I started to write a post last night about what a moron Dylann Roof is. I got one sentence down and stopped. Didn’t really know where to go with it and ran out of time.
On Sunday, however, the associate pastor of the Olathe church Patty and I attend — Saint Andrew Christian Church — deeply moved about 150 of us attending the 10:45 a.m. service, and she gave me permission to reprint her sermon.
Erika Marksbury is a very smart person and a gifted preacher, and she is one of those rare clerics who can rise to the biggest and most unsettling events. She has the ability, in times of great distress, to hold a mirror up to a congregation and help the congregation see itself in the context of a broken but ever-hopeful world.
This morning, Erika used as her stepping-off point St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, in which he urged the Corinthians to “open wide your hearts.”
Here’s what Erika said…with the exception of an anecdotal section, which I omitted for space considerations.
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So you decided to come to church this morning. We came to church this morning. We sang, and prayed, and have just heard scripture together.
We did this despite what happened on Wednesday, in a church, to people who sang, and prayed, and heard scripture together.
Maybe you thought it would be ok because here is not there. Because Kansas is not South Carolina. Because a twenty-four-year-old suburban church is not a hundred-and-ninety-nine-year-old southern church. Because most of these people are white, and all of those people were black. And so we are not like them.
Except that doesn’t hold up. Especially here. Because the story we tell every Sunday at church is our intentional effort to break down those boundaries. The story we tell says that in this place or in that place, new or old, white or black, all who gather around the story of Jesus are one. When we sing, our folk songs blend with their gospel choruses. And when we pray, our celebrations and our sadnesses mingle with theirs, because our hearts carry all the same stuff.
And when we break bread and drink from the cup, we remember brokenness and love, bodies and blood. Some of the earliest church fathers used to say that the bread we share is the body of Jesus and it is our own. This morning it is that of Jesus, and it is ours, and it is Clementa’s, and Cynthia’s, and Sharonda’s, and Tywanza’s, and Ethel’s, and Susie’s, and Depayne’s, and Daniel’s, and Myra’s. We are none of us, really, separate from each other.
We do not come to church to be reassured that we are unaffected. We come to church to be reminded that we are bound. We come to church because the songs remind us that we belong to God and to each other and the prayers acknowledge that there are some things we cannot do alone and the scriptures make clear that justice is hard and it has always been the call of God and the work of people of faith.
We come to worship because the sanctuary has historically been a safe space. People who were persecuted could come seeking refuge. They would run into the building and collapse on the floor beneath the cross and know that inside those walls they would find amnesty. Even though much of that old meaning has slipped away, still, when people find themselves afraid or unsure, they often find their way to a sanctuary. And when that very principle is violated, when people are not safe in their holy places, it is up to other people to create sanctuary outside of those walls once thought to contain it.
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The people of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church opened their hearts. They did not withhold their affections or their faith. They prayed and sang and studied scripture with a stranger, and they acknowledged him as fully human. They made themselves vulnerable.
But what else could they have done? Deny him? Allow within their walls only people that they already knew and trusted? They are a congregation named Emmanuel – a people named God-with-us – so that really wasn’t ever an option. Maybe they knew that invulnerability was impossible. They surely knew it was anti-gospel.
What Paul is asking in these scriptures – open your hearts – takes on a strange and sad and scary new resonance today. What does it mean to open our hearts in a world where welcoming strangers means risking our lives?
But that’s not really a question for our context, is it? Or it’s only one of them. Our questions are: how brave, and how vulnerable, will we be? How many difficult conversations will we have with our friends and relatives? How hard will we work so that Grandmothers Against Gun Violence will have a voice that can be heard over the NRA’s? How will we tell our kids the hard and horrifying stories of our racist past, a history that stretches from centuries ago to just last week? How much rearranging of our lives will we do to make sure we have chances to learn more, to stand with, to speak up, to reach out? And how will we treat all our neighbors as fully human, not just as people with sad stories but also as people with dreams? How will we learn to trust and celebrate one another? How will we open our hearts?
We were never those people that believed racism was over with the Civil Rights Act or the election of Barack Obama. We have always been those people who have believed that white privilege is real and that most of us benefit from it and that something is fundamentally unjust about that. And believing those truths is the tiniest beginning. But knowing the truth does not change it. Sitting down with it – confessing our gain from it – sharing our fears connected to it – speaking our dreams to strangers, and hearing theirs – that’s movement towards real change.
