“No Room for Hate”
June 28, 2015
Romans 12:9-18; Luke 11:1-4
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
I was stunned to hear the news. At first it was only snippets—a headline on my email server, something about a massacre at a church. As the details unfolded, the news continued to shock me with its horror. A young white man enters a historically African-American church, is welcomed with open arms into a Bible Study class, and then stands up and shoots nine people. An act of blatant racism; an act of bald hate.
I was stunned again a few days later as I listened to the statements family members of the nine Christians made at Dylann Roof’s bail hearing.
“I forgive you,” began Nadine Collier, daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance. “You took something really precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people, but God forgive you and I forgive you.”
Every Sunday we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our trespasses—our sins—as we forgive those who trespass—who sin—against us.” Jesus is very clear about the depth and breadth of God’s forgiveness, and equally clear about our need to forgive one another. And still it is startling—stunning even—to hear someone live out the prayer that so easily rolls off our tongues. It is startling—stunning—to witness this part of our faith put into action. “Aren’t some things unforgivable?” we ask. “Isn’t it too much to expect us to forgive someone so filled with hate?”
It is tempting to set Nadine Collier—and Bethane Middleton-Brown and Alana Simmons and Anthony Thompson and Chris Singleton—up on a pedestal, as though they are a different category of Christian from the rest of us. It’s tempting to lift them up as saints, using that word with its modern-day connotation: people who are beyond our normal human frailties and struggles, people who work miracles. If we set them high enough above us, we can pretend we don’t have to take their words seriously.
But these grieving family members are not superhuman or even super-spiritual. Bethane Middleton Brown, sister of Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, named the depth of her own struggle: “For me,” she said, “I’m a work in progress and I acknowledge that I’m very angry. But one thing DePayne always taught me is that we are the family that love built…. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive.”
Her words remind me that forgiveness is not a feeling like anger. Forgiveness is a choice we make and a process of transformation we undergo in the midst of all our painful human emotions. She has made a choice to forgive; that choice will shape her long journey of facing her anger and sorrow and moving toward peace and healing.
These grieving folks are saints—if we use the biblical meaning of the word. In the early church, saints were simply members of the community that gathered to follow Jesus. They are saints just as we are saints.
If it is tempting to distance ourselves by putting these family members on a pedestal, it is equally tempting to dismiss them as naïve, as though they must not really understand how evil this act of terror really was, as though their choice to forgive somehow doesn’t honor the depth of their loss. But they are not naïve. In fact, it is because they know how powerful hate really is that they refuse to succumb to it. They choose to forgive in order to honor the lives of nine people who sought to live as Jesus taught.
Alana Simmons, granddaughter of Daniel Simmons, put it eloquently: “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof—everyone’s plea for your soul is proof– they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won’t win.”
Rev. Norvel Goff, Senior, the preacher at the first Sunday service held at Emanuel AME Church after the shooting, addressed the implied assumptions of naivete: “I’m reminded of some news media persons that wondered why the nine families all spoke of forgiveness and didn’t have malice in their hearts,” he preached. “It’s that the nine families got it.”
They got that Roof’s intent was to set into motion a downward spiral of hate and violence, a race war. They said no, we are not falling into that trap. They got that fighting hate with more hate means hate wins. Even more, they got the meaning of our faith.
“Love is always stronger than hate,” Chris Singleton, son of Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, began. “So if we just love the way my mom would, then the hate won’t be anywhere close to where love is.”
“Love is stronger than hate.” Familiar words. We said them this morning in our prayer of confession and our assurance of God’s forgiveness. I say them over and over again every Easter Sunday, as I try to preach the good news of the resurrection. The message of Easter, I say over and over again, is that love is stronger than hate, love is stronger than fear or despair, stronger even than death.”
If we resist the temptation to distance ourselves by putting the grieving family members high on a pedestal or by dismissing them as naïve, then we are left with a challenge: what does it mean for us to live our Easter faith in this world today? What does it mean for us, a very different congregation more than 900 miles from Charleston, to proclaim the faith we share with Emanuel AME? What does it mean for us, some of us people of color who know first-hand the impact of racism, others who seek to be white allies? What does it mean for us, people who long to be part of the solution, who are often overwhelmed by the persistence, virulence and complexity of racism?
Violent acts of hatred like this church massacre may be the most blatant expression of racism–but there are so many other ways racism is manifested in our culture today. There are the subconscious judgments people of good will make about others, assumptions that can only be transformed when they are brought to conscious awareness. There is our deep-rooted human instinct to fear people we perceive as different from us, our very human temptation to abuse whatever power we have. There is the shocking disparity in how different races are treated in the criminal justice system, a disparity reflected in recent police shootings and in the outrageous percentage of black men who have spent time in prison. There is an educational achievement gap we can’t seem to eliminate. There is the tangled intersection between prejudice and poverty, between racism and lack of economic opportunity.
There are so many layers. There is so much history, so much distrust, so much emotion. It is easy to become paralyzed, to despair that we can make it better.
The promise of Easter is that, with God’s help, we can. Love–God’s love–is stronger than hate, and God’s love is stronger than fear, stronger than our long history of distrust, stronger than our inclination to abuse power, stronger than all the twisted systems we create. Love–God’s love–is stronger than racism.
So how do we live this Easter faith? We live it by saying no to hate. We live it by carefully examining our own unconscious assumptions. We live it by choosing not to be controlled by our fear, by acknowledging our power and sharing it. We live it through the long process of studying the reasons behind education gaps and criminal justice disparities and working to change them. We live it by listening deeply, by building relationships when layers of distrust make it hard.
Love that is stronger than racism is passionate love. It is persistent, thoughtful, wise, creative love. It is love that is in it for the long haul. It is love that comes from God, love that is renewed through worship and prayer, love inspired by Jesus’ life and teachings.
“Love,” Chris Singleton said, “is always stronger than hate.” “Love,” we proclaim every Easter, “is stronger than despair and greed, abuse and apathy and racism, stronger even than death.” This is the promise of our faith.
It is not a promise for some future time, when God will swoop down and make everything wonderful. It is a promise for now. It is a promise that found fulfillment in that Charleston courthouse. Through the words the grieving family members spoke, love is already victorious. It is a promise that yearns to be fulfilled through our actions, large and small–actions that build trust, create opportunity, transform broken systems, actions that say no to hate.
Let us live our Easter faith. Let us fulfill God’s promise. Amen.