Last week, we started our series on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Did you take time to consider the rhetorical question of ‘what is good and what is bad’? Was your heart moved to any concrete action to respond to this season of your life, the life of COVID19, the life of the country or the world?
This week, we look at the first set of contrasts named by the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes. There it is: A time to be born, and a time to a die. At first this seems pretty straightforward. We are all born, and we all know that someday we will die. It’s the way of all life.
In fact, the Hebrew word for born means more than just physical birth. It implies that even if we are not physically giving birth, we are participating in a time to be born.
A ‘time to be born’ then is the start of everything. It is the stardust that formed the cosmos, it is the seed in the ground, it is the embryo, it is the idea in someone’s mind, it is a new beginning after a loss. It is a movement for justice, it is a new ministry.
As noted last week, we are in a Season of Change. Change means there is uncertainty and even chaos. Birth is full of pain, work, and transformation. Often, in order for something to be born, something must die. Whether it is a physical death, or simply the death of expectations or an idea, there is death. Another way to look at death is as a change or transformation. Sometimes it takes a crisis to highlight the need for that change, transformation...for that death.
The Coronavirus and the death of George Floyd both spotlight the inequities in our society. When medical care for some is less than for others and where anyone, esp. Black men, are disproportionately victims of police violence there is something systemically wrong. Call it racism, call it white supremacy, call it ignorance-the fact remains that the System and our definition of justice for all, must change.
In her opening remarks to the Episcopal Church Executive Council on June 9, the President of the House of Deputies, Gay Clark Jennings, called the church, esp. the Episcopal Church to respond to the question “how long before white Episcopalians take on the emotional labor of those oppressed by white supremacy in the church and outside of it because it is your bound and right duty as part of the baptismal covenant, as baptized persons.” Presiding Bishop Curry says we must remember “even when the cameras have gone away, even when the public attention has moved elsewhere, God will still be God, and our work goes on. Our struggle continues. And we will not quit.”
In her sermon on Trinity Sunday, the Very Rev. Mariann Budde (Bishop of Washington) quoted from The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. This Pulitzer Prize winning essay, published in the NY Times last year, states that in a large part the wealth of the United States has come via the labor (enslaved or otherwise) of the Black community. Hannah-Smith goes on to say, “it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.”
Bishop Budde emphasized that every struggle for equal rights has sprung from the struggle for Black freedom. There would be no votes for women and no rights for LGBT, or any other group, if the fight for abolition had not led the way. She suggested we are in the crucible of change in Kairos time at this moment. She called on white America to look at ways to correct, heal, and rebuild what we have knowingly, or not, participated in.
In Ephesians 1 we hear, He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10). We are co-workers in this work. We must work for change, even if it means death to some of our cherished ideas. The dying of the false ideas will allow birth of a new freedom, where all are truly one family in God, together in Christ.
Can I look at my life, my preconceived ideas, my internalized racism and white supremacy and see what needs to change, to die?
Can I be open to hearing, speaking, living a new narrative of real freedom?
Can I more fully live into the baptismal promise to strive for the dignity of every human being?
It won’t be easy, but it must be done. The time is now, and it is long overdue.
