A Special Easter Message
from the 74126: A Community of Resurrection
By Rev. Ron Robinson
(Prayers for God's
presence of love and healing for the families of those who were killed here a
year ago, and for the lives of those who were injured and for their
families, and for our neighborhoods where the victims and the shooters lived
for the neighbors were injured too; prayers of healing and unconditional love
also for the two men arrested a year ago Easter morning, and for their family
members, and for all those who may be harboring feelings of hurt and
abandonment and rising violence within their minds and spirit and who struggle
to grow in and with God. And prayers for those in the justice system. Prayers
that we keep asking why this might have happened; not for excuses, not for
simple explanations; but if we are serious about reducing the violence, we need
to keep digging deeper into its many sources)
A year ago this weekend
we gathered for the Easter sunrise service outside at our Welcome Table
KitchenGardenPark, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. We gathered in the wake of the Good
Friday shootings in our area. As we held the sunrise service we heard about the
arrests which brought a modicum of relief to our area, and many questions. But
when we gathered outside at first the tension of the violence and its wake were
still present. Echoes of violence and fear and segregation from the past, and
not just the race massacre past of 1921, but the continuing fear and racist
responses of white flight and redlining and neighborhood decline and
abandonment and the summer a few years back when every night there was a
shooting we could hear, or heard of.
Just today, for
example, we were inviting a person to come to the garden to plant a bed with us
to help his hunger needs, and not just use our Cornerstore Pantry, and he, a
white person, said he didn't want to because there were too many shooting there
in the area where the garden is. We tried to convince him otherwise, but no
use, and it probably wasn't the real reason anyway. We hear this all the time
from people who say to us, or to others who are coming to work with us, that
people have told them not to come because of how dangerous it is. Even though
statistics and our own presence here belies this fact. Even though as white,
and as American Indian, and as bi-racial families, living and working here in a
majority African American service area in our two mile radius, we are still
priveleged and are safer on average than many of our African American
neighbors. Still the stereotypes and the fears persist.
And there was
heightened fear in our community a year ago; fear by the residents of color
that if they went outside some "white guys in a pickup" might gun
them down too. It was a reality based on what had just happened; and fear by
"white" residents that there would be violence of retribution, as
they were also ethnic minorities in the zipcode. We had already heard stories
and rumors of white people being attacked in the area the day before, and black
clergy colleagues were busy, they said, helping to prevent such things from a
few they encountered. It all reminded me, when I thought of it later, about
those days of the years of integration from my seventh grade to senior year at
Monroe and McLain schools, when ever so often, more often than not, stories and
rumors of racial fighting or plans to fight would ripple through the school
corridors, dividing friends, based on some minor incident or just rumors spread
to be violent in itself and to feed into the spirit of fear and scarcity and
fear of diversity and unity that was wrecking the community outside the
schools.
On that Easter
morning when news of the arrests occurred, and we began to find out who it was,
and to find out the connections we all had, for some of us perhaps with both
victims and the ones arrested, there was of course some relief, but not much,
for our area itself seemed to have been violated, feeding into more of the
stereotypes about our area held by others. And there was then the continuing attempt
at explanations and rationalizations. The fact that the shooters had come from
upbringings filled with violence is important to know, but it is often the
case, and it should make us more committed to the environments we create for
children regardless of their race; what I am saying is that so often my white
neighbors would be quick to point out the sufferings of the "white"
shooters (one with American Indian ethnicity too, but that is a part of the
conversation to keep having) but they are often silent or uninformed about the
sufferings and upbringings of those who are black and commit violent crimes;
and yes, we had to keep pointing out, there are cases where blacks had attacked
and killed white people in our area, and recently, but that the incidents were
not the same; those had been acts with other motives like robbery; this had
been one of projected revenge and race was an apparent prime motive. Deeper
still were the echoes of violence and suicide and depression, and yet these are
almost always present in all who commit such crimes regardless of race. It all
should have made us more empathic; at times, even months later, it sometimes,
from all, made us less empathic. Now we have issues that came up that involve
the death penalty for the case still being prosecuted. I have long been against
the death penalty for all, and especially because of the way it is carried out
in greater percentages against people of poverty and color. I, like at least
one of the surviving victims, don't think justice would be served by the death
penalty in this case, or any case, but it is hard to speak about it since I am
white and the shooters come from the same poor white culture I have; so, if
anything, regardless of the outcome, it should make me re-double my own commitments
to a broader understanding of justice and reparations especially for people of
color in our society. Just as it should, again we say, make us re-double our
care and concern for the gun culture that puts such weapons in the
easy reach of the impulsive and the addicted and the greatly mentally
disturbed.
