“I can’t breathe.”
“Please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man, please.” The white police officer was kneeling hard on his neck during his arrest Monday. George Floyd was black. He was handcuffed. He was at their mercy.
But there was no mercy.
The policeman kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. “They’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill me man.” The gathering crowd begged the officer to stop crushing his neck or he would surely die.
If you’ve seen the video you can’t unsee it.
“I can’t breathe,” has become a rallying cry.
That was Monday.
That very morning a white woman in New York’s Central Park, called the police on an African American man—a Harvard graduate—who was bird watching. She called the police on him because he was a black man in Central Park and so she felt threatened.
In February an African American jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, was shot to death in Brunswick, Georgia by two white, self-appointed vigilantes. They were not arrested until a video of the incident went viral seventy-four days later.
You know these stories. They go back. And back. And back.
They ignite deep feelings in us.
Depending on your race; depending on your background; depending on your sex; on your age; on your life experience—no two of us will respond in exactly the same way.
But no one can deny that they touch the open wound in our nation. Again last night there were riots in New York, Seattle, Nashville, Philadelphia, Los Angeles—and looting here in Uptown.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, and I raise this this morning, not just because it was a bad week in America. And it was a very bad week in America. But because today is the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Pentecost speaks directly to it.
Here’s our scripture:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Par′thians and Medes and E′lamites and residents of Mesopota′mia, Judea and Cappado′cia, Pontus and Asia, Phryg′ia and Pamphyl′ia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyre′ne, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
When Jesus died on the Cross on Good Friday, the cause of death was asphyxiation—he could not breathe.
The sky went black. The veil of the Temple was torn from the top to the bottom. Rocks were split. People saw dead men walking through the city.
It was terrifying. It was the price of our sins.
That Friday the disciples could see no way forward, no future for themselves, no hope. In the upper room they were afraid, confused, despondent.
Until Easter morning.
The Feast of Pentecost picks up the story seven weeks later.
The disciples were back in the Upper Room as a mysterious new wind began to blow.
To understand what happened that day, it helps to go back in the Bible, back to the Book of Genesis, back to the story of the Tower of Babel.
The story, from Genesis Chapter 11, describes a time, when “there was only one language on earth.” In the land of Shinar, the descendants of Noah took it upon themselves to build a great city; and in the middle of their city a great tower to heaven.
They didn’t try to build it because they were religious. They didn’t build the Tower to commune with God. They built it because they could.
It was the first vanity project.
“Let us make us a name,” they said to one another.
But the project offended God who confounded their speech, so that they all began to speak in different languages. As they fell into mutual incomprehension, the project collapsed and they were scattered across the face of the earth into different nations and races—forever at war, forever at enmity.
The story of the Tower of Babel an origin story.
It’s the story of the origin of racism.
This story is not complicated.
You don’t have to dig deep to get the point.
It’s right there to pick up.
It tells us that the root all racism, the root of all hatred, the root of all evil, is pride and lust for power.
The sin of pride is at the root of every wickedness, it says.
It is the original sin, the enemy of justice, the foundation of fear.
And from across the generations its effects continue to poison the soil of our communities and to yield terrible, bitter, and strange fruit.
As William Faulkner put it, “The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.”
By God, we know that’s true.
But Pentecost tell us that we must not give up hope.
Pentecost promises that a new creation is coming. A new creation.
Its birth won’t be easy. It will involve a long slow labor, but it will come. A new creation will come.
You see, God unfurled a banner at Pentecost.
The events of that morning were a great reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel.
Indoors, in the upper room, the disciples were gathered. Wind and fire swept over them, and they were taken up into an ecstatic trance: they begin to speak in foreign languages, heavenly languages: they began to speak in tongues.
That’s what was happening in the Upper Room.
That’s what was happening indoors.
But that’s not what was going on outdoors.
Outdoors pilgrims from all over the world had gathered in Jerusalem for a Harvest Festival.
But in contrast to the disciples, these pilgrims do not start to speak in tongues:
No, each speaks in his own language.
They do not speak with one voice: they raise their own voices.
One language does not drown out the others. Their utterances are one equal music.
What amazes and perplexes them as they speak, each in his own tongue, is that each person hears the language of the other as if it were his own mother tongue.
It is the undoing of Babel.
It is a dramatic declaration that Jesus can and will heal the wounds of racism.
These pilgrims, representatives of different cultures, different languages, different histories, and different points of view—experience unity without uniformity; difference without division; harmony without homogeneity
As the Holy Spirit comes upon them they are united in the praise and worship of the one God.
It’s a beautiful picture—a window into heaven, and a promise.
In Northern Saskatchewan, I had a friend who was an indian chief. He was a wise old patriarch, revered in his community—a senator, a real leader. He would stand on the church steps Sunday mornings and take off the baseball hat of any absent-minded teenager who was about to enter with it on. “Spit out your gum,” he would tell them. “This is God’s house.”
He knew their names. They were all his relatives. Many were his grandchildren. He loved them all. When he died his funeral took six hours. Everyone had a story to tell.
But I was a white bishop of a largely Cree diocese, so Alan would try to help me by interpreting his culture and the dynamics of his community by telling me stories. Long stories.
In those days I had the habit. If someone was telling me something, I would say, “uh-huh”, “yes”, “I understand,” —by which I meant, “I’m tracking with you, please keep going.”
But if, while Alan was talking to me, I said “I understand”—he would immediately stop talking, turn his back to me, and walk briskly away.
He was making a point, of course, that if I already understood, there was no point in his telling me something.
It was a valuable lesson in listening across cultures.
You see, listening to the Holy Spirit in your life, means listening, really listening to God in prayer, and listening, really listening to those around you.
We worship at the shrine of our own opinions. Sometime those idols need to be smashed.
Where does that leave us this morning?
It leaves us yearning to be together, yearning to be at peace with one another, yearning for true communion.
We live in damaged times and in a damaged church.[i]
Incarnation is black and white and South Asian and East Asian and Native American and Hispanic and Pacific Islander and Nigerian and Greek and French and Russian and German and English and Arab and Persian—and, well I could go on.
As I thinking about what to say this morning, I was trying to figure out if there was one word for all of us.
I wondered if perhaps it had to do with something Rowan Williams said. He said “the hardest thing to be is where we are.”
This is not a moment to hurry by quickly—like the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan. We must stop. Our sisters and brothers lie wounded and in pain. We must stop. We must stop and do all we can to bind up and pour oil into one another’s wounds.
For as the apostle Paul reminds us, “If one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). To pursue racial solidarity is to weep with those who weep, and to suffer with those who suffer.
We must take the time to lament. The time to be together. The time to listen. The time to pray.
It’s been said that the death of George Floyd was an anti-Pentecost moment—that the breath of life given at Pentecost was squeezed out in Minneapolis, that the fire of Pentecost was snuffed out [ii].
Certainly, there was no grace for George Floyd on Monday, no empathy from those who held him down, no compassion, no release.
And yet, as Dr. King said,
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Christ showed us in his body that suffering and conflict are the stepping stones to freedom.
For on the other side of the darkness of Good Friday; on the other side of the silence of Saturday, is the good news that on Sunday, freedom came. [iii]
Let me stop now with the words of a poet:
Let me hold the door for you.
[Let me hold the door for you].
I may never have walked in your shoes,
but I can see the soles are worn,
your strength is torn under the weight of a story I have never lived before.
Let me hold the door for you.
After all you’ve walked through, it’s the least I can do.” [iv]
——
[i] Stanley Hauerwas.
[ii] Daniel Passini.
[iii] Danté Stewart.
[iv] Morgan Harper Nichols: Empathy.