I don’t know the whole story, but I do know what I saw and heard through my kindergarten eyes and ears. I know what I learned from adults that day. And I know that it left an indelible mark and questions without satisfying answers. I can without a doubt remember the day in kindergarten when I realized that race was a thing that mattered and that I had one.

A class mate of mine was carried out of the classroom by his hands and his feet. He had been throwing a tantrum on the dark blue rug that had the numbers of a clock around the outer edge. (I loved that rug) He was sent to the principal’s office. He never came back to class that day or any day afterwards. I don’t remember his name. I do remember that his skin was darker than the other black kids in my class. I remember thinking that I would never be subject to the same kind of discipline. I remember feeling very uncomfortable.

I was white.

I didn’t have the language of privilege at that age, but that’s what I was learning about.

I am not always good at paying attention to discomfort or heading into situations that might make me encounter it. But it’s worth the attention. It’s worth noticing. Like I told a kid who had just run his first mile before coming to church for Wednesday evening programing, “if it hurts, you have to stretch or it will hurt more.” You have to pay attention to what your body is telling you. Discomfort offers and opportunity for growth. Avoiding it does no such thing.

“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness. Not health but healing. Not being, becoming. Not rest, but exercise. We are not what we shall be, but we are moving toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is moving on. This is not the end, but this is the road. All does not yet gleam in the glory of God but all is being purified.” -Martin Luther

In my ministry as a parish deaconess, friends with young children and congregation members regularly ask me if I know of or have good resources for talking with their children about race. They share stories of struggling with how to raise their children to recognize and celebrate human diversity as a gift without relying on the language of “color blindness” that they, more often than not, were raised with. Mostly I listen to their stories and celebrate with them the good things they’re already doing. Their questions keep me wondering about what ways the church can partner with parents as they strive in this arena. I know we can meet communities, families, congregations, and children where they’re at and encourage healthy conversations around race where faith and grace are at the center of the conversation. I also know it’s hard to know where to start.

Younger Children & Elementary Children

·       Consider doing a resource audit and see what you notice. This is not meant to make you feel guilty, but to help provide a mirror. I recently had middle schoolers go through the children’s books on my shelf at church and put them into 2 piles: books that had persons of color in them at all and books that had mostly white characters. It was informative. We had great conversations as a result.

·       If your congregation is in the habit of celebrating the saints (or even if it’s not), consider using a children’s sermon to highlight MLK Day, the birthday of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Saint Augustine. These leaders in the church were persons of color. There’s a great children’s book by Archbishop Desmond Tutu called “God’s Dream” that you could read on his birthday each year. There’s even a board book version that you could give out as a baptismal birthday gift.

·       Children love to dance and bang on drums. There are great global music songs in the ELW that you can break the ice with by inviting the little ones to dance in the aisles. Setting 7 has a great “Glory” that even a congregation unfamiliar with Latin music can get into. We can celebrate the gift of the gospel with our whole bodies.

Middle Schoolers

·       Middle schoolers are capable of deeper conversations than we sometimes give them credit for. Three days of confirmation class could be spent on race, culture, and class. ELCA World Hunger has downloadable resources on Hunger and the Catechism.

·       Middle Schoolers are busy struggling to broaden their worldview beyond their own “bubbles.” Give them the tools to be courageous by setting an example. The ELCA also has missionaries across the globe. Maybe your congregation could consider sponsoring one and your middle school Sunday School could write them letters.

·       Middle Schoolers LOVE to inform adults about things they “know more” about. What if your middle schoolers were to do a poster series on “You Could Be a Lutheran If . . . ” that explored Lutheranism in America and the world. For example, one poster could be “You Could be Lutheran if you live in Tanzania” because there are more Lutherans in Tanzania than the United States.

High Schoolers

·       ELCA Racial Justice Ministries has a number of downloadable resources that are created for adults, that I think you could adjust for conversations with high schoolers in youth group.

·       Equipping leaders and mentors to engage in conversations around identity, race, culture, class and how we attend to those conversations as persons of faith is perhaps one of the harder things to do. However, youth will want to talk about identity – it’s edgy. Maybe prep your leadership with ELCA Racial Justice Ministries resources like “One Body, Many Members.”

·       In some places Lutherans are reclaiming the practice of sharing personal faith stories and giving testimony. What might it look like to have a testimony series that intentionally asked questions around the intersection of identity, race, culture, and class? What if adults and youth shared stories that were truly vulnerable and didn’t always tie up in a neat bow?

