Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to gather regularly with a group of local pastors to pray. Because of COVID-19, that rhythm was interrupted. However, in light of the murder of George Floyd, and the public outcry that followed, the group felt it was necessary to renew these meetings. Ultimately, this led to the creation of a city-wide prayer service that took place last night.

The goal of this service was to gather black and white pastors to publicly lament the violent history and the current trauma the black community is enduring and point our city towards the multicultural reality of the kingdom of heaven. Because there can be no healing without first acknowledging the severity of the wound, this lament was thorough and specific.

Having served in Auburn for less than 2 years, and having by far, the least amount of tenure of any of the pastors who shepherd in this city, it was an honor to be a part of this public symbol of confession, repentance, and hope. It is my prayer that Union Church will be a part of a new era in the South where “justice roll[s] down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).

Below is the outline of our theological foundation, specific points of lament and prayers for unity that were used in the service…

Introduction

In the wake of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, GA, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY, George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, GA, our hearts are grieving. We see the trauma caused by these ongoing killings, the sleepless nights, the painful memories of past injustices, the mothers who are scared for their sons, and wives who are afraid for their beloved black husbands.

Moreover, these recent injustices have caused us to reflect more on how racial oppression against African Americans is deeply rooted in our national history.

Who we are as the people of God

We gather today pastors and ministry leaders who believe in the Bible as our full authority in faith and practice, as leaders whom God has called to serve his Church in this area. We gather as those who have by faith been born again into the one family of God. We are all children of one Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all and through all and in all.

As brothers and sisters in Christ, our family shares a common heritage and a common story, which is revealed in the Scriptures and culminates in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a people, our story has continued to unfold in the pages of church history as the gospel has been proclaimed to all nations and generations.

Both Scripture and history reveal that our family story is marked by both faith and failure. Even the godliest among us has not been free of all wickedness, nor the most honorable free of all shame. The wisest are beset with confusion and the strongest with weakness. The rebellion of Adam is one in which we all share. The violence of Cain we have not always forsaken. The idolatry of Israel and the injustice it produced has been a snare to every generation. All except Jesus, that is. He is for us the last Adam and the true Son who honored the Father unto death, even the death of the cross whereby he laid down his life for us. He is the only true hero in our story. In Jesus and only in Jesus are we one.

As we consider how our family’s story has unfolded in America, we find this same pattern of faith and failure, honor and shame, strength and weakness, hurt and hope. The outrage erupting across our cities in recent days, like it has many times before, is an ongoing symptom of a chronic disease. It is a disease from which our country and our churches have yet to be fully cured. It is the disease that causes us to believe that “I am better than you, my ways better than your ways, my people better than your people.” It is more than a disease from which we suffer. It is the sin we commit when we seek the good of “me and mine” even if it comes at the expense of “you and yours.” It is the sin that, when manifested along ethnic and cultural lines, we call racism. Though much progress has been made in eliminating the most explicit forms of racial injustice, this sin has a long history in America and in the church, the final pages of which have yet to be written.

Why we are gathered here today

Today, we gather before God to acknowledge and lament the legacy of American slavery and the racism upon which it was built. We gather to acknowledge and lament that this legacy still plagues us. The trauma suffered by African Americans over the generations from Jamestown to Minneapolis is incalculable. Injustice persists in the systems and structures of our society and still tears at the social fabric of our communities. Some wounds have not yet been healed. There is pain that is understandably still felt. The night of weeping for many lingers on. Denying or dismissing these grievous facts bars the way to experiencing the unity and joy that is ours in Jesus.

We do not enter the following lament from a position of moral superiority over our forebears. We are, as they were, influenced by the evils of the age. This lament is also not an effort to heap upon anyone a burden of guilt for the sins committed by others. It is, rather, a means to understand and enter into the grief of brothers and sisters in Christ and to bring that grief before the God of all comfort. We cannot heal until we reckon with the past and recognize its persistence in our present. We cannot heal until we bring that reckoning before the face of God. We cannot heal until we do this together as the family of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, his body.

The gospel of grace is what enables us to do this. In the gospel, we not only have the promise of forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit, but we also have each other. We do not have to face the ugly parts of our past alone. We can face the facts together, grieve together, repent together, and receive God's healing grace together.

We gather here today to do just that: to acknowledge the wrongs that have been done, to lament the pain and brokenness which has been caused, to repent and to call upon God for mercy and grace.

Lament

As we offer up the following lament, it is important to recognize that we are limited human beings. We cannot carry the full weight of another person’s grief, let alone God’s. We can, at best, enter into the pain of others by faith and in measure, humbly asking God to grant us his tender love. We are also limited in our emotions. We may not yet feel sorrowful over things that we know are sorrowful. We are limited in our ability to understand how we, as individuals, relate to sins that are corporate and systemic. We struggle at times to see how we as individuals relate to injustices, past or present, in which we have had no direct personal involvement. We do not even fully know ourselves and our own hearts. We bring all of these limitations to God and ask him to share his heart with us. We ask him to grant us the gift of godly grief and the ability to lament.

As overwhelming as it may feel, this lament is by no means exhaustive. Instead, it is a starting point. Following the reading of each statement, people can respond by saying, “Lord, have mercy.”

