The Walls Come Down!

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

Focus: Racism

Function: To help people see how racism is addressed in the gospel message.

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

I am going to work very hard at keeping this positive, but I need to face a little bit of our national pain and discuss what the Bible has to say about it and help us understand just how far this passage of scripture must go if it is going to inform our Christian lives together in America.

I just returned from our Church's Annual Conference. AC is always very inspiring and at times it can be very sad.

And, in one sense, this sermon will be my AC report.

I went to some really, really great events and insight sessions.

I think the highlight, for all of us, was the ministry that we shared together from our Brothers and Sisters in Nigeria, the EYN Church in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Woman's Choir performed throughout the conference in worship services, in insight sessions and during meals and luncheons.

I wish you could see the joy with which they share their faith.

It is electric!

It is so inspiring to see the HOPE within them even though they are still suffering in ways that we cannot imagine.

Kathy and I discusses whether or not I would give my tithe for last week on the 5^th of July or today. I suggested today because the 1^st Sunday is always the biggest and we might even it out.

But, sorry Joe and Peg, I gave my tithe to the Nigerian Crisis fund.

We take an offering every worship for some sort of cause or another and it generally averages between 3 and 5 thousand dollars.

Our Sunday Morning offering, the Nigerian relief offering was over $14,000!

The COB decided to raise 3 million over the next two years for immediate relief for Nigeria and then we were given a more to come estimate.

Well, I am happy to tell you that we have already raised 3,1 million dollars! And, we have decided to raise 2.1 million more.

To see the pictures of whole housing subdivisions, with farming acreage for each house being built on land that we already purchased is comforting. By the way, although we are building them for our EYN brothers and sisters, because of partnership with another organization, we are also building them for Muslim families. Yes, in a compound much like a trailer park, but with permanent concrete/block houses, Christians and Muslims are living together in peace and real live harmony!

And, the Church of the Brethren is the inspiration behind this.

To see families living in refugee camps who are alive, and living in relative security warmed my heart and filled me with tears of joy.

There was a lot of tears of joy.

On Monday afternoon, we spent most of the afternoon's business session focusing on and praying for our brothers and sisters in the faith.

3.1 million is small by government standards, but for a denomination as small as us, it is absolutely phenomenal. THANK YOU! Praise the Lord Jesus Christ!

Because of our partnership, instead of raising just 5.2 million overall, we now have an additional 6 million promised to EYN's efforts by another Christian Charity.

We learned that over 1700 hundred churches have been burnt. The toll of those displaced is over 180,000 and there are at least 8,000 of our Brethren brothers and sisters who were murdered so far. The kidnapped girls is just a small part of it.

And yet, the joy and hope is overwhelming! It is electric! It is truly inspirational!

What a joy to be part of that.

Meanwhile, in 1915, the Ottoman Turks instituted a pogrom against Armenian Orthodox Christianity in Turkey.

It went largely unnoticed by the world and its press. But back then, the COB gave over $250,000 for relief. That is, coincidentally, worth about 5 million dollars by today's standards. And, we were much bigger then with more resources, so, this effort in Nigeria really is huge.

1.5 million were murdered. And we got the privilege of helping the survivors. Sadly, there were to few, estimates are around 300,000 people.

But they lived because of us. We fed, clothed and housed them for years until the war was over.

Members of the Armenian Church were there to thank us on the 100 year anniversary and they were happy that we were still doing the same thing today, with the same personal and corporate sacrifice.

There were many stories of the way Brethren gave sacrificially to help those in EYN.

Again, THANK YOU!

And, coincidentally, this fits well with the theme of this passage of scripture.

This passage is about how God brought down the walls of separation between the races in Christ Jesus.

This passage is about Jesus' peace bringing enemies together. It focuses on the power of God's love to transform people. God does it.

And God, according to this passage, has acted in the atoning sacrifice not only to save us from sin, death, hell and brokenness, but also to reverse the process that God started at the tower of Babel.

God wants the races together, as one, mixed in a common faith, worshiping together as more than Americans, Armenians, Hispanics, the Undocumented, Blacks, Whites, Russians, Jews, Germans, Europeans, Africans, every single race, every single gender, every single person in all of humanity together in perfect love and harmony and listen to this final caveat: “because of Jesus.”

However, people will choose to divide for many reasons.

The one that breaks my heart the most is the “because of Jesus” attitude of some.

At AC, instead of people at microphones making long speeches, before we have microphone debates about controversial issues, we sit at tables and discuss the issue.

It is a great idea and it works. The idea is to see the “other” person as sincere in their beliefs.

AC also acknowledges that issues, perspectives and debates do not often enough consider how those decisions are played out by those with minority representation or status.

Most specifically years and years ago, we agreed together and overwhelmingly approved a call to accountability about minorities and women who are on the ballot and who ultimately get elected.

The commitment was not a command to the nominating committee to provide diverse candidates, but also to structure ballots in such a way that diverse candidates get actually get elected.

So, if no woman, for example, has been called to serve as moderator for several years in a row, then the ballot may reflect only two women intentionally so that we can be more diverse.

After the results of the main slate of elections was announced, there was also a report on how well we did with our own decision to hold ourselves accountable to gender and racial equality.

We did poorly, by the way. I wish I could say I feel good about it. But actually, the results were very alarming from my perspective.

However, what really gave me pause was the table discussion.

The fellow across from me at the table said that they only way to ensure gender and racial equality was to list candidates without a name, without a gender, without an age, and without a race.

We have a qualification section on the ballot and he suggested we merely use the qualifications section.

And then, for some reason, he asked ME (no one else at the table) what I thought of it.

In a few seconds, I had to try to figure out a way to help him understand what racial and gender privilege is.

I didn't do so well. It takes time to help people see it. And, I failed miserably.

I told him some stories that my daughter in law has told me about privilege.

Before she met my son, she was going with another white man. He regularly uses marijuana. He picked her up from work one night right after smoking pot. She doesn't do it.

He got pulled over, and it was her, with her face literally ground into the mud under the officer's boot who was accused of smoking the demon weed.

He didn't understand.

So I said: “here is the thing, we do not even know what we do not know about systemic racism in our culture. If we vote that way, we will continue to do our work in ignorance of how believers of other races and genders suffer. The only way we can be aware, so that we can fulfill Christ Jesus' mandate to do justice, is to intentionally, for a season, stack the deck with minorities and women and then, I hope that qualifications alone will work because it will only be then that we learn what qualifications we actually need to fulfill Matthew 25 and Luke 4:18 better.”

His answer left me speechless and I hate to report it because Jesus loves him and I am sure that he is as sincere as me. He just doesn't know and it is up to us to patiently help him see it.

He said: “well, there are several of them (repeat OF THEM) in my church. All of the coloreds in my church know that I love them.”

If that is his term for them, then he is either lying, or his ignorance, and I don't use that to demean him, he simply doesn't understand, but it is his ignorance that keeps him from understanding. He doesn't know what he doesn't know.

This passage of scripture is about the good news. It is about the good news as it affects our racial attitudes. It is as much about racism, systemic racism as it is about salvation. They do indeed go hand in hand.

So, I am greatly encouraged and proud, in a Brethren humble sort of way, of who we are as a people.

We are Brethren. The name does exclude our women. But it also emphasizes our community and love and support for everyone.

Yes, we always have a way to go to implement the onus of this teaching by Paul.

But we have moved forward.

God help us move more.