Sermon 6.8.25 Who is the US? Pentecost 2025

I want to begin today by saying thank you to everyone who has prayed for me and my family this week as we began the process of my grandma, Tutu’s, homegoing.

I honestly knew that I could write a sermon for her, but I wasn’t sure I could preach, do you know what I mean?

During her service this past Thursday, I felt the power of prayer, not just in the building where more than 200 family and friends gathered, but all the prayers for our family’s safe travels, all of the prayers for the Holy Spirit to speak love through me and give me the strength to honor my Tutu.

Thank you.

The Acts of the Apostles text asks a startling question; “And how is it that we hear, each of US, in our own native language?”

On this Feast of the Holy Spirit, the birthday of the Church, the Day of Pentecost, I’m moved to preach to you, Who is the US?

Heritage has been a lot on my mind this week, which probably isn’t that surprising.

Heritage, I think, at it’s most basic level is about being rooted.

It’s also, though, about the question “who am I?” and when you’re in a group of people, the question “who is the US?”

Because depending on which side of the family you’re with, the US is different.

Sitting around the pool catching up with cousins from all over the US, looking at genealogy charts of my DuTeil family, at which my aunt Diane has worked really diligently.

I heard things about my family that I did know, that our DuTeil family were part of a group of 500 French soldiers, who were escaping France during the French Revolution in 1790.

They were eventually granted land by the US Government after their initial purchase of land in Gallia, Ohio turned out to be a fraudulent scheme.

I knew they had settled in the Ohio River Valley and that they hunted buffalo.

I didn’t know that many of them settled in Gallipolis, Ohio - specifically - and that one of them created quite the stir, when he brought a buffalo into town and the whole town had a huge party to celebrate, which is recorded in the archives of the local newspaper and in the “Buffalo book,” about the French Buffalo hunters of the midwest US.

Those were people on my grandfather’s side of the family and how they immigrated to the United States.

On my Tutu’s side of the family, I knew that she was part of the Daughters of the Revolution, which is comprised of people who can trace their heritage to people who fought in the Revolutionary War.

I also know that some of her family came from Cockermouth England by way of Maxwell Castle in Scotland late enough that my Tutu grew up writing letters to “the English cousins,” from whom she and her sisters received paper dolls in the mail (a sort of early 20th century version of getting an Amazon package, though I’m sure it wasn’t 48 hour delivery guaranteed).

I know that on my Slane side, we can trace our lineage back to Edwin Sandys, who was an Archbishop of York under Henry VIII, during the early years of this Anglican experiment that became – among other things – the Episcopal Church.

I’m going to out us Jerry! I know a bit about Jerry Bedford’s family, partially because of that really excellent PBS documentary about Nicodemus, Kansas that we showed here at the church,

But also, because Jerry and I run into each other almost every week at Cream and Sugar Coffee Shop down the street and I’ve gotten to follow some of Jerry’s genealogical research and stories over the past couple of years.

Heritage is such an important thing, because in a time when you can basically redefine yourself and become whoever you want to be, it tells you where you came from and who your “US” is.

Heritage is important for everyone, but it’s also complicated.

For systemic reasons, tracing lineage in the African American community has been very difficult, because of the obvious;

What I have found beautiful, though, are apt reminders - in black heritage stores – that African lineage means that black people in America are descended from Kings and Queens; leaders of tribes, warriors.

The heritage of the black community is also the heritage of perseverence, strength, ingenuity, and a level of forbearance that is unimaginably large.

I’m not going to quote him directly, because I don’t remember the exact quote, but I was listening to Dr. Cornell West give an interview a few years ago, in which he essentially told the news host,

It’s a good thing that black people aren’t as violent as white people, because the recompense for slavery and everything that has followed would be catastrophic for both white and black people.

He continued, if black people were as violent in their protests as white people imagine or as the situations that call for protest demand, it would be catastrophic for both white and black people.

His point was that the forbearance of the black community from seeking revenge - in any generation - is one of the greatest invisible gifts that this country has ever received.

How lucky we are in the white community to receive this gift, and yet, we still don’t dare talk about reparations, because the gift of forbearance is still so invisible to so many.

And yet, there are some historically white institutions that are beginning to talk seriously about recompense for the heritage of enslavement and its aftermath.

