Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

When I wrote tomorrow's sermon, I was unaware of George Floyd. I had no knowledge of his existence. I had no concept that an officer would hear him utter the words, "I can't breathe," before becoming unresponsive for 173 seconds before the officer's knee was removed from his neck. 173 seconds is longer than I normally heat my mug of tea in the microwave as I anxiously await it being ready. 173 seconds is much longer than I am willing to wait for a page on my browser to load. 173 seconds is longer than it takes me to relieve myself and wash my hands well. 173 seconds is much longer than most of us can hold our breaths. 173 seconds is easily long enough to recognize that someone whose neck I have been pinning down is in severe distress, when they have been unresponsive all the while. It is easy to gauge the impulse behind one's actions in such a context. It is easy to understand what is driving one's decisions. Pinning another with a...

I grew up under the notion that justice was somehow separate from the gospel. It belonged to the sphere of society and political order, and the gospel had nothing to do with it. The gospel as I perceived it was fixated on issues of eternity, far beyond the socio-political realities around me. There were a few mild implications on my parents’ work in regard to the dire economic issues surrounding us on all sides, but my traditions keep a pretty high wall separating questions of faith, doctrine, and theology from peering into issues of social justice, economic inequality, racism, and other forms of inequality. That was a comfortable place to live, growing up in one of the world’s nations most plagued by economic and social inequality. We weren’t in Bangladesh or the caste system of India, but we were surrounded by mansions bordered by slums with a hundred families having access to a single working faucet. Children wandered around the favelas without pants, for there was no money fo...