Takoma Park Baptist Church February 21, 1988
All of us, it seems, have a tendency to choose comfort. All of us appear to prefer to choose a way to live that involves as little tension, as little discomfort as possible. I am not talking just about luxuries and material things; I am talking primarily about our relationships. We want to live with as little discomfort as possible where our neighbors, our friends, our family are concerned. And one way to do this is to avoid people who are different, avoid people who make demands on us. If you want to live in a settled, easy set of relationships, well then, make sure you are in a community where everybody is just about alike.
All across America, particularly in the great northeastern cities, but other places too, this has been done through ethnic neighborhoods. Go to Baltimore and you can still see it: Little Italy, Polish blocks, German quarters, even a street or two filled with Lumbee Indians. Ethnic neighborhoods have a great deal of value and they mean for many people a place to live in some degree of comfort, with your own kinds of folks who place little challenge on you. We choose comfortable relationships whenever we can.
Sometimes that pursuit of comfort takes on an ugly twist: white flight to the suburbs in pursuit of some notion of property values or just plain comfort. Or it becomes a ghetto neighborhood where any intruder is subjected to jeers and catcalls and hostile looks, because those who live there just do not want anybody different around. We seem to have a natural tendency to choose tension-free surroundings, to want to be with and live with folks we think are just like us.
But one of the fascinating things about the Christian Gospel is that it calls us to live in the tensions, not avoid them. It calls us to live in diversity, not to wipe it out. And in particular, in our multiracial world, with a long history of tension and exploitation and misunderstanding, there is the ringing declaration of the Apostle Paul, summoning us to go beyond what we think of as radical differences, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
If Paul were alive and writing today, would his declaration include a phrase, "There is neither black nor white"? If Paul were teaching in this hour, would he have celebrated a Black History Month, would he have struggled with racism, would he have tolerated our continuing discussions about music that is particular to black culture or to white culture or whatever or would he have in some measure dismissed it all with a wave of the hand, “There is neither black nor white?”
Well, yes and no. Yes, I believe that the great apostle, thinking as he was about the great walls that separated people in his own day, would say to us, "There is neither black nor white, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." He would want to deal at a radical level w with one of the great dividers of the 20th Century.
But I also suspect that the Apostle would not in saying that be simply dismissing our differences and papering them over. I rather suspect that he would be pointing us to some deeper realities and to some possibilities for living out the Gospel, the Gospel of reconciliation, than we have imagined.
Living the Gospel in black and white -- can it be done? What is it going to mean? And what do we do with the tensions it brings? Is it worth doing at all, to live the Gospel in black and white?
I
First, we need to realize that living the Gospel in black and white does not mean pretending to colorblindness. It does not mean pretending that there are no real differences. Living the Gospel in black and white and hearing the apostles’ declaration that there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free – that does not mean that we close our eyes to the fact that in the world of here and now there are those realities.
Let’s remember that Paul was not trying to pretend that there was no such thing as a Jew, no such thing as a Greek. He knew well those cultures. He spoke of himself as a son of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, able to call upon his heritage and his culture. He knew that there were genuine differences in race and culture.
And obviously he knew that there really are differences between men and women, even though, as it seems, he was not married. Someone asked me in prayer meeting if there was Mrs. Paul; about all I could think of was that she is the one who makes fish sticks, I think! Well, Paul clearly knew that men and women are different biologically, emotionally, and as the French are wont to say, “Vive la difference!”
Living out the Gospel in black and white does not mean pretending that there are no cultural differences. And I believe it does mean that we as Christians are called to affirm one another’s cultures, to understand one another, to value one another. We need to come to the place where we will value and treasure what each has to give to the tapestry that will make up the Kingdom. Living the Gospel in black and white in our church, for example, is going to mean that all of us will treasure Black History Month; I received some degree of encouragement last Sunday afternoon to see at least a half dozen Caucasian faces at that absolutely glorious concert we were offered. I live for the day when all of us will treasure Black History Month and then we’ll go beyond it and value all sorts of cultures, all kinds of contributions to the tapestry of the Kingdom.
Downtown at 15th and V streets there is Augustana Lutheran Church. Augustana Lutheran Church began as a church for the Swedish people. I believe that at one time their services were in the Swedish language, and that’s the culture in the background. One of the traditions in the Swedish church is the Luciafest, St. Lucy’s Day, and it involves one of the young women of the congregation being chosen to represent St. Lucy with a crown of burning candles. Frankly it sounds a little dangerous and, like the fellow who was being ridden out of town on a rail, if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d just as soon not have this. But that’s the Swedish custom. Now Augustana began a number of years ago to reach all kinds of people in its neighborhood, and a historic moment arrived several years ago when the first black teenage girl was chosen to play St. Lucy and to be at the center of this very Swedish festival. How many black Swedes do you know? But these black folks were valuing a heritage not their own, living the Gospel in black and white, and in yellow and brown and red.
We found out after a Sunday when the choir sang an anthem in Caribbean calypso rhythm that you didn’t like it. All right, musical taste; that’s your privilege. But maybe the day will come when we will value that as somebody’s culture, someone’s heritage. And vive la difference!
II
But let’s come down to this: when you read carefully all that the Apostle Paul says to us in this passage, the heart and core of it is that with God, living the Gospel in black and white is becoming aware that all have sinned, all have come short of the glory of God, and all need a savior. And that savior treats all according to his need.
Listen to Paul’s understanding here: “The Scripture consigned all things to sin.” Really a better translation is something like this: the Scripture shows that all are imprisoned by sin. All are imprisoned by sin, all need a savior, all are caught up in the same dilemma. All, black and white alike, are equally subject to sin’s prison.