Bio: Claire Schoepp (she/her/hers) is a parish Deaconess at two congregations in Chicago serving as Director of Child and Family Ministries at Luther Memorial Church of Chicago and Administrative Assistant at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square. Claire is grateful to First Immanuel Lutheran Church and Rev. Harry Therwanger for everything. Claire and her spouse, Isaac Schoepp, love living in Chicago where they take in as much theatre as possible.

…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:32)

The timing of the debate about appointing Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court after the hearing with Dr. Ford strikes me as ironic. This hotly contested debate unfolded as the country was observing the national holiday still known by most as Columbus Day. For some years now some have been campaigning to change it to National Indigenous People’s Day. In fact my I-phone calendar noted that October 8 was Columbus Day (regional holiday) and Indigenous People’s Day, with the note, “This is not a nation-wide holiday; it may not be observed in our region.”

The story of our country includes the narrative that our European ancestors came here to escape the tyranny of a hierarchy of royalty and high-ranking church leaders. When the Europeans settled here they essentially recreated that hierarchy with different labels. Though we do not have monarchs with numerous layers of aristocracy, we very much have a system in which a few thrive far more than most.

Prestige and Privilege

The elite are often sent off to expensive private schools where they are encouraged to believe they are special, above the rules that govern others, and born to lead by virtue of their family and social connections. Our founding documents about liberty and justice for all only applied to Caucasian men who owned property. That property, originally occupied by indigenous people, was often obtained by ignoring or discrediting the rights of the people here long before Columbus landed on the shores of the Americas.

These assumptions are changing. Change causes anxiety. Anxiety often produces angry outbursts such as we’ve witnessed lately as the #MeToo movement has exposed the dark underbelly of previously unchallenged privileges among some. Though we no longer publically claim that women are the property of men, we often have enforced behaviors that allow women to be treated as such.

A Social Revolution

We appear to be in the midst of a civil war as potentially destructive as the Civil War of the 1800’s. The class system that has evolved over the past four hundred years is hurting a large portion of our population. Growing numbers refuse to suffer in silence.

Today when we acknowledge Christopher Columbus and his explorations we also tell a more accurate account of what happened then. We are starting to talk about the abuses and oppression Columbus and other European explorers inflicted on the people already here. We are slowly, and very painfully, coming to terms with the fallout from the re-creation of a class system that rewards some and excludes most. Not until I started doing extensive research for an upcoming book set in the 1600’s did I learn that Europeans were capturing Native Americans and hauling them back to Europe to sell as slaves. But fessing up to our past injustice does not come naturally. Some textbooks are being rewritten to portray slavery as a wave of immigration from Africa, as though the slaves asked to be brought here in chains. The travesty of the Trail of Tears is being written as some friendly land swap agreement between the Native Americans of the Southwest and the Europeans who needed land to expand. Some are trying to white wash our history by brainwashing our children.

Who Speaks the Truth?

The issue today seems to be whether we will believe people when they tell us this lopsided system is hurting them. If we believe the victims of abuse and injustice, we must work together to render aid and change the system.  What kind of a nation have we become when a woman has to move twice to protect her family because she goes public about a night of personal horror? What kind of people are we when a Senator calling for more time to process the situation also receives death threats? What kind of people are we when we encourage crowds to chant about locking people up for voicing their opinions? What kind of people are we when we justify tearing terrorized toddlers from their mothers’ arms because they didn’t cross into our geography according to our nearly-impossible-to-navigate entry process?

When we promote and favor the few but discredit the many hurt by this system of elitism, we are clearly telling those who suffer that we either do not believe them or we do not care about their plight. I once interviewed a Holocaust survivor. He told me that of all the atrocities he suffered and witnessed, the worse part was when he managed to track down a few surviving relatives. They asked him, “Why are you making up those lies? That never could have happened.”

I Do See Progress

I am a glass half-full sort of person. I see progress. I see more women and minorities in places they certainly would not have been a few decades ago. For example, today nearly one third of our sixty-six ELCA Lutheran bishops are women. I also see more and more men stepping up to address these issues of inequality. I am grateful and encouraged for this progress. I pray it continues.

My grandmother lived in Cleveland when her father was dying in Zanesville, a hundred and fifty miles away. She took a train to be with him, and according to the story told to me, spent the night in the train station. No one would rent a room to a married woman travelling alone in first decades of the 1900’s.

My mother managed our family of three children alone for months at a time when our civil engineer father was out of the country on a project. During one of his trips the bank deducted his paycheck from their account, rather than add it. This of course put the account in the red and caused multiple checks to bounce. The bank would not deal with my mother because she was a woman. She had to get her father, a Federal Reserve banker, to intervene to straighten out the mess.

