A Seat at the Table of Lament
Church family, I’ve been restless thinking of how to respond to the recent news of the death — nay, murder — of George Floyd. My newsfeeds, like many of yours, have been inundated with videos, posts, memes, etc. about what often feels like a weekly occurrence (and actually has been over the last few weeks when we look at Ahmad Arbery’s and Breonna Taylor’s stories). What do you say about these atrocities? What prophetic utterance can one give to both exhort and rebuke a culture that is still steeped in both explicit and systemic racial injustice? I fear there are none. They seem to continue to fall on deaf ears, sparking only momentary moments of rile or passion that fade away as quickly as they came. That’s not to say that we don’t say anything. We absolutely must. But we must also persist beyond those words. We must act.
As we’ve been traveling through the ‘Year of Biblical Literacy,’ a consistent theme we’ve been explicitly pointing out is that of the imperative as God’s people to do righteousness and justice. Over and over again, God calls his people — His covenant partners charged with spreading His glory and His shalom to the ends of the earth — to do righteousness and justice. And when they don’t, accusation, warning, and consequence soon follow (cf. Isaiah 5, etc.). But the same prophets that accused and warned Israel and charged them with being unfaithful to their Covenant with God by not doing righteousness and justice also gave them a promise — that a rescuer, a truer and better King, a truer and better High Priest — One who would serve as an intermediary between God and man — would one day write God’s laws on the hearts of His people (cf. Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26; Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10, 10:16, etc.).
Church, we are those people. And thus, it is both radically disingenuous and incongruent to call ourselves Christians and sit idly by as we live in a world, and more immediately in American culture, that still seemingly treats people of different colored skin as ‘others.’ Let me speak it plain… To be idle towards the call to do righteousness and justice — especially in the context of racism — is the opposite of being a Christian. We can not — we must not — be silent either in word or in action.
The scope of what we can do and what we must do (and how we do it) is far too voluminous for a simple blog. But my good friend and fellow pastor, Kevin Platt, wrote a phenomenal response to his church in Mesa, AZ that I want us to reflect on. Something that gives us a starting place.
Family, We know that power is often abused. Today we mourn the death of George Floyd. I know newsfeeds will be inundated for a few days. We will be overloaded with images and opinions. Some of them helpful. Many of them not. I know we will wonder can we really engage with one more area of suffering in a world currently confused, crippled, and constrained by responses to a disease. That the invitation to participation at this table, at this time, is one we may rather not accept. But I want to lovingly urge us to still take our seat at the table, but it may be a different seat than you expect.
I invite us to a seat that rejects the desire to put our heads in the sand of shallow doctrine AND the compulsion to self soothe by anxiously acting. I invite us to sit in the seat of consideration in the presence of God for a while.
As a pastor my invitation to our church is to...
Pause to consider. How do we marginalize others? How are complicit in the suffering of others? Friends, let's not deceive ourselves, none of us have waded in the waters of our idolatrous and racially divided American culture and not gotten wet in the process.
My invitation is to...
Let the Spirit of the living God meet us in that space- don't rush through it. Let us find ourselves moved to repentance and reoriented with a hunger and thirst for justice. Let him bind up the wounds, apply His healing salve, and give renewed energy. That may not be a quick process, but we must linger as long as it takes.
And then, dear God, let us act with an enduring hope that has one foot firmly planted on the death and resurrection of Jesus and another on the reality of new creation that is sure to come. Our hope is in Jesus and our hand is to the plow of justice in Mesa and beyond.
We learned from our sermon series, ‘The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing,’ that a huge component to Israel’s fasting in the Old Testament was to join in solidarity with those who are suffering. If you’re so inclined, I’d like to invite you to join Jessica and me in fasting this Saturday (May 30) to join in solidarity to grieve with George Floyd’s family (and Ahmad Arbery’s and Breonna Taylor’s and all of our African American brothers and sisters) and to lament, grieve, and pray to the Lord. Let’s ask him for tangible ways that we can engage in Sonoma County to live into Isaiah 1:17, Zechariah 7:10, etc, by decrying injustice and inversely doing righteousness and justice in the everyday stuff of life.
With you as your Friend, Pastor, & Fellow Repenter,
– Daniel Huskey