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Following Jesus
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His Name Is
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Dealing with Feelings
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Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2005

Grace Church of Burlington March 6, 2005 "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do."   Anne Lamott             “Those white Christians must read from a different Bible," black columnist Barbara Reynolds wrote of the Religious Right after the November elections. In her USA Today column, she denounced the intent to cut aid to the poor, asking, "What kind of Christians stamp on the neediest?" On this and other issues, many Bible-believing blacks and whites find themselves at odds. Despite differing rhetoric, they do read the same Bible and ultimately proclaim the same goals: equality, dignity, and justice. But their strategies and priorities can differ dramatically.             February was Black History month. And while I am certainly not an authority on the subject of either Black history or race relations, I am concerned that because we are so isolated from these issues in our community, we can forget that they are legitimate issues.             The majority of us at Grace are Caucasian, so what can we say to African Americans' dashed expectations? How can we contribute to racial reconciliation? Obviously, adequate answers would require volumes. But here are a few modest suggestions:             A) Recognize Our Insulation. Despite a barrage of media images, most of us have not experienced what blacks experience. Mentally putting ourselves in their places is neither easy nor equivalent.             And station in life is no insurance. Former UN ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young wrote of his own anguish on learning that his college-student son was beaten by police. A very dear black friend of mine is frequently stopped by police for flimsy reasons. When persons of color report such incidents, it is easy for us to think they are overreacting. But are they? Can we ever put ourselves into a black person's skin? White Christians must listen hard to understand how powerfully racism still affects African-Americans.             What Bible do whites read? The one in which Jesus says: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Racism, even apathy toward racial injustice, is surely the antithesis of love. White Christians must also apply Jesus' words to racial reconciliation.             B) Determine Not to Caricature "The Other Side." In assessing the problems of the Democratic party, columnist Meg Greenfield identified "the worst affliction of the strategizing Democrats: an inability to imagine the basis of legitimate, morally worthy opposition to themselves."             Many conservatives say we've been too long caricatured as not caring about civil rights or the poor.  But do we ourselves too easily caricature black believers whose politics or policy prescriptions do not agree with ours? The issues are numbingly complex, and caricaturing rips apart hopes of reconciliation.             C) Don't Marginalize the Issue. Reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel. As he wrote to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, Paul formulated his gospel in the context of ethnic and social reconciliation. A white evangelical mistake in the sixties was to leave civil rights at the margins. We sometimes said the right things, even wrote some good articles, but (with a few notable exceptions) gave little support to those in the trenches. We failed to see the connection between reconciling with our brothers and sisters and reconciling with God.  Today the Church must not only make up for lost opportunities, we must learn to give sustained effort to racial reconciliation. God calls us not to occasional fits of good intentions but, rather, in Eugene Peterson's words, to "a long obedience in the same direction." God has called us to make disciples of all nations. Personally, I am weary of seeing more churches started to minister to white evangelicals who are overflowing with good churches while our cities have a dearth of Bible-believing churches. American Christians send billions overseas to the fields of the world but close their eyes to fields of the urban community half an hour away.             I like what Jesse Duplantis says about prejudice. He says that we were all made of dirt. There's white dirt, red dirt, yellow dirt, brown dirt, and black dirt, so we all came from the same place - we’re dirt. We would think it crazy if we saw one clump of dirt telling another clump of dirt" I'm better than you are. "That is exactly what we do when we tell someone who is not the same color that we are, I'm better than you, or I'm so different than you that we can't associate with each other. We're all just dirt and no matter what color dirt we are, we're still just dirt. And that’s why we need the Cross, all of us, red, yellow, black and white – because apart from Christ we’re just dirt with no hope!