The devotion for today is an article that came out on Tuesday in a special Grace at a Glance. While many of you might have already read my article below, we are reposting it for those who might have missed it and as an introduction to our devotions for the rest of this week.
This week we will be sharing our own reflections on how the events over the last week have affected us and our acknowledgment of our need to confess and learn together. I am thankful for the writers’ willingness to be vulnerable and share their thoughts. We are not experts when it comes to talking about race and anti-racism, we are learners on this journey with you. I hope that you read our articles with grace and see them as an invitation to a conversation with me or any of us.
Please pray with me: Holy Spirit, you stir up the winds of change around us and lift up the voices of all people. We hear the cries of your people today, especially people of color who cry out about injustice. Help us to listen with curious ears and give us curious hearts so that we might learn and be transformed together. We pray this in the name of your Holy Spirit, who is guiding us forward. Amen
The death of George Floyd, and an Invitation to Conversation about Race, Confession and Learning
June 1st, 2020
Dear People of Grace,
This morning as I woke up, I felt the exhaustion of a long month and an even longer last week in May. For the first time in a long time our morning news did not even speak about the Coronavirus for the first part of its broadcast because of the unrest in our nation. There are new concerns on the hearts and minds of the American people today and rightly so.
As I said in my sermon for this weekend, I have a lot of big emotions right now. I would guess you do too. Our emotions are something to pay attention. They help us discover what is happening within ourselves. There are a lot of big emotions in our community as well and different emotions, some people are angry, others are afraid, and I think most of us are sad. As we watch and read the news or blogposts, I hope that you will attempt to understand the emotions of the writers. Are they writing from a place of fear, of anger, of sorrow, of threat and how can we listen to their concerns? I would urge you to read and listen to people who disagree with you and/or who are different than you. If you are not listening to the voices of our communities of color at this time, I would urge you to do so, especially people who are black. Also, please read multiple voices and sources. Just as my words do not represent the thoughts and feelings of all white people, one writer does not speak for all black people or all communities of color.
George Floyd’s death one week ago horrified our nation. It was awful to watch. It would have been so much worse to have lived and died this way. Unfortunately, George Floyd’s death was not a unique event. Countless men and women of color have died unfairly, and unjustly. The difference is that people are videotaping it and we can see with our own eyes what is happening. We see a man, not resisting arrest, but being murdered in daylight on the streets of Minneapolis. He was not fighting the police officers who ignored his cries for help, his cries asking for breath. As of today, there has been one arrest made, but it took days of protest for this to happen. This is racism. We cannot ignore it. We cannot look away. What happened to George Floyd is not new. Our country was built on racist principles in which our Declaration of Independence stated that “All men are created equal,” and our founding fathers then declared that people with black skin are not actually people. What we see happening today is an exposure of this truth and it is a hard one to face.
I am convinced that we are all swimming in a soup of racism, which means that for many of us we don’t even realize it is happening around us. I remember as a youth, when I worked in my parent’s store when a person of color came in, I would smile and say hi in an effort to welcome and to undo the racism that I knew about. Now, I wonder if my effort to be welcoming looked like I was more suspicious of the individuals who entered. Did they think I didn’t trust them? I do not know. My good intentions were not discussed with the people I encountered because I didn’t know how to do that. Talking about race is hard. It is uncomfortable, we are going to make mistakes. I am going to make mistakes.
Grace Lutheran is predominately white. The Lutheran Church is predominately white. What I have learned over the past few years is that those of us who are white have work to do: internal work that helps us reflect on our lives, our privilege, and the culture that instilled in us a fear of people of color. This is not something that we need a person of color to come in and teach us about, but instead white people have to do the hard work of learning about our own whiteness. I really hope that you will join me in this conversation. I hope that you will have this courageous conversation with me.
A few years ago, I went to a racial justice conference and the first thing that was said was this: “You are going to be uncomfortable and you are going to say the wrong thing, but that’s okay, because we are here to learn and grow together.” People of Grace, we are on this journey together. I pray that you are willing to learn with me. We have some hard work to do and not all of us are in the same place. Some of you are a person of color and have not had the privilege of not talking about race, it is an everyday reality, others of you have been doing some hard work for a while now, and some of you are just beginning the process, or haven’t even started. It does not matter. I just hope you will dare to show up, listen and learn together. At its heart the conversations we have to begin with confession. I confess that I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself. I confess that because of my skin color I have had doors open, I have had countless privileges that I never even realized and that I have a lot more to learn.
A few years ago, I had a friend from seminary post this on Facebook: “White parents, if you are not speaking with your white children about race, you need to start today and you need to ask yourself why.” Her question was an invitation to me to learn more and to be courageous. That evening, I had the first real intentional conversation about race with my kids, outside of Martin Luther King Day and we have been having conversations about race ever since. Last week, I had a conversation about race with my parents and my children together. We all had different experiences and different ideas. We had to hold each other in love, in grace as we spoke together. We had to try to understand each other and not dismiss the difficulty of the conversation. Our church is our family of faith, this is a family discussion we need to have, one where we hold each other tenderly in love and one where we speak our truths, ask courageous questions, dare to be vulnerable and listen to someone else’s truth, confessing our sins, and forgiving each other.
Starting next Wednesday at 7 pm, you are invited to a time of learning on Zoom, where we will together learn about race, about whiteness and how we can listen to our communities of color and work for justice. I hope you will join me.
May God bless us and strengthen us on this journey,
Pastor Joanna Mitchell