You see, Satan, after all, is an equal opportunity exploiter, isn’t he? Satan is an equal opportunity exploiter, and sin is a disease which attacks blacks and whites alike, and the first evidence of sin is broken and prejudiced relationships. From the beginning of the Scriptures we can see that: Cain kills Abel, brother slays brother, because of sin. And so Paul would say to us this morning, if you are going to live out the Gospel in black and white, remember that every one of you is subject to the exploitations of sin, every one of you is in need of grace, and every one of you has the opportunity to experience the reconciling power of the Gospel.
There are a score of different directions I could take this message at this point. My heart is very full about this urgency to see men and women receive Christ and be freed from this prison called sin. But for today, as we think about living the Gospel in black and white, just this: that if as the Scripture here says, "all, all are imprisoned by sin" and if as the Scripture here says, "In Christ Jesus you are all one …neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, and yes neither black nor white … isn’t that saying that we must share a witness with all people? All people?
Now folks, let’s face facts. We are trying to swim upstream here in this church. The church growth people have told us that the easiest and quickest way to grow a church is to use what they call the homogeneous unit principle. That’s fancy language for getting together folks who are already alike. That means, as I said in the very beginning, letting people sort themselves out racially so they can avoid that tension. And there is much to be said for this. Read last Sunday’s newspaper about a black church in Prince George’s County that has grown from 17 people to 3000 in five years, using this principle. But we are trying to swim against that stream, and we are doing it because we believe the Gospel at its fullest calls us to do so. We believe that every man and woman in this community and beyond it is a fit subject for our witness, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And we need to proclaim our witness across racial lines.
Several years ago I had working with me a young short-term workers whom I assigned to develop a campus ministry at the University of the District of Columbia. His assignment was very clear: you do UDC and I will continue to do Howard and Georgetown and so on. But do you know every time I went to the Howard campus, I found out he had been there dealing with my students. And when we would have retreats for all of our students, I found that he would single out the black students and pull them aside. And what I eventually discovered was that he considered that every black student was his, never mind what campus they went to, never mind whether they were his assignment; they were his. And he said, you just can’t deal with them, you don’t understand." What was his assumption? I can only talk to my kind of folks; you can only share the Gospel with folks who are like you already. And it just is not true. It is not true and it must not be true.
If all are imprisoned by sin, then all need the Gospel. And if you are a child of Christ, then you will practice reconciliation and you will share your faith with every one, black and white, Asian and Hispanic, and you will labor to make this place a house of prayer for all peoples.
III
So, you see, what it boils down to is this: Living the Gospel in black and white means letting the Holy Spirit root out the last vestiges of fear and prejudice. Living the Gospel so that we can truly say, with Paul, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus – that is going to mean permitting the spirit of a reconciling and loving God to cure us of low self-esteem and of insecurity, for, you see, we are, all of us, worthy of the death of the son of God. Christ has died, and for you, for me, for black and white as well. We are all imprisoned in sin, and he has acted to redeem us all. He calls us all worthy; there is no room for self-hatred.
One of the bitterest legacies of slavery and of segregation is lingering self-hatred, low self-esteem. And it infects both black and white. Some of us had a fascinating discussion about that one Wednesday night a few days ago. And we recalled that it is not only a matter of poor self-esteem among some black folks about their blackness, but it is also that you can explain the redneck phenomenon this way: a class of whites who needed somebody, anybody, to look down on because they felt so negative about themselves. But over against all that, here is the declaration of the Gospel: “Christ died for all,” and, says Paul in this passage, "in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith." Call no one unworthy for whom Christ died. Think not of yourselves as of no account, for the price paid to get you back was the price of a savior’s blood. Think not of yourself or your brother or you sister as someone better than you or worse than you, for all have sinned, all have come short, and once and for all Christ died. You are of value.
You see, back in the days of slavery there was a peculiar theological debate that went on among some of the slaveholders. The visiting preachers were going around the south wanting to evangelize the slave population, and some of the slaveholders had some second thoughts about that. What if these slaves of ours become Christians? They will know that they are human beings; they will think that they are somebody. And how can I enslave a brother in Christ? And so some slaveholders refused to let the missionaries preach, because they knew they would have to see a Christian brother as an equal. A perverse but nevertheless true theology. For if Christ died for you, you, as you are, are of value. No need to let insecurity tangle you up.
In 1976 I became D. C. Baptists’ campus ministry director, a job which included about five campuses, one of which was Howard University. I got started on every piece of my job early except one. I played around for about four months before I showed up at the Howard campus to start work. Frank1y, I was scared. I really didn’t think I would be accepted. It was that old insecurity bit. Well, I went over there, met first with the other chaplains, and the Methodist chaplain said to me, “Well, I tell you what. If you’re going to come here, be sure you wear a tie and jacket and look like a preacher; last thing we need is a white liberal with a dashiki pretending to be something he isn’t.” And that’s right. The Holy Spirit began to work on me to assure me I had value, just as I am. I didn’t need to be somebody else; just me, for whom Christ died.
And so today if you would live the Gospel in black and white, then open up to the spirit of God. Hear him say to you, you are worth it all. You are worth the price. You do not have to live in insecurity, you do not have to choose mere comfort, you do not have to avoid the tensions of interracial living. No, just acknowledge that you are worth the death and sacrifice of our Christ, open your heart to all that He can do, and in Christ Jesus become a child of God through faith. Then truly you will know the depth and the power, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
