Dear Students,
The prophet Jeremiah wrote to the people of Judah during their exile, “seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.” (Jeremiah 29:7) Seek and pray. This is our instruction as we sojourn in this time of already-but-not-yet. The Justice of God has already triumphed in the death and resurrection of Christ, but Justice is not yet experienced by all people. Our reconciliation has already been achieved through the saving work of Jesus, but reconciliation is not yet the lived experience of all people. So we must seek and pray for shalom, the wholeness, peace, restoration, perfection, the just-as-God-intends-it for our cities, for IWU, and for our STM community.
Seek understanding. In the week since George Floyd was murdered, and the months since Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery were murdered, and the years since Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless others were killed you may have found yourself asking questions. You may have found yourself becoming defensive. You may have found yourself attempting to justify or excuse actions that led to the death of black Americans. You may have found yourself at a loss for words and thoughts. And if you are black, you may have found yourself unsurprised, yet with a renewed sense of fear for your life and a familiar sorrow deep in your soul.
Students who are white, I urge you to suspend your defensiveness and justifications and seek to understand the well-founded fears and deep sorrows of your black, Latinx, Asian, and other minority brothers and sisters. Seek understanding of the history of racial oppression and violence, and the complicity of white Christians therewith. Seek understanding of why centuries of fear and sorrow will burst forth in powerful ways, with tears and raised voices and rage and even violence and destruction. Seek understanding of why it is necessary to remind or convince the country that Black Lives Matter. Seek understanding of your own biases and prejudices and resistances. Read, listen, and be slow to speak. (Suggested resources: Code Switch podcast, Disunity in Christ by Christena Cleveland, The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby)
Students of color, I ask you to seek understanding as well. Seek understanding of your heritage and the gifts it offers to the American fabric. Seek understanding of your own sorrow or disconnection or anger or fear. Seek understanding of your own need for rest, expression, support, solitude, or connection. And yes, seek understanding of your own biases and prejudices and resistances as well, for all fall short of the glory of God. (Suggested resources: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austen Channing Brown, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Seek action. John Wesley identified communal works of mercy, such as advocating for changes in society, as means of grace. Taking action toward shalom is holy work. Seek concrete ways to act on your understanding. Seek a peaceful demonstration, a conversation, a new podcast or YouTuber, a local faith-based reconciliation network, a class, a friendship. Call your local and national elected officials, advocate for reforms in your hometown and at IWU. Act on the feeling that a comment was harmful or untrue, or that a joke wasn’t funny, or that a word was a slur. If you shared a meme or blacked out your profile picture, back it up with action. (Suggested resources: Harvard’s Implicit Bias test, https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html; SURJ, www.showingupforracialjustice.org; The John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation, www.jvmpf.org)
Pray for transformation in yourself. When we are in Christ we are a new creation; the old is gone. Not somewhat new, not part of the old. We are being transformed completely, down to our thoughts and attitudes and reactions. We are all being sanctified, and as long as we perpetuate bias and are complicit with racism we do not yet have the mind of Christ. Pray as David did, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) God will be faithful to answer this prayer, to reveal the layers of our hearts that have resisted the touch of the Holy Spirit. It will be difficult, convicting work. It is the way of Christ.
Pray for transformation in your communities. The Holy Spirit moves in power when people are united in prayer. Revival is marked by long-term change, and so as we continue to pray for revival at IWU and in the United States let us pray that the transformation would take root so deeply that even barely visible fractures are healed. Whether implicit biases or unjust systems or inequities so subtle that they are difficult to name - the Holy Spirit can reach even there.
Pray in lament. Our merciful God sits with us in our sorrow. Lament is part of the Christian tradition that acknowledges our pain and sin, lays it before the Lord in all its raw honesty, and weeps as the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. We stop to experience godly sorrow that leads to repentance. We grieve for lost lives, we speak the names of those who should still be alive today, we lift up the names of loves ones and strangers, we mourn with those who mourn. In lament we cease our defenses and justifications and explanations and simply acknowledge the pain of the community. And in so doing we grow in compassion. (Suggested resources: Prayers of Lament, https://transformingcenter.org/2016/07/prayer-lament-breathe/ and https://sojo.net/day-of-lament/prayers)
When we gather in August we will not be same people. We will either be more cynical, more divided, more entrenched in self-righteousness; or we will be more compassionate, more understanding, more gracious, more like Christ. I pray that each of us chooses the path of Christlikeness, that our STM community may marked by the shalom of God."
