Tag: racism

Sermon: Sunday, August 30, 2015: Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I didn’t like where the dividing line fell in this morning’s reading, because sometimes I am on one side of the line, speaking truth to power and other times I am on the other side of the line, parroting the worst of what our culture has taught me. I think these stories are meant to be told together, to remind us that all our dividing lines are false and dangerous, and that we cannot simply wrap them up in religious rationales and be satisfied with the ways things are. That real religion, pure religion, cares for all who are in distress and amends itself when we notice that it is we ourselves who have caused harm.

Sermon: Sunday, July 5, 2015: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

I think it must be divine providence that on this Independence Day weekend, as our two congregations are once again gathered for worship in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in which many of our long-time neighbors are getting pushed out by rising rents and unbalanced development; in a month in which our nation has had to grieve the loss of nine more Black lives, lives that matter, to a White racist, who also happened to be Lutheran, who still in this day and age had easy access to guns; a month in which nearly a dozen Black churches across the South have burned to the ground with at least three confirmed as arson and other investigations still pending; that the scriptures once again ask us to examine how our prejudices have stood in the way of the deeds of power God is dying to accomplish in and for us.