May 31, 2020 - Pentecost - What Does This Mean?

On Saturday July 13, 2013  George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. In worship the next day at Creator his name was not spoken and our spiritual life went blissfully on.

While I had watched the trial and throughout the proceeding months my faith in the justice system was complete. Sure, there were still racial tensions in America but I was confident in the outcome. After all there was a black president in the White House. Trayvon was unarmed and Zimmerman initiated the encounter by playing that he was a cop. Yet, despite my deep, shattered feelings that Sunday, I did not even write in a Prayer of the People that day.

The arithmetic of black deaths and indignities since then feels like they have increased in frequency. There was Michael Brown and Eric Garner, just to cite two questionable deaths. Just recently, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor have all been killed after being wrongly suspected of perpetrating perpetuating low level crimes.

Pastor Janelle focused worship this morning around Jan Richardson's This Grace That Scorches Us.
The congregation broke out into separate zoom groups to discuss this blessing by Richardson and how we were feeling about the news and the Pentecost message. I heard stories about a family  who cam from Burundi wonder whether life in the Burundian Civil War was better than living here at this time.  

We want our God to give us direction, and define a moral and good way to live life. The First Reading in Acts today recounting the story of Pentecost describes a violent wind, divided tongues of fire and those speaking about God's deed of power being described by the crowd as drunk. This God is wild and cannot be contained.

Today Pentecost and the news loosed my imagination. It included small heartbeats of humanity. I saw in a Portland video where protestors and police took a knee in solidarity with one another, showing a respect for one another while also realizing that neither group could back down from their roles in this fight.

The cultural complexity of this image was profound. There were overtones of Colin Kaepernick's taking knee for the anthem in this gesture.  Taking a knee out of respect for the community and not to restrain  them was powerful on the police side. And.for the protesters to recognize and respect the power of the police while they did their work sent a strong message as well.

I think with the George Floyd protests there is a greater effort to hear the peaceful protesters over the expected violence that everyone regularly condemns. But we can't just pray for peace in the streets when we have the recent history of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner to name just a few where there was no respect shown, people died, and there was no justice seen by the community. This is not a problem with a few "bad apples". The poison of racism and bigotryus as  in our lives is too strong and too powerful for individuals to overcome

Instead we sang O Living Breath of God with the echos of "I can't breath" from the news. We heard God's truth in scripture after listening to a video of Amy Cooper calling 911 and saying "An African American man is threatening my life" and sounding more agitated because he simply was not doing what she wanted him to do and to increase the urgency of this false call she was making.

This is another moment of the apocalypse we are now experiencing. I use the word in the original Greek sense of describing something uncovered or revealed. And I understand now why the word evolved into how it is defined today. Once experienced the world is changed. You cannot live your life in the same way again. To add racial injustice as well as the coronavirus to life we are experiencing it deepens the impact. The breath of the Holy Spirit, the compliant "I can't breathe." and the thought of the healing breath of Jesus as opposed to the breath that gives you disease humbles me today.

I am listening for the voices of those filled with new wine and today I believe I hear their whispering.

A 2020 Pentecost Prayer - This country is burning Lord with a violence we see again and again. May it be a cleansing Holy Spirit fire with a grace that can scorch us. We call on your name to bring your fierce mercy within us and remove our complacency and our complicity.