Guest Sermon May 22, 2022 by Rev. Marilyn Baugh Kendrix

Some years ago when I was meeting with a church’s deacons group,
each person was asked which was their favorite person of the Trinity –
God the Creator that some call Father,
Jesus the Redeemer that some call Son,
or the Holy Spirit that some call the Sanctifier.
And without even taking a moment to ponder the question,
I replied that the Holy Spirit was my favorite.
When asked why, I remember saying that it’s because
the idea of the Holy Spirit is most like how I imagine God.
As a Spirit that exists everywhere and in everything and everyone.
A Spirit that is the connecting tissue that holds me together,
and holds everything together and that connects me to each of you.

In the reading from the Book of Acts that we heard read this morning,
we find Peter in the middle of a good sermon
when all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit falls upon everyone gathered.
And everyone meant on the new Jews who made up the first Christians
and on the Gentiles alike.
And we see Peter changing his mind
about who God includes in the Good News.

You know,
the United Church of Christ came up with this catchy slogan,
“God is still speaking” about 14 years ago and since then
it has become a unifying statement that could be heard repeatedly
in many UCC churches and at all UCC events.
God is still speaking. It came from something that Gracie Allen said.
If you know who Gracie Allen was, then you should not admit it,
because it means you are really getting old.
For those of you who are too young to remember,
Gracie Allen was one half of a comedy team, with her husband,
George Burns who smoked a cigar and acted as her straight man.
Well, Gracie Allen said,
“Never put a period where God has put a comma.”
And the UCC thought that was a perfect statement about the
continuous revelation of God to her people.
A perfect opening statement into the notion that
God is still speaking.
But this notion that God is still speaking was not a new one,
hatched by a slick marketing campaign of the 21st century UCC.
No, this same sentiment was spoken some 380 years earlier
when John Robinson in his farewell address to the Pilgrims said,
“for I am verily persuaded [that] the Lord hath [yet] more truth and light to break forth from His holy word.”

So, where did John Robinson get the idea that we must continually
look for new truth and new light in Holy Scriptures?
Where did the UCC come up with this notion that in our reading of these scriptures, in the living of our lives, in the unfolding of history,
God is still saying something new?

Well, I think that following the unfolding of the life of Peter,
that first follower of Jesus provides a clue.
Because throughout scripture, we can witness Peter,
growing and changing
and understanding God’s message to him differently,
as he follows Jesus in his ministry.
In our reading from the book of Acts this morning,
we are provided with yet another example
of Peter’s willingness to listen to a still speaking God.
In the beginning, Peter understood the gifts of the Holy Spirit
to be for the Jews alone, for these chosen people
who had been worshipping the One God for thousands of years.
But here God is, doing a new thing.
Here we find the Holy Spirit falling upon Jews and Gentiles alike.
And once again, Peter is moved to reassess his understanding
of what God is saying.
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing from these people
who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” he asks.
From the very beginning, Peter is called upon to change his mind,
to change his understanding of what God is calling him to do.
And in most cases, God was always calling on Peter
to expand the Beloved Community,
to include more folks. Spread the Love
because the Holy Spirit falls on Jews and Gentiles,
on rich and poor, on Black and white.

Now this could be very disconcerting news.
Is not the Lord God constant?
How can one live one’s life in accordance with scripture
if how we understand scripture keeps changing?
How can we be true followers of Jesus Christ if what God is saying
seems to be constantly evolving?
Well, I think that our gospel reading provides the answer to that question.
23Jesus [said],
“Those who love me will keep my word,
and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them
and make our home with them.

So, there's the answer. Love.
Love is the constancy of God.
The way to understand all of the sermons of Jesus
is to listen with a heart of love.
There is a Taize chant that I love that says this very thing.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Where charity and love are, God is there.

You know, as I was thinking about the expansiveness of the love of God
and the call from Jesus for us to love one another,
I couldn’t help but think about the murder of George Floyd.
and the outpouring of indignation around the world
that his murder caused.
It was as if everyone suddenly remembered that we are, all of us,
part of the same human family, a family where God’s love falls on all.
Those protests were a demonstration of this understanding
by thousands of people in the US and beyond.

But the truth is that many, many Black people have been
killed by police or vigilante police-wannabes for years for centuries.
But, unless there was video footage of the killing,
many people allowed their lack of love for Black people
blind them to the truth of these killings.
It certainly seemed to most Black people in America
that much of white America was blind
to the systemic racism that permeates our society,
the systemic racism that plays out in the killing of so many Black people.

But not this time this time was different.
This time, we got to watch a murder on national TV news.
And George Floyd’s death led to a national discussion about racism,
and not the personal animus of one person for another,
but systemic racism, racism that is baked into our policing
and so many other of our systems and structures in America.
But as I talked with and listened to lots of white people
over these last couple of years
I’ve discovered that many don’t know what we even mean
when we say, ‘systemic racism.’
Not systematic – that would mean identified steps taken
to achieve racism and that’s not what we are talking about.
No, systemic racism is racism that is so imbedded in our culture
that it’s like it’s in the air we all breathe and the water we all drink.
We are like a fish who does not even know he is swimming in water.
But some of you may still be wondering what systemic racism is
so I thought I’d share a few examples.

