As we prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Savior, during this Advent season, we'd like to invite you to revisit a sermon from a few years ago. Pastor Colin Robeson preached on a part of the Christmas story that is often overlooked in Matthew 2:13-18. After the Magi visit Jesus, they go home by a different route. The Holy Family, warned in a dream, flee as refugees to Egypt, while Herod commands the slaughter of all boys in Bethlehem two years and under. Why does Matthew include this story?
- Coming Clean – On Oct. 18, Pastor Scott Dudley preached an excellent sermon on confession. I highly recommend that you watch the sermon again or read the transcript and think about it through the lens of racial reconciliation.
- Daniel Hill Interview – Pastor Daniel Hill along with other Chicago area pastors participated in a prayer vigil following the shooting of Laquan McDonald. His prayer of corporate confession and repentance was played on CNN followed by an interview where Hill explains the importance of confession and repentance.
- Daniel Hill Sermon - In this session from the Formed for Justice Conference at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Pastor Daniel Hill explains the sick/healthy metaphor used in the blog. The whole session is valuable, but the relevant section begins about 11 minutes in.
"How long, O Lord, how long?" is the opening refrain of many Psalms. This is the heart cry of lament. We've been exploring the steps to racial reconciliation using the helpful acronym GAPS, and today we're looking at the P, which stands for Pray. Prayer is at the core of racial reconciliation, and the first type of prayer we'll consider is the prayer of lament.
- Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah
A prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations that provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. - Weep with Me: How Lament Opens a Door for Racial Reconciliation by Mark Vroegop
Vroegop invites us to mourn with him over the brokenness that has caused division and to use lament to begin the journey toward a diverse and united church.
Don't have time to read a book? Check out these articles instead:
- How Lament is a Path to Praise - Mark Vroegop will introduce you to the biblical practice of lament and teach you how to start practicing it yourself.
- Pursuing Racial Justice Requires More Than Lament, but Never Less – In this interview, Vroegop explains how he was led to bring together the topics of lament and racial justice in his book Weep with Me.
Have you ever made a judgment about a situation and later realized you only knew part of the story? Did learning more details change how you thought about it? This has been happening to me a lot lately as I delve into the history of our country from different perspectives. We're in the midst of a series of articles applying the GAPS model for personal reconciliation to racial reconciliation. This time we're looking at the A in GAPS, which stands for "Admit your part of the conflict." Applying this to racial reconciliation, this means telling the whole truth about our history as a country. As I noted in the first article, this step requires white people like me to do the heavy lifting because we have inflicted most of the damage in the relationship.
In our last newsletter, we looked at Pastor Scott Dudley's model for personal reconciliation, GAPS, and we applied it to racial reconciliation. Today, let's flesh out that first step. The G in GAPS stands for "Go to the person you're in conflict with." In the context of racial reconciliation, this means we need to be in relationship with people of races and ethnicities different from our own. Let's look first at why this is important and then at how to do it.
In the first session of our Justice, Kindness, and Humility Bible Study, our speaker calls up an image from Handel's Messiah that I think is fitting to reflect on as we prepare for Holy Week. In teaching us about a biblical theology of justice, the Rev. Dr. Gabriel Salguero refers to the movement "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted," which in turn quotes Isaiah 40:3-4: "A voice of one calling: 'In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.'"
What do you see when you look out the window? What do you see when you look in the mirror? I first learned to think about these questions in a new way at the Frames and Filters workshop led by Tali Hairston. (This concept was first introduced by Emily Style for the National SEED Project.) Tali explained that when I look in the mirror, I see myself reflected back. When I look through a window, I see how others experience the world.
As a member of the dominant culture (white, native-born American), when I look at movies, magazines, TV, and books, I'm usually looking into a mirror. I get to see my own experiences reflected back a lot. Seeing yourself reflected in the world around you is great for building identity and self-worth. But what if you're not part of the dominant culture? Too often, you're looking through windows and seeing the experiences of others. This is great for building empathy and learning about others, but it is isolating when you rarely see yourself reflected. The truth is, we need both windows and mirrors in our lives.