A few Pastoral thoughts and feelings,
about George Floyd, and the senseless killing of yet another Black Man in America.

There are swirling emotions in our land, in our hearts, in our communities ... as we recoil in
horror and respond in grief and react in anger, when yet another unjust violence and death is on
full display against a person of color in America. There was no reason for George Floyd to have
died, beneath the weight of an excessive force of knee to throat. We know this. We also know
that his has happened so many times before, and no doubt will many times yet. An excessive
force applied ... that is so much more than knee to throat. THIS is what fills us fully, to the top
and over-flowing, with the horror, grief, and anger: We did not stop it in the past, and we are not
poised to stop it again, and again, and again.

Some aspect of justice may be served in the charging and subsequent criminal proceedings of
the responsible officer, and perhaps other officers involved in George Floyd’s death, but it is not
true justice, is it? As the Prophet Amos says,”... let justice roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:24 NRSV) We are SO far away from this - SO
Far. We know this too. So our horror, and our grief, and our anger - those things ALL need to
be directed at our own tolerance of racial hate, fear, pain, loss, and ignorance toward and
intolerance of the other.

I was moved by a simple statement by commentator and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Eugene Harold Robinson. I always listen to Eugene, originally intrigued because he has the
same exact first-middle-last names as my Dad, but more so since because as a black man who
writes and speaks in thoughtfully-considered ways out of deep places I cannot begin to fathom,
Eugene Robinson has a gravitas that often tugs at my soul. I just heard him say, in such
straight-forward terms, a great truth. He said, “I am sick of having this conversation”. With his
sons, to warn them. With us, as his readers and viewers. As a man of color, he has every right
to say that. I cannot say that. As a white man of privilege in a nation that repeatedly tolerates
hate, racial hate, immigrant hate, people-different-from-me/us hate ... I have no right to say that.
Because “this conversation” needs to be about the me/us, not just over and over and over about
the victims, with no different future outcomes.

Throughout the Season of Lent, we spent six weeks considering what “doing justice, loving
mercy, and walking (humbly, which is hard for us to do) with God”. As individuals, as
community, as church. If this doesn’t include the “conversation that Eugene is sick of having”, a
conversation that leads to pro-action, pro-activity that leads to reconciliation, reconciliation that
puts America onto a different trajectory ... then we wasted our Lent. Worse, we wasted God’s
justice, and God’s mercy. We wasted God’s time.

I do grieve with George Floyd’s family, and with black Americans. The magnitude of what they
have lost is reflected in the outrage and the anger. Yet, my grief will likely fade, with the next
news cycle, until it happens again. Then, I will feel grief, and guilt ... again. Because we just
don’t “get it”.

I pray that we ALL will become “sick of this conversation” ... sick enough that we actually do
something to make “this conversation” unnecessary.

Reverend Tom