Example 1:
Here’s one from my own childhood and speaks to very local government.
I grew up in Amityville, Long Island, New York.
Now the Amityville school district draws children from the
incorporated village of Amityville where white folks lived
and the unincorporated village of Amityville, known as North Amityville
where the black folks lived.
I lived on the black side.
Now, the administrative legislation of the village says that only
residents of the “village” (meaning incorporated village)
can use the town beach.
When I was growing up there, that meant that we black
kids on the black side of town could not use the beach
which included swim lessons in the summer.
Now there was no law that said Black people couldn’t use the beach
and that Black kids couldn’t take swimming lessons there. No.
Most systemic racism is not explicit like that.
But it resulted in providing a town beach for white people only.
Since I left over 50 years ago, I looked it up.
I checked out their current rules before putting this into this sermon.
Now, I know that rule is the same today.
But the demographics of the village that I found online
indicated that 9% of the incorporated village residents are now Black
so I guess today, those folks can use the beach
and other parks in town.
But still the vast majority of Black people
whose children attend Amityville schools
still live in North Amityville.
and so they cannot learn to swim at the town beach
That’s racism imbedded in the policies and practices of one small town.

Example 2: Here’s one from private industry.
I got this one from a story on NPR’s Morning Edition a few weeks ago. There’s a woman, Carla Duffy, a Black homeowner in a nice mostly black neighborhood in Indianapolis.
She purchased her home about 4 years ago for 100K
and then completely renovated it.
She loves her house, has no intention of moving but she wanted to refinance
to help her daughter buy a house.
Well, Carla was shocked when the first appraisal came in at $125K.
Carla had recently arranged for an independent market analysis of her home and it came in at $187K.
So, Carla asked the bank to do a second appraisal.
Well, the 2nd appraisal came in at $15K less than the first, $110K.
When she complained, the appraiser said, “It’s all data driven.
I would not know how to change that.”
So, Carla got creative –
she asked a white, male friend to stand in for her during a 3rd appraisal.
She removed all her family pictures and her Afrocentric art,
anything that would indicate that the house was owned by a black person.
And guess where the third appraisal came in -- $250K!
Now, I believe the appraiser who said it’s all data driven.
The systemic racism in the assumptions that appraisers make
is white supremacy, baked in.
Heather McGhee, in her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,
estimates that there is $68 Billion in lost wealth for black homeowners
because of this example of systemic racism that results in white supremacy.

Example 3:
I learned last year that the NFL was engaging in
what they call “race norming” in order to decide on the monetary settlement for retired players who found themselves dealing with
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
Seems they postulated that Black players
start from a lower level of cognitive acuity because they’re Black
and so they adjust their payout downward as a result.
Effectively, this is saying that black people are stupider to begin with
so no need to pay them as much for their brain damage.
On the evening news on Oct 20th of last year,
I heard that the NFL will discontinue the use of race norming
but that only happened because people found out that
race norming was part of the process
unlike most systemic racism is not visible,
and no one is talking about it on the evening news.

Example 4: Here’s another example from private industry,
this time a little closer to home.
Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres has spent decades
researching discriminatory lending and markups
from automobile dealers in Connecticut and nationwide.
In 2019 Ayres states this:
“Auto dealers consistently charge Black consumers prices
that are hundreds or thousands of dollars more
than their offers to white shoppers.
These inflated prices can more than double the dealer’s profits
compared with selling the same vehicle to a similar white customer.”
The National Consumer Law Center led a class-action lawsuit
based on Ayres’ research.
The dataset from these lawsuits showed Connecticut dealer markups were 279% higher for Black customers than for white customers
—and worse in Connecticut than in 37 other states.

You know, in recent months,
many folks have been pushing back against
all this talk of systemic racism.
They somehow find it threatening to uncover the truth of racism
and actually talk about it in public!
In fact, lately, there’s been yet another tall tale
intended to once again put blinders on white folks in America,
To once again put up walls of separation between white folks and Black folks in our country.
This time the hysteria is over CRT – Critical Race Theory.
And while the hubbub is coming from folks who are
neither experts in nor targets of racism,
it has become a rallying cry for those who want to deny facts.
So, who are the experts?
Well, certainly the academics who have been studying racism
for many years as well as the people who are its targets,
we are the experts.
And of course, the truth is that these folks who decry the teaching of CRT
have decided that anytime anyone mentions race, or slavery, or Jim Crow or even has cartoon pictures of little Black kids in a textbook,
they are teaching critical race theory.

So, just so we are all on the same wave length,
let me share with you what Critical Race Theory really is.
this is a quote by Stephen Sawchuk In Education Week magazine.
Sawchuk writes and I quote:
“Critical race theory, is an academic concept
that is more than 40 years old.
The core idea is that race is a social construct,
and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but something embedded in” our society’s
systems and policies and practices.”
The systemic racism I just talked about.
BTW, that is not what anyone is teaching in public schools.
What is being taught in public schools is history – a truer,
more inclusive history than was taught when you and I were in school.
But it is history non the less.
If you would like to learn more about a more inclusive American history,
I’d recommend that you read some of the books in the list included after this sermon.

