​I remember going home for my grandmother’s funeral in Nashua, MT near where she lived. I could have flown into Great Falls and ridden the 5 hours to Nashua with my parents, but my Uncle Tom was also coming from South Carolina, and he was flying into Billings. Since I didn’t get to see him much, I opted to meet him there and drive up with him.

When we got to Nashua—which is a small town of about 200 people—we stopped at the restaurant in town. My cousin’s wife worked there, and we met my Uncle Leroy and Aunt Bonnie and a few of my cousins there. When we walked into the restaurant and sat down, the waitress came to take our order. She was a local; she’d gone to school with my two uncles and my aunt, and watched my cousins grow up, but she didn’t know me. However, after looking me over, she asked, “Are you Wes’s son?” She'd never seen me, but she knew my dad, and that told her enough to recognize me.

When Jesus asks the disciples, “who do you say that I am,” Simon responds by telling him who his Father is: “You are the Messiah, Son of the living God.” This is not news to anyone at this point; so far in Matthew’s gospel, all of the disciples have recognized Jesus as God’s Son, and he has referred to himself as such. And yet, when he says this, Jesus blesses him.

In my sermon on Sunday, I said that, “Our place [as Christians, that is, particularly as privileged Christians] is beside those who are bearing the brunt of hatred and suffering injustice…because our lives are just as much at stake as theirs.” Upon reflection, I have realized that this is an untrue statement. Privileged (i.e. White*) Christians’ lives are not at stake “just as much” as are the lives of our siblings in Christ who suffer from the evils of racism, poverty, homophobia or other such sins of our culture. The simple fact is that White Christians do not lose their lives to these sins in the same way that our oppressed siblings do. We are safe, and we are often disconnected from the everyday reality of these sins and largely blind to the power they have in our lives. This is our “privilege” that comes from having white skin, being born into a middle-class family, being heterosexual and cis-gendered.

What I was hoping to convey is that though, as White Christians, our privilege means we seldom have to face these sins, we are also victims of them, though not in the same way as our oppressed siblings. These evils do violence to those of us with privilege, too. Perhaps the best way to say it is not that our lives are at stake, but that our souls are at stake; not in the sense that we are in danger of damnation for simply being privileged, but rather that the sins committed out in our name and for our benefit—with or without our knowledge—do damage to our relationships with others and with the world. These sins mar the Imago Dei we bear as God’s creation and children.

Racism, for example, puts people of color in emotional, physical, and psychological danger, while White people are seemingly unaffected. However, the very existence of racism causes distrust and tension among the children of God, which harms White people because we are deprived of the wholesome, loving relationship with our siblings of color that God intends for us to have. God’s good creation is marred, and we all suffer, though certainly not in the same way or to the same degree. The same is true for anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and any other division that keeps us from living in the harmony with one another that God has desired for all of us.

The work of God is liberation, and if we are to be people of God, we cannot but be involved in that work. As it says in 1 John 3:19, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their siblings are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen cannot love a God whom they have not seen.” To love our siblings in Christ necessarily means to become like them in suffering for the same justice for which they suffer; we cannot truly love them unless and until we put our lives on the line for them: for, “no person has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) If our lives are not at stake with our siblings, then Christ invites us to put them at stake with our siblings. This is the gospel of the LORD.

​Here we are again. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say anything about what happened in Charlottesville yesterday because we should all know already that it was an abomination and a travesty. And yet, how can we not say something? It’s not enough to call it what it is, anybody can see what it is: racism, hatred, domestic terrorism. I can’t imagine there is a single person here who would defend the actions or even the intentions of the neo-Nazi protestors who gathered to save the statue of Robert E. Lee (but if there is, then we should talk). We are a safe, comfortable, privileged congregation situated across the country from what happened yesterday, but the fact remains that this is still our problem.

​John was dead. When Jesus heard the news his heart fell. He knew Herod had wanted to kill him, but there’s a big difference between wanting to kill a person and actually killing them. John had been a teacher, a mentor, a friend. The two men had been close; where John left off, Jesus had picked up. He’d gone off by himself for several days after John had been arrested. Now that John was dead… he needed to collect himself. He told the twelve that he was leaving, and without so much as a question, they picked up and followed him.

Today's worship featured a "Narrated Liturgy" in place of a sermon. The "liturgy" is what we call the familiar structure to our worship. It consists of regular parts that, while they may change in content, remain consistent in form from week to week. This repetition in our worship can cause us to ignore the importance of what we are doing, and so every year, we  narrate the liturgy, providing a running commentary of why we do what we do. The liturgy is below, with the congregation's parts (marked C) in bold type and the pastors' (marked P) and Assisting Minister's (marked A) parts in plain type, and the narration is included in red italics.