7th Sunday of Easter / Ascension
Texts: John 17:1-11;
Acts 1:6-14; 1 Pet 4:12-14; 5:6-11
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Excerpt Page from N.T. Wright
Excerpt Page from Jared Diamond
ANTI-RACISM: THE HEART OF GOSPEL MINISTRY TODAY
In January 2015 I had been Senior Pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church (Portage, MI) for 8½ years. I had worked to build relationships and gain trust. We were a couple years into setting annual goals for growing the congregation, beginning with several youth ministry goals. I felt it was time to advocate for two goals that were particular passions of mine: (1) to work on developing more of an anti-racist identity; and (2) to work on being a Reconciling in Christ congregation, being intentional in our welcome to all people. I figured these two went together well, and I presented my proposal to Church Council and staff.
Before I could present it to the congregation, I got a call from my sister in Arizona that my Dad had come down with pneumonia while wintering with her there. I spent several weeks in Arizona with my sister and brother, caring for my Dad. In March he was not getting better and asked to go into hospice. He was ready to die and be with my mother again. He died March 27. His memorial was a couple weeks later after Easter. Along the way, I had herniated a disc in my back and underwent surgery to repair.
By the time I was able to fully return to my job as pastor in late May, I had lost the congregation. In my absence, the conservative Council President — with whom I knew I was going to have to be in constant conversation over my goals and, or course, that didn’t happen because of my father’s death and my surgery — the Council President made my life very difficult. How much of of having him turn the congregation against me was due to the goals I had advocated for in January? I suspect it played an unspoken part.1 I’ll never know for sure. At only age 59, but with nearly 30 years since ordination, I decided to take early retirement. That’s my retirement story.
Am I still somewhat hesitant to bring up my passion for anti-racism? I’d like to rectify that this morning and tell you the story of my antiracist journey. How I’ve come to see the Gospel itself in terms of working to heal those things which block what Jesus prays for in today’s Gospel: that we human beings may be one as God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — are one. I shared with you, as Bethania began the journey of becoming a Reconciling in Christ congregation, my journey to find healing from homophobia. This morning I’d like to share about my journey to find healing from racism.
It really began with my second call to Grace Lutheran in Howell, MI. When we arrived in June of 1988, the big news there was that county resident Robert Miles had just been acquitted of insurrection against the U.S. government in the last big insurrection trial before those held in the aftermath of January 6, 2021. Robert Miles was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and lived on a compound, head of his own church, about 8 miles north of Howell. I have more info about him in your Sermon Notes, including a picture of him admiring a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, still current with today’s racist insurrection crowd.
But it was after the cross burning in the front yard of an African American family in Howell, that our journey into antiracism really began. Citizens Insurance, the largest employer in Howell, funded and launched a citizens group to work against Livingston County’s well-earned reputation for racism — so much so that they found it difficult to get people of color to move to Howell to work for them. It was called Livingston 2001, with the hopes that those currently in kindergarten in 1988 would graduate from high school in a home county that was more welcoming to people of color. It was in my work with Livingston 2001 that drew me to a new Augsburg Fortress book at a Synod Assembly, titled Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America.2 Written by ELCA pastor Joe Barndt, it began my journey of connecting the life of striving to be antiracist with my faith and theology.
So when we first moved to Racine in 1994, taking a call at Emmaus, I quickly became friends with Chuck and Sue Ruehle, pastors in the Greater Milwaukee Synod who worked with Joe Barndt at Crossroads Ministry.3 As a family, we continued to go deeper into the work of antiracism, with Ellen going to work for Chuck Ruehle in 1998 as his Executive Assistant for the next 12+ years. She even worked remotely for the last four years as I took my last call in Kalamazoo, where an ELCA church had closed its doors and left the money from selling its building to start an antiracism group for the Kalamazoo Community — one of Crossroads’ most active groups.4
It’s been nearly 40 years now since we moved to Howell, MI and began our antiracist journey. Since then, working for antiracism has gone from being a peripheral issue — one that I could take up as a privileged white person when I choose to — to becoming a core issue of faith for me. In other words, an issue that I see as an essential element of the Christian life. I read the Bible with antiracism as a central theme to the Christian story in today’s world. Part of salvation in Jesus the Messiah is what he prays for in this morning’s prayer from John 17 — namely, that the human family would be one as Jesus and his Father are one. Anything that blocks this Oneness from happening must be resisted and engaged. In today’s world, one of the biggest blocks to that work of salvation to make us one is White Supremacist Racism.
This way of reading the Bible’s message for us today in light of racism has become the lens to my way of reading the Bible. I outline in your Sermon Notes some of the highlights of how to read especially the New Testament in its light. That Jesus came to save us and heal us from those things which divide us. That keep us from being the one human family God created us to be. I encourage you to take home the Notes and digest them more fully.
This sermon is about the narrative of becoming antiracist in our Christian identities and service in the world today. Yesterday, for example, a large rally was held in Selma, AL, after the Supreme Court all but dismantled the Voting Rights Act (also detailed in your Sermon Notes). How can we be sure to be among those who protest such racist rulings by the Supreme Court? I believe it is through seeing the Ascension, which we also celebrate today, as Christ ruling in the world. We who have the Messiah’s Holy Spirit poured out upon us, which we celebrate next week, must be his body in the world, continuing to work to heal all that which divides us.
I’d like to close with a quote from N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Acts (p. 14) on the Ascension (from today’s excerpt page):
We need to consider . . . what it means to say that Jesus is already ruling the world. People will say, as they’ve always said: ‘Look at the world around you; just look out of the window! It doesn’t look as though Jesus is in charge.’ But think what we are saying. It is Jesus, not Caesar, not Herod, who’s in charge. As Jesus made clear in Mark 10 and John 19, there is a sharp contrast between two different types of ruling, of authority. The rulers of this world stamp their will on their subjects by bullying and violence. Jesus wins the victory through the power of self-giving love. His followers will have to do the same: through their suffering, their martyrdom, their loving witness, their creation of communities that, by their very existence, call the world to account. The results are mostly not instantaneous. That’s not how self-giving love works. But they will quickly be remarkable . . .5
Siblings in Christ, I invite you to the antiracist journey which seeks to make real in this world the healing of our world’s brokenness through God’s salvation in Jesus. Let us be the Body of Christ in this world, seeking to bring healing to all that divides us. Let us put into action Jesus’ prayer: so that we may be one as Jesus and the Father are one. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, May 17, 2026
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Excerpt Page from N.T. Wright
Excerpt Page from Jared Diamond
Notes
1. The Council’s list of my shortcomings didn’t include anything about those proposed goals. If you look in books about congregations ousting their pastors, the Prince of Peace Council’s vague list lined up with the most common items on the generic list of things which councils name in these situations. Things like ‘didn’t communicate well enough with the staff.’ Well, my last meaningful staff meeting had been the one where they voiced push-back on the antiracism goal. I wasn’t able to follow up that negative conversation until several months later when it had become too late.
2. Joseph Barndt, Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America (Augsburg Fortress, 1991).
3. It began as “Crossroads Ministry,” working primarily with church-related organizations. But as they began increasingly to work with secular organization, they changed the name to Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training.
4. The Kalamazoo, MI, organization goes by the name of ERAC/CE: Eliminating Racism and Creating/Celebrating Equity. Their history page details how ELCA synod leadership helped start ERAC/CE in the late 90’s with funds from selling one of their closed churches in Kalamazoo (Our Redeemer Lutheran Church).
5. N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (Zondervan, 2024), 14. Emphasis in the original.
