Prayers for Ferguson

Good morning friends.
It is good to gather in worship with all of you this morning.

I had a whole different sermon planned for this week, and it's mostly written, but you're not going to get to hear it until next week, when we'll pick up our conversation about visioning. I decided that it was better to talk about the events in Ferguson.

I decided to change directions after one of those odd little God moments that sometimes happen.

On Thursday evening I was here at church, rather than at the protest march in Ferguson, where I really wanted to be, because we hosted a wedding here yesterday, and I was making sure everything was set up for the rehearsal, and I locked up after they were done. I was a little grumpy about it, you know that kind of 'hrumph, I could be doing something socially active and more useful, or at least hanging out at home with Rachel and Jonah' kind of feelings.

But before we got started, the bride, Deneen, pulled me aside, and thanked me for being a gracious host. She said that it had been a hard week, and I asked her why, and she explained that some of her good friends lost a son in Ferguson over the weekend. She wondered if I had heard of Michael Brown.

So I learned that she knows the Brown family well. That she had to shut down her Facebook account this week, because of how much stress it was causing her on her wedding week, and how much she hurt for her friends. And I was reminded that we are connected, in unexpected ways with one another. And it was pretty clear at that point were I was supposed to be for the evening. And I am honored that we all, the St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship, were able, in our own small way, to be of comfort to someone in need. A privilege we were given because we have been willing to inconvenience ourselves, and open our building to the community where we live, even when it's a bother.

Faced with a world with so much violence and pain, it is important for all of us to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of the Gospel.

So this morning, I want to lift up Ferguson, and the city of St. Louis, and the police departments of our city and our county, and reflect on who we are called to be and what we are called to do in these times of unrest and concern, and to invite God's presence in to our hearts today.

The events of the past week probably do not need repeating, but it seems fair to remember them together anyway.

On Saturday afternoon, a Ferguson Police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18 year old resident of Ferguson.

Which was tragedy enough, adding to a list of moments in our society where Police officers have used their authority to wield deadly force to end the lives of unarmed people.

But in the days that followed, Michael Brown's killing went from a tragedy to a national circus, garnering the attention of everyone from the president on down, leading to protests around the nation, with a signature posture-raising hands in the sign of surrender, and the slogan 'hands up, don't shoot!'. Last Sunday night, dramatic protests in Ferguson escalated into looting, and left a Quick Trip smoldering. In the nights to come, the police response escalated to tanks, snipers, rubber bullets, and tear gas, and things got so tense that Governor Jay Nixon intervened on Thursday, changing the chain of command, and reduced the militarized tactics. After a peaceful night on Thursday, tensions the last few nights have remained high, with some sporadic looting, and a curfew imposed yesterday. And so we wonder, gathered today, what will happen next. Whether things will continue to calm. What will happen to the police officer involved. Whether anything will change in our city. And I also wonder what this means for me. About what I'm supposed to think about these events, and what I'm supposed to do going forward.

And I don't think there are certain answers to the questions we face. I don't want to pretend like I know what happened on Saturday afternoon, or to suggest that it's clear what our nation or local government should be doing in terms of law enforcement, and I don't want to speak to much for people who aren't me-to say 'the police should be doing 'x' or the governor should be doing 'y', or even 'all Christians should be doing 'z'. But I also feel like the church has something to say about Ferguson. Actually, there are lots of things we could say about Ferguson, but there are two I'd like to focus on.

The first is this:

We don't know what happened for sure last Saturday. But we do need to continue to say that our society is shaped by patterns of injustice.

It is easy enough for me, as a white middle class man, to become complacent about the system of justice in the United States. If I am in trouble, I can call the police, and they will be very helpful, regardless of what story I bring to them. If I go to court, I can trust that people will listen to me, and treat me with respect.

But that is not the justice system that many people, particularly black people and poor people experience in our country. Their relationship with the legal system is much more combative, a place of discrimination and fear, where you can get in trouble for things you didn't do, and have no recourse but to submit to the system.

