Loading...For the past several months, a group of us have been meeting nearly every other week for a class called Sacred Ground. We met online, led by Deacon Mary and our friend Kippy, who directed our conversations, teasing out our responses to what we were assigned to study.
Before I go any further, it may be helpful for you to know how the Episcopal Church defines and explains this program. According to the website:
“Sacred Ground is a film-and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity.
“The 11-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.
“Sacred Ground is part of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society. This series is open to all, and especially designed to help white people talk with other white people. Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.”[1]
I’ve known about this curriculum for a long time. Clergy in many dioceses, are expected to take the course. To be honest, I put it off when I was in Indianapolis for a number of reasons, but mostly because I was afraid of the amount of reading and other preparation needed prior to each session. … And I may have been a little afraid of having to think about my own relationship with racism and biases.
I want to be clear that there is a comprehensive reading and watching list to prepare for the direction planned for each session, and it does take a time and emotional commitment to complete. And sometimes the timing wasn’t the best for me to get it all done. But most of the time, the readings and videos were worth the effort. I usually would find something that helped me or taught me or reminded me that we each carry some biases and pre-conceived notions about people who do not live, look, or believe like us.
It's good to do some self-examination every once in a while. To look back at where these notions developed and why. To check in on how or if they have changed. To recognize what has gone well and not so well. To recognize that it’s okay to admit that I did not know what I did not know, and to be open to learning, growing, and changing.
That’s a lot of necessary inner work to help bridge gaps that may have been built between people of culture, religion, and social location. Especially when many people tend to put themselves into categories, groups, or silos that separate us rather than integrate us.
Unintentionally or not, we have built our own boundaries, keeping people out and holding others in.
Our Gospel today comes from what I consider to be one of the most pivotal, most jaw-dropping chapters found in any of the Gospels. In each of the liturgical years (A, B, and C) we get a third of this chapter. Today, we heard the final third. If you have a chance, I invite you to read all of John, chapter 17, to get the full experience.
Throughout this chapter, Jesus is praying out loud for the people in the upper room. That motley group of men and women gathered along the way who come from a variety of life experiences, following a man who invited them to learn what love looks like. He is talking to God about them, in front of them.
It’s today’s part of the prayer that catches my breath. It is in this moment Jesus takes a turn. He goes from praying for the people who have followed him into this upper room, whose feet he has washed, with whom he shared both bread and wine, and who ate a Passover meal with him, to teaching them and praying for them, for their ministries without him … and then he begins praying for us.
Over two thousand years ago, Jesus prayed for you and me when he said, "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
… Jesus prays for us.
His prayer is that everything he has taught this group will continue for generations. He is praying that in these three years, the people surrounding him know the connection between Jesus and God is real. He is praying that they, too, are connected with God. He is praying that this connection, this relationship, this UNITY will continue throughout eternity. These bonds between the people and God will go on because of love.
If they, and ultimately, we, have been paying attention, we have learned Jesus does not discriminate who is worthy of God’s love. He was sent into the world to show the world that if we love God with our whole hearts, we will show it by loving others as we love ourselves. A simple message: Love God. Love one another.
That has, for millennia, been nearly impossible to accomplish.
We know this because we see how divided humans have been. Divided by class, education, cultures, partisanship, genders, skin color, religion, ethics…the list seems endless. It seems to be easy to pit people against one another, and extremely hard to reverse the results.
Jesus showed us what love can look like by eating with outcasts, spending time with misfits, admonishing bad policies, recognizing that some laws – religious and civil – harm more than help, they do not lead to UNITY. He talked to people others didn’t think he should talk to. He built relationships by listening to life stories. He healed people who others didn’t think should or could be healed. He fed hungry people when others would not. Through every act we read about; Jesus teaches us what love looks like.
He teaches us that love is about having relationships and that when we are in relationships, with one another and with God, we create unity, a bond, that can become a movement that has the potential to become the Beloved Community we believe is so desired by God.