ONE Nation?

I wonder how many members of the elite have dealt with such issues. We are in the midst of a cultural revolution. Future generations will no doubt have some name for these shifts in power and privilege we’re seeing unfold. For now we are re-thinking our collective assumptions about how we should live and work together as ONE nation, under a God of mercy and compassion, that truly ensures liberty and justice for all people – not just the privileged few.

The original Pledge of Alliance read, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This version was amended by Congress in 1954 to: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Francis Bellamy, a socialist, wrote the original version in 1892. A socialist wrote our Pledge of Allegiance.

I pray calm, wise, and compassionate leaders can guide us out of this contentious corner into which we’ve backed ourselves. We’ve come a long way, but we certainly have a long way to go until we truly are a one nation that provides liberty and justice to all our people.

Bio

Kathryn Haueisen is a retired ELCA pastor, a consultant with the Mission Investment Fund’s Capital Campaign Services, and an author who blogs about people and places that offer help and hope at www.HowWiseThen.com. She has written devotions, curriculum, and articles for numerous Lutheran publications as well as other consumer and faith-based publications. Her book, A Ready Hope: Effective Disaster Response for Congregations (Alban Institute 2009) prepares communities and volunteers for the long term recovery process that unfolds following a natural disaster.

On Monday, April 30, 2018, I was asked to accompany Bayron, a man seeking asylum in the US, to his Immigration Court hearing at the Rodino Federal Building, Newark, NJ. Bayron came to the US in 2016 across the Mexico/US border in Texas on foot with a toddler, fleeing violence in Honduras, widely known as one of the homes of the infamous gang, MS-13.  The menace of MS-13 is regularly invoked as a warrant to deport not just gang members, but any undocumented immigrant.  Bayron has no criminal record, yet he is but one of the hundreds of thousands of deportees that, largely based on public discourse about MS-13, have been rounded up by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Before entering the federal building, we prayed.  Once inside the guard announced, “It’s time to play airport.”  Of course, TSA agents do not carry weapons or wear body armor. By this, they meant that shoes and jackets have to come off, belts, watches, and cell phones need to be deposited into a plastic basket which will be x-rayed, and pockets needed to be emptied.  Then you proceed through a metal detector only to be met by another armed guard on the other side who greets you with a pat down.  Then you put your shoes and other clothing items back on in a chair flanked by two armed guards. Granted, the guards were jovial, but as kind as their intent could have been, it did not outweigh the fire power, controls, and “official” nature of this encounter.

Bayron was shaken up.  He didn’t know if he would be deported, given an ankle monitor, or asked to come back in a week only to face the same terrors all over again.  The building, what and who it represents, is terrifying.  There is no way around that.

After clearing the check-in, and some more prayers, we proceeded to the elevator at the back of the foyer and ascended into the center of a building that some say is the hall of heroes and others the belly of the beast.  Upon reaching the correct floor, a Spanish speaking guard escorted us to the waiting area and asked that we turn our cell phones off in his presence because electronic device use is prohibited in this area.  Upon entering the waiting area, its casino-esque décor was apparent – there were no windows in the room.  And, while there were no slot machines, the whole affair felt more like a game of chance with people’s lives hanging in the balance rather than a judicial affair with lady justice’s scales shaping the outcomes of the proceedings.  This room, absent cell phones, computers, visitors, windows, and even attorneys is a little black box.  It is meant to be as invisible as the population that it serves.  You can’t care about what happens there if you can’t go there, see there, or be there.  Its lack of transparency to the public is essentially due to the same reason a person gets “draped” during surgery:  You don’t want to see it, because if you did, you probably wouldn’t go through with the procedure.

Most of the people in the room were brown or black.  There were a few babies there with their parents.  The youngest baby, in what I think was her father’s arms, was crying and the parents were attempting to sooth the child.  Were the baby’s tears the only thing preventing her parents from crying?

The anxiety in the room was palpable.  Will I have to leave my children behind?  My partner? Family? – today?  These were the questions on people’s faces amidst the somber quiet of insecurity and perhaps terror. In an otherwise starkly adorned waiting area, two portraits gazed upon those who had been caught up in ICE’s dragnet.  The official presidential portrait of Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions stared smilingly back at those whose heads hung low.  While President Trump’s Deportation and Removal totals are not yet complied, Presidents’ past have all increasingly ramped up deportations.  President Obama – 3,805,552 deportations.  President George W. Bush – 10,328,850.  President Clinton – 12,290,905.  President George H.W. Bush – 4,161,683.  President Reagan – 8,276,853.  Were we, as Christians, to take these staggering totals as seriously as we take Jesus’ words from Matthew 25:40, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me,” we might be moved to affix these deportation totals to presidential portraits with their deportation tallies placed at the bottom of the photo like the ID# at the bottom of a mugshot.