These have been
the continuing thoughts over a year when Good Friday has continued in our
community; it didn't or doesn't just happen on one day when in the zip code
with the lowest life expectancy, where businesses and so many agencies and any
kind of investment has fled over the years; when (despite recent attention and
good news on all the abandoned burned out structures here I have been promoting
in this space) you can still drive down the major streets and into the
subdivision culdesacs and see so much neglect and abuse, and know that it
reflects the continuing struggle of the area (even though we have great homes
and neighborhoods and families and lives and it is a blessing to live here).
Overall we have kept silent and have been nursing wounds and fears. The crimes,
for some, brought racism and all the other issues that have been raised
connected to the shooters mentioned above back up to consciousness; for some
they can't any longer deny the continuing race and ethnicity issues that they
thought might have been gone once the majority of white flight was over. For
some, I hope it also made our overall zipcodes here more visible, and that
attention can not just end at the city limits line, but that the lives of
people who live just over the line impact what happens on the city side the
same as the county side, and vice versa. We need a plan and commitment that
involves both city and county for the area that is increasingly becoming as
one, demographically and with ties of where people shop, play, go to school,
work, etc.
I write this all on Holy
Saturday, Easter Eve, a time for a day of reflection itself, of prayer, of
listening, of waiting, a day of transition between despair and renewed hope.
The day for the traditional "harrowing of Hell" when it was emptied
out. A good day for emptying out all that has been bottled up by shame and
fear; Christ went to bring liberation and to end Hell, as the tradition puts it
that I like, and so what better day to empty out the shame that comes, and to
begin again the holy conversations needed for our times and place. We do not do
Good Fridays well; we aren't expected to; we deal with shame on these topics
and events; we do not have good guides through all the emotions, all the
reactions; we make mistakes; I will make mistakes in just how I try to convey
my thoughts here. Holy Saturday reminds us it is all right, if we come together
and just reflect, and if we commit to keep walking together, together toward
the tomb that we do not know yet is empty.
What I know is
that we can experience, because we do so in glimpses all the time, in the ways
people help each other in our many undertakings and partnerships, we can
experience a Community of Resurrection. Sometimes, when we come together like
at the service of memory and healing today, or right after the event, we get
glimpses of it. Other times it comes up from the hard work of planting seeds
and combatting cynicism and skepticism in all the issues and activities you
read about that we are involved in (continuing struggles and new plans at
McLain, all the renewal efforts with the Health Dept, the ways we partner for
basic needs for our residents, and even our times when we can come together in
worship). I think, on these moments, that in the Resurrection stories in the
gospels, that Jesus appears only briefly for the most part; short encounters,
sometimes just rumors of the appearance after the crucifixion, and then he is
gone; for most the faithfulness comes from seeing the changes that were
effected in the lives of others. So it continues for us today.
It has been ten
years since the first Easter service in the church plant that is now known as
The Welcome Table missional community. It is time for us to look again at what
it means to be a community of resurrection. How best can we take our core value
of the missional approach to church and reflect it in our worship? For the time
being as we work on these questions, we will merge missional relationships and
worship and create community by participating more often with the worship of
others. Some at the local Methodist church partners here; some as we did at the
wonderful contemplative Taize service downtown with Trinity Episcopal; some
with our Unitarian Universalist partners, some that we lead here. We are also
looking at ways to create more worship here throughout the week in all that we
do, so that we don't take something as vital to community growing as worship
and put it only on Sunday; creating an ongoing spiritual prayerful space here,
at the center and at the park, and in other ways that will emerge. Our sense of
community that is now forged in mission can itself be resurrected, as part of
what our wider community needs, seeds of resurrection that stand alongside of,
and stand against, the Good Fridays.
