Dear Saints in Santa Fe and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, who continually calls us to love one another.
“We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”
Remember this part of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech spoken sixty years ago this August, and 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation?
Dr. King went on to note that it was obvious that people of color in America have been given a bad check, one that came back marked “insufficient funds.”
Tyre Nichols, whose funeral was yesterday in Memphis, is but the latest to receive this “bad check” of injustice and inhumanity inflicted upon women and men of color through the centuries.
Sadly, churches have sometimes been complicit and, all too often, complacent. All too often.
February is Black History month and each Sunday morning, 8:30-9:30 am, our Adult Education series, “Racial Justice: Bending the Arc,” will look at racism “right under our noses.” In worship our music will feature spirituals and music by black composers. We are using a new lectionary by Wilda C. Gafney, and black woman scholar of Hebrew scriptures, and thereby are being introduced to new stories in the Bible about people left out and on the margins.
And then let’s talk to one another and hear the stories of others talk to others and face the racism that has so handily destroyed the lives of so many in our communities. Let us become more aware of racism’s shape, scope, and contours. And then may we do all we can do dismantle it.
It’s a heavy lift, which goes without saying. I am seeking to form a group here in the congregation, a peacemaking group I mentioned in my last letter to you and invite you to join me in talking all this over, racism and injustice and every other way our culture allows such inhumanity to fester.
Dismantling racism, confronting injustice, talking over issues, and seeking a way forward—this is the work of the church, as we work hand in hand with others to fulfill the promises of our nation to “guarantee the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Where one day we’ll hold a funeral for racism and allow people like Tyre to live.
Grace and peace,
Harry