The Pandemic of Racism

The Pandemic of Racism

Rev. W. Worley

“Please. Please. I can’t breathe.” George Floyd, Minneapolis

At a point beyond submission, when he was not a threat to himself or to anyone else, the very breath God breathed into George Floyd a white police officer choked out.

At the same time the COVID pandemic has taken the last breath of more than 100,000 Americans, the pandemic of racism in America is choking the breath and life, literally, out of black people.

Both the pandemic of race and virus are unseen to the eye. Both constrict the breath. Both effect one racial group more than the other. Both effect the most vulnerable people in our society. Both are contested by people who want to deny that there is even a problem despite the bodies that continue to pile up. We have cast blame for COVID in different directions. Responsibility for the pandemic of racism, however, belongs entirely to white America.

The coming together of these two breath stealers on a Sunday that celebrates the breath of God coming upon God’s people seems almost providential and demands all the prophetic power the church can muster.

The COVID pandemic will eventually be overcome with a vaccine. The racism pandemic will be overcome when Holy Spirit that gave birth to the church draws people together to live fully into the truth, “that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer.” The knee on George Floyd’s neck is knee on our nation and on all people, who seek to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24).

What will you say on Sunday?

When we receive the Holy Spirit so that, “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams,” (Acts 2:17), we will call for change. Justice will come to the land. And we must make, and become, the change God wants in the world. It starts with one command—“Love one another as I have loved you.”

It really is that simple.