Scripture: John 20:19-23
Learning to Receive the Holy Spirit from Those Who Cannot Breathe
Prayer: Gracious and Longsuffering God, in the midst of all the poignant humanity found among coronavirus sufferers and their loved ones, this past week a horrific display of inhumanity called our attention to another virus.
How long, O Lord … How long? Come the Holy Spirit today, to say for those who dare practice their Christian faith: Not long! Not long!
May it be so. Amen.
Each Wednesday afternoon, since the outbreak of the pandemic, National Capital Presbytery has hosted a Zoom meeting for all clergy serving in any of its 108 Metro DC churches. We are all seeking and sharing best ministry practices in this challenging time.
At the beginning of each meeting, our General Presbyter, the Rev. John Molina-Moore, shops around for discussion topics.
This Wednesday past, that was not necessary. Wednesday’s topic: a virus that is nothing novel. A virus enforcing social distance for over five centuries.
I’m speaking of the virus of white supremacy.
Thanks to Minneapolis on Memorial Day, that was our clergy colleague topic on Wednesday. The video images. The foot on the neck. The “I can’t breathes.”
And so this past Wednesday afternoon at 2 pm, I settled in among my white clergy colleagues to be taught. Taught, by a half-dozen of our colleagues of color. Listening to them begin to move through lament into hope. Learning how to receive the Holy Spirit from my colleagues who could not breathe.
Much as we learn from the story of Jesus’ first disciples today.
Our story begins: “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jewish leaders …”
Today, that story can begin for us, “On this Sunday, the doors of our homes are locked for fear from COVID-19.” And it can also read, “On this Sunday, the doors of free movement for people of color are locked for fear of white supremacy.” And it can also read, “On this Sunday, the doors of homes are locked for fear of popular uprisings.”
In any of these three contemporary scenarios of the first disciples’ plight: who among us can freely breathe
Enter Jesus. And enter he does. How, no one knows. Not in John’s telling. The doors are locked. But he just shows up!
And then we hear his first resurrection words to the very first Church – repeated, for emphasis. His first words to them and to us: “Peace be with you.”
And then, after a quick commissioning: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Receive the holy ventilator! No more lockdown! Fresh air!
I Can’t Breathe: Meet the Holy Spirit.
But how to receive the Holy Spirit – when you cannot breathe?
Jesus again: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Now: no one of us of palest complexion has any right to turn to this verse and say to a person of darker hue in our land that he or she must forgive us the sin of white supremacy.
And yet every one of us of palest complexion has every right – and every reason – and every obligation – to learn. To learn from persons of darker hue in our land how they have forgiven that sin of white supremacy time and time and time again …
Not because white supremacy is being forgotten. How could it? And not because the words of Rodney King are enshrined: “Why can’t we all just all get along?”
No. Faithful people of color in our white supremacist land are continuing to teach us all – as the first disciples would teach their oppressors – what it means in an “I-can’t-breathe” world to “receive the Holy Spirit.”
It means to forgive … as a form of resistance.
Forgiveness as resistance of the resentment so many of our darker-skinned sisters and brothers know would eat them alive if they did not forgive – translation: if they did not let go and move on.
For “if you retain the sins of any,” Jesus teaches, “they are retained.”
Well, to whom are they retained? Not against the sinners … in some heavenly judgment. And we have already judged our white supremacist selves.
To whom are they retained? “If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” For the locked-down and the locked-up: retaining the sins of the oppressors means they are retained within. Remember Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem”: “What happens to a dream deferred? … Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” This is what happens when an oppressor’s sins are retained withing. Retention within stifles the breath of the resistance that is forgiveness, the letting go and moving on, the breath … of the Holy Spirit.
It’s the breath not of “let’s forgive and forget – why don’t we all just get along?” It’s the breath of “let’s forgive by letting go – so we, the oppressed, can keep moving on … and resist.”
Forgiveness as resistance. Resisting first the resentment: taking anger’s poison, hoping the oppressors will die. Resisting the resentment of the oppressor – in order to then resist the oppression. To practice freedom from the unjust in order to be free for what is just. To practice receiving the Holy Spirit when one cannot breathe otherwise.
Forgiveness as resistance. Resistance from the resentment that robs “Peace be with you” from within. Resistance that empowers the faithful oppressed to cross Christ’s bridge of peace into the land of justice.
The day is coming in our rapidly browning country when we will wake up one day and find our white supremacy attached to a ventilator. If there’s a ventilator to be had.
Until then: for those of us of paler complexions, we must learn from the remarkable diversity of the first disciples to become less socially distant from our darker-skinned sisters and brothers.
And then – hearing the stories of the daily sagging load of oppression – we must learn to receive God’s special gift from them. Receive the Holy Spirit from those who have learned to resist resentment in order to resist injustice.
We must become less socially distant … then learn to receive.
Receive the Holy Spirit from our sisters and brothers who cannot otherwise breathe.
