Rev. Dr. Wanda Bynum Duckett currently serves as the District Superintendent of the Baltimore Metropolitan District of the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. This sermon was preached at the Lovely Lane UMC on June 7, 2020. Rev. Duckett is a gospel preacher and poet committed to the cause of justice.

 

Sermon Title: No Justice; No Peace

Sermon Text: Jeremiah 29: 1-7 (emphasis on verses 4-7)

 

4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.

6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.

7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

INTRODUCTION

If racism is America’s original sin, then perhaps humanity’s original sin is willful and benign disregard for each other’s welfare. It’s a problem as old as humanity itself, it’s an issue as ancient as the ancient of texts, and yet it is also as current and familiar as the latest tweet, post or blog. The sin of humanity’s mistreatment of humanity is not just about the disparities of race and class that are so glaringly evident in the midst of COVID-19, it’s about the sibling against sibling harm that has been going on since Genesis 4:7. Because it wasn’t enough that Cain killed his brother Abel, but that when God confronted him about the crime he had committed against his brother, his response was to simply shrug his Old Testament shoulders and ask, Am I my brother’s keeper? Not repentance, but Why was he jogging in that neighborhood? Not contrition, but you all are killing each other anyway. Not concern for the life that he had taken from his family and the community, but I bet there’s one building that they’re not looting: the social service’s building! (That by the way was the racist remark made by a businessman in Essex whose client base is almost 80% African American.) It’s not just the insult, but the injury of repeated, layered, systemic disregard for the peace and justice of black and brown people in this country. For immigrants, for the poor, and for the fact that they are almost always the same…..the black, the brown, the immigrant, and the poor.

Cain’s issue back then is the same as our issue today. As black and brown bodies are dropping under the knees of our brothers and sisters in blue, and the question remains…are we our siblings’ keepers? As communities in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world are plagued by violence, poverty, food and health disparities, the caging of immigrant children, modern-day lynchings in broad daylight, shootings in the park jogging like Ahmad Aubrey, rough rides like Freddie Gray, and shootings in the homes of people like Breonna Taylor who worked every day making contributions to the care of others…are we our siblings’ keepers? While we are arguing about the value of life, and whether black lives matter at all, and whether because there is black on black crime there should not also be an outcry about corrupt and violent policing in our communities….are we our siblings’ keepers? While we are splitting hairs over degrees of murder, rather than being outraged that George Floyd could be killed by a police officer with others watching as if to prevent even heaven from coming to his rescue, the question remains, are we our siblings’ keeper? While we craft convenient narratives about one another that keep us from treating each life as equally valuable and precious in God’s site, God is still asking us like he asked Cain after he killed his brother Abel….What happened? 

When did the knee I gave you to bend in prayer before Me for one another become a murder weapon? Who gave any of us not just a permit, but a license to kill just because we happen to wear a badge, carry a gun, or get a coded message from someone who should be promoting peace but rather promotes shooting in the midst of looting? What happened to the so-called progress of the civil rights movement? Are we still crossing the Edwin Pettis bridge? Are we moving forward to the New Jerusalem or back to the scene of age-old crimes? Are we back to tear gas? Are we back to bully clubs and brutality in 2020 – for the love of God – in the midst of a pandemic? Is that where we are? What happened to the right to peacefully protest? What happened to the responsibility of leadership to keep this nation strong by keeping it united rather than making it weak by tearing it down. What happened to the right to simply stay home and be safe and breathe, rather than being lured out of our homes to fight the good fight because our lives are in jeopardy either way? 

When did becoming great again entail inciting one another to hate again? The problem of original sin isn’t just the problem of murder and violence, but it is the problem of an evil, murderous spirit rooted in the misunderstanding of our interconnectedness as human beings. We need to understand who we are, whose we are, and the fact that there is no such thing as supremacy of race unless that race is the human race. This is not a competition, it’s a shared journey. Until we understand that, we will continue to be on this treadmill of murder, and blame, and unrest which doesn’t help any of us sleep at night. No justice, no peace.

So I just took off my mask today, I came out of quarantine today, and stopped by Lovely Lane today – the birthplace of Methodist – whose halls are hallowed by the spirit of God, and the spirits of both Frances Asbury AND Richard Allen…I just dropped by on a pandemic Sunday to bring a word to a Pentecost people and remind all of us that we are our siblings keeper. None of us is okay, unless all of us are okay. No lives matter, unless black lives matter. Nobody is safe from the pandemic, unless all of us are safe from the pandemic and have access to health care, and healing, and testing in our communities. None of us are immune to racism, unless all of us become anti-racist and anti-racism. None of us are protected from violence, unless and until all of our communities are protected from violence. That’s how wedded we are to one another. If you don’t love your neighbor, you can’t properly, or possibly love yourself. Hate is a virus that will take your breath away and it does not care who carries it or who catches it. And the only immunity to it is love. Like it or not, we are in this thing together my sisters and my brothers, (hasn’t corona taught us that) and its gonna get worse before it gets better, unless we figure it out and make it better.

So, hear again the word of God through the prophet Jeremiah. A word to the exiles, those oppressed and taken from their homes. Those who knew neither justice nor peace. Those who lived in a land where they were marginalized, treated as less than, and asked to sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land. Listen to what God says to such a people.

Build houses…settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. In other words, live your life. Don’t let anyone take that joy from you. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there in the place where you were once slaves, there in the place where some folk feel that your lives don’t matter, there in the midst of pandemic, pandemonium, and protest, there where the outcome of this next election will determine the future of this country in an unprecedented way, there in a world where you can lose your life for no other reason than being black, there…here…in this place of exile….speak and seek truth, and justice, and the creation of a better world. INCREASE….and do not decrease. Stretch and do not shrink in the face of the challenges of the day.