In St. Louis County, you are much more likely to be pulled over if you are black than if you are white, despite police finding more contraband in the vehicles of white people than black people. In the United States, as a black person, you are much more likely to be arrested for the same crime as a white person, and put away for a longer period of time. You are much more likely to face an aggressive arrest, and rude or even violent treatment from a police officer. Over the last decade, on average 2 black men were killed by police very week.

And we can talk about why this happens-how mistrust of the police becomes a self fulling prophecy, how dangerous neighborhoods lead to police offers who treat everyone they meet as a potential threat, how white people with political power push harder on the issues that matter to them, and give less attention to injustices that are not quite as germane to their lives, so that unbalances develop between wealthy and poor areas, but the end result is that our justice system discriminates on the basis of the color of your skin, and God weeps at that reality.

And I remember, this week, that Jesus' run-ins with law enforcement looked a lot more like how black people in our country experience the police than how I do.

Jesus told stories about the law. About how unjust judges will ignore your pleas for justice, unless you badger them so mercilessly that they decide it's easier to give you what you want than keep resisting. How Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, but hold hypocrisy in their hearts, white washed tombs who ignore the needs of the widow and the orphan. About how police will force you to carry their packs along the way, and you may want to offer a second mile, as a subversive way of challenging their casual dehumanization. And of course, it was the legal system of his day that arrested him, tried him, beat him, humiliated him, and crucified him.

There are stories of good Centurions in the Bible-Luke tells of a Centurion who trusted Jesus to heal his servant without even coming to lay hands on him, and Cornelius taught Peter that “Nothing is unclean that God has declared Clean” but on the whole, law enforcement, while it kept the peace in ancient Israel, was an uneasy burden.

So as we think about what it means to be church in a country with such wounded systems, I hope that we reflect on what it meant for Jesus to break the rules, and stand in solidarity with the prisoner and the outcast.

But there is another story I want to reflect on before we close this morning.

Because the story of the dynamics between protestors and the police in some ways has gotten more attention than the killing of Michael Brown.

Last Sunday night, there was looting and destruction of property, and in response Ferguson began to escalate their police presence. And like many of you, I was stunned by the images of police charging unarmed protestors with their hands up, of pastors with rubber bullet wounds on their bodies, of snipers and tanks on the streets of our city.

I've been thinking about the gospel of peace that we proclaim.

Because there are a lot of people who are trying to look like Jesus in this moment.

On Thursday, I got to sit with community leaders planning how to insert themselves in a fraught situation, wanting to work with protestors clamoring for justice and guide them in the way of peace, and wanting to work with the government and law enforcement, and to demand justice and a demilitarization of the police response, and I heard them again and again call for God's justice and God's peace to dwell on our city.

And I have watched some of the videos of pastors and alder-people like Antonio French who have dwelt with protestors until all hours of the night, encouraging peace and calm, and I've been inspired by their courage, and I've wondered what that kind of calling might look like for me.

And I have watched how the tensions ebbed and flowed over the week, from the fierce conflict on Wednesday to the calm of Thursday evening when Highway patrol captain Ron Johnson, a Ferguson native, went so far as to lead the protest march and talk with many people who faced tear gas and rubber bullets the night before, to the uneasy back and forth on Friday and Saturday nights, with increased police presence and sporadic clashes late at night, and watching all of this, I've felt like we can see all the complicated nature of humanity-struggling to find the right way forward in a time of uncertainty, where there are no panaceas, no easy ways to make things right, but people on all sides are struggling to find a way forward together.

And so I've been thinking about the gospel call-to be clear about what we believe-discrimination is wrong, and that violence is not the answer. And to be clear about who we are- that we can be community, even in times of trouble, if we are willing to be present to those who are in need, and that we can embark on the long struggle of justice together.

And I've been thinking about what we can do together. I expect many of you feel a certain sense of powerlessness in the face of all of this. I'm going to join in prayer this evening with our neighbors at St. John's Episcopal Church at 5:00, and I'd love to see some of you there. And I'm going to help the clergy coalition on Monday as they help connect with students going back to Normandy High School, but I hope that we as a congregation keep our eyes and our ears open to see how we might push for justice in a broken world, and seek peace in times of violence.

In the name of Christ, Amen