Missional in a polarized world
We cry.
From our streets. From our churches. From our homes. From our borders. From our hospitals. From our prison cells. We cry, ‘God of mercy — breathe on us. Heal us.’
God answers.
‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’
Oh how we want that healing from heaven. Heal us from this pandemic. Heal us from the brokenness of George Floyd’s murder. Heal our BIPOC brothers and sisters. Heal the oppression. Heal our broken systems. Heal us from our prejudices. Heal us from our racism. We’re desperate for healing for our raggedy souls and the next raggedy intake of air choked by tear gas, or masks, or by knees. I can’t breathe, we exhale but that life-giving, automated reaction, coordinated by the stem of our brain, is suddenly the one choice we cannot make. One breath equals healing but somewhere, somehow, someone can’t breathe.
My people.
The Church — that broken body of Jesus that inhales new life with a sunrise on a Sunday morning — we know all about mercy and the healing of our land, don’t we Church? We preach it from our pulpits and we engrave it in the entries of our sanctuaries and we write it on the minds of our hearts like a circumcision.
But if Sunday morning in America is the most segregated hour of the week, then is the We in actuality, Us and Them? When we cry mercy — for whom do we cry it? For Us or for Them?
But if Sunday morning in America is the most segregated hour of the week, then is the We in actuality, Us and Them? When we cry mercy — for whom do we cry it? For Us or for Them?
Because mercy finds a vaccine and mercy brings peace to our streets. But mercy also lifts a knee and mercy rights the wrongs — our personal ones and our societal ones. Because mercy heals our eyesight to value one another…
