I’ve been thinking about sacrifice recently. It’s a common word in Christianity, but I wonder if we truly understand what it means to sacrifice. When we choose to sacrifice our time to volunteer at Alpha House or the Delonis Center, we’re giving up time that we could use to be doing something else in favor of doing something more important to us. When we choose to sacrifice our money to pledge to the church or to donate to charities, we’re giving up the potential to buy something that we might want or need in favor of supporting an important organization or cause. But a sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost us something. During this pandemic, we’ve been forced to sacrifice so much that we didn’t want to give up, but we did it because we knew it was important and for the greater good. And now, the pandemic of systemic racism and white supremacy are more apparent to us than ever before. Now is the time to ask ourselves, are we, as white people, willing to make sacrifices for racial equity? Are we willing to sacrifice our privilege and power - not just for a few weeks or a season, but for life - in order to lift up all those who have been marginalized, dehumanized, and disenfranchised? Are we willing to sacrifice what we thought we knew in order to imagine a new world where justice reigns? Are we willing to sacrifice our comfort in order to abolish the colonizer, the oppressor, the cop in our own heads? Are we willing to sacrifice everything? “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?’” We must.
Holding you in love, Rev. Andrew Frazier
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2020
Categories |