Lamenting 400 Years of Suffering

Colonial Period

O Lord, we lament “this central paradox of American history: that from the start, liberty and slavery were intertwined.”
O Lord, we lament that beginning in 1525 and continuing until 1866 over 12.5 million African people were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions.
O Lord, we lament that nearly 2 million people died at sea during the agonizing journey.
O Lord, we lament that in 1619 this evil trade made it to Jamestown, Virginia with the sale of “20. and odd Negroes.”
O Lord, we lament that in 1641 the colony of Massachusets recognized slavery as a legal institution.
O Lord, we lament that in 1642 a law was passed in Virginia decreeing that the status of the children followed the status of the mother, which locked generations of people of African descent into slavery.
O Lord, we lament that the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 embedded the idea of white supremacy into law.
O Lord, we lament that by the time of the American Revolution, the permanent enslavement of people of African descent was firmly rooted in American soil.
O Lord, we lament the contradictions in our nation’s foundational belief that “all men were created equal and were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” because non-whites were in effect alien to these rights.
O Lord, we lament the unspeakable abuse of all kinds that was let loose upon generations of precious people created in your image.

These United States until the Civil War

O Lord, we lament that the cementing of permanent enslavement of black people was based on the false ideology of race and that this ideology was developed and defended by Christian leaders and embraced by many Christians.
O Lord, we lament the scale and the horror of the domestic slave trade that rapidly expanded in the mid-1800s, how it permanently broke up families and dehumanized black people in every possible way.
O Lord, we lament that many Christian leaders were complicit with the slave trade, were themselves slave owners and that a great many church buildings and chapels were built by the slaves that they owned.
O Lord, we lament that many leaders inside and outside the church argued for the righteousness of slavery and opposed efforts to limit it.
O Lord, we lament that many inside and outside the church actually argued that slavery was in the best interest of slaves themselves.
O Lord, we lament that some Christian leaders argued that slavery was a God-ordained institution and essential to civil society.
O Lord, we lament that though some Christian leaders regarded black people as equal in human nature and dignity, though they preached the gospel to them, though they believed them to be part of the one body of Christ, they nevertheless contradicted themselves and the gospel by asserting white supremacy and defending racial inequality.
O Lord, we lament that many Christian leaders, especially in the South, opposed their brothers and sisters in Christ who labored long and sacrificed much in the cause for abolition.
O Lord, we lament that many Christian leaders supported the Confederacy’s cause to preserve slavery and preached and published literature calling upon Southerners to take up arms in what they considered to be a holy cause.
O Lord, we lament that this War claimed the lives of over 620,000 soldiers and yet still did not bring an end to the diabolical beliefs and practices that plunged our nation into its misery.

Post-War Era to Civil Rights Movement

O Lord, we lament that the racism that was fundamental to the defense of slavery endured long after the Civil War and the end of legalized slavery.
O Lord, we lament the racial caste system that was established through the Jim Crow laws in the southern and border states as people inside and outside the church clung to the doctrine of white supremacy.
O Lord, we lament that this belief in white supremacy continued to be buttressed by many sermons from many pulpits and undergirded new forms of racial oppression.
O Lord, we lament the practice of convict-leasing whereby multitudes of black men were entrapped on false charges without any due process and subjected to forced labor at the hands of former slave drivers and to the great financial profit to investors.
O Lord, we lament the prevalence of lynching that also began in this period which terrorized black people in an effort to maintain white social and political dominance.
O Lord, we lament the rewriting of southern history according to the Lost Cause narrative in order to justify the evils of the Jim Crow era.
O Lord, we lament how many white southerners inside and outside the church have been sympathetic to this nostalgic view of an idyllic “Old South,” even to this day.
O Lord, we lament that so many inside and outside the church supported segregation never believing that things were or should be equal.
O Lord, we lament that many inside and outside the church appealed to “science” to support the doctrine of white supremacy.
O Lord, we lament that after both WWI and WWII, black soldiers who bravely fought overseas in the cause of freedom returned to a home that was not free of oppression.

From the Civil Rights Movement until Today

O Lord, we lament that so many inside and outside the church remained ambivalent to the moral claims of the Civil Rights movement.
O Lord, we lament that The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end illegal discrimination or racism, but only gave black Americans the legal tools to fight back against legal injustices.
O Lord, we lament that since 1964 racial injustice evolved into other forms, still undergirded by a tacit belief of racial and cultural superiority.
O Lord, we lament the corrupt practices of red-lining and unjust lending practices.
O Lord, we lament the racial discrimination inherent in the War on Drugs and mandatory minimums.
O Lord, we lament corruption in the justice system that yields starkly different outcomes for white people on trial than blacks and has led to mass incarceration.
O Lord, we lament racial profiling, the excessive use of force and the killing of unarmed people of color killed by police.
O Lord, we lament that the enslavement and oppression of black people in the United States has created wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of white Americans.
O Lord, we lament that while white Americans have since colonial days enjoyed the possibility to pass on wealth and opportunities to their children and grandchildren, this has not been possible for many black Americans until more recent generations.
O Lord, we lament that legalized, institutionalized, and spiritualized racial oppression of the severest form lasted in our country for 345 years and roughly 15 generations. We lament that in the mere 56 years and 3 generations since, there remains the naive and hurtful belief that the social structures and attitudes constructed over such a long period of time and over so many generations can be so quickly dismantled and overcome.

Petitioning Our Father

Father, we in this present day long to be a church who “does justly, loves mercy and walks humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8).

Father, we agree with your Word that “Christ himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16)

Father, we rejoice that in the Church of Jesus “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col 3:11)

Father, we look forward to fulfillment of the story of which John spoke - “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Father, we make it our aim to pass these Biblical and gospel truths to our children so that their hearts and minds will not be formed by the injustices of our national past but will be shaped by the justice and righteousness of our eternal future.

Hear our cries! Come Lord Jesus, Amen