Learning from 2020: Part 1

I remember the text message well, “OMG! Kobe Bryant just died.” 

I was at a student’s scout ceremony and saw the text in our family thread. Like the entire sports world, I was saddened and shocked. An athlete who shaped so many had died tragically.

Many revered him and saw how much he stood up for his daughter as not a “female basketball player” but fully as a person, his daughter, and a basketball player. He told Jimmy Kimmel that people tell them he needs a son to carry on his legacy of basketball, Kobe always replied, saying, I have a daughter for that.

We all thought 2020 was off to a rough start, little did we know what would come next, next…next.

We then experienced a global pandemic as covid-19 took over the landscape of the world socially, politically, personally, and in every way. We were quarantined, confused and scared. The virus shut down all the aspects of our daily lives and forever changed many of those aspects.

What can we learn?

We need each other, we need community. 

As we were starting to enter reopening phases from the virus’s isolation, America (with the world watching) began to discover, for the seemingly 10,000^th time, that racism is not gone. A man in Georgia, Ahmaud Arbery, was gunned down and murdered, some even said, “hunted.” The horrific video made its way around the world. Mere weeks later, police brutality and racism again took center stage, as George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. This was, as I have seen some say, “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” The world, especially the white world of America and Christian America, had too often been looking at the wrong part of the stage, the parts that made them comfortable. For many people racism has always been center stage.

The topics of systemic racism and police brutality have left covid-19 as a seeming distant memory, though many protesters still don their masks. Racist policies, systems, and personal complicity have led to heated debates, family strife, and education. 

What can we learn?

It’s easy to run away from 2020. Too often I hear Christians say, “Come, Lord Jesus!” I get the sentiment, they crave the second coming, but I think we are either overlooking the true power of Jesus’ first coming and/or we are boxing the truth of Jesus’ message into our own box of comfort, pride, and ignorance. The power of the Spirit proclaimed in Acts 1:8 wasn’t just so Christians could speak in tongues and preach well, it was so that we can act in accordance with God and by God’s power. Shalom for all. Look at the whole stage.

Jesus was baptized, fasted for 40 days in the desert, and then began his ministry; one of the first things he did was preach the Sermon on the Mount, found in Luke and Matthew. 

Two parts of that sermon stand out to me right now: The Beatitudes and The Lord’s Prayer.

The Beatitudes confirm that people will mourn, suffer, face persecution, and hunger and thirst for righteousness. The Lord’s Prayer confirms that Jesus’ goal was never to come rescue us out of the world but to empower us to be in the world in ways that are loving, just, righteous, heavenly, generous and so on. I don’t use the word “peace” on purpose, because we sometimes misuse peace where the word shalom should be; shalom is the state of living as God intended, and when some people experience the lack of shalom every day, then we haven’t been accomplishing the fullness of The Lord’s Prayer. Of course God intends peace, but it is about so much more than we box it in to mean.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 

The world is in collective mourning right now. Mourning and pain can sometimes propel us, individually and communally, into damaging actions. Protests and the like are expressions of mourning. A community is mourning and saying “Listen! Look and see the unjust system we live in!” All too often people turn the other way or, perhaps worse, explain away their mourning with prejudice so ingrained they can’t see it in themselves. The mourning is for good reason, and if you don’t like the riots, perhaps look closer and listen better, join the mourning in ways you deem productive. Remember, when slavery was challenged, people who were upset didn't just riot, they started a literal war. 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 

The mourning is mixed with a craving for righteousness. Andy Dwyer is famously quoted as teaching us, “Did you know the food you eat becomes energy?” Well, what are you consuming? Be sure that it isn’t isolated to your own contexts, because you will be trapped and caught in a system of your own making that perpetuates your prejudices and denounces the realities of what is center stage for people of different places and races than you.

The Black community is hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I am thankful to see so many who have already been hungry for the same thing and excited for so many who are becoming aware of the God-given hunger for righteousness in the form of racial justice and reconciliation. However, I mourn that our hunger has not turned fully into active energy. Let’s begin to hunger for full righteousness, not just the aspects of righteousness that taste good to us. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Making peace in 2020 is not about stopping protests. It’s about creating a world where all people, and right now specifically Black people, can be at peace, living in the shalom-filled world that God intended.

Let us be a church who, by the power of the risen Savior, acts in ways that accomplish the prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Looking at the Whole Stage

Barna and the Reimagine Group recently released as a resource for churches about US Christians and how we feel about racism titled, “Where Do We Go From Here?” Reimagine Group founder Jack Alexander says in the introduction, “…my heart has been broken as I have learned more about the facts of our nation’s history. In Ezekiel 9, God calls his people to grieve and lament over abominations and injustices in the land. In our land, a clear abomination began in 1619—[401] years ago—when approximately 20 African slaves were sold in Jamestown, Virginia. Nationally, laws, codes and persistent discrimination ensured that black Americans would remain at a social and financial disadvantage, long after they were technically free.”

The racism did not end after the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, or you showing respect to your friends who are Black. Racism will begin to end when the system that perpetuates it is repented from.

Too many have been complicit, knowledgably or not, in this system. If you don’t believe in white privilege or systemic racism it’s likely because you have been benefiting from it. 

We as Christians have to be ready to act and not let this be another movement we care about for a week and then stop caring about it, just like going on a short-term mission trip and doing more damage than good.

The Barna study sites that “About three-quarters of practicing Christians are open to solutions, spiritual and otherwise!” That’s a good start, even if it is late. We are regrettably late to be so active only as of today, but let us not cause us to relent. The study is concluded by Bryan Lorrits, pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Silicon Valley, CA. He says, " The fact is race is still a reality which divides us. The truth is Jesus came to give us the ministry of reconciliation. "

The systemic racism needs to be ended. It will be painful, it will be hard, it will be long, but 401 years of systemic racism cannot become 402.