While the details of this affair are horrifying, they pale in comparison to the circumstances asylees are running from.  That is, it is preferable to endure the horror of being rounded up like an animal in the US than suffer violence back home.

By the grace of God, we were able to procure Bayron an attorney who happened to have a case that same day, at the same time, in the same building.  The attorney, from Catholic Charities, whisked us into a small conference room where he rifled through Bayron’s paperwork and attempted to speak Spanish, which he wasn’t fluent in.  After many failed attempts at communication, a colleague called a friend who spoke Spanish who then proceeded to translate the conversation over the phone.  The guards can speak Spanish, but the attorneys can’t?

The attorney was confounded by Bayron’s disjointed paperwork; he packed in a hurry.  Somewhat flabbergasted and pressed for time, he turned to our group and asked, “How long have you know Bayron?”  We said, “About an hour and a half.”

The attorney sort of chuckled to himself and, watching the clock, pressed on with his questions and sorting.  We knew Bayron for about an hour and a half.  In a roundabout dash of phone calls through networks of colleagues three clergy ended up showing up to accompany Bayron.  That is more than I thought were going to be there. And, when you honestly think about it, considering the 215,000 deportations in 2017, the staggering number of people who need assistance is debilitating.  What can any individual do in the face of so much need?

I get it. And, honestly, that is why I wrote this piece.  I don’t know that I can make a difference on my own. I can’t.  But if enough people know what is going on, then maybe We can.  Every day people are denied due process in little black boxes like this one in Newark, NJ.  Yet, Bayron got a one year stay of deportation.  This is a provisional win.  But, without the attorney from Catholic Charities, the massive networks of activists, and a few willing clergy, Bayron may have been deported that day.  I can’t say that I did it, or that any one thing prevented him from being deported, but what I can say is this:  Bayron knew someone and that someone knew other people who would fight for him to stay.  I am writing this to tell you that that someone can be you.  And, in such a xenophobic context, victory is not always halting a deportation.  Sometimes victory, if we will have any at all, could simply be saying no as loud as you can with as many people as possible.

Bio

Carmine Pernini is the pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rahway, NJ, a member of the NJ Synod’s Anti-Racism Team, a Coordinator for the Union County Interfaith Coordinating Council, a member of Faith in NJ’s Clergy Caucus, and on the Steering Committee of the NJ Clergy Coalition for Justice.  He is married to Rev. Kathryn Irwin, of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Nutley, NJ, and they have three children and one on the way. 

Words Matter.

If there anything I learned in my last 5 years in Lutheran academia is that confessions are central. Words matter. They shape realities and transform both perception and perspective. Words are powerful.

Even if they sound made up –or effectively are- words have the power to reclaim identities and shape worlds. For example: Latinamerican. You may read this and think that someone let a typo slip, repeatedly, throughout this blog post. But I chose to use Latinamerican, rather than Latin American, or Latin-American for a reason. Other than Peruvian, latinoamericano –a person from Latinoamerica- is one of the labels I would use “back home” –back home meaning back in a Spanish speaking country- and in Spanish, this word has a unifying sense to it. We may be from different countries but we are one Latinamerica. Latinoamerica unida.

Latin-American, or Latin American on the other hands is defined by Merriam-Webster as: based in or relating to the American countries south of the U.S. where people speak Spanish and Portuguese. You can see how this definition centralizes the United States to define a group of people.

I’m not here for the colonizing narrative, so I hope you can see why I would reject Latin American/Latin American as stubbornly as I do. Every label, every name, every hat, and every mask we pick and accept for ourselves shapes us. That is the power words have in our everyday life.

To be in the United States, to be an immigrant in the United States, to be a Latinamerican immigrant in the United States, to be a queer Latinamerican immigrant in the United States, to be a queer Latinamerican immigrant man in the United States, is quite a thing. As one embodying all these experiences I learned this: words matter. Words can have an almost magical character; they evoke, invoke, revoke and reframe realities into our experiences, be it personal or communal. Words are powerful.

As I first learned to literally speak new words, I learned and relearned how words hold power -power to acquire, power to release, power to create, and power to destroy. Of course this sounds esoteric when framed like this. Instead, I could have just said that I learned enough English to buy food at a supermarket, words to bless and be a witness to God’s power, to make a phone call or send a letter, enough to have a conversation and make new friends, but also enough language to tell people to stay away, to not harm me or my family, to denounce racism or queerphobia.

