Streams of Mercy
The July 29th issue of the Presbyterian Outlook focuses on the topic: “Presbyterians and Race – 200 Years of the Outlook.”
Outlook editor Jill Duffield writes:
“Unless we white people recognize the depth and breadth of injustice and harm done, we can never advocate and participate fully in making the amends that result in real reconciliation. Knowing the past, as best and honestly as we are able, is critical to acting faithfully in the present and subsequently shaping a future pleasing to God. White Christians ought to be leading the way to expose our history, name our complicity, recognize our complacency, confess the sin of systemic racism, repent of relentless white supremacy and work for justice … Our baptism must matter, materially, made manifest in how we live together. Like Zacchaeus, our encounter with Jesus should transform us in ways undeniably evident to others.”
Many people say that the past is past and that all that matters is what we do now. While the past may be past, the pain and suffering, and the experiences of terror and oppression endured, continue to impact the lives of many. The evil of white supremacy and the advantages it gives whites and the limitations it imposes on people of color is alive and well. I am coming to realize that as never before. I have been a part of past injustices, and am called to deal with their present consequences. At seventy years of age, it’s difficult to know what to do now. I know I must be willing to hear the truth, and must be a diligent seeker and sharer of that truth.
Duffield writes:
“The white church’s complicity with racism is indisputable, and the suffering inflicted on generations of African American is undeniable…White Christians cannot deny the injustice of slavery and Jim Crow, the horrendous violence of the KKK, lynch mobs and bombings, nor the systemic unfairness of access to home ownership, funding for college education, impact of law and order legislation and so much more. Knowing that our leg up comes at the expense of standing on another’s neck, we must repent. Finally, we must repair the damage, make reparations and pay back that which is owed…We must prayerfully do the work to recognize the depth and breadth of the wrong done, and truly repent.”
We can rise to meet that challenge only with God’s help. “Repair is possible. Reconciliation is possible, Reparations are possible. Through Christ, all things are possible,” writes Duffield. This is truth, and we must long to live into the fullness of this truth together. She mentions the story of Zacchaeus in scripture. If you remember, Zacchaeus was a tax collector who cheated his fellow citizens without giving it a second thought. When he encountered Jesus, he came to see the error of his ways, and he promised give half his possessions to the poor, and to pay back those he defrauded four times as much as he had taken from them.
Duffield closes her editorial with these words:
“If we prayerfully do the work to recognize the depth and breadth of the wrong done and truly repent, then the acts of repair become inevitably unstoppable, joyful and exuberant. Like Zacchaeus, we will do whatever it takes to make things right.”
I share these thoughts from Jill Duffield’s editorial in The Presbyterian Outlook, in hopes that they will touch your heart as they have mine, and move us all to be a part of the new thing God is doing in our day. In the words of Mother Theresa, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
Elizabeth