In the New York Times a while ago, Malcolm Gladwell said,
“I could care less whether white people are nice to Black people,
or vice versa. All that matters is that society be fair.”
The unfairness of our society,
the history of the unfairness of our society,
an unfairness baked into systems, defined by race – that’s critical race theory.
Now, if we are to deal in truth,
it’s important to know where the untruth about CRT comes from,
this notion that it’s being taught in the public schools of America.
It’s important to know that a Conservative activist,
named Christopher Rufo – R-U-F-O - found the term
“Critical Race Theory” in the writings of academics
from some 40 years ago
and decided it was the perfect “bogey man” to rile up some Americans.
He wrote, and I quote these are his words
“We’ve needed new language for these issues,
‘Political correctness’ is a dated term and, more importantly, doesn’t apply anymore.
It’s much more invasive than mere ‘correctness,’
which is a mechanism of social control,
but not the heart of what’s happening.
The other frames are wrong, too,” he wrote.
‘cancel culture’ is a vacuous term
and doesn’t translate into a political program;
‘woke’ is a good epithet, but it’s too broad,
too terminal, too easily brushed aside.
‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain.” Close quote.

The perfect villain – to misinform white Americans.
And just as he’d hoped,
CRT has become the issue of the day
for this decade’s racism rallying cry.
Of course, in the hysteria over CRT,
it has come to mean any time anyone mentions race.
Many white people are up in arms about the teaching
of what they think of as CRT in schools, K – 12.
Of course, remember it’s not actually being taught in public schools.
As I said, what is being taught is history and these folks say well
they say that children are made to feel bad – ashamed of their race
or uncomfortable about learning that our founding fathers were
human beings with all the biases that go along with being human;
that they were indeed driven by high-minded theories
of democracy and self-government
but that they may ALSO have been driven
by the desire to hold onto wealth and power.
These people who rail against the boogy man CRT
don’t want children to learn these things.
They don’t want children to “feel bad” about their race.

Now there is one thing missing from their assumptions
about the children who might be taught about racism.
Because in all these discussions,
when the CHILDREN that are imagined feeling bad are mentioned,
it’s only from the point of view of the white kids, right?
It’s like black kids, children of color,
who are also sitting in those classrooms, do not exist,
they can’t see them there.
Their point of view does not matter.
It’s like they are invisible and remember,
no one should be invisible in the Beloved Community of Jesus.

Might the Black child “feel bad” about her race
if we leave out the reason that is behind her experiences of racism
that most Black children experience by 5 years old?
And that the reason does not point to something wrong with her?
Isn’t the notion that somehow white children
should be protected from ever feeling bad
at the expense of black children being made to feel bad all the time
and internalizing society’s view of them
isn’t that just another form of white supremacy?
You know, I recently read a post on Facebook
where a 9-year-old white girl was asked how she felt
about reading the child’s version of the 1619 Project
that many parents are trying to ban from school curriculums.
Her answer was,
“I think the only white people who feel bad or mad or uncomfortable about reading the stuff that white people did in history
are the people who want to do it again.”
Out of the mouth of babes, right?

If love were the center of all our lives,
then we would not need to have conversations
asserting that black lives matter,
because we would live in a way that demonstrates daily
that all the lives of all the people matter.
...
Unless we live into the command of God
to abide in love with one another,
there will be no hope that we can partner with God
in the coming of God's kindom here on Earth.
...
So, one of the real challenges of this idea that
God is still speaking, is knowing whether
what you are hearing is coming from God or not.

Right now in America there are those who are listening to evil voices and are committing acts of terrible violence against black people, and Jews and other people of color.
And I have to admit that it has brought me to the brink of despair,
not only because young, white men are becoming radicalized
by a movement to “keep black and brown people from “replacing” white people.
But by the fact that more and more of our government leaders
agree with that sentiment.
I try not to be an alarmist but it kinda feels like Germany in 1930,
where the soil was being prepared for a leader who was all about hate.

So, how do we know if what we are hearing is coming from God?
Again, if it sounds like love for all people, it’s from God.
If it sounds like hate, it’s not.

We must ground our lives in love of God
which can only be demonstrated by love for one another.
We must be like Peter, who understood that God’s spirit was for Jews and Gentiles alike and he stood up for those Gentiles.
We, who hope to carry out the love of God in the world,
must stand up for those marginalized in our tme.
...
God is still speaking and God invites us to sing a new song to God.
God invites us to sing a new song with our words,
and our thoughts and our actions. A song of love for all the earth.
for all the children, for all humankind.
God is still speaking and as we listen to that still small voice of God,
may our hearts be broken open and may we discover a boundless,
healing reservoir of compassion and love.
May it be so. Ashe and Amen.