Over the past several weeks, a variety of professional sports started up again and developed plans for continuing during the pandemic. However last week the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team boycotted one of their playoff games to focus attention on the killing of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, yet another unarmed black man shot to death by police. The boycott spread not only to other NBA teams but to other professional sports including baseball, hockey, and soccer. The video of a press conference by Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers summed up the pain of many Black people as he described the reality of living with the fear of race based violence both historically and currently. The most quoted sentence from this moving video was, “It’s amazing to me why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” I encourage you to just sit with those words for a few minutes, without response and without defensiveness. A segment of that press conference is posted below. Any significant steps toward racial justice/reconciliatin must begin with pausing to take in the pain. The depth of the pain of our nation’s racial history and the pain of these last three months are the foundation for any hope for lasting change. Otherwise we will settle for superficial platitudes such as “all lives matter” and superficial gestures of “unity” that are insufficient for these tragic yet opportune times. The authors of the Bible were familiar with expressing their deep pain before God knowing that this is an essential part of the path toward healing. One example comes from Psalm 90: 13-15:
Relent, Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.
The cry of the Black community is echoed in this psalm, “How long will it be?” We don’t know how long it will take for racial justice to be a reality in our nation. We do know that God’s desire and intention is for justice for all people, especially those who are suffering injustice and oppression. The real question is how long will it be before each of us individually and the Church corporately pause to take in the pain of our Black sisters and brothers and commit ourselves to the struggle for racial justice? I conclude with the words of the late Black poet and activist Audre Lorde, words I saw posted on the reclaimed Lee Monument in Richmond, VA:
If you are sllent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.