I mean, I hope it is. I hope we’ll at least try. And when we fail, I hope we will try again, and not be afraid to fail again, and then try again, and fail some more, and keep trying. I hope we won’t get tired. I hope we won’t get lazy. I know that’s easy to do, and it’s easy for white people, for privileged people, to turn away. I do it all the time. I like to think of myself as an ally but that can be exhausting and some days I’m unwilling to be exhausted by anything other than my own kids. But we turn away at the risk of coming right back around to here, to this place of mourning and horror, and despite all the ways I will mess up I want to commit to doing what I can to create sanctuary outside of these walls. If you want to also, here’s a small way we can start:
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Get out a pen. If you don’t have one on you there should be one in the red book – you can pass it on when you’re done.
Write this address down: Emanuel AME Church, 110 Calhoun Street, Charleston, South Carolina, 29401. And sometime this week, send a card. If you don’t have one at home there’s a stack in a basket near the door – feel free to take one of those. Write a note of sympathy and solidarity, and drop it in the mail.
Paper may be flimsy. But even walls are no protection to people committed to welcoming neighbors, strangers. And if these cards carry our love, maybe they can help to create a sanctuary, and a space for dreams to be shared again, for those who are mourning now.
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I put my card in the mail Sunday…It won’t change anything, but it’s better than just stewing, being angry and wringing my hands.
Magnificent sermon, Jim.
The Kansas City Star should reprint it and so should every newspaper in the country. What an exceptional associate pastor you have in Erika Marksbury!
Laura
Thanks, Laura…I’m very glad you appreciated it as I did.
Thanks for sharing it. So much to think about and to do after the thinking. I shared it with others– who are sharing it– and hopefully the ripples will spread out and I know of several cards that are being sent.
Great to hear from you, Penny! Thanks for reading and commenting…I hope things are good with you.
What does this depraved young man shooting a group of seemingly nice people, have to do with white privilege? He was sick and hate filled, not privileged. I also sent a card, not because of privilege, but of profound loss and sadness.
Thanks for the comment Js…I completely agree that Dylann Roof was and is sick and hate filled…But I think Erika’s point about the contrast between an almost-all-white congregation in Olathe and a black congregation in Charleston was on target.
To me, these words were powerful…
Maybe you thought it would be ok (to come to church Sunday) because here is not there. Because Kansas is not South Carolina. Because a twenty-four-year-old suburban church is not a hundred-and-ninety-nine-year-old southern church. Because most of these people are white, and all of those people were black. And so we are not like them.
This was my first time reading your blog, or any blog for that matter. Thanks so much for sharing what your pastor said. It was beautiful and insightful. My card will be in the mail tomorrow. It feels too little, but expressing sympathy and love and extending prayer are maybe all we can do when something so senseless happens.
I’m flattered, Melody, especially since this is the first blog you’ve read…Welcome to the Comments Dept. Comments, especially when reasonable and thought-provoking, are the lifeblood of any good blog. Weigh in any time.
The lesson I learned from this is the difference between how Charleston has reacted owing to the conduct of the wonderful people of the AME church compared with the behavior of those in Ferguson and Baltimore. The beauty of a people who were so kind and warm that even their killer had pause before committing his cowardly act.
And that brings me to a point of departure with your pastor.
Both this killer and the killer who murdered three defenseless people in Overland Park were outright cowards. Both picked soft targets where they knew there would be no one with a weapon in opposition and when finally confronted by an armed presence meekly surrendered.
This drug besotted punk in South Carolina didn’t attack drug dealers, he didn’t even try to shoot up an average inner city street corner. The coward went to a church filled will people he knew were unarmed. Far from disarming honest citizens, we need to empower them to protect themselves from the cowards who would prey on them, not make them even more defenseless.
Our praise correctly goes out to the families and the congregation at the AME church. If ever a group deserves justice and has a right to retribution it is that congregation and yet they didn’t loot their neighbors’ businesses. They didn’t destroy their community. They didn’t glorify a drug dealer, or a common thief, they offered forgiveness in the hardest of circumstances and brought their community together in unity as a result.
Already, as a direct result of their Christian spirit the Confederate flag flying at the Capitol will come down, something that would never have occurred had their been a Ferguson style response. And that’s as it should be. They should be honored and their approach to life should be emulated.
Amen.
in addition, I find it sad that a symbol of American history has been turned into a symbol of hate and division, and for that reason must be banished.