A Word from Pastor Nathan

Washington Avenue, Beloved:

One of the things that inspires me to wake up and run on this new-fangled, self-powered, beast-of-burden treadmill is that an audiobook is waiting for me. I just finished listening to Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. The author’s debut novel is superb. Released in 2019, more than one million copies were sold, making it the best-selling novel of the year.

Running while listening to an audiobook can be hazardous to one’s health. I cannot read ahead but only listen in real-time. A line from the book can surprise and trip me up, especially when I can’t see it coming. This line, in particular, from the novel was significant: “Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?” Those words will preach. Like the main character in Owens’ novel, “I wadn’t [sic] aware that words could hold
so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

After my run concluded, I asked myself, ‘Who are the injured, the still bleeding at our doorsteps and to the ends of the earth?’ My mind immediately goes to those who seek racial justice.

One of the words that well-meaning people toss around when talking about race is reconciliation. We even take up an offering each year that funds the Reconciliation Ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Reconciliation is a good word, truly, but it trips us up.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood reconciliation to be an end, not the means. If we rush too quickly toward reconciliation without taking necessary steps, we are asking the injured and the still-bleeding to bear the onus of forgiveness. As Christian people, we must practice the disciplines of honest truth-telling, confession, repentance, reparations, and, in time, forgiveness. These actions bend the arc of the moral universe toward the future God wants and ultimately will have. Reconciliation will no longer be a far-off hymn but a present reality.

This morning I ran the standard five miles and started a new book, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. I’m already hooked and cannot wait to wake up tomorrow to hear the unfolding story and lines from the author that will trip me up but nevertheless inspire my imagination, which is what good books should do.

Peace abundant,