The seminary that I attended, Virginia Theological Seminary - where my DuTeil grandfather, Claude Francis DuTeil - the descendent of the French 500 of Gallipolis, Ohio – also went to become an Episcopal priest – My friend the Rev. Dr. Joseph Thompson and his team at the seminary have done genealogical research to find the family members of every person who was ever enslaved by someone at the Seminary, forced to work at the seminary without recompense, or was underpaid because they were black.

Virginia Seminary makes direct payment reparations to the descendents, offers them free meals at the refectory any time, and holds expenses paid “family reunions” as part of their reparations.

That, I think, is something to be proud of; being connected with an institution that is serious about repair.

This week, I heard word of another institution that is getting serious about reparations to the black community; the Episcopal Diocese of Souther Ohio.

Did you know that we have a reparations task force in our diocese? They have gotten together to discuss the root causes of forced removal because of the highway systems, decline of resources because of systemic racism in the wider culture, and the participation of the church in those systems.

If you want to read a truly wonderful article that lays all of this out, The Rev. Karl Stevens, who is one of the chairs of the taskforce wrote an article that we sent out from the eConnections (I will attach a link when I post this sermon on our website’s sermon blog).

We have representatives from our church on the task force.

We have already seen some of their work come to fruition with the hiring of the Rev. Aaron Rogers as the first Missioner for Black Ministries in the diocese, who will start his ministry journey with us this month.

That in itself is a 2 million dollar commitment to repair.

Later this month, I have been asked to meet with the Trustees of the Diocese for the next step as the process of repair continues in our diocese.

I will be asking the Trustees to invest another 2 million dollars to create or bolster the endowments of the four historically black churches in our diocese; our sister congregations of St. Margaret, St. Simon of Cyrene, and St. Philip, and also our own beloved St. Andrew’s.

If my math is correct, that would be $500,000 for each church’s endowment.

But that is just the beginning.

The overall goal is that 14.7% of total diocesan wealth would reside within, benefit, or be under the direct control of the diocese’s black Episcopalians.

There are signs of hope.

When we ask “who is the US?” these two institutions are giving a resounding answer that says the US is a beautiful menagerie of black and white folk.

That’s Good News.

But now, we need to extend our view further.

As I said in the beginning, defining the US depends on what group you’re with.

For me, am I with the Slanes, or the DuTeils, or the Richardsons, or the Millers?

Does it get more expansive when I’m with people who are both DuTeil and Richardson descendants.

In social terms, we might think of it like this.  I was in Atlanta this weekend and in my hotel I came across some Omegas in the lobby.

Their US in the lobby was the Omegas, but at the same time, there were also other black fraternities and sororities in town, so their US outside of the lobby also was the Divine 9.

In the beginning of this sermon the US was both the families of white and black America separately, and then combining them into a new US that includes both.

Our Us expands, when we come together.

I want to finish today, by expanding our US further, because whiteness in our country is much more complicated than it seems at first.

And that fact has repercussions for what is happening in our country right now and how we define our collective US.

I love my in-laws a lot.

After I got done preaching my Tutu’s funeral sermon on Thursday, Lisa and Steve Jianakoplos and my sister-in-law, Stephanie Lopez, all wrote to me to tell me how much they loved my sermon and how much they loved me.

Now, anyone who looks at my family would say that I have a white family, Yes?

My wife is white, my children are white, my sister-in-law is married to one of my best friends, whose family is of Mexican descent, but she is also white, right?

But, let me tell you one funny thing and one all too serious thing about my father-in-law’s “whiteness.”

Steve Jianakoplos – you’ll never guess by his name – is a Greek American.

When Melanie was growing up – this is the funny one – he used to tell her, “when you take one of those state tests at school and it asks for your demographic data, you don’t put ‘white,’ you put ‘other’ and then write-in Greek.”

That’s pretty funny.

What’s not so funny is that Steve won that differentiation, because when he was growing up in the 1950’s Greek people were not considered white.

When Steve was seven or eight, his mom and aunt tried to take him and his cousins – his US – to the public pool in Alton, Illinois.

Steve’s grandfather had been the owner of the movie theater in town and the Princess Confectionary.

Steve’s mom and aunts went into the women’s locker room to get to the pool, while their boys went through the men’s side.

When the women came out to the pool deck, though, they couldn’t find their children.

When they asked the pool attendants, where the boys were, the attendants looked them straight in the face and said, “N-words aren’t allowed in this pool.”

They went outside and found their boys crying in the parking lot.

