Why I Live in Hope

June 21, 2020 • Third Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Matthew 5:1-5, 11-16
(recommended: The Inclusive Bible)

Sarah Capers
I live in hope because God has a history of taking care of those who hope in the Lord. The Bible has many stories of God’s people being saved and liberated from suffering in situations that seems impossible. As long as God ‘s people remained hopeful their situations eventually improved.  I also feel hopeful because Jesus made promises. Jesus promised to be with us always. He sent us a comforter and a protector to be with us when he ascended. I  live in hope knowing that I have a comforter and a protector walking with me side by side holding my hand when I’m able to walk and carrying me when I cannot walk, no matter what happens in my life. I live in hope because all things are possible with God.

Dwight Campbell
Good Morning, my name is Dwight and I'm just outside getting some air - trying to enjoy this day and trying to enjoy and be heartened by what I'm seeing. It's amazing how millions and millions of people across this world are outside protesting for justice.  Not just political justice or legislative justice, but real justice not only for Blacks but for everybody. They are fighting for their souls the souls of their own nations and souls of people around the whole world. Again I am heartened by it but I'm also a little skeptical I'm moving into my seventh decade of life and I've seen this several times before.  People protest, there's legislation -  and you can't legislate freedom. This is just a short hello so I can't get into that the way I'd like to -  but it's a beautiful thing.  I'm skeptical because I've seen it before, I've seen the Civil Rights Act go into effect, I've seen the Voting Rights Act go into effect where everybody was free to vote but at the same time the Supreme Court reverses that and takes portions of it away - but it's an amazing thing, a beautiful thing. My heart and my souls are strengthened that maybe this time something, in fact, may change. I just pray that everybody stays safe. I pray that there is no violence in Tulsa, where this man has tried to evoke something so I hope all the protesters stay home for several reasons. One physical safety, meaning from harm by National Guardsman and physical safety in the sense that they don't catch Corona. But I'm heartened, I pray for them, I pray for you so, everybody stays safe, stay healthy, and stay blessed. God Bless you, bye-bye.

Cassie Hinnen-Neals
Hi, Good morning, I’m Cassie and I was asked to share my thoughts around the direction of our country and where we’re going. I believe that we are taking steps in the right direction, more people are taking steps in the right direction. More people are aware of the pandemic of white supremacy and are now actually learning more by taking the first step of being aware. You can’t do anything about something you’re not aware of. And, while it seems crazy that so many people weren’t aware or hadn’t acknowledged their awareness of it for this long. It hasn’t really been that long. Its only been a few generations - there are people in their 40s and 50s who went to segregated schools. So, this is the time for that change. There was a protest that I went to and the young woman who organized it shared that she knows there are people who will get in trouble with their parents (mostly young adults) for being there today. I hadn’t thought of that perspective - there are teenagers who get it, and their parents don’t. And, having to be in that household and being part of a shift and change is a huge step, a huge action, a huge place to fill but a very powerful place to be coming from. Knowing that you are standing in the face of going toward the right thing. So, I think the country/world is taking steps in the right direction to fix injustices including white supremacy and the systems that are keeping people where they are. And, I am hoping those strategies translate to better health care systems, better economics, and better education systems because all of those things need a shift. We are the people who are going to have to make it happen and to raise children to do the same. Thanks for your time.

Isaiah Du Pree
Some people say that hope is a dangerous thing. As an abolitionist, or someone who believes in the abolishment of prisons, policing, and mass surveillance, hope is an essential component of my politics. Hope allows me to imagine a better world is possible. It allows me to envision another way. It allows me to realize that we don’t have to live like this. Hope allows me to dismantle structures that we have been taught are both permanent and necessary. You see hope, in fact, is a dangerous thing because hope encourages us to challenge the status quo. It gives us the strength to see beyond that which we have been socialized to believe is just and normal when it is in fact unspeakably violent. Hope is the work of building planes in the air believing that one day they will fly with others on them. Hope is building bridges that we ourselves may not cross. Hope is planting trees knowing we may not rest in their shade. Hope is the work, not just for me, not just for you, but for all of us and our future. Hope is the work of abolishing. And, the work of liberation.

I am so grateful to Sarah, Dwight, Cassie, and Isaiah for taking a lot of time to talk with me this week and agreeing to join me in offering the message for us today. I had many other conversations as well with Church of the Village members this week about the current protests and about whether and why there might be reason to hope that this movement will lead us to fundamental change. In particular, I want to thank Alfida, Reyno, Adora, John, and everyone who participated in the conversation on racial justice on Thursday night. I really wanted to see how folks in our own community were reading this moment. 

Last week, when I started thinking about this message, I began from a feeling of hopefulness and the desire to explore what that might mean for us right now. This hope arose in me from a place similar to what Dwight talked about. Dwight and I are from the same generation although with very different life experience. But we watched a lot of the same history pass by before our eyes and we both participated in some of it. We’ve seen the movement that made the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act possible. We witnessed mass protests that helped to end an imperialist war in Vietnam. But the gains of the Civil Rights Movement have been under attack ever since and many other wars have followed. Yet, this time it feels different. I have read or heard a lot of people saying that same thing. Earlier this week Cassie called it a “tipping point.” As one opinion writer put it, “More and more of the alienated feel seen and heard, and this has bred a sense of optimism.” She wrote, “Even Ta-Nehisi Coates, usually sober and cynical about possibilities for real racial progress, has recently expressed hope that this time is different.” [1]

For me, it has been inspiring to me to see hundreds of thousands of people protesting across the country and millions across the world. The protests are occurring not just in big cities, but in small cities and even very small towns in mainly rural areas – places that don’t even get counted or shown on the protest maps. The protests are more widespread and much more multiracial that any I have experienced in my whole life. I also sense a level of determination that I have not seen since the 1970s. You know I am generally an optimist, but I confess that I had not realized how much I had lost hope in the possibility of genuine, radical change – especially the undermining of white supremacy – until that flame was reignited in me by the protests that resulted from the murder of George Floyd. I never stopped advocating for racial justice, but I had fallen into thinking that I might not see any big changes happen in my lifetime. I heard others say the same thing this week.