If you’ve ever been in a situation where you had to learn a new language, a new culture, and a new code to communicate, you know how empowering and transforming these landmark moments are.

I remember my first word, the first time I truly spoke from my heart in the English language. It happened while hanging out with my friend Donna a good 17 years ago, were instead of calling her by her name to get her attention, I just said “YO!”

Yo.

YO.

It startled me, it surprised me, as this was the first word I spoke without translating, without overthinking which way to say what. Sadly I don’t think I’ve used “yo!” since then –at least not quite like that first time- but I fondly remember it as my first step in a journey to reclaim my voice.

When speaking about, well, *speaking*, sometimes we can see this as something passive, but for people who have lost their voice, for those who have ever been considered “less than”, for the other, for the margins, speaking is not only active but intentional, its sacred, because none of us had the privilege to use our voice as a given. We had to reclaim it. Word by word, space by space, claiming that those words, and their power, are important enough to risk ridicule, violence, or indifference. Every time words are put forward, we assert our place, we claim our seat at the table, not as a guest, but as a host, as someone who will be heard.

So when being all of these things, when one has all of these words, names, masks, hats, applied to them, when one has words to say, it is expected that something will happen. You see, people are afraid of this. This magic, this power to reveal what is preferred to be kept hidden, unnamed and unknown.

I have been created in the image of God, I am not just creation, and I have been lovingly, carefully, and powerfully crafted in the image of my creator for a purpose in this journey. Why is this important to say? Because words matter, words hold magic, they hold power. Words are the difference between “You’re wonderfully created” and “You’re wonderfully created in the image of God” where one confesses that I am part of creation, and the other, that I’m not only creation, but also co-creator in Christ, your equal, your sibling in Christ, created in the image of God.

Words, as elements that hold power, can be weaponized, and meanings can, and will surreptitiously be used to hold power over one another. Every day we see how #BlackLivesMatter is turned to #AllLivesMatter, how queer is used both as an identifier with rich meaning, and as a slur, how immigrant is used both to disenfranchise people of color and to elevate Europeans who came and keep coming to the United States.

Words matter, they hold power, and they also withhold power when we neglect to say them. When we withhold the blessing of community to others, when we neglect to name others as our equals, as image of God, as co-creators in Christ, we are unable to confess our sins for what they are.

As a person who holds all these names, all these words, all this power, I have to remind myself constantly that even though the church means well, I have the power to change it into something else. I hold the power to create a church where I’m not just an asset, or a blessing, or a resource, but the Church, where I am a child of God created in the image of God, co-creator in Christ. I hold this power to call the church into a revival, and hold it accountable for constantly calling me brave, fierce, or beautiful, but not claiming me as sibling, child of God, or one of their own.

I know the Church is constantly transforming, reforming, and becoming this community, where the power of creation is spoken into reality through all of us. To all my kin, to all my people, to all people of color, immigrants, to all my queer folk, to all my people who are still figuring out their place in the Church, from parishes to synods to seminaries -you have power in every word you speak, you hold magic within you, you, as co-creator in Christ can speak this church into reality, into power, into home.

You are beautifully, wonderfully created in the image of God, co-creator in Christ and bringer of realities, not only into the church but into this world. Words matter. Speak them, slowly, with an accent, mispronounced even, but with the confidence that your words hold power, and in speaking them, you are speaking God’s kingdom into reality. Words matter. Hold your place. You are the Church.

Bio

Cesar Abel Arroyo Traverso -prefers to go by Abel- is a candidate for ordination in the Grand Canyon Synod, originally from Lima, Peru. He lives in Phoenix Arizona with his husband Jeff, where he misses the ocean and keeps learning what “dry heat” actually means. Abel is a graduate from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago where he got his M.Div and emphases on both African American and Latinx studies.

When I was a kid I thought of Jesus as my personal superhero.  My maternal grandmother Emogene gave me a children’s bible—filled with colorful pictures depicting the works of Jesus. I loved that book and the promise that it held.   I likened its gospel message to a comic book filled with villains, action, and Jesus as the Saviour with the mysterious powers. He walked on water, fed the masses, healed the sick, and stood up to the bullies. And the most exciting part of the Good News message was that I too could grow up to be just like Him.  for Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these,… .” (John 14:12 NRSV).

