I have been thinking back quite a bit these days to a trip that several of us took in the fall of 2021. Women from BMPC, as well as other congregations, traveled together to St. John in the Virgin Islands to visit historic National Park sites that were originally sugar cane plantations where human beings had been enslaved. These sites were particularly historic because of their proximity to the British Virgin Islands, where slavery was outlawed almost 30 years before being banned in the US.
Standing on the beach at the former plantation, this group of white and black women stood together, prayed in memory of the men and women who lost their lives in that place, especially those who jumped into the water hoping to swim to freedom, gave thanks for the ways that the world has changed since those days, and asked that each of us might be transformed by the things that we saw and experienced together.
The impetus for the trip was the way that the National Park staff had used their time and energy during the lock downs of the pandemic to both update the interpretation materials for the site that better described the experience of enslaved people in that site, and to add it to the National Park’s Network to Freedom listing identifying sites on the Underground Railroad.
I was moved, all of us were, by the way that the staff talked to us about their responsibility to tell the truth about that place and the ways that telling the stories of the enslaved people there was a small measure of repair to the inhumanity of slavery.
I think of this trip and experience each time I read news of the attempts in these days to remove these kinds of interpretive tools and stories from National Park sites and historic locations around the country.
Many might consider this a political issue outside the realm of our purview as a church or as people of faith. But in most ways, it is deeply connected to our history, present, and future as Christians in the United States. Not just because of the ways that Christianity, the Bible, and the church were used to justify slavery; the fact that Presbyterians more often than not declined to stand up against slavery when it really mattered; and the ways that we have collectively failed to be accountable for the lasting impact of these historical roots in our culture and communities today, but simply because what we believe as Presbyterians about confession and forgiveness.
Each time we gather in worship, we begin our liturgy with an act of confession. Some people find this incredibly off-putting and maybe even tedious. Still, its placement at the start of worship is very intentional, positioned so that every time we hear scripture read and proclaimed, we are reminded of the ways that we and the world are broken and the truth that through Christ, forgiveness and repair are promised and fulfilled. The echoes of our forgiveness still ring in our ears before any part of scripture is spoken.
We practice this act of spiritual repair each week, so that when we step into a broken world, we are not caught off guard or offended by the need for this same kind of liturgy of confession and repair in our community and national life.
As we do that work, may this prayer of forgiveness from Cole Arthur Riley’s book, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, be a part of each of our comings and goings this summer as we travel the breadth and beauty of this land:
Let your soul receive this rest: God seeks to mend the brokenhearted, provide for the economically oppressed, honor the aging, and protect the vulnerable.
Receive forgiveness for the injustices you’ve participated in and be purged of those that still reside in your own heart.
Find renewal in the divine, that we would welcome healing as it knocks.
That we would reintegrate every part of us that this work has tried to cleave apart, claiming the dignity of our bodies daily.
As you receive this mercy, let it hold you and keep you, that your hope for liberation would be reborn each morning. Amen.
