Dismantling Racism... Among Ourselves--February 11, 2021

 Dismantling Racism...Among Ourselves--February 11, 2021

"In that renewal [in Christ] there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!" [Colossians 3:11]

It wasn't enough just to avoid saying bad things about "the other." What was necessary was to affirm that Christ was present in them as well.  The Gospel itself demanded no less.

Let me say that again: it was not enough for the authoritative voice of the apostle Paul simply to stay quiet and insist, "I'm not saying anything that is racist against Gentiles myself personally!"  But rather the apostle here insists on dismantling the prejudices that were present in the early church where he saw them in other people.  It was not sufficient simply to keep his head down and claim he wasn't guilty of perpetuating bigotry against people outside of his own ethnic-religious-cultural group, because staying silent when you know rottenness is happening quite often gives tacit permission for the rottenness to continue.  Not speaking up to say, "This is not acceptable.  This is not the way of Christ," is going to send the message that it is ok, and that it is compatible with the way of Jesus.

But we don't have silence here from these verses from Colossians.  We don't have permission to say, "As long as I'm not making things worse, I'm in the clear and off the hook."  Instead, here from the text of the New Testament itself we have a clear precedent of opposing what we would call today racism and of positively affirming the full presence of Christ in people from every background, nationality, skin color, culture, language, and way of life.  

This is actually a really important point to be clear on, especially as 21st century Americans as we continue to have a long overdue reckoning with the way racism still divides and festers among us.  In this moment of our society, a number of prophetic voices--most of them Black and Brown voices, to be quite honest--have spoken about the need to go beyond saying "I'm not racist," to actively striving to be "anti-racist."  The difference is the same as what we noted above in Colossians.  We don't hear Paul letting himself off the hook and saying, "I know that some Christians speak ill of Gentiles, but I don't, so I don't have to speak up to discourage or stop it when it happens."  We don't see Paul saying, "Well I have never personally told a joke about those Scythians, so this isn't really a problem."  Nor do we see Paul saying, "Look, those uncircumcised Gentiles have already gotten a free pass by being allowed to believe in Jesus at all--now they're demanding I eat with them and celebrate that Christ has welcomed them even with all their non-Jewish, non-kosher practices?  You can't make me do that!"

No, as these verses from Colossians illustrate, it's simply not enough--it is not the call of Christ--to be silent in the face of the demeaning of others, or the subtler ways others are left out and marginalized because they are "other."  Maybe Paul himself came to learn that as he reflected on his own life, when he had been the one holding people's coats while a lynch-mob stoned the early Christian community organizer Stephen to death.  On that day (see the end of Acts 7 for that story), Paul himself wasn't throwing rocks, but his silence gave consent to those who became a violent mob.  He could say, honestly, "I didn't throw any rocks myself," but very clearly, Stephen was killed with Paul's approval and with his tacit direction, shown precisely in his silence while the rocks were flying and Stephen was breathing his last.

However many years later after Stephen's death this letter was written, the same lesson hangs in the air:  saying your hands are clean because you didn't personally throw any rocks is a lie.  And when it comes to the racial divisions that beset both the early church and today's church, the same is true: it is not enough for Christians simply to look away while other people demean and degrade people of racial minorities or from disempowered groups.  Followers of Jesus are called to speak up and insist positively the abiding presence of Christ in all, and to speak against attitudes, actions and policies that perpetuate that racism.

It's not that early Christians forgot their backgrounds or pretended they weren't there.  Gentile Christians continued to "be Gentile"--it's not something you can "repent" of.  They continued to eat Gentile foods and wear their hair and clothing in Gentile ways.  The Jewish Christians continued to worship in the Temple and many kept kosher and circumcised their sons.  When the voice in Colossians says the old categories aren't there anymore, he doesn't mean to pretend everybody thought or acted the same--he meant we were no longer allowed to pit one way over the other as supreme while the others were all inferior.  It was about stopping any one group from misusing power over against another, and about including people as they were.  That's radical--and it's here in the New Testament itself.

For a lot of us who find ourselves, simply by the color of our skin and the position in society were born into, in positions of privilege, it can be really tempting to tell ourselves, "As long as I don't personally say mean things about people whose skin color is darker or whose language is different from mine, that's all anybody can ask of me." It's tempting to say, "Hey, I'm not flying a Confederate flag myself, so I can't be asked to risk losing friendships when someone else flies it or puts it on their vehicle!"  But the Bible here itself calls us out and says, "Yes, you can be asked to do those things.  In fact, God insists on that and of more from you.  Christ himself calls you to affirm his holy and good presence in those who have been treated as inferior or less-than for generations, and you are called to be a part of the change."  The New Testament itself calls us beyond letting ourselves off the hook by claiming, "I don't say racist things (out loud), so I'm not the problem," to see our silence as permission for racism to continue wherever it festers.  And the Scriptures themselves call us beyond that silent complicity to actively dismantle the power of racism wherever it is--including in the church itself.

That's hard.  I know.  It means being honest about things we want to ignore or sweep under the rug.  It means being able to recognize that people who are "nice" a lot of the time can also still be capable of perpetuating rotten beliefs and mindsets, which become even more rotten practices and systems.  It means loving folks enough to honor what is good and noble in them and also to call out the prejudices in one another when we see them.  It means letting other people see our own blind-spots and helping them to excise the cancer of bigotry from ourselves, when we didn't want to admit it was there.  It means acknowledging when in our lives we might not have been throwing stones, but we were quietly holding coats and letting the rocks fly with our tacit permission.

And it means we dare to believe the Good News that these verses from Colossians proclaims: in all of us, with whatever background, whatever language, culture, nationality, or ethnicity we have come to Christ, Christ is here, present in all of us.  Let us dare to live like it is true.

Lord Jesus, give us the grace to see your presence not only in those who are like us, but also those who are different and those we have too often treated as less-than.  Give us, too, the courage to see our failures, our complicity in the past, and the opportunities to start in new ways to honor all people as made in your image.