No justice, no peace
Today is Shavuot. The Feast of Weeks. After Passover, you "count the Omer;" you count seven weeks, SEVEN SEVENS. Then you celebrate Shavuot. It commemorates the giving of the Torah. It is also the wheat harvest and so a promise of food---and of life----for the early israelites.
In Christian tradition, it was on Shavuot, that flames of fire fell on the early believers in Jesus, and they were able to tell strangers of what G-d had done in the languages of the strangers. Languages the speakers had never learned. The celebration of the giving of Torah, became the giving of the Spirit. Flames of fire. And the world was turned upside down.
Fire warms. Fire also BURNS. Fire can be a blessing. Or it can tear our world down.
Today several of our cities are on fire. Those of us who are white may be tempted to pray for peace. AND PEACE IS ALWAYS A GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS THING. But there can be no peace until there is justice. "No justice, No peace." Our desire for law and order may seem like peace to us, but it is not peace for our communities of color. We have failed to hear the language of our black and brown brothers and sisters tell us of how un-justly they are treated.
The Constitiution was written to proclaim white people equal in the eyes of G-d, not black. It did not have to be amended to state that we were not property. It did not state that we were 3/5 of a human being. The Constitution and the laws that grew out of it are not intended to protect black people.
Those of us who are white want to pray for peace because we are comfortable. We have failed to hear our black and brown brothers and sisters tell us of the failures of our system of government. But the prophet Jeremiah warns of a false peace. "“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace Peace’ they say, when there is no peace.”
There will be no peace until we address the wounds borne by our black brothers and sisters. Those of us who are white need to allow ourselves to be UN-comfortable and LISTEN to the black community and work with them to change the problems and inequities in our system. Until we do, there will be no peace.
