and
non-violent demonstrations, occur.
Many good comments have been offered this past week. Like
many of you, I was especially touched by the honest words of Benjamin Watson, a
black football player for the New Orleans Saints. In the midst of his
acknowledged anger and fear and embarrasment and sadness, he also said that
said that he was both hopeless and hopeful. Yes, some aspects of our race
relations in this country seem hopeless. But the best of us do not give up.
Those of us who see a better world are hopeful.
Like many of you, I have spent my entire life struggling for
just race relations in the communities where I have lived. I was fortunate to
have been taught early in my life about equal respect and equal dignity and
equal justice for all races, and especially for African-Americans in the South,
where I grew up. But, as a white man, I remain sensitive to those times and
places where respect and rights do not seem to be equal, even in my own heart.
Yes, I yearn for a community, a world, where the words
“black” and “white” are not just categories, where those words are not simple
stereotypes. Those descriptions refer to actual and individual people.
Ultimately, each of us, individually, is worried about the same things:
security in our streets and neighborhoods, wisdom and moderation in our police
forces, non-violence and peace in our protests and demonstrations, and justice
in our communities.
“Keep awake.” Now, on this First Sunday of Advent, when the
Christian Church always focuses on the kingdom to come, we hear Jesus adding
his own words to our conversations. “Keep awake,” says Jesus, and we are urged to
keep awake to race relations in our communities.
Keep awake. Do not lost heart. Be watchful and alert. This
season of Advent, four weeks before Christmas, always signals for Christians a
new kingdom. However, I have come to believe that the word, “kingdom,” is not
so great a word to describe what we look for in our time, because “kingdom”
itself is a rather outmoded word.
We simply don’t have “kings” any more, and it takes too long
to try to re-interpret what our kind of “king” is. First of all, of course,
“king” is a male word. (Has anyone noticed, by the way, how so many of the players,
on both of the violent sides of our race demonstrations are male? It may be
that we don’t need any more male anger and male diffidence and male shooting.)
In the same way, we don’t need just another king. Our God,
the God we wait for, is not simply another imperial ruler who will bring
another system of justice.
The problem with earthly systems of justice is that they
exist only for a season. Every country has imagined that its justice system
might be ideal. The Protestant Reformation was a revolution in a way. Certainly
it was a protest. The French Revolution. The American Revolution. The Civil
War. Even the Civil Rights Act, for which we are truly thankful. As advanced as
these developments toward justice were, in their own time, there then came a
time when elements of those system also failed us.
So, every year, the Christian Church says “keep awake.”
There is something greater. We have a God who will not come to us with simply
another set of laws. He does not sit as a new judge, settling disputes once and
for all.
No, our God comes to earth in new way. God actually comes as us. The holy mystery of the
incarnation is that God is incarnate among all of us!
Justice and peace emerge in our world, not by our depending
upon someone else, or someone outside us. Justice and peace emerge in our world
by our acting justly and peacefully in every small personal element of our
lives.
Race relationships remain one of the most challenging tests
of whether we believe in the incarnation or not. Christianity proclaims that
God was incarnate not just in Jesus, but in each of God’s created human beings.
We are, each of us, made in the image of God. The reason Christians believe in
just race relations is not because of some super-law, or grand jury decision,
or new political system at all, but because we believe that God is present,
really present, in every human being.
That is a daring proclamation. I dare us to believe it
during this season of Advent, waiting for Christmas incarnation. Keep awake.
God appears among us, in every day, and in every moment of decision, and in every
relationship of our lives.
AMEN.
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip
Thank you, Dean Candler. I think there must be more voices from the pulpits of our so-called Christian churches for us parishioners to begin the hard work of looking inward at our own attitudes and behavior towards those different from ourselves. While I think that, primordially, we are wired to feel most comfortable with those who look like ourselves, had we not striven to overcome that innate tribalism, we could just as likely have devolved into factions as violent and dangerous as the most militant in Islam. For me, the most unsettling aspect of Ferguson and now the Eric Garner case is not that of police brutality toward minorities; it's that the prosecutors and grand juries comprised of supposedly average citizens failed to find that great wrongs were done to these individuals and THAT inflicts greater harm on our society and to our collective soul.
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