And most of all…Seek the peace and prosperity of the place to which I have carried you and called you. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

There it is saints. From Genesis to Revelation, from Cain the murderer to John the Baptizer, from Pharoah’s army to the Good Samaritan’s deeds of compassion, from the prayer Jesus prays for himself in the Garden at Gethsemane, to the prayer he prays for his disciples that they might be ONE. There is no freedom unless we are all free. There is no prosperity unless we all prosper. This virus has taught us that there is no health unless we are all healthy. And unless all of us can breathe, none of us is free from the suffocation that comes when we fear each other rather than loving each other. 

Black and brown people in this country may be exhibiting the side effects and symptoms of a racist culture, but I pray to God for the souls of those who carry the cancer of it in their hearts. What kind of spirit, what kind of pain, what kind of Cain-like dysfunction causes us to kill one another for no apparent reason and when the world asks what happened, far too many times it takes too long for the system to answer if it ever answers honestly at all. And we know justice delayed is justice denied. Far too many times justice never comes. But until there is justice for all, there will be no peace for any of us.

As I pondered my invitation to preach here at Lovely Lane on this Peace and Justice Sunday, the site of the historic Christmas conference where Richard Allen AND John Wesley were in attendance, where Harry Hosier and Frances Asbury were in the movement, I believe it’s time that we recapture the movement: the spirit of unity that God intended from the beginning of humanity, and this time let’s get it right. The unity of the trinity mirrored in the unity of God’s people. God’ the commander’s intent that we might be one. But we don’t get there by silence, or apathy. We get there the way Jeremiah says we get there. By seeking it. Not just looking, but seeking. By action, repentence, and a decision that we as a nation will make deep and systemic change and we won’t stop working and praying and marching and speaking and seeking that change until a change comes and stays. No more marching one week and chilling the next. No more protesting when there’s a murder, then going back to business as usual until the next episode. We must continue to keep the feet of our leaders to the fire until the heart of this nation is able to answer, “YES, I am my brother’s keeper! Not just some of them, but all of them. And I’m not good, unless everybody is good. I’m not whole, unless everybody’s whole. I’m not safe, until all God’s people are safe!”

What I love about this season….this crazy time in our history, is that I do believe people are starting to get it. I don’t know, maybe it’s the common suffering of the pandemic. Maybe it’s the fact that we are just in shock that here we are in 2020 dealing with 1960s problems of injustice. But in the midst of it all, people all over the world are leaving their places of privilege and comfort and safety and saying, “You know what…this is wrong! This is not about some of us this is about all of us. This hatred has got to end. We are better than this.” I love that the young people of Baltimore are modeling the most peaceful and impactful protests that we’ve seen in a very long time. I love that my neighborhood of Hamilton which has its own history of racism, was out last Sunday in full force, flanking Harford Road to the right and the left. My stomach turned when I thought this might be backlash, but as I got closer, I saw that our white siblings were holding up signs in protest. As I got closer, I realized that they were wearing shirts and waving their hands shouting out black lives matter, because they wanted others to know that we are one and we are better than this. 

What I see as a glimmer of hope is that there seems to be a growing sense of acknowledgement that we are inextricably wedded in the tapestry of humanity. Like it or not, we are our siblings’ keeper? We are as wedded as the white babies that suckled at the breast of African slaves. We are as wedded as our common fear of the corona virus that keeps us from grieving the loss of our loved ones together, worshipping in our churches together, and living in an unmasked world where everyone can breathe free. This is not a time for us to be separate! Don’t you hear the spirit of God calling us to unity? Don’t you hear the words of God coming from the prophet Jeremiah: settle in, plant your garden, birth your babies, live your lives, and co-create a world where everyone can do the same. Pray to God for justice and for peace because guess what America…where there is no justice me, there is no peace for you. 

You see it does not matter how we got here. No justice, no peace. Truth be told the only ones of us who have any real ownership in this country have been relegated to poverty and exile on reservations. Until there’s justice for Native Americans, there’s no real peace for any American. No justice, no peace. If there’s no justice for George or Ahmad, there’s no peace for any of our sons. If there’s no justice for Sandra Bland or Breonna Taylor, there’s no peace for any of our daughters. If there’s no justice for immigrants, there’s no peace for those of us who consider ourselves citizens. If there’s no justice for the minimum wage worker, there’s no peace for the millionaire. If there’s no justice for the paying customer in a crab joint, there’s no peace for the small business owner. If there’s no justice for my house, there should be no peace outside the white house. There is not individual peace without collective justice. The songwriter said it like this: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” Let me, let us be the one who listens to hear my siblings’ story without trying to minimize their impact. Let us, let me be the one who disagrees and still finds a way to treat everybody as a precious child of God. It’s not lost on me that my inbox may be full of messages from people who don’t agree with my stance on issues and they don’t agree that racism even exists, and some of those people are brown and black just like me. But you don’t have to agree, just listen. Just lean into one another’s story and understand that we are in this together. And let’s seek and pray to the Lord for understanding. Until we know justice, we will not know peace. And until we understand that we are all made in the divine image of God, we will not be able to know or do justice. So let’s seek it, let’s pray for it, let’s spread it until justice goes viral and peace is a pandemic. Until Jesus comes back Let us KNOW JUSTICE, so that we might also once and for all KNOW PEACE. May it be so in Jesus’ name. AMEN.