Starting a Sacred ConversationFriday afternoons were special times for me in Philadelphia during the last two years with the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania.
I really don’t recall how all the links were made, but on Friday afternoons, we’d load up several cars and vans with our small staff and a number of Penn students, and art supplies, and drive west, not far from the ivy league campus, and descend on the basement of a Presbyterian church in West Philly. In that basement fellowship hall, we would cross from the ivory towers of academia and white, mainline church security to the swirling, dizzying crowd of black elementary school children whose world was mostly defined by urban poverty, violent neighborhoods, disjointed families, and words, actions and attitudes hardened on streets far from our own childhood memories and much beyond what any of us lived with most of the time. These were some of the more fortunate children from the neighborhood, part of an afterschool program that at least gave them a safe place to go for a short time until an adult could pick them up.
I never felt so nervous and unprepared to do ministry as that first day we were invited in to launch the “Arts After School” program, trying to connect Penn students with the reality of a much different neighborhood than the campus.
Marcy Francis was our angel of grace. Miss Marcy had what the rest of us didn’t! A Black woman of incredible presence and warmth and strength, Marcy flowed into the room in colorful garments, and with a shake and a thwack of her beaded gourd drum—her sekere—she quickly had 25 children lined up before her, singing out, clapping, calling and responding to songs and chants and affirmations of dignity and worth, teaching all of us about the strength of tradition. And with a look of her eyes to us lily white folks standing on the sidelines with little or no sense of rhythm, the message was clear: you better get singing, clapping, calling out and responding right in line with these children; you better let them be your teachers, ‘cause if you don’t, when we move on to arts and crafts or snack time, all hell’s gonna break loose.
I think I learned more about crossing so many lines of our culture from those Friday afternoons than I ever did in workshops and lectures and seminars about racism and classism. Immersion and moving from the head to the senses, moving from theory to practice, were both challenging and rewarding.
Today, on Trinity Sunday, we are invited in the UCC into a sacred conversation—to talk about race—prompted by two months of attention to Trinity UCC in Chicago and Jeremiah Wright. I admit, I feel a bit like I did as we loaded into the van and cars for that drive out to a church basement in West Philly. We’re in the vehicles, sitting in the parking lot beside the CA building, full of uncertainty.
I’m self-conscious, nervous, about some of my own inadequacy, wondering about the whole endeavor—especially about the idea of a conversation when I think we may not have the context we should, or that the conversation about race is too narrowly defined. I keep hoping that a Miss Marcy is about to come around the corner with her sekere slung over her shoulder ready to build the bridge from mind and even good hearts to color and movement and hands and feet and eyes and ears and singing.
That’s not the reality and I’ve struggled in my own thinking about this day—about what to say. I come to this day and offer the smallest of starts—like turning the key to say, OK, we’re about to leave the parking lot.
I’m not going to pretend I’m doing more than that. And to turn the key, in the context of church, is to start with the most foundational of points—which is, actually, at the very core of any sacred conversation on race. We heard about these foundational points in today’s scriptures:
From Genesis: So God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them.
And from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth: Put things in order…live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.
The powerful vision of a divinely created world does not talk about humans of different ethnicities and races, but makes the claim that all humans are created in God’s image—the claim of the equality of all God’s children.
With a word, God brings each part of creation into relation with every other part. The power of relationship that connects all creation is sacred. It is God calling all creation into this sacred relationship and promising all peoples to be present and to act with steadfast love toward them—generously and graciously liberating them from oppression.
And so the sacred journey begins. Through discord and division, God is a convener, a creator of community, assembly-- ekklesia. The basic relationship between Yahweh, the Holy One, and humanity is the gathering together to make a covenant of loyalty, service, mutual provision, and the dispensing of justice
In God’s gathering, people are brought together to speak, listen, be challenged, judge and be judged, and be reconciled, and, having been transformed by the experience, to go forth to live and enact justice.
God requires people to remove systems of poverty and oppression, creating the same relationship of generosity, grace and justice among themselves as God first formed with them. The “shroud” of non-recognition brings separation and death. In the light of relationship as being cast in Yahweh’s image—imago dei—in light of all children being of the same parent, all people are to recognize their common humanity.
This sacred conversation is a call to human relationship. On an individual level, this call is lived out through our involvement with the communities, institutions and people in our life-space.
This call cannot be realized, however, in a context of individualism; it can only be realized in community. This is because we are not just connected to others; we are our relationship with others. We form and re-form each other.
That may be our biggest struggle. Most of us have limited exposure on a regular basis to racially diverse situations and relationships. A Sacred Conversation About Race can seem terribly objective—like we’re going to do racial justice “to” someone—an academic exercise at best, an objectifying task with elements of guilt at worst.
At its core, a sacred conversation about race is about more than Black and White, more than about race. It needs to be a Jubilee conversation, proclaiming a moment of favor to the oppressed and the oppressor, an offer of grace to reconstruct relationships, an ethical norm for moral behavior.
A sacred conversation begins rooted in striving to put things in order and live in peace, recognizing the divine presence in each person and each group of people, and celebrating it. During the summer months, in worship, we’ll move through texts that frequently involve the action of God in the lives of individuals and groups toward reconciliation and peace.
A sacred conversation is about education, empowerment, experiences, exposure to the “other” in past, present and always with a vision toward what yet may be. Plans are underway, thanks to Kay’s initiative, to show the classic film “To Kill a Mockingbird” and have a book study of Timothy Tyson’s “Blood Done Sign My Name” as part of a conversation this summer.
And Adult Nurture will be shaped by the theme “Faith and Isms” in September as part of our continuing conversation.
A scared conversation requires our personal commitments to living joyfully sacrifical lives, committed to empathy, involved in our world, promoting just social, political, economic relations; ready to summon up courage not only in the face of blatantly hateful speech and acts, but in moments when the “other” is not present, and subtle innuendo, off-handed jokes, and blanket declarations are made and assumed to be OK; courage to say—NO! that’s my brother, that’s my sister, you’re talking about—NO!
So, I hope I’ve turned the key, that we are started toward a substantive and sacred conversation that will at times be direct, but always woven into our experience as First Congregational UCC in our time and this place.
