LIBERATION LECTIONARY ~ PRIDE MONTH

Sharing Remembrance

I thought to leave this blank but who am I to name us nothing? Danez Smith

Scripture: Acts 2

Read the 2nd chapter of Acts this week. Key verses: Acts 2.17-21
“I will pour out My Spirit on all humanity; The youth will prophesy and see visions, The elders will dream dreams, I will pour out my Spirit on my children, and they will prophesy. I will display wonders in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and remarkable Day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Lesson: The Very First Birthday of the Church

Humanity’s capacity for communication is as vast as the mind of God. Pentecost is a day that reminds us of that. Howard Thurman wrote about  “the growing edge.” about the birthing and dying of things all around us. He writes, “Look well to the growing edge. All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born.” The only pathway to resurrection is life and death. And that has been just as difficult to grapple with as the miracle of living again itself. 

In the second chapter of Acts, the disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem during a major Jewish holiday. “Shavuot”, which celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The holiday always falls 50 days after the second night of Passover, and the 49 days in between the two holidays are known as the counting of the omer. The holiday is also known as Pentecost, since it is the 50th day after Passover.

After their catching sight of Jesus and fellowship with him for a while - according to scripture - the disciples see the Lord taken up into heaven, as some witnessed at the Transfiguration, and as others had only heard about as legend from the Prophetical Books. What fresh memories they must have carried with them? What a most unique and unforgettable way to go into the next holy day, feast and festival.

Devout people from around the known world made their way to the same place where Jesus’s disciples still sat dumbfounded, prayerful, anxious and striving to hope. Read Acts chapter 2 and try to picture yourself there, in the room, in the space. What do your thoughts and feelings bring up? How would you feel if all of a sudden there was some brand new way to talk coming from your mouth? Do you think the disciples were simply talking or saying something important in these other tongues? Why wouldn't they be aware of what they were saying as well? How would you react to the crowds reacting to you?

When Peter rose up to preach. The words came to him as if they were already there. Perhaps he was not considered eloquent before. But he was a clear leader at this point. We bring up the doubt of Thomas as a centerpoint of Jesus’s power to forgive. But Peter flat out denying his own passion for Jesus - outright zeal at many times - now that was a plot twist worth following. The church was being inaugurated by a disciple who cussed out a person he should have testified to. Peter was an anxiously attached, ear slicing, relationship denying ROCK upon who the Lord planned to build God’s church. When God says They can work through anybody, this is the evidence. Peter would later display racism and remorse for the same. He would mess up and make amends. Pentecost reminds us not only that we have a God who reaches out to help us communicate with each other, God reaches out to show us that we can communicate with each other DIFFERENTLY. We can change. We can be bold in places where we felt weakened. And We can defend our people as a pathway to protecting ourselves. This is the work and power of the Holy Ghost, the 3rd person of the Trinity that many people call The Holy Spirit.

This story of the birthday of the church is the third major birth announcement in the story of scripture. The creation was the first birth story in scripture. Creation was led by the 1st Person in the Trinity - whome we call Yawhe. Nativity and Resurrection are two parts of the second great birth story, led by the 2nd Person in the Trinity, whom we call Jesus, Yeshua, Iesu (and other names, especially depending on your heart’s language!). Now the story of Pentecost is after the RE-birth of Jesus, and is the marking of the coming of the Comforter, or Holy Spirit, to live within the people that Jesus had already come to live with.

More than living beside us, the God who made us, and came to dwell among us, more than with us, God will live withIN us. This is the truth of God that God uses us to teach each other. What is the story of Pentecost teaching you?

Remembering Greenwood

This week we remember the race massacre which occurred in Greenwood, a prominent Black neighborhood of Tulsa. Greenwood was home to the famous Black Wall Street. Black people around the country knew of it and flocked to it to find hope and safety. When we talk about Tulsa, it is important to remember that racial terror was widespread and “everyday” in most cities, especially places like Oklahoma where good civic infrastructure was few and far between.

Black wealth was possible, but it was often crushed before it could take off. Modern styles of oppression meant not only lynching, but stalking, body bullying, loud gossip that went as far as the local paper. The Greenbook of history was not a joke. There were roadside inns known to trick and trap Black people. There were restaurants known to attempt to poison Black customers. The “wild wild west” was life or death for Indigenous people and for Black people. So the prosperity of Greenwood was more than a miracle, it was a daily act of resistance. Almost as regularly as politicized racial attacks on the national level, some legislator in Tulsa tried to land-grab areas restrict the spread of Black power in the area. By the time of the massacre, tensions were at an all time high because the Greenwood neighborhoods were known as nicer than the white side of town.

Read more about the happenings of the tragedy in Greenwood, and the resulting decades of fighting for Reparations. So much has been learned because of the willingness of people to communicate against all odds; truly the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.

Sources and Readings

The local based, Tulsa History, about the 1921 Attack on Greenwood. This was one of the most significant events in Tulsa’s history. Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area.

Survivors of Black Wall Street Massacre Challenge Tulsa’s Atonement Strategy // Three plaintiffs, all over 100 years old, say the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood has harmed the wealth and well-being of Black residents to this day. The city has tried three times to dismiss their lawsuit.

Centennial Remembrance produced by the New York Times. “Greenwood was so promising, so vibrant that it became home to what was known as America’s Black Wall Street. But what took years to build was erased in less than 24 hours by racial violence — sending the dead into mass graves and forever altering family trees.”

This special includes interactive virtual tours of quotes, residences, businesses and crucial locales of Greenwood’s Black Wall Street.

Meditation : Little Prayer

let ruin end here

let him find honey

where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion’s cage

& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing

& if not let it be

Little Prayer by Danez Smith