Tag Archives: white churches

Our Time Has Come

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5th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/5/2015: Ezekiel 2:1-5  Mark 6:1-13

On the third Sunday after the Charleston Massacre, on the day after the 4th of July, we read Ezekiel’s call story and the story of Christ returning home, where he is rejected by his own people and can do no deeds of power among them.  And this was the first Sunday after Bree Newsome, an African-American woman, shimmied up a flagpole in Charleston, South Carolina, and took down the Confederate flag, quoting the 27th Psalm and the Lord’s prayer on her way down, where James Tyson, a white man, waited to help her get over the fence.

We read from Bree Newsome’s statement, Our Time Has Come (Bree Newsome’s complete statement), asking what God is calling us see and do through her prophetic words and her prophetic act.  We emphasize our belief that responding to God’s call to us as individuals and a church is a choice; and we remember that call is ineffective absent community.

NOTE: In the sermon I refer to an interview with Bree Newsome and James Tyson in which they note that black groundskeepers were required to raise the flag that they had taken down.  The interview video is here, the image appearing at about about the 1 minute mark.

Our Time Has Come (pdf sermon manuscript)

Slinging Stones for Mother Emanuel

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4th Sunday After Pentecost, 6/21/2015: Mark 4:35-41  1 SAMUEL 17:32-40

This was an important Sunday for churches across America.  Four days earlier, Rev. Clementa Pinckney was assassinated and eight parishioners were massacred during a bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  The story of David and Goliath provides a way view of how we as people of faith will slay the giant of racial terrorism.

I am indebted to Malcom Gladwell’s recent book, David and Goliath.  Gladwell’s reading of the story is available as a TED talk: The Unheard Story of David and Goliath.

Slinging Stones for Mother Emanuel (pdf sermon manuscript)