Monday, June 22, 2015

White Privilege

We have been working on this big project at St. Andrew's, to generate your next generation of leadership. Last week we churned out some newsprint about that. I intended this week to bring those of you who missed it up to speed and continue.

But then. Wednesday. Nine people died at Emmanuel African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. They included a high school track coach, a state senator, a librarian, a barber who had just graduated from college, a clergy spouse, the janitor, a counselor, a pastor, an 87-year-old member of the Eastern Star, whose nephew dived in front of her and asked the young man with the gun to shoot him instead. But he shot them all, except for two others who pretended to be dead, and survived.


They had gathered for prayer and bible study, when a young man wearing the flag of Rhodesia on his sweater, that sorry leftover of the world's nightmare, apartheid, entered the church. The flag of Rhodesia notwithstanding, they welcomed him. Because that is what Christians do. We reach across the barrier.

We are here for one thing. We have one job on this planet, reconciliation, the healing of the breach that sin creates among ourselves and consequently, between us and the God who will do anything to reclaim his children from our madness.