The Witness of the Martyrs

4th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 12), Year B
Texts: Job 38.1-11; Mk 4.35-41

Normally when we observe commemorations for saints and martyrs, I say a little something at the beginning of the service and then we don’t do much else. Today is different, and I think it’s important to talk about why it’s different. It’s not just that the Emanuel Nine are contemporary martyrs, and it’s not just that this weekend is also the celebration of Juneteenth. I felt that it was important this year to mark this commemoration because the storm has finally come.

This storm has been brewing for 400 years, ever since the first enslaved Africans arrived on American shores, ever since people began to believe that the inherent “otherness” of some human beings made them inferior. The clouds have been gathering through chattel slavery and Civil War, through racist immigration restrictions and the mass internment of American citizens during wartime, through unjust policing and incarceration practices and lynchings. For decades, for centuries, even, the peace has held in spite of the darkening skies; so what changed? Why are things happening now that didn’t happen 6 years ago when an angry young man walked into Mother Emanuel Church with a gun to start a race war?