Month: August 2017

We Are God’s Help

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short ArticlesLeave a comment

rescue

The catastrophic images from Texas bring back painful personal memories from 1999 when Hurricane Floyd flooded our home in Eastern North Carolina. Carson and Sara, who were four and two years-old at the time, were rescued by boat, while Lori and I stayed behind to put more of our things into the attic. We spent the next three months living in a FEMA camper in the driveway of our decimated home.

In the days the water receded, I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of despair. We had only lived in our home for six weeks prior to the flood. It was the first home we ever owned, and we had yet to make our first mortgage payment. Because we did not have flood insurance, rebuilding our home seemed impossible.  I cannot recall any other time in my life when I felt more hopeless. If ever I needed divine help, it was then.

Thankfully, help from God came. Every week help came. Help came bringing pry bars, hammers and saws to rip out carpet, pull up flooring, tear out sheetrock and pull out wet insulation. Help came bringing new flooring, sheetrock, and insulation. Help came with paintbrushes and paint.

Help also came bringing what we needed the most: hope. Help came with a message that rebuilding our home was possible. Help came with the good news that although we could not go back to the good old days before the flood, with the help of God, we could go forward into good new days.

The movie All Saints, which is now playing in theaters, is a true story of the All Saints Episcopal Church of Smyrna, Tennessee. The church was preparing to close their doors for good and sell their property when a group of refugees from war-torn Southeast Asia showed up.

In one scene, the teenage son of Rev. Spurlock asks his father about the fate of the refugees if he decides to allow the church to close.

Rev. Spurlock responds: “We must pray and ask God to help them.”

His son replies: “Dad, aren’t you God’s help?”

The people of East Texas need our prayers. However, when we pray for God to help them, may we remember that we are God’s help.

Today, we can be divine help by sending our dollars to Texas by giving to the mission fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at http://www.weekofcompassion.org. You can designate 100% of your gifts to help communities affected by Hurricane Harvey.

In the days, weeks, and months to come, we will have opportunities to be divine help by sending ourselves, bringing tools and building materials. More importantly, we will have opportunities to be divine help by bringing what these people need now more than anything else: hope.

We will have opportunities to go with the good news, that with the help of God, although it seems impossible, good new days are indeed ahead.

Eclipsed by Grace

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short Articles2 Comments


On Monday, if just for a moment, our busy lives were eclipsed by miracle.

At some point we stopped whatever we were doing, with friends, family or co-workers, to wonder at crescent shapes in the shadows on sidewalks, peer through homemade projectors crafted from an empty box of Cheerios, or gaze through a new pair of solar glasses that we will likely misplace or discard before we need them again. The hot August air cooled. The sky darkened. The moon eclipsed the sun, and we expressed a collective “wow!”

The news channels stopped talking about the threat of  nuclear war, unstable world leaders, democrats and republicans, racists and terrorists, and showed us beautiful pictures of heavenly bodies that united us in awe.

It was just what our country needed.

We needed a pause to see the sheer mystery and miracle of it all. We needed a break to experience the utter grace of this mystery we call life. And we needed to do it together, in community, as one people.

It didn’t take long for us to see it, to experience it, and to get it. We only needed a few minutes for it to come into focus. Sun, moon, crescent lights on shadowy sidewalks, cool August breeze, projections in a homemade projector: It was all miracle, and it was all grace, completely unearned, undeserved.

Moreover, as the sky lightened, we began to see that this miracle has been here all the while, every day, every minute. The sun, moon, sky, shadows on sidewalks, trees, leaves, cool breezes, our co-workers, our family and our friends, even the concrete and the Cheerios we had for breakfast last week—it is all miracle, and it is all grace. It is all gift.

And this grace that we call life has the mysterious and miraculous power to unite us all, because it is for all: Caucasian, People of Color, Christian, Muslim, Jew, None, gay, straight, English-speaking, Hispanic speaking, rich, poor, abled and disabled.

The good news is that if we will pause, if just for a moment, we can experience this grace any time, any day. We can see it, and we can get it everyday; and with our human family, with our sisters and our brothers, we can express a collective “wow” at the love and the grace that bonds us together.

On Faith, Compassion and Bigotry

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Guest Bloggers1 Comment

My friend Susan passed away suddenly the day after she published these words. Like the mother of Heather Heyer, I hope to magnify Susan’s words.

Susan Irene Fox's avatarSusan Irene Fox

My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? Do not try to blend the genuine faith of our glorious Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, with your silly pretentiousness. Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by your words and actions? Will that kind of faith save anyone? (James 2:1,14)

In other words, we cannot claim to be Christians, we cannot claim to follow Jesus and at the same time claim to be a white supremacist, a white nationalist, a member of the KKK, or a member of the neo Nazi Party. They are antithetical.

Nor can we simply stand by and say nothing, or choose to say silent about the horrendous bigotry of these groups whose foundation comes from hanging black people and exterminating…

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Charlottesville Wake-Up Call

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short Articles2 Comments

torches2

I first expressed the following bullet-points following the actions of domestic terrorist and white supremacist Dylan Roof in Charleston, South Carolina. Many were calling the murders of the African Americans who had gathered for a Bible Study at the Mother Emanuel Church “a wake-up call.” I have heard the same expression used this weekend following the white supremacists who gathered to spew their hate in Charlottesville. What happened? Did we fall back asleep? It is way past time for America, especially the church in America, to stop hitting the snooze button, stop closing our eyes to ignore the racism and bigotry has been emboldened in our country today.  It is way past time to wake up, rise up, stand up, and speak out, as intolerance cannot be tolerated.

  • We must wake up to the reality that racism is not only a wound from our country’s past, but it is a deadly virus that still plagues us today. White preachers, including myself, have been too often afraid to even use the word “racism” from our pulpits for fear of “stirring things up,” as if we might reignite some fire that was put out in the 1960’s, or at least by 2008 when we elected our first black president. We must wake up and boldly call this evil by name and condemn the racism that is ablaze today, in all of its current manifestations: personal racism; systemic racism; political; and the subtle racism that is prevalent in our homes, in the workplace, in the marketplace, in government, and even in the church, for Jesus could not have been more clear when he said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

 

  • We must wake up to the reality that hatred in this country is being defended by people who are calling it “religious freedom.” In America, we believe all people are created equally; therefore, “religious freedom” never means the freedom to discriminate. Slave-owners used the same religious-freedom arguments in the nineteenth century to support slavery. Today, we do not tolerate people who want to own slaves, nor should we tolerate anyone who wants to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

 

  • We must wake up to the reality that many who cry out that they want to “Make America Great Again” loath what makes our country great today, that is, our cultural, ethnic, religious and racial diversity. We need to boldly speak out that it is this diversity that makes us look most like the image of God in which we were created. This diversity also looks like the portrait of heaven we find in the book of Revelation: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (7:9). We must wake up to voice our opposition to the purveyors of fear, some who are even calling people bear more arms “to take our country back.” Furthermore, we must wake up to stop folks mid-sentence when they start reminiscing about going back to the good old days of the 1950’s when “we had prayer in school,” as they are completely disregarding the fact that during this time African-Americans in our country were not only treated as second-class citizens, but were being lynched in trees.

 

  • We must wake up to the reality that the most segregated hours in our country occur on Sunday mornings. We must find ways to build bridges and tear down the walls that we have created that prevent us from worshipping and doing ministry together. To stand against racism, hatred and violence and to stand for social justice and equality for all, we must do it side by side, hand in hand, as one body, one Church, serving one Lord.