“I wonder where we would have been in the Selma 1965 story? Would we have been among those beaten, hosed, and jailed? Would we have been actively registering voters and been present, even living with those struggling for dignity and equality? Would we have been Jonathan Myrick Daniels, willing to confront evil and hatred at the end of a shotgun?”
“I argued that to remain silent and not to act in defiance when the Apartheid regime had been taken over by the Principalities and Powers legitimatizing oppression, injustice and racism, seeing this as even Godly, was not an option for us.”
“Perhaps another miracle in this story is about being brave enough to be reliant. Reliance is hard. It’s hard to go against cultural norms which prize independence, self-sufficiency, self-determination. It’s hard to admit that we need help an ask for it. It’s hard to risk the appearance of weakness. It’s hard, sometimes, to believe we are worthy of help.”
by the Rev. Daniel Romero
The Rev. Dr. Dorothy White and the Rev. Katie Ernst, preaching at our Racial Healing Eucharist to celebrate the consecration of Bishop Barbara Harris and the life of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper.
“Many women and men say that Mary, at least as often portrayed, is much too passive. I understand this thinking because I often feel the same way. The Magnificat, the Song of Mary, is not one of those portrayals.”
We might want to glamorize or glorify the legacy of King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, even as their descendants live with the consequences of a racist form of capitalist exploitation of the natural resources that were a sacred source of life for the original inhabitants of that land. How can we hold all these stories on this feast day, appreciating how Kamehameha and Emma lived, ruled, and worshipped, while also acknowledging the cultural genocide that has impacted their people? How might we find absolution and forgiveness? How and when will we turn to a new way?
Noted theologian and TV writer and producer Shonda Rhimes once wrote: “Freedom lies across the field of the difficult conversation.” So I want to give you fair warning: this sermon will be one of those difficult conversations. If I wasn’t trying to give you a warning, I would’ve started my sermon with these words from Frederick Douglass: “Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery…I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me.”
(The Reverend Siri Hauge Hustad) Often a sermon is to open up with Hope and wonder and the good news of Jesus Christ; alas that is not my only task for today, at least not in the very beginning…
Copyright © 2020 St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
[email protected]
651.228.1172
60 Kent St N, St. Paul, MN 55102-2232
Map & Directions