Today, most Greeks would be considered “white,” they’re part of the US, but 70 years ago…

There was a different US.

If you went back far enough in almost any white person’s heritage, there will have been a time, when they were not an US.

And in fact, except for our native brothers and sisters, no US either white or black, or Asian, or hispanic are autochthonous to this land on which we live.

And in pre-European America, the native tribes were also a conglomeration of different US groups; which we call tribes.

The United States of America is and always has been filled with a vast number of US groups.

Ancient Jerusalem and the whole of the Ancient Near East was no different.

The most startling thing, I think, from our reading from Acts of the Apostles is not just that the Holy Spirit came down to empower the disciples; that’s miraculous and amazing.

But look how many different US groups the Holy Spirit shows us were there;

“And how is it that we hear, each of US, in our own native language? Galileans, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.”

The ultimate power of the Holy Spirit is that it redefines who the US is; or as Paul puts it, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.”

This spirit of adoption is not just that God adopts you, but it is a stance that if I am adopted into the family of God, then adoption belongs to everyone, even those who are not US right now.

Far from the colorblindness of well-meaning whiteness, however, the Spirit does not wipe out difference, but rather adopts all of the beauty of each US into the body of the whole; that is the Church Universal.

We are in a moment right now in our country, where Christians need to remember the Grace of our adoption in the US.

As ICE raids increase, as faithful Christians either ignore, remain silent, or actively revel in the deportation of people who have immigrated to this country to seek a better life as all of their - white, non-white, recently white, or not-yet white – ancestors did; the Holy Spirit demands that we remember that we are all US, no one is illegal.

People are not immigrants, they are people; people who have immigrated from one place to another, sure, but people, FULL STOP.

If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.

We want to talk about criminals? Fine.

All of the news this week is about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who funny enough in every picture except the one that was being shown two months ago does not have “MS-13” written on his knuckles.

To be honest, there is no telling how the legal side of that will turn out.

If we’re being fair, we don’t know if he has been involved in the types of things the government is now accusing him. That will all come out in time.

What we do know is that it defies our legal system to deport someone without due process to anywhere, especially to the most heinous prison on the face of the planet.

If our courts are defied, desecrated, and denied their “separate but equal power,” what’s going to save you when it comes for your US?

In the public arena, that case is fraught with unknowns as to the criminal activity of the defendant, so that’s as much as I feel I can say responsibly at this moment.

But, what about Diego, who is the uncle of a baby that I baptized on Mother’s Day of this year in St. Louis?

A hard working, no-nonsense Guatemalan man, who puts siding on people’s houses, sends money to his family, loves Jesus, and just wants a better life.

He was picked up yesterday in St. Louis, we have no idea where he is.

What about Emerson Colindres here in Cincinnati?

He graduated from high school in Cincinnati this month.

His family brought him here when he was 8 years old from Honduras; he plays soccer, cares for his family, and makes his community a better place.

He was part of the Alternative to Detention program. On Wednesday, ICE asked him to report for a “check-in.”

His mother and his soccer coach went with him and had to watch as he was put into handcuffs and taken to Butler County Jail.

Our moment, right now, is a Pentecost moment. Who is the US?

Will we remain silent until it is our US that they come for?

I’m sorry during this Pride month that the first two weeks have gone by and I haven’t mentioned the US of the LGBTQ+ community that is also going through things,

But the fierce urgency of now is calling for this focus for the moment.

I haven’t been involved in more than a couple of protests since the beginning of the new regime in Washington.

Some of them just seemed to me more political disappoitment than actually substantive.

But for me, this is different.

Tonight at 6pm, community will gather at the Butler County Jail to demand the release of Emerson Colindres, I ask you to join me if you can.

We have been given signs of hope that progress and repair are possible, but only if we turn to a true Pentecost theology that says that we are all US;

Diverse, beautiful, different, but US.

Arresting people and deporting them just because their skin color and heritage makes them “suspicious,”

Not giving due process,

Tricking people under false pretenses,

We must protest, we are better than this as a country.

The United States of America was founded on the principle that WE the People are the US.

The Holy Spirit affirms that Jesus’ sacrifice makes all of us the US through adoption.

If we as Christians, of all people, can’t be an US people,

Then, when we reach that heavenly city, Jesus will say to US, “Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know me?”

Who is the US? The Holy Spirit says ALL of US.

May the Holy Spirit continue to be heard in our Day as well.

Amen.