I still hear his voice in my head when I think of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Clem. It was deep, rich, and welcoming.

It was late Wednesday evening when we first heard the Emanuel 9 were martyred by Dylann Storm Roof, a young radicalized white man hoping to start a race war. He was wrong on many counts, the first of which being that America’s race war has ever been a cold war at any point in our history, and he was wrong in not recognizing his were only the latest in a long line of black and brown bodies strewn across cotton fields and amber waves of grain. But of all the things he was wrong about, he was wrong in his understanding of the character of the black community in the South, and wrong about how thick we South Carolinians become when someone threatens the fragile peace we’ve worked so hard to begin. Even after six years in New England, I still say we because South Carolina will always be my homeplace.

What he got most wrong about who we are in South Carolina is that, despite all the creative ways we have to argue and divide ourselves, we know how to come together in a moment of crisis. Instead of a race war, black and white hands joined across the length of Charleston’s Ravenel Bridge as thousands marched across in support of their neighbors. It’s one of those moments that really doesn’t make any sense unless you understand that at our core and despite that we frequently have a funny way of showing it, we really do love our neighbors when you get right down to it.

I heard Clem’s voice in my head when his picture appeared on TV as they announced his murder.

I began my time on synod staff in South Carolina in February of 2015, and I’d been joking earlier in the week that the then-bishop and my colleague (now the current bishop) were crazy to go on vacation and be out of pocket during the same week, leaving me to run the place. I really was joking, because very little constitutes an actual emergency for a synod office, since it’s largely administrative work. That evening, however, even before I was able to get in touch with the bishop, who was in the mountains with very little signal, I knew my morning would begin in Charleston.

I don’t remember exactly when I learned that Dylann grew up at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, which is less than a mile from the synod office, though I’m pretty certain the rumor mill churned that out while I was driving to Charleston the next morning. It was sometime that day that I began hearing the first rumblings that, “Dylann isn’t actually a member there anymore, he’s been estranged for years.”

Even the very first time I heard this, it didn’t sit right. Dylann may have indeed been inactive for quite some time; he may have even been taken off the rolls at some point, but he’s one of ours. As much as I question, doubt, argue, and wrestle with my faith, it’s my bone-deep conviction that because he was baptized and confirmed in one of our congregations, Dylann remains one of ours. I keep calling him Dylann because, even now, it’s a spiritual discipline to remember that we’re both members of the whitest denomination in the nation and we must not diminish the stark reality that something of us is more intimately connected to the martyrdom of the Emanuel 9 than any of us would like.

I can hear Clem welcoming Dylann with some of his last words even as we deny him.

The most pressing emotion I felt that day as I traveled to Charleston was imposter syndrome. “Eric, I need you to represent the Office tomorrow at Redeemer in Charleston, and bring my greetings.” Bishop Yoos, Herman, entrusted me to bring greetings a few times previously, and it’s a phrase I’ll never not find kind of funny. I understood the gravity of representing the Office of the Bishop of the South Carolina Synod in this moment and knew it was something I was equipped to do. The part of myself that knew how much more I could have done, and that I was going to be offering words of comfort, grace, and the conviction of God’s loving presence, when I wasn’t certain exactly what that looked like in a moment like this, keyed up an anxious inadequacy.

But I Chose You

It’s not that I didn’t think I’d have the words, cause God and everyone else know I can talk. It’s more that I was wrestling with the integrity of the words I knew I had to speak, given that despite my advocacy for queer inclusion, I’d really only dabbled in antiracism. I marched for Trayvon. I read and studied and did some peripheral work on disarming my shame and internalized racist ideations. But I knew I was going to speak to a commitment to a renewed conviction to do the work of bringing new energy to the work of racial justice that I hadn’t earned.

That day I learned one of the most important lessons of my life regarding justice work, that we can’t do this work only rooted in our own integrity or experience. We first stand in the integrity of those who choose to bring us along with them. I hadn’t done the work, but I remembered Herman talking about his work with other bishops in South Carolina to bring greater attention to racial justice. I remembered stories he told me about the racial justice work he’d been doing for decades at that point to change the hearts of Lutherans and others in and around the synod. I wasn’t standing in my own integrity or reputation. I was standing in his.

I was standing in the integrity of the Office of the Bishop, which, for all its imperfections and our own, is a seat that represents the new creation through Christ Jesus and his fickle family, the Church.

I hightailed it from Charleston to Newberry College so I could drop off supplies for the youth ministry folks who would arrive while I joined Christ Mission, our only black Lutheran congregation in South Carolina, for worship late that afternoon. I arrived just in time for worship, and I felt more at home when Rev. Leroy Cannon asked me to say a benediction.

While this may not mean much to folks who haven’t been around black church, I’d been around the block enough as a hospice chaplain who attended a fair few AME funerals. I still remember how awkward I felt the first time I attended an AME funeral at being escorted to the front to sit with other clergy because I showed up in my collar. They asked me to pray that day, and when I said a nice short Lutheran prayer, the pastor looked at me and said, “I didn’t want a prayer, I wanted you to pray,” to the great amusement of the congregation. I muddled through it that first time, but my experience with black congregations told me that Rev. Cannon didn’t actually mean for me to say a benediction of just few words, he meant, “You’re gonna preach a little towards the end of the service.” Several other pastors spoke before me, and when it was my turn, I offered a short scripture and spoke for just a couple of minutes, and when I heard someone in the congregation say, “Amen!” I knew I’d hit at least in the neighborhood of the right note.

As soon as I heard that Amen! from the pews, and I mean as soon as I heard it, I knew I’d done better than I’d expected, and offered the benediction, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.” Though I knew that kind of amen! meant I’d done fine, since we’d gone well over an hour at that point, it also kind of felt like they were saying, alright now, wrap it up, preach!

