The Spirit's Radical Repair
The Spirit's Radical Repair
This Sunday, we continue our Acts sermon series on the Holy Spirit with Karen sharing on reparations. It also coincides with the celebration of Juneteenth where we how the Spirit's work broadens our attention.
When we read Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-35, this Sunday’s texts, we're witnessing the Spirit repairing what systems of domination have shattered, the kinship of humanity itself. The Spirit is mending the fracture created when some are declared less human, less valued. At Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13), the Spirit bridges, through language, those on the margins by creating a community more closely connected to a fuller sense of their shared humanity.
What is being repaired? The severing of community. The theft of labor, dignity, and future. The lie that some people exist to serve others, and where others are related to as deficits based on their lack.
This weekend we also celebrate Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston finally heard: you are free. Yet that proclamation, while liberating, did not instantly repair centuries of theft. The reparations movement asks: What does genuine repair look like? How do we move beyond emancipation (naming someone as free) to restoration(rebuilding what was taken) and deeper belonging?
The early church's radical sharing was the Spirit's repair work: reshaping who counts, whose voice matters, whose belonging is non-negotiable.
Reparations align with Juneteenth because both ask the same Spirit-led question: How do we repair the human kinship that oppression and the deepest of divides break? Not charity from a distance, but genuine justice and belonging, recognizing our lives are bound together. The Spirit continues to call us to the mending work of dehumanizing systems.
Given Juneteenth, and if and as you have capacity, I commend to you this episode of On Being. Krista Tippett interviews pastor Ottis Moss about Howard Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited. It invites another curious way in to the Spirit's movement toward liberation from margins. In this 2020-episode, Rev. Moss reflects on the impact of George Floyd, via Thurman, and gives a beautiful, hopeful picture of what the Beloved Community looks like.
Join us Sunday as the Spirit invites us, through Karen, to imagine what a communion (koinonia is the word) or repair looks like among us.
Peace, David
This Sunday, we continue our Acts sermon series on the Holy Spirit with Karen sharing on reparations. It also coincides with the celebration of Juneteenth where we how the Spirit's work broadens our attention.
When we read Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-35, this Sunday’s texts, we're witnessing the Spirit repairing what systems of domination have shattered, the kinship of humanity itself. The Spirit is mending the fracture created when some are declared less human, less valued. At Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13), the Spirit bridges, through language, those on the margins by creating a community more closely connected to a fuller sense of their shared humanity.
What is being repaired? The severing of community. The theft of labor, dignity, and future. The lie that some people exist to serve others, and where others are related to as deficits based on their lack.
This weekend we also celebrate Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston finally heard: you are free. Yet that proclamation, while liberating, did not instantly repair centuries of theft. The reparations movement asks: What does genuine repair look like? How do we move beyond emancipation (naming someone as free) to restoration(rebuilding what was taken) and deeper belonging?
The early church's radical sharing was the Spirit's repair work: reshaping who counts, whose voice matters, whose belonging is non-negotiable.
Reparations align with Juneteenth because both ask the same Spirit-led question: How do we repair the human kinship that oppression and the deepest of divides break? Not charity from a distance, but genuine justice and belonging, recognizing our lives are bound together. The Spirit continues to call us to the mending work of dehumanizing systems.
Given Juneteenth, and if and as you have capacity, I commend to you this episode of On Being. Krista Tippett interviews pastor Ottis Moss about Howard Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited. It invites another curious way in to the Spirit's movement toward liberation from margins. In this 2020-episode, Rev. Moss reflects on the impact of George Floyd, via Thurman, and gives a beautiful, hopeful picture of what the Beloved Community looks like.
Join us Sunday as the Spirit invites us, through Karen, to imagine what a communion (koinonia is the word) or repair looks like among us.
Peace, David
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