Proper 10 (July 10-16)
Texts: Romans 8:1-11;
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/pr1JBWmV5a4?feature=share&t=828
DAWN IN THE 21ST CENTURY MEANS ANTI-RACISM
An old Rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.
“Could it be,” asked one of the students, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the Rabbi.
Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach tree?” “No,” answered the Rabbi.
“Then what is it?” the pupils demanded.
“It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”
It seems to be night in our nation right now. We are so divided that it seems impossible to look upon the face of any fellow citizen and see a brother or sister. We see an enemy. Our institutions and leaders are failing to shed the light we need to see one another as brothers and sisters. We can blame our politics. But what about our responsibility as people of the Way. Churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques? Aren’t they important institutions that can help bring some light to the darkness of our deep divisiveness? Aren’t we as followers of Jesus called to bring light into the public square so that we might increasingly see our fellow citizens as brothers and sisters? What is preventing us from doing so? What are the roadblocks to the mission of bringing God’s human family together?
In my time with you, I’m sharing my belief that the major roadblock is the need to revitalize our basic Gospel message. We began a month ago with the proposal that our Gospel has gotten off-center. Jesus himself, as we read the Gospels, proclaimed the Good News as God’s reign coming into the world. We have shifted the center to going to God’s kingdom when we die and ‘go to heaven,’ instead of praying for God’s reign to earth. It becomes easier not to talk about the politics here on earth. Let’s just talk about that comfort and grace of going to heaven when we die.
I admit being uncomfortable, too, to the extent that I grew up in church, ‘You’re not supposed to talk about politics.’ Right? Yet, if we’re getting back on-center to the Good News of God’s reign coming into this world, then how can you have a reign without having a politics? We might need to begin — upfront and always, if we’re going to talk about politics, God’s politics — by admitting that God’s politics are way different than ours.
Two weeks ago I suggested it’s something much deeper than being off-center. What keeps dragging humankind off-center from God’s Good News is our being so accustomed to our typically human Good News. When Jesus co-opted Caesar’s word for Good News — euangellion in the Greek world, “evangelism” in English — he signaled the two opposing proclamations of Good News. Caesar’s Good News always involved news of defeating one’s enemies — in other words, the superiority of Roman power. When God sends Jesus to proclaim the Good News, it involves the power of a love that even reaches out to enemies, a love that seeks to ultimately make friends of enemies. The deeper roadblock that this signals is to understand the fundamental difference between typical human reigns and God’s reign. Human reigns have evolved on the basis of being over against other peoples. God’s reign seeks to save us from that kind of division. Human reigns are based on having Us-vs-Them, on having enemies. Some of our politics right now are soly about who are our enemies. God’s reign is based on no longer having Us-vs-Them, only Us. God’s reign brings the dawning of the day when we can look upon the face of any fellow human being and see a brother or sister.
How resistant are we to seeing this stark difference between us and God? Again, it’s deep in our evolution. With a new articulation of Christian anthropology, which I began sharing with you a couple weeks ago (please come to the “Gospel Talks”!), we can understand that being a divided human family is deep in our evolution. In Friday’s version of The Cross newsletter, I proposed that we can read Paul’s use of the terms “in the flesh” and “in the Spirit” as seeking to articulate this difference between living in human reigns as they have thus far evolved — “in the flesh” — and choosing to live into God’s reign — “in the Spirit.” This stark contrast dominates the first part of Romans 8, which we read this morning.
By the end of Romans 8, Paul will remind us of the crux of this difference, when he tells us that God sent Jesus, “in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Romans 8:29). The goal, in short, is to unite the human family into one. It is to finally bring the day when we can look upon the face of any fellow human being and see a brother or sister. I said that at the end of Romans 8, we are getting a ‘reminder’ of the goal of the Gospel. This is because the bringing together of Jew and Gentile has already been made a central theme in this letter. (I’ll cover this more in detail in today’s Gospel Talk (between the services). From beginning to end, Paul’s letter to the Romans is about the grace of God to reconcile the human family from its divisions — the most poignant division in the first century being between Jew and Gentile. In this middle part of Romans, Paul is even proclaiming that life “in the Spirit” means that we can even begin to move past the roadblocks of our evolution. We can live into a new way of being human that is faithful to God, following in the ways that Jesus was and is faithful to God.
That Lutheran summary of the Gospel of Romans as “justification by grace through faith”? How about if we tweaked that a bit as: “reconciled by grace through faithfulness.” God is graciously reconciling the human family through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah. I said that the main division for Paul in the first century was Jew and Gentile.
Now let’s ask: What would be the central point of division for the human family in the 21st century? What would be the analog today of healing the division between Jew and Gentile? Wouldn’t it be healing the division between white people and people of color? Our laws have been corrupted by Sin to divide us racially. So, if the central Christian mission for St. Paul in the first century was reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, then wouldn’t reconciliation of the races be the central mission for us in the 21st century? For Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, the main goal wasn’t just securing full and proper rights for all people, it was reconciliation between all peoples. Their ultimate goal was to that those who now opposed them might ultimately become friends. Obviously, we still have a ways to go. But if I’m right about cuing off of Paul’s mission to heal Jew and Gentile means our mission is to heal the racial divides, then that still needs to be central to our mission in the here and now.
I think that Resurrection has chosen the right theme to characterize its mission: being welcoming. Because the goal behind being welcoming to everyone is to live into the healing of all that still divides us. So I ask you: doesn’t one of the central planks of your mission to welcome all need to be anti-racism? In other words, to understand how racism works so that we can seek to dismantle it and be part of reconciling the races? Should your next pastor be someone who is trained in anti-racism and can help you with that crucial task of being welcoming to all races? Especially during this typically most segregated hour of our weeks?
Often, even bringing up the subject of racism makes us uncomfortable. I suggest to you that that is because of the roadblocks we’ve talked about today. That discomfort is because our human kingdoms have evolved with such divisions as necessary. Paul calls this “living in the flesh.” We are called to live in the Spirit, to live in God’s reign, with God’s politics, with God’s culture of radical inclusion.
Our discomfort with thinking that God’s reign might call us to the very challenging work of racial reconciliation might be compared to the kinds of soil in today’s parable of the Sower. Yes, there’s still lots of resistant soil. We might be a rock in resisting racial reconciliation. But the Good News is a the amazing grace of a persistent Sower. So we might end by simply asking with preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor, who puts it this way: “What if it is not about our own successes and failures and birds and rocks and thorns but about the extravagance of a sower who does not seem to be fazed by such concerns, who flings seed everywhere, wastes it with holy abandon, who feeds the birds, whistles at the rocks, picks his way through the thorns, shouts hallelujah at the good soil and just keeps on sowing, confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last it will fill every barn in the neighborhood to the rafters?” Amen.
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Lutheran Church of the Resurrection,
Racine, WI, July 16, 2023
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/pr1JBWmV5a4?feature=share&t=828