Or maybe it’s just that I was hungry, and was eager for the fellowship meal following worship.

Back to the Youtherans

I arrived at Newberry College a little after eight, and the youth and adults from around South Carolina who comprised the Youth Ministry Cabinet already had most of the work done. It wasn’t long before Ally McDonough, a youth from Charleston who’s now graduated from college, came up to me and said, “Pastor Eric, we need to do something. What can we do about Charleston?” In all the craziness of the last twenty-four hours, the fact that youth from Charleston would be there and want to do something that spoke to the horror of the moment just never crossed my mind! I had this gut-wrenching feeling that this one should have been pretty obvious to me, and I felt a little guilty that it hadn’t occurred to me before.

I thought for just a second and said something along the lines of, “Well, it’s the annual Convention, which is our annual business meeting. Y’all could write a resolution.”

“No, I said we want to do something.”

Smart kid.

“Y’all could write a resolution outlining what SCLCY will do in response to Charleston.”

So they did.

The only real instruction I offered was that it needed to come from the youth, not adults. They came back a bit later with the Resolution Against Racial Injustice, stating that the South Carolina Lutheran Church Youth would stand against racial injustice by praying for victims and perpetrators, and stand for inclusion and justice. It really was a great effort, and it passed unanimously at the business meeting. I remember this because it wasn’t just the marching orders for the youth, but for the second time in fewer than twenty-four hours, I was tasked to represent an Office. I didn’t realize how much representing this Office would transform me.

The document further stated their intention to disseminate this to every congregation in the synod, the legislative bodies of South Carolina, and other places where it may have a positive impact, which was my job. For the next four years, and to this day, I’ve faithfully executed this sacred obligation. I mentioned it to every congregation I visited. We shared it at synod assembly the next year. In fulfilling this obligation, the work before me to do something remained front and center in my vision and planning. The bishop was eager for us to be about this work, and I got almost free rein to follow my conscience and the lead of leaders like Rev. Cannon, Rev. Jackie Utley, and members of Christ Mission and others in the synod who really just needed me to make space for them to get to work. I learned to use my voice to amplify black voices, and more, how to stand for values of those who have life-and-death stakes in this work that I’ve become so passionate in doing as my own.

Ten Years Gone

Ten years later, I hear Clem’s voice urging me on.

And it’s not just in my mind. The voice of a man I only met a handful of times is deeply entrenched in my heart. His voice will remind me of this vocation to work for an antiracist culture for the rest of my life, as I now stand in my own integrity and experience, inviting others to stand with me in the work as I continue to listen and follow the lead of folks who have the most at stake.

And ten years later, I hold my connection to Dylann and Clem as reminders of this vocation. It’s not just because they’re central to one of the most defining moments of my life, but they serve as a perpetual reminder that my life really is colored by my connections to them: Dylann, in the damage I’m capable of causing, in the woundedness of the parts of me that can never be reformed, as a part of a system that can never be fully undone in the whitest denomination in the nation; Clem, in my obligation to welcome the stranger, to live in the courage of my convictions, and in the hope that my voice may resonate for someone with enough compassion that it pulls them along even once.

I thought, actually a lot, about ending this blog at ten years.

Ten years seems like a good run since my first post, after all. Despite my best intentions to write regularly, I’m only active in fits and starts. Love Sees Color hasn’t actually ever achieved what I hoped it would be — a space for dialogue between black and white voices. It hasn’t gone viral or caused a movement.

But much like my ministry, which looks so very different from what I ever might have expected when I began, both have become something so much dearer and life-giving than I ever could have foreseen. Maintaining this space causes me to think more carefully about my work because just knowing it’s here changes the way I approach things. Because I pay to maintain the site, it takes up space in my discernment as I think about who I’m called to be. In this way, Love Sees Color serves a much more significant purpose than I imagined it might.

Maybe most surprising to me, in maintaining what amounts to a public diary of otherwise private discernment, of confronting my biases, and attempting to dismantle my prejudices, this space offers a window into a frequently untold aspect of antiracist work precisely because it isn’t the story of a white guy overcoming all his issues. In all sincerity, I feel that the most important contribution to the work is that Love Sees Color is almost entirely comprised of stories about how I stumble into myself as I learn what work is necessary for me so that I can do my part in advocating for equity and justice. There’s not a lot of real estate taken up by an average white guy who offers confessions about his own struggles with race and identity. In wrestling with how I am and am not capable of overcoming my own internalized racism, this space affords me a means of public accountability that’s become one of my greatest tools for remaining active in it, even when I feel like I’ve hit a dead end.

Voices of Grace

I hear Clem’s voice.

And as is so frequently true of the interior voices that urge us on, I know it isn’t Clem.

The voice compelling me to continue is the Spirit driving me into the wilderness of my own conscience, stirring my heart with the conviction that it’s time to be about God’s work. God commands me to do these things through the waters of my baptism, as well as the vows and sacred obligations I undertook when I was ordained. And while I know this may come across as kind of melodramatic, it feels like an opportunity to memorialize my own journey of becoming more fully and authentically human.

The true wages of racism’s idolatrous heresy is that in diminishing someone else’s humanity, I lose my own. In proclaiming the reality of someone else’s humanity, my own is restored. Similar to the way people joined hands and connected across the span of the Ravenel Bridge, this tenth anniversary of the Emanuel 9’s martyrdom at Dylann’s hand represents a compeling moment to offer our hands in the work of death and resurrection for the sake of the world God loves until we dwell in the dream of God’s grace realized among us.

Realized, not in the blandness of a space where our equality comes at the cost of diversity’s vibrancy, but in the truth that to love someone is to honor and respect everything they bring with them. As it turns out, love cannot be blind.

Love sees color.

Please consider supporting this work through my Patreon.