It was Jesus, along with the Super Friends, Davey and Goliath that were all part of part of my imaginative childhood faith formation that good and God could conquer evil. This was the 1970s and unfortunately, Saturday morning cartoons didn’t feature many examples of racial diversity.  However, I enjoyed Davey and Goliath because 1)  he was Lutheran and 2) he had friendships with Jonathan Reed and Cisco both people of color. The mission of the all-white main cast of Super Friends ( Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Robin and Aquaman), each with their unique powers, was to fight injustice, to right that which was wrong and to serve all humankind. Who wouldn’t want friends like these?

This week, Starbucks the American coffee company chain was pulled into the national spotlight, when a store manager in the Center City section of Philadelphia, refused restroom access to a black man because he hadn’t made a purchase.  Starbucks store guests, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson both 23-year-old black males arrived at the Starbucks for a professional business meeting with a local real estate developer Andrew Yaffe.   After denying access to the restroom, the store manager called 911. Police officers responded by arresting the two men for trespassing and escorting them away in handcuffs. The treatment of the two men ignited protests and a sit-in at the establishment. Subsequently, the charges against the men were dropped; the manager was removed as an employee from the location; an apology was issued from the Philadelphia Police Commissioner and a personal apology from Starbuck’s CEO Kevin Johnson; followed by a commitment to educate its employees on implicit racial-bias across 8,000 stores. Implicit racial bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.  The goal of the training is to promote conscious inclusion and prevent discrimination within and across the organization.

At the heart of this story for me is Melissa DePino—a 50 years old white female that videoed and posted the incident on Twitter. Although the story isn’t about Melissa DePino –it is about what she did in the moment. DePino wasn’t just a bystander while two people of color were handcuffed and humiliated –she used her very human powers to be an upstander. To view the video click pic.twitter.com/0U4Pzs55Ci.

@Starbucks The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing. pic.twitter.com/0U4Pzs55Ci

— Melissa DePino (@missydepino) April 12, 2018

Melissa DePino is my shero (female hero) of the week — because more than likely by this time next week another story of racism will make headline news. DePino used her white privilege to expose the unfair discriminatory treatment people of color face on a regular basis; she held Starbucks accountable for their actions  by exposing the situation and she named her own experience of white privilege.   Her post revealed the pervasive reality of racism and white culture. In the curriculum, Transforming White Privilege: A 21^st Century Leadership Capacity (an online resource developed by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation) white culture is defined as the dominant, unquestioned standards of behavior and ways of functioning embodied by the vast majority of institutions in the United States. White culture defines who looks professional, who is a threat to society and to whom the rules apply.

What if people of color had more white super friends like Melissa DePino?  White leaders that activate their powers whenever they see a person of color in distress because of the evil actions of racism. White leaders willing to put their whole bodies on the line for racial justice. No one can say for sure what could have happened to Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson if there wasn’t a video of this incident.  However, the historical and daily realities of black and brown people that find themselves accused, abused and  dehumanized by a society that devalues them is real.  The problem of racism in America will not go away with a day of training of 175,000 employees of Starbucks but it is a start.  Melissa DePino’s actions should serve as a reminder to all of us that believe in justice that we too are superheroes. Every day we can show up as transformers for racial justice following the example of Jesus the “Holy Disruptor” by speaking up when we see or hear something; informing our networks through social media; showing up in support with others at public actions, rallies and marches, holding institutions accountable and by voting for elected officials that work for equity and inclusion for all of us.

Judith Roberts serves as the ELCA Program Director for Racial Justice. She is mom to Julian Barlow. Lover of good vegan eats, Zumba and documentary films.

The Transforming White Privilege: A 21st Century Leadership Capacity curriculum  is available for purchase for $250 for the ELCA visit: https://www.racialequitytools.org/module/overview/transforming-white-privilege.

 Lenten Sermon on the film Black Panther

Good morning church.  During the peace I was hit with the “Wakanda forever”, I needed that. I was curious, did anyone else see Black Panther yet? (Yes’, echoing from the church). Great. Ok. Even better. Good, cause that’s what we’re talking about today. And if you haven’t seen it yet, I apologize in advance in case this spoils anything for you, but I encourage you to go out and see it.

 I also want to say, excuse me before I start, for everyone here who is under 30, thank you, thank you for being here. Thank you for existing in this church. You don’t understand how important you are. All of you. Bless up. That is so important. Thank you for worshipping.

  The Gospel according to Mark 1:9-15, (NRSV) “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee. And was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart. And the spirit descending like a dove on him. And the voice came from heaven, you are my son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased. And the spirit immediately drove him out of the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days tempted by Satan. He was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come here. Repent and believe in the good news.”