In a world that seems to forget the importance that if it isn’t about love it isn’t about God, or a world that focuses on shaming and blaming rather than loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, people have remained in relationship with God. The story of God, and in our Christian context, the stories of Jesus, continue, because there are enough people who can see that love is the way to God’s Beloved Community.
I realized this week as I prepared for the final session of our Sacred Ground training that I talk about the Beloved Community as if we all understand what that means. I think I have done us all a disservice by not digging into what it means. I realize I have expected that reciting the Baptismal Covenant questions would be enough. But it’s bigger than that. Let me explain.
According to the Episcopal Church Racial Justice and Reconciliation Team, which created the Sacred Ground training program, “[t]he vision of Beloved Community rises from the Bible’s most important commandments: to love God and love our neighbors, in whom we see the face of God.”
Now, I think I’ve been clear about that. But to comprehend what it means as it states in today’s Gospel to “all be one,” we need to take it a step or two further, recognizing that our communion with God and with one another means we must better define what it means to love our neighbors.
In our Sacred Ground training we more clearly began to
“… understand Beloved Community to be
the community that loves as God intends …”
That’s great, but what does that actually mean? The Racial Justice and Reconciliation Team goes on, explaining that loving as God intends is:
“…where we speak truth and dismantle hierarchies of human value,
where we seek right relationship with one another and creation,
where each person and culture honors and protects others as
equally beloved parts of the human family of God,
and where we counter human selfishness –
the true root of sin and racism – with the selfless love of Jesus.” [2]
Being in relationship with God and in unity with one another doesn’t mean we are in lock step. We each bring our unique selves to the community because no community will survive if everyone is a plumber, for example. Jesus was able to do many things, but I’m quite sure he didn’t dig any wells.
Jesus knew that, but it didn’t prevent him from setting unifying expectations. In John 14:12 he stated: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”
We are in this world to continue the work of love, striving to become the Beloved Community, recognizing that it is when we acknowledge the beauty of our many experiences, talents, gifts, and voices, we can learn to accept one another, to love one another as Jesus loves us.
Yesterday was the last session for this Sacred Ground group. We met in person for the first time in our 11 sessions. We wrapped up our program, but we didn’t wrap up our work. You see, becoming the Beloved Community doesn’t just “happen” because we take a class or read a book. It takes a lifelong commitment to building a world that creates UNITY through creating bridges that cross the gaps and gullies and canyons society has built, dividing people from people. It takes a willingness to walk in love like Jesus taught us.
We wrote a prayer of lament yesterday, which you will find in Gleason Hall. Please talk with us about it.
We are committed to continuing this path to building this beloved, united, community, recognizing that we are only a small part of a bigger process, but that everything we offer is valuable to accomplish Jesus’s desire of unity between God and we Jesus Followers.
Today we will commission the people who are here today who have completed the Sacred Ground training. In this commissioning, we commit to continuing this work, and we invite you to join us.
I want to end this message today with the words we prayed yesterday, words written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let us pray.
When our eyes do not see the gravity of racial justice,
Shake us from our slumber and open our eyes, O Lord.
When out of fear we are frozen into inaction,
Give us a spirit of bravery, O Lord.
When we try our best but say the wrong things,
Give us a spirit of humility, O Lord.
When the chaos of this dies down,
Give us a lasting spirit of solidarity, O Lord.
When it becomes easier to point fingers outwards,
Help us to examine our own hearts, O Lord.
God of truth, in your wisdom, Enlighten Us.
God of hope in your kindness, Heal Us.
Creator of All People, in your generosity, Guide Us.
Racism breaks your heart,
break our hearts for what breaks yours, O Lord. Amen.
[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/
[2] BECOMING BELOVED COMMUNITY WHERE YOU ARE A Resource for Individuals & Ministries Seeking Racial Justice, Healing, Reckoning & Reconciliation. www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/racial-reconciliation. Updated: June 2024.
