By Dawn McNamara, Truth and Reparations Task Force Vice Chair
As I reflect on the first few months in my role as Vice Chair of Truth and Reparations Task Force, I am leaning into our work this year. First, we are tasked with education, a renewed history lesson if you will, into how and why our past shapes who we are today. It’s painful work, to see how decisions lead to negative outcomes time after time throughout history.
If we are to call ourselves Christians, making a daily attempt to live into our Baptismal Covenant, we must work towards repair, to a place where our people can feel valued and know they are loved and that God is residing in them.
It reminds me of what N.T. Wright says – that the story of Christian scripture can be thought of as a five-act play:
- Act 1: Creation – God creates a good work and humans are made in God’s image.
- Act 2: The Fall – Human rebellion brings sin into the world (a turning away from God and one another), and Creation becomes distorted.
- Act 3: Israel – God calls the people of Israel to enter into covenant, follow God, and receive God’s blessings.
- Act 4: Jesus – Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and ascension, Jesus fulfills God’s covenant with Israel by defeating sin and death.
- Act 5: The Church – Through the Holy Spirit, the Church is commissioned to continue God’s mission to the world.
This five-act play seems to perhaps point to the direction of the Task Force since its inception. Let me explain…
Racism is not simply a social problem—it is also a spiritual problem. Racism denies the fundamental and spiritual truth that EVERY human being is created in the image of God. When we judge others by their color of skin, whom they choose to love, or cultural background, we fail to see the divine presence that God has placed within every person.
Any religious response to racism begins with looking at ourselves and how destructive history has broken the divine spark of God in all. The Task Force has begun this work with prayer, examination, and beginning the vital work of education. If we do not see history in its true light, every ugly and dark bit, then we can never hope to start the work of healing and reparation.
We are in Act 5. The mission of the church is to stay in Covenant with God, follow the example that Jesus Christ brought to us in thought, word, and deed, and continue that example as we daily seek ways to bring about healing and reconciliation to a hurting and fractured world.
Not a small task… not an easy task… not a painless task. But I feel that the task is at the heart of each and every one’s own Baptismal Covenant. As I stand on the back corner of the Richmond Public Library on some Saturday afternoons and look into the eyes of those facing food and shelter insecurity, I see the face of God more vividly than at most any other time. Faces not of fear or hatred, but faces of people longing for connection, searching for wholeness, and I find myself thinking, feeling that I am reaching for the same.
I am blessed by those moments. I am encouraged by those moments when reconciliation does not seem to be so far away but there, with us, in us as we hug and pray with each other. Hope seems real in that moment, just for a moment.
I pray, second by second, minute by minute… we all see that all creation is good; when we fall we can (with God and each other) get up remembering that we are all called by God with a specific purpose of love and caring. Jesus showed us the way and we are now on a journey of fulfillment.