I had the privilege to paint during the “It Ends Now” movement in uptown Charlotte at the request of my dear friend and long-time spiritual collaborator Casey Crimmins. While the nation is turning over with violent uprising in response to the death of George Floyd, I had mixed feelings about taking to the streets, not wanting to be aligned with riots. As I half heartedly packed my car Sunday morning, I reached for one of the only pre-built canvases in my studio, a picture I had previously painted at a worship service with a duel image of Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter as well as Peter standing up at Pentecost and preaching under the newly poured out power of the Holy Spirit. As I went upstairs to kiss my wife goodbye for the day, I overheard the online church service she was watching and realized it IS Pentecost Sunday today! I had a chill all the way up my spine, and a sudden assurance that God was saying “Yes, take this canvas that already has the DNA of Pentecost underneath it, and go uptown knowing you have an assignment there.”
First Ward Park, Uptown Charlotte, NC May 30, 2020.
In the midst of a national crisis of racial division and hatred rivaling any in my lifetime, it was amazing to experience a peaceful and unified gathering of the corporate “Church” beyond any one denomination or creed. More than a thousand people came to express their solidarity and belief that love, justice, and repentance are the answer, and the march around the uptown was more than a mile long of peaceful demonstrators. The original birth of the Church, Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, was preceded by an outpouring of God’s Spirit that unified a city full of diverse languages, tribes, and cultural backgrounds. Tongues of fire rested on believers, old and young, men and female, slave and free, and a new people identifying themselves by love in relation to Christ, the Church, was born. I tried to capture that fiery power, and those unified colors of community coming together in the painting. Each figure is further highlighted with a tongue of fire resting above their head.
It was amazing to be among 50+ church communities, neighbors, strangers, and friends gathering to acknowledge the brokenness of our nation, repenting for 400 years of broken, white privilege systems of injustice, and declaring of our complacent silence: “It Ends Now!” Several speakers of various communities and backgrounds spoke, but none moved me more powerfully than a white pastor who declared the need of my own demographic to repent and acknowledge our guilt, actively being about the work of healing and putting complacency aside. I thought back with shame to the morning’s hesitation; weighing inconvenience, danger, optics, and (to be fair) levels of indifference as I decided whether or not I would come. I AM part of the problem. Just as I AM part of the solution! This same pastor reminded the gathering that “justice” would have to include equitable redistribute of power, land, and money… the tangible assets so long withheld or bound by systemic racism. With the headquarter building of “Bank of America” overshadowing where we stood in First Ward Park, I painted it into the background along with the Hirsch Tower and Wells Fargo building. The classical facade of my original painting morphed into the symbol of so many oppressive financial/judicial systems, and I prayerfully added unified figures busily disassembling and redistributing green bricks.
I could not be more proud of the leadership and vision of these two men: Sanchez Fair and Casey Crimmins!
Here is the original image as it was in March 2020 when it was first painted as the changing of Simon’s name to Peter (The Rock) along with Peter at Pentecost. It was created for a sermon series on Peter from Threshold Church.