 I want to talk about the movie the Black Panther a little bit. It really is a movie for the culture and I am blessed to have seen that in my lifetime. I want to talk about one of the characters, Killmonger. I feel like many of us here are from the United States or have lived here for a good amount of time, correct?  I think in many ways; his character is so relatable to us. The black pain. The pain of being left behind. The pain of being disconnected in some way.  Killmonger, many of us can relate to him because of this. Because of this anger that has been built up inside of him. This young man who was half Wakandan and half American, grew up in Oakland, without a father. Even though everything might have said that he couldn’t have made it, he ended up graduating from college. He did his graduate studies at M.I.T. He even joined the military.  That motivated him to get him where he is.

 I want to look at Killmonger, as us. I want to look at this wilderness, as the African diaspora experience. I want us to look at the common things that we share, that we go through, as being in the wilderness. Because often times, during Lent, we do this thing where we talk about this individual wilderness, and we’re all so alone in it. And no one can relate, but maybe they can relate. But this experience, this American experience in particular that we go through, we are collectively in the wilderness. In addition to, all the other pieces of the wilderness we will experience.

 Jesus speaks to this struggle because he too has been there, in the wilderness. Which obviously plays a major part in a lot of our relations and the relationship with our ancestors. When they too were enslaved and they were going through their wilderness. Their journey through the underground railroad. Their journey to liberation. Their journey marching. Jesus did that too.

 What happens to us in the wilderness? Killmonger said, “The world took everything away from me, everything I ever loved.” This speaks to the pain of any of us. Cause maybe the world took everything away. Maybe the world took away a child of ours, a loved one, a place that we call home. Gentrification or displacement due to war. Maybe the world took away security, or finances, or even our freedom. Maybe the world took away your heritage and identity; the foundation for future generations. This world can be oh so cruel. This wilderness can turn anyone to be angry. That’s what I want to talk about.

 I want to talk about the anger that comes with being in the wilderness. I want to talk about the rage that sometimes can come inside of us just by living our everyday life. Seeing ourselves bloody on the street, on the news, every single day. Going home and seeing the next person evicted for whatever reason. Knowing that the majority of people in prison today look just like us with dark skin but did almost nothing in comparison to those who still walk free. Shout outs to Zimmerman.

 Let me ask you, what happens when we let the wilderness win? That’s my question for us. Because that’s what happens with Killmonger, right?  I think in many ways that’s what happens to a lot of us. This journey can be so much of a burden on us. The weight that we carry on all of our shoulders. Then sometimes we then tend to act out in spite. Or maybe we do work hard. We might actually work hard to degrade others and burn down our sacred spaces. To destroy bridges amongst each other and personal relationships. We can be so angry, but with what purpose? Because often times anger comes from a place of vengeance; anger tends to be a secondary emotion. That’s not always what we’re feeling, there’s something deeper inside.

 Jesus was led into the wilderness, being tempted by Satan and amongst wild beasts. Now sometimes, I think when we look at scripture, we look at how light and fluffy it is. “He was in the wilderness”, then we create these really cool metaphors about the wilderness. But, the thing is that the wilderness then, is very fierce. We’re talking about wild beasts. We’re not talking about homes and shelters and protection. We’re talking about living on your bare feet. The callouses. The harsh that’s done there. And you know if you’re in shoes for too long, that you don’t really feel comfortable in, already I’m done. I’m “I’m ready to go home.” What happens when I can’t go home? We’re talking about Satan tempting him.  At any moment he can respond with anger. At any moment, he can fall off his path that he was placed on….but he didn’t.

 To be honest, Jesus would have had all the right to become angry. Aside from the nonsense he had to deal with in society, let’s talk about being alone. Being threatened by the idea of being forgotten. Feeling displaced and at risk. Uncertain of his own survival. Something that I didn’t mention in my little bio, is that I was actually a trauma chaplain at Christ medical center in Chicago prior to my new position. And I’ve seen all of this. A lot of this by my emergency room department. Gunshot wound victims, who tend to also come from south Chicago, or northwest Indiana. I’ve seen the fear of being forgotten. The “hey, contact everyone on my list” or people outside waiting trying to come in. This anger of “this is not what I wanted for myself, but this is kind of what I ended up with.” This feeling of being displaced, because throughout their childhood maybe they had to go from foster home to foster home or mom just couldn’t simply keep a stable apartment. Again, these are many collective shared things that a lot of us may have experienced or witnessed others experiencing or having those cousins that have experienced it.