I will close with
Holy Week short reflections that go a little deeper into how each Day, from
Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday, is like a Four-Act Play, each day with its
own theme, its own lessons for our lives, together.
Today
is Act One: the meal, the presence of abundance in the midst of fear and
scarcity, the commandment to love one another as we have been loved, reminder
that nothing to come, nothing done, can separate us from the love of God, the
attention to the bodies around us, to the hurting feet; it is all about the
anointing, sharing the belovedness. In the way of the Psalm, this is the day of
lifting up the original blessedness, our orientation to the Divine
intersecting, intertwining, with us.\
This
is Good Friday, this is Act Two, the sudden dis-orientation, the
disillusionment, the dashing of hopes, when the truth that another world is
possible, and is emerging, is revealed to be a lie, the day of abandonment,
forsakenness even, when injustice and oppression and the way things just
are rule the day, the bottom drops out from under us and from all life and from
creation, again, again, just when we thought maybe...there is nothing necessary
about this Day, though perhaps inevitable, for what do we expect when we line
up the roads with crosses, with a punishment culture, and there is nothing good
in it, though good may come wringing its way in response to it, though we can't
feel it or imagine it this day; this is the day, so often repeated in our
history, when Incarnation, that glimpse of divinity and love, what we herald at
births just so recently, culminates in violent death, mocking the very flesh of
God in us and among us. This is the day when the House of Hope is barred by the
threshold of despair, and we know where we must go to cross it, but we can't
yet, and so we turn away, and even if we draw close and embrace it, embrace
what is left of You, we can't hold the pain, it keeps slipping from our grasp,
and even when we want to find meaning in how much pain we bear, we can't. We
pray that Your presence might be with us even in Your Absence, but we can't
even remember the words or what your presence felt like.
This
is Holy Saturday, Easter Eve, this is Act Three, the deepening of the
disorientation, the sitting with the loss, but also the tradition says the day
of the Harrowing of Hell, when Christ descended to release all those who had
died before his coming, to be with them even in that place, to be even with
those, and I like to believe to close it on his way out. This is the day of
pondering, questioning, and of emptying our minds as Christ empties Hell; a day
when emptiness caused by what happened to us, from outside us, can prompt us to
reclaim the emptiness within us and move us from a position of isolation and
aloneness to one of purposeful solitude. This is the day when we live fully in
the in-between, but can not see what is to come. This is the day that reminds
us that the More that is to come after our times of loss may simply be the dawn
and the noon and the dusk of the next day, but that even this is something; it
shows us that there is a force beyond us holding us, moving us forward, that we
can simply rest in the day, and wait for the next day. There is much going on
that we, on the outside of the tomb, with our gaze turned inward on our own
suffering, cannot see or know.
From out of nowhere, comes Easter. This is Act Four. This is
the day not about the miracles of nature and the nature of things we can figure
out and know; this is the day about the way nothing we prepare for prepares us
for the reality of love that overcomes death, overcomes shame, overcomes all
that seeks to deny its truth. This is the day when we are confirmed in the
truth that another world is possible, not only is possible, but is happening,
and our task is to go be where it is happening, receive its grace, and
participate in the communities of resurrection. This is the day that reassures
us that nothing we or anyone can do or think or imagine can separate us from
the love of God. This is the day when we wake up to the rising of the soul, to
the wonder that defines who we are. This is the day when we set aside our
struggles to understand, and find ourselves by losing ourselves in the story
that God in mystery will align what is broken and askew, will justify what
injustice has created. This is the day when we remember, as colleague and
mentor Carl Scovel wrote, God’s other name is Surprise! That on this day we get
a glimpse that, as he also wrote, there is at the heart of Creation a Good
Intent, and that we come from, live in, and will return to that Goodness.
Aleluia Aleluia Aleluia is first sung by the Cosmos, is embodied in Christ, and
breaks forth from our lips. This is the day of Re-Orientation, not only to our
home we began with, but to our home of abundant everlasting Spirit. That Easter’s
good news invariably and inevitably is cast aside, even on this day, as so much
within us and around us can dampen even our most heart-felt alleluias, does not
change its truth; it is still here, beckoning us toward its sun-split horizon.
