Like all of us, my heart has been heavy with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. As I struggled to make sense of these events and wrestled with the question of how the church can be part of the solution, I found myself turning to Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

From his cell in the Birmingham City Jail, where he was imprisoned for peacefully marching against segregation, Dr. King wrote in response to a statement written by eight white clergy members that criticized and called for an end to these nonviolent protests. Near the end of the letter, he wrote:

“If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.”

And so I think one of the first things that we as a church can do is to repent, to beg God for forgiveness for all of the ways in which we have been patient with anything less than brotherhood, all of the ways in which we have been patient with the dehumanizing treatment of our black and brown brothers and sisters.

And from there we can beg God to change our hearts and change our vision.

We can pray every day for God to change our own hearts and to change the narrative around race in this nation.

We can pray every day that no more of our brothers and sisters will be killed because someone thought they looked suspicious.

We can pray every day that every American will see the image of Almighty God in each person they encounter.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, the Lord promises: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Will we humble ourselves? Will we pray and seek God’s face? Will we turn from our wicked ways?

Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us, sinners. Forgive us for the sins of racism, for our complacency, for our complicity, for our patience with injustice. Welcome our brother George into your kingdom, and comfort those who loved him. May his death not be in vain, but hasten the coming of the day when racism is banished from this country. Forgive our sin and heal our land, we pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.