What a time to be alive! With Pentecost we have entered a whole new part of the Christian year. This is the qualitative second half of the year when the future spiritual evolution of the earth and humanity is handed over to human beings. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany; Passiontide, Easter, Ascension, and finally Pentecost are festivals resulting from the gifts of the spiritual world. The second half of the year, two festivals: St, Johnstide and Michaelmas, framed by three “in-between the festivals” times, is a time when human beings are gifted by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and then the question rests upon us: What will you do with your one wild and precious life? (to quote the poet Mary Oliver) — What will you do with your freedom, O Human Being?
The reading that we hear today is really the perfect reading to begin this journey. In it we hear the question of Nicodemus: “How can a human being be born anew when he is already old? Surely he cannot enter into his mother’s womb a second time?”
This is our business at hand: “How can we be born anew from above?” This is indeed at the heart of all spiritual seeking. Indeed, Christ answers him: “No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and of the Spirit.” And he describes then an incredible state of freedom that one experiences when this spiritual birth happens: “The wind blows where it will. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit!”
We stand at a great moment in our human evolution. We are so free that we could choose not to seek this spiritual birth from above. But we can see—through the incredible bareness of human souls who have been three months under lockdown, who now rise up and come together to lift up the human being to a higher state through the protests that have swept all fifty states and 18 countries besides. There is a state of emergency for a large percent of our population in this country. There has been a systematic stripping of the humanity of people of color in this nation going back to even long before its founding. But this dehumanization of black people and all other people of non-white races is not just a dehumanization of them. This is a big part of why people are taking to the streets. But it is a dehumanization of anyone who can look out of their own white body and see black bodies as not fully human. It is dehumanizing to be able to do that, and for most of us, not even realize it.
Now, many of us might respond to that and say: But I am not a racist. Not even a little! I love all people. It is why many white people have tried to turn the slogan #blacklivesmatter into #alllivesmatter. Of course all lives matter. But it is a grave misunderstanding of the deep inculturation we have ALL had over centuries that has told us: that black lives are worth less than white lives.
The scholar and professor Ibram X. Kendi says:
“The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.”
“The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what — not who — we are.”
In his work, he points out that we are all soaking wet with the ideas of racism—white and black people alike. We have had these ideas poured on us for so long, we do not even know that we are wet anymore. But we are being offered an umbrella, something to help us stop for a moment and realize we have been being drenched with hateful lies, that make themselves insidious in our perceptions, in our cultural policies, in our daily and personal tolerances of racist incidences, in our in-actions as much as our actions. What in religious life we call sins of omission. To be non-racist is just saying: I am not willing to put in the work. But it is time to put in the work. For the sake of our humanity.
We have a great opportunity right now to humble ourselves before this moment in history and admit all that we do not know, and do not yet know how to do. Humility allows us to look at our fellow human being and say: “Tell me who you are.” This is what is described as the I-Thou relationship. It differs immensely from the I-It relationship of seeing others as object. Racism and classism are based on making fellow human beings into an It. This is a lie that hurts everyone, though in different ways. This is why it is right to say until it is no longer necessary: Black. Lives. Matter. Anti-Racism is the active work of restoring everyone to the sacred I-Thou relationship that God intended in our Creation—so that yes, all lives can be seen to matter.
To remember our Creation is one way we can help ourselves and our fellow human beings be born anew from above for God created all of us in God’s image and likeness.
Franciscan Richard Rohr points out the difference between God’s image and God’s likeness, however, a difference that outlines the Way that is the religious path. Objectively it is a fact that we are all born in God’s image—the spark of God’s love is in each one of us. But to become those who individually become God’s likeness is to surrender to, allow and practice God’s love—this is the personal path, the work of the path of freedom in seeking the spirit. To look into humanity and see and feel God’s greatest work and greatest longing and greatest love waiting to unfold—this is the practice of the Christ-following human being. This is to live in Christ: to look upon the world of others and see someone we are meant to be in holy connection with. It will take work to grow an inner anti-racism in us so that we can no longer be duped into thinking anyone ever is less worthy of love, respect, dignity and fair treatment. To look upon our brothers and sisters in humanity and say in all humility, with our hearts on fire: “Christ in you.”