A Service of Lament and Confession, Johnson University, Tennessee

On June 3, over fifty Johnson University faculty and staff gathered on the lawn of the Tennessee campus’s presidential residence (socially-distanced and in masks, of course) to lament and confess of the university’s participation in the sins of racism and injustice. (A similar gathering was held on our Kississimmee, Florida campus.) It was a powerful time and full of tears. I reproduce the program here with the permission of campus pastor, Bill Wolf, who designed the service in partnership with faculty and community partners.

Opening Scripture: Joel 1:1-3, 13a, 14

Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God!

Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

Lamentations 5 and Lamentations 5 Adapted for 2020

Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace!
Remember, Lord, what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd; look and see the disgraceful way their bodies were treated.

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
Our inheritance of the image of God in every human being has been co-opted and denied by others. The family of Ahmaud, Breonna, and George Floyd has lost their loved ones, widowed mothers once again grieve their dead children.

We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought.
We must scrap for our basic human rights (even to sit peacefully in our homes); our basic needs (even the need to breathe) have a great price.

Our pursuers are at our necks; we are weary; we are given no rest. We have given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria, to get bread enough.
Corrupt officers pursue us with their knees on our necks; we are weary and we find no rest. We submit to uncaring government officials and to big business to get enough bread.

Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities. Slaves rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand.
Our ancestors sinned the great sin of instituting slavery; they are no more–but we bear their shame. The system of slavery and institutionalized racism ruled over us, and there is no one to free us from their hands.

We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine.
We get bread (or jog in our neighborhoods) at the risk of our lives, because of the guns on the streets. George Floyd is down on the street, his body crying out for air.

Women are taken advantage of in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders.
Black women have been violated throughout our nation’s history; Breonna Taylor gunned down in her own home. Noble black men have been hung, lynched, and gunned down; elders and spokesmen are shown no respect.

Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music.
Young men can’t find work because of unjustly applied laws, unjustly incarcerated because of staggering negative expectations. The elder statesmen and civil rights leaders have been assassinated; young people who speak out their protest are silenced.

The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning.
Trust in our ultimate triumph has diminished; our triumphant proclamation of victory has turned to a funeral dirge.

The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned! For this our heart has become sick, for these things our eyes have grown dim, for Mount Zion which lies desolate; jackals prowl over it.
Our sense of exceptionalism has been exposed. Woe to us, for we have sinned. Because of this our hearts are faint, because of these things our eyes grow dim. For our cities lie desolate with predatory lenders and gentrifiers prowling over them.

But you, O Lord, reign forever; your throne endures to all generations. Why do you forget us forever, why do you forsake us for so many days? Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old— unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

(adapted and re-adapted by Soong-Chan Rah in “Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times”)

University Confession for the Sin of Racism

People: We confess:

Leader: Founded in 1893, during an era of racial segregation, we wrongly mirrored the posture of our peers, expressing sincere concern for the plight of African Americans but speaking in condescending terms and advocating segregationist solutions.