I was deeply moved and enriched by our dialogues and listening to many experiences of racism. It deepened my grasp of just what a heavy burden our siblings must bear. They talked of carrying that burden around all the time, of worrying about their children’s welfare everytime they leave their apartments, of the continual fear of being profiled by the police. I listened to a webinar from Yale Divinity School this week in which Prof. Anthea Butler said, “The woundedness of African Americans and people who suffer under racism in this country is staggering…. I need white people to understand what this takes out of us – and what white people lose – because you lose something because we don’t get to be everything that we could be because of the racism.” [2]

I heard beautiful and painful stories about interracial friendships, relationships, and marriages. I heard stories of lives well lived. Along those lines, author Nic Stone cautions white folks, “Don’t just read about racism – read stories about black people living.” [3]

The richness and openness of our conversations this week both affirmed my sense of hope and deepened my wariness of declaring too quickly that “a change is gonna come.” 

Why should we have hope in the face of centuries-old and intransigent systemic racism? We have just heard that there is not just one single answer to that question. Sarah describes her hope as grounded in the love and steadfastness of God’s Spirit “standing beside me when I can walk and carrying me when I can’t walk.” Dwight sees hope in the numbers and the spirit of people speaking out and coming out into the streets for justice. Cassie is buoyed by the young people who are defying their parents beliefs to support Black Lives Matter. And Isaiah proclaims “Hope is an essential part of my politics” that “allows me to imagine that a better world is possible…. Hope is the work of abolition and liberation.” What they all have in common is that their hope understands the reality of systemic racism. Their hope – our hope – stands in the face of white supremacy and says, “We will not let you get the best of us.” 

Theologian Willie Jennings spoke powerfully of that in a podcast this week. He said, 

“Hope is a discipline; it is not a sentiment. But what I have also learned is that living the discipline of hope in this racial world, in this white supremacist-infested country…requires anger. I am angry. As long as I can remember, I have sensed this anger in me like a constant low humming sound, sounding from my very being…. This anger is the result of a history that will not relent. A history that constantly seeks to bind black people to death itself. But I’ve also come to realize that this anger, my anger, is connected to the righteous indignation of God.” [4]

Jennings went on to say that this anger can be shared. White people cannot know precisely what it feels to have experienced racism their entire lives, but we can share in black anger over this hideous system, we can educate ourselves, we can stand in solidarity, and we can take action to end white supremacy.  

We are in a rare time of radical awakening. I sense that in the Church of the Village we are all roughly on the same page in recognizing the change that is needed has to go far beyond “reforming policing,” to actually ending white supremacy in our society. But we should have no illusions about how difficult that struggle will be. We will face massive resistance not just from police benevolent associations, but from white power structures and elites who benefit in power, privilege, and wealth from white supremacy. White supremacy has quite consciously fostered racism to keep white workers divided from their natural allies. Many white workers see people of color as the enemy rather than the powerful white elite who have actually stolen their livelihoods for generations. An activist in the local NAACP chapter said to me yesterday, “we need a movement, not a moment.” Radical change for racial justice and equity will take a movement on a larger and more sustained scale than the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s. White people who stand in solidarity with this movement for racial justice will have to commit to fundamental changes that will undermine our privileges. We also need to be prepared to resist the white backlash and countermeasures – especially those disguised as “change” that really don’t alter the underlying structures. Those in power will not go without a fight. As Frederick Douglass wrote, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” 

And let’s keep our eyes on the ultimate goal. As Sara Elliott Holliday put it this week in The Resistance Prays, “Injustice must be called out, and called out again, year after year, but the point, ultimately, is on the other side of making Black Lives Matter – it’s having Black Lives Flourish”! [5]

As Cassie said, “We are the people who are going to have to be part of making change happen.” God has been leading us to this point for generations. The time is ripe. And Jesus called us to be a light for the world. And this light is the love and justice of God shining through us.

Friends, God has work for us to do. God is with us – walking with us, marching with us, and sometimes carrying us in this crucial work. Let’s sing together our hope for the better world we know is possible.

(c) 2020 Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.

[1] Sandra Susan Smith, “These protests feel different, but we have to be realistic. There's a long road ahead,” The Guardian, June 14, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/14/these-protests-feel-different-but-we-have-to-be-realistic-theres-a-long-road-ahead

[2] “From Words to Work: Dismantling Racism,” Yale Divinity School faculty panel discussion, June 18, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie2F2S-2zG4 

[3]  Nic Stone, “Don’t Just Read About Racism – Read Stories About Black People Living,” Cosmopolitan, June 8, 2020. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/books/a32770951/read-black-books-nic-stone/

[4] Willie Jennings, “My Anger, God's Righteous Indignation (Response to the Death of George Floyd),” podcast, June 2, 2020. https://for-the-life-of-the-world-yale-center-for-faith-culture.simplecast.com/episodes/my-anger-gods-righteous-indignation-willie-jennings-response-to-the-death-of-george-floyd-FXkkWh9b

[5] Sara Elliott Holliday, “Do a Holy Dance,” The Resistance Prays, June 19, 2020. https://mailchi.mp/51eb95688620/do-a-holy-dance?e=3b27ed89e5

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