This morning, you were supposed to hear a talk about the current state of the youth ministry here at Westwood Baptist Church. While such a conversation is definitely necessary, it is not timely. Events are taking place, and social influences are at work in our world that require an immediate response. It’s easy to imagine that it does not affect us, or that we are insulated from such things because we are either geographically, or ideologically, removed from such pressures, but such wishful thinking could not be further from the truth. What happened in Charlottesville is but the most recent of a series of violent events that have taken place in our state concerning the topics of race, religion, immigration, and identity. We are not removed from such topics, but directly in the midst of tensions that have implications for the ministries of this very congregation.
Our Scripture passage for today says that the work of people gifted for ministry, such as myself, “is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Ever since I chose to walk the path that would lead me to ministry when I was a teenager, this verse has rattled around in my mind and my heart. Paul’s words to the Ephesians are that those with gifts are to do more than encourage people to make decisions, but reorient their lives toward the example of Jesus Christ. That work of ministry is always contextual. The work of clergy is to interpret the world through the lens of the cross, and then use our gifts to prepare the body so that we may respond to where the Holy Spirit is leading us. It’s a grave responsibility. One that burns people out faster than almost any other profession. The pressures of addressing highly charged issues can break people’s psyches, their families, and the congregations they have been called to serve. I did not consider my call lightly, and I don’t know of anyone else who has.
In such times as these, it can be difficult to know what to say. Typically, in my lifetime, the Church has remained silent on most social issues; instead saying that God only cares about matters of the soul. Such theology does not have it’s foundation in Scripture, where the Incarnate God healed many physical bodies of their ailments, but in Platonic philosophy that believed there was at “truer” world of ideas beyond our physical one. Instead of providing sound theological basis for our response to the world, the Church has divided human beings against themselves by calling our bodies trash and instead speaking only in the words of Gnosticism, a movement called “heresy” by the early Church.
Today, violence and fear roll through the populace like a tidal wave. A study released by Pew Research said that in 2016, for the first time, a majority of members in both major political parties now believe that members of the other political party are out to intentionally destroy the country. Lobbying groups, purportedly the voice of their donors, use overtly violent language while calling for resistance to opposing opinions.
This violence and fear even touches us here in northern Virginia. Just last winter, the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, on Little River Turnpike, was vandalized with anti-semitic symbols. Just across the river in Silver Spring, Maryland, an Episcopal parish was vandalized with the words, “Whites only” just after the 2016 election.
I say violence and fear because the two are intertwined, each feeding the other. Fear drives us to violence, and violence causes more fear. What has happened in Charlottesville is the clearest picture yet our fear of the other, and our propensity to respond to any fear with violence, is driving us mad. Our madness strips others of their humanity. We don’t see those who are different from us as people, but agents working for our destruction. When people are not people, then we can eliminate our opposition through any means necessary.
When people lose the dignity of being people, and are instead seen only as enemies, even pastors can become emboldened to wield violence. To return to the topic that brought us to this conversation; just yesterday in Charlotte, a car plowed into a group of protesters carrying signs denouncing white supremacy and the KKK. Do you think the driver saw their victims as human? Do you think the counter-protestors who threw rocks and shot pepper spray into the faces of people bearing Confederate and Nazi flags saw them as human? Do you think the torch-bearing mob, chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” and who surrounded a church filled with clergy for a prayer meeting the night before the rally was supposed to begin saw these ministers as human? Do you think the militia members who brought all their tactical gear to what was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration did that because they thought those who speak against them are human?
The first major response I have seen after these terrible events has been for people to “calm down and let’s just have some peace.” While I totally agree that peace is, and should be, our ultimate goal in the aftermath of these terrible events, we must interrogate that word, “peace.” Far too often, peace has been seen as an absence of conflict. However, in my own home there have been many times where there has been an absence of conflict between Meg and myself that does not in any way reflect a true feeling of peace. Eventually, our conflict comes to bear and we have to address our contentions because we simply can not ignore them any longer.
I believe our society finds itself in a similar situation. For years, we have had an absence of overt racial conflict in our country. After the LA riots it seemed many of our racial wounds had been healed, and with the election of our first African-American President, it appeared that we were truly in a post-racial society. However, the Southern Poverty Law Center, who tracks hate groups throughout the US, saw an increase in the number and stridency of racist groups since 2008. We must recognize that President Obama did not create these groups, but instead his mere presence highlighted a tension that had been simmering under the surface for generations. What we had thought was peace, was nothing more than a lie.
Instead of real peace, we lived in a world that still head the same hatreds and bigotries that had fueled violence for our entire history. Instead of such things being stamped out, they went underground; only to pop up with even greater intensity and cause more destruction and pain than before. We who have been called to be peacemakers have failed in our calling. We must acknowledge that we confused quiet for peace and are now reaping the harvest of our inaction. By the very act of turning a blind eye, or turning to primarily “soul matters,” we have perpetuated the very hate our faith calls us to stand against.