 But God. In that wilderness was God. Jesus felt God and trusted that he would be led through.  That is the message that we’re always going to hear when it comes to the wilderness talk. God’s there. God’s present. God was there for our ancestors. God was there for our parents. God is there for you. For me. For us. I want to ask us to reflect for a second, what’s in our wilderness? What are some things that might be taking us out of character right now? What are some hardships that we might be facing? At what point or where do we feel disconnected in our life today? Life is not a walk in the park.  How do we keep ourselves going?

 Killmonger used anger, spent years building hate before trying to actually heal, which led him to Wakanda. Using that same hate to instruct a military coup and trying to arm the oppressed globally.  That per say is maybe not a bad idea but, look at what he destroyed, trying to fix something. He destroyed sacred rituals. He destroyed sacred ground that people lived on. He destroyed other people; stability and comfort of those who lived there. That’s what happen when we leave the wilderness and we bring our anger with us. That’s what happens when we don’t take the time to heal. We become a destructive force. We become something that becomes so toxic in our environment, in our communities that people may not even want to be around us if by chance they get to survive.

 The reality is, we can come out of our trials and choose not to heal. But don’t be surprised when a lit match burns down your house. I can feed you the same line of “God is with you in the wilderness” and that is very much true, but I want to push our learnings today.

 Let’s say you’re out of the wilderness. What are you going to do now? That’s the message I want to pull up from here. What are you going to do now? When you get out, how do you cope with the trauma? I’m going to sidebar this real quick because the thing is that, as we’re talking about our history, I’m so blessed that ya’ll were talking about your history today, something else that we bring with us, that is literally in our D.N.A. is intergenerational trauma.  Maybe, those before us didn’t have the opportunities to try and heal. Maybe they didn’t have the time of day to try to work and keep themselves together, but right now you do. How are you going to heal? How are we going to share this healing with others? How are we going to undo a lot of the damage that has been done to us?

 We may have been like Killmonger. We may have left broken economies or homes that felt like prison. We may have found freedom after abusive relationships or financially stopped working in non-traditional methods. But just because we escaped, does not mean that we escaped the pain and the imprint that the wilderness leaves on our spirits. Do we want to continue to live in the pain so that the anger builds, or do we see peace in ourselves and God to learn to heal? That’s your decision. That’s your decision every single day. Do we even know what healing feels like? Has there ever been a time where you felt that you were healed?

 And I would say culturally, we never are really permitted to heal. From bouncing around from slavery, to Jim Crowe, to mass incarceration, human trafficking, the crack epidemic, when have we really even had the time to breathe? That’s right, I can’t breathe. In 2008, I know more names of black unarmed people shot by the police than the prophets in the bible. When have we ever had time to breathe?

  The message deep in this text is that we need to regain ourselves and our lives. Christ’s message is powerful because he leaves the wilderness. His mentor is arrested, and he can still find God. Cause if we know the bible pretty well, John doesn’t make it too long and that was someone who brought Jesus up in the faith. Who gave him this power, who passed over the torch to him. After suffering and knowing that his partner in crime will too suffer.  Being a stranger in his own home, he still was able to give glory to God. Somewhere in that time period, he was able to find healing and find peace in himself and in God. That’s a hard pill to swallow, because sometimes, these things are so rough, that I can’t even see where God is. Then God taps me on the shoulder and says, “Hey, I’m right here.”

 The example that Jesus set, is to find grace in the chaos. With that, I wonder, what if Killmonger was taken back to Wakanda? Or if he grew up with a father. I wonder, what if he wasn’t the truth that the king chose to omit? I also wonder, how many of us carry this pain too? What was the Wakanda that you needed?  Where can we invite Jesus into our pain?

 We are not alone in our wilderness. We’re not alone in our wilderness because we are a community. Whether we may be going through the exact same thing at the exact same time, there are journeys in our wilderness that intersect. That overlap. That are shared. They may look different but are still the same. In this wilderness we are not alone and like Jesus, we will persevere. Will we learn from Jesus, and seek the peace that is God? Or will we allow our despair to overcome us? That is the work that we are charged with. That is your duty ESPECIALLY in this Lenten season.

 I want to leave you with this, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.” Who are you? Are we our trauma or are we our healing? Maybe we’re both. Who are you after the wilderness? Who are you?

Amen.

Bio

Nicolette Marie Faison (Nic) is an approved candidate for ordination and graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. The Chicago transplant lives out urban justice and community healing through her work as the City Director for DOOR Network. When she is not quoting Marvel’s Black Panther, Nic spends time with her cat Penne debating which city has the best pizza. (It’s New York.)