When terrible things happen, when there are obstacles to overcome, it is too easy for us to descend to a place where we respond in violence or fear. It’s what happened yesterday when both protesters and counter-protesters brought clubs, shields, and helmets to Charlottesville. They each went after the other based on their ideologies; based on their self-assurance that they were right in their convictions. In the end, three people wound up dead. Violence in the name of the cause is why a man went into an abortion clinic in Colorado armed with a rifle because he wanted, “to save the babies.” He believes, even still, that abortion is killing babies, and so to stop it he killed people who worked at the clinic. Both fear and violence are why protestors stand on street corners outside mainline Christian churches where LGBTQ people get married and shout that God hates them.
It’s not enough to stand up to hateful ideologies, if you are responding with equal violence. But how are those who are called by God supposed to respond to such hateful things has racism and Nazis in 2017? It was in the book of John that Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, should you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And we know what this love is supposed to look like because the Apostle Paul told us, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
During the Civil Rights Movement, there was a Baptist minister named Will Campbell. You may not have heard of him, but trust me, it would be worth finding one of his books on Amazon. Will was a white man who believed in the work of Civil Rights. He was there for the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In fact, Bayard Ruston advocated for his inclusion as the only white member. Later, he would be ridiculed by his allies in the movement when he would minister to Klan members in jail. Why would he go and minister to the same people who would willingly kill him and his friends? His response, “anyone who is not as concerned with the immortal soul of the dispossessor as he is with the suffering of the dispossessed is being something less than Christian.”
It is difficult to stand up to hateful ideologies. It calls for boldness and puts us at risk for reprisal when we stand up and unequivocally say, “Racism and hatred are wrong. They may be done in the name of a Gospel, but that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” We have to be able to say that with conviction. We must be capable of responding when Nazi websites use the phrase, “God bless,” that they are not speaking of the same God we are. We can say that, and we can say it with conviction because it is the truth. Historically, Christians have said that we know God by looking to Jesus. Jesus says in the Gospels, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.” If our view of God is mediated through the image of the Jesus who ministered, died, and was risen then we must admit that the God we see is one who heals, feeds, clothes, welcomes, visits, and speaks powerful truth about how we treat those who are different from us. If you are struggling to find it, you can read it in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and the meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well in Luke, and the healing of the Roman centurion’s daughter in Matthew.
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, N.T. Wright, the British New Testament scholar says that his statements of “no Jew or Gentile,” are statements about race distinction, “no slave or free,” are statements of class distinction, “no male or female,” are statements of gender or sexual distinction. The image Scripture gives us of God is of a creator who does not separate us out from one another, and definitely does not see any of us as being better or worse than the other. It’s time, here and now, for Christians to stand up and say no to this kind of hatred and bigotry. To go back to today’s passage, this context where the Church finds itself doing ministry is one where there is racism. And the Church is called, by the witness of Jesus’ ministry, to stand up and speak out against such hate. We must speak out here in our church, in our workplaces, in the grocery stores, our schools, at the park, and anywhere else we find ourselves confronting such an insidious sin.
Now, I know from some personal conversations, more accurately described as spirited arguments, between myself and some members of this congregation that there are those who believe that the only real ministry of the church is one of bringing people to decisions, or saving souls, like I talked about earlier. If the Scripture I discussed in this sermon is not persuasive, I have a story I would like to share. Do you know where the invitation, like we have at the end of all our services, came from? When I was growing up, there were only three responses to the invitation. Either you came to “give your life to Jesus,” “rededicate your life to Jesus,” or “respond to a call to ordained ministry.” But there is a great depth that we must rediscover.
In the early 19th century, during the last decades of the Second Great Awakening, a Baptist/Presbyterian minister named Charles Grandison Finney was making quite a name for himself as a revivalist who spoke out in favor of the abolition of slavery. When he came to the conclusion of one of his passionate fiery sermons, he would make a call for people to come down to the altar and sign their names on a sheet of paper, enlisting them into the abolitionist cause. He believed that such an invitation was necessary, “to give feet to our faith.” Finney thought that it was one thing to make a decision for the mission of Jesus in slaveholding America while sitting in your pew, but it was quite another to come down the aisle and be counted amongst those who went out to do something about the injustice of the world. Throughout the history of the Christian story there are those who are calling people in the name of God to action. It happened during the time of Jesus, it happened during the early Church, the early monastics, the great Awakenings, during Jim Crow and Civil Rights, and it is happening again.
For still others, you may be sitting in the pew and you have found a way not to feel. Maybe you were appalled, as I was, when you first saw some of the images from Charlottesville. Perhaps you wanted to cry, or rage at the things you saw. Now, you have found a way to hold all that down, though. Because in a world where things come at you so fast, the ability to just push it down and make it to your bed at night can be seen as a virtue. But today, I hope you are disturbed, discomforted by the things you have seen, and maybe even the things I have said. For you I also have a verse from our Scriptures. Psalm 139 says, “Search me, O God, and know my thoughts. Test me and know my heart. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me to the way of everlasting.”
Today, the Holy Spirit of God is calling on the Church to stand up. Stand up and take a step toward love. As Paul says, it is time to cast off all that which hinders us and run the race set before us. That race is one that is asking us to be a part of the solution. One that speaks out and says that Nazis and racists have no place in Christ’s church. A race that calls us to sing that there will be no quarter given to violence, no matter whose name it is done in. But a calling that says we do this in the name of the love of the God who saved us, and we want to hold that love over the world.
Amen.
