The Peaceable Kingdom
Mark 1: 4-11 (NIV)
And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
In all honesty, this sermon didn't finally start to come together until late in this week. I really had no idea what direction I wanted to go with my sermon this week, so I turned to my family and a few of my seminary friends and posed this really open-ended question: if you could hear your pastor preach about anything, what would you most want to hear a sermon about? The first responses I got were from my Dad and my brother-in-law, who essentially both said that if they could hear a sermon about anything right now, they would want to hear a sermon about racism, and how we as a people can get past it.
Well then. If that's not the most daunting thing anyone's ever asked of my preaching, I'm not sure what is, but here we go:
In even tackling a topic like that one I'm standing on the shoulders of the greatest preachers our world has ever known, starting with Jesus himself, who certainly had a lot to say about the race tensions and xenophobia of his time. I stand on the shoulders of the father of United Methodism, John Wesley, who lived when slavery was still legal both in his native England and in the American colonies, and was thoroughly disgusted by it. He encouraged his congregants and lay preachers to seek an abolition to slavery, and social holiness, reaching to the margins of society and not stopping until everyone lived in justice.
I could go on all morning naming great preachers from history who fought against racism and the social injustices that come from it. Walter Rauschenbusch, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King. And those names are just a drop in the bucket.
Yet, in preaching on a topic like racism I have to face an incredible irony: despite how many of our forefathers and -mothers in the faith have preached for peace among the races, our Church is nonetheless deeply divided along the color lines. It's a sad part of our history that we just can't seem to get past, a wound for which there is seemingly no salve. In fact, our own denomination suffered a fracture along the color line in the late eighteenth century that we have never recovered from. Have you ever heard of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church? The AME Church was founded by Richard Allen in 1787, when he got fed up with the racism he experienced at his home church, St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Although welcome to worship at that church, Allen and all of his fellow African-American congregants were forced to sit in a separate section of pews, segregated from the white parishioners. Allen formed the AME Church, establishing a community that kept the beloved Methodist traditions but that treated African Americans with dignity. And although we can now say, over 200 years later, that the UMC works alongside the AME as partners in ministry, we never healed from that schism, and because we couldn't get over our prejudice then, we're not whole today.
It's tempting to want to say, Oh, get over it, all that stuff's in the past. Slavery's been illegal for 150 years, segregation's gone, our churches ordain black, Asian, and Hispanic ministers right alongside white ministers. There's special scholarship money set aside to ensure racial minorities get a chance to go to college. Affirmative Action has been helping the same minorities get on the ground running in the workforce. Hey, we even have an African American President! There's no such thing as racism anymore, right? Racism's dead, right?
Wrong. Wrong, and this is where I say that all of us with light skin need to check our white privilege.
It's a lot easier to point out racism and call it what it is when you're looking for overt, obnoxious, explicit acts of racism. A disgruntled Caucasian person that yells out racial slurs any time he sees a person of color? Sure, that's racism. A school that will only admit white students? Sure, that's racism. A group of people with white hoods and burning crosses that target racial minorities for acts of violence? That's racism. And I don't see stuff like that going on around me, so racism must be a thing of the past, right?
No. And don't get me wrong, we've come a long way since all of those things were commonplace. But if you ever hear someone tell you, like I did a moment ago, to "check your white privilege", and you don't know what they're getting at, it's this:
Oftentimes in our society it's not in those outlandish moments that we see racism rear its ugly head. Those things still happen, but much, much, more often, racism takes the form of an implicit, underlying, oppressive, systemic current in the river that light-skinned people don't need to notice because we're safe on our cruise ship. That is to say, we don't notice it because it doesn't affect our daily lives. We're protected from it. We're privileged to have light skin in a society that favors light skinned people.
We don't have to worry that we won't fit in, that wherever we go there won't be people who look like us. We don't have to worry that if we dress a certain way, or act a certain way, or say the wrong thing to the wrong person that people will assume we're thugs, or gang members, or trouble makers. We don't have to worry about being profiled by law enforcement, or being watched a little more closely because we look suspicious or conspicuous. Nobody questions whether we belong in this country, or whether we're here legally. We don't need to feel outnumbered and intimidated. We don't need to feel like we need to prove ourselves more, or that we need to work a little harder to achieve the same thing as a lighter-skinned person. Even if we face prejudice for other reasons, even if we're disadvantaged in other ways, even today in 2015, it's still much easier to thrive in this society if you're white.
But let's get right to the heart of what's really going on in our country right now. Because there was a reason why, when I posed this question of what you'd like to hear a sermon about, racism was the first thing that both my Dad and my brother-in-law thought of. Because my Dad and my brother-in-law are two pretty different people with two pretty different world views. But they both watch the news.
And if you watch the news, too, then you know exactly why now is the time that maybe we as a people of faith need to talk about race more than ever.
Because there's so much going on that we don't know what to think. Was George Zimmerman justified in fighting Trayvon Martin, to the point of taking his life, because he thought he looked suspicious? Was Officer Darren Wilson justified in fatally shooting Michael Brown for stealing, challenging him, and evading arrest? Were several officers of the NYPD justified in using lethal force to apprehend Eric Garner? In the media whirlwind that has ensued, amid the protests, amid the mounting distrust between law enforcement and civilians, amid the angry voices shouting "black lives matter" and "police lives matter", we've seen enough chaos to make us repeat Garner's now-infamous last words, I can't breathe.
In recent years it's become popular to have an almost-radical reaction to racism and say things like Well, I'm not racist. I don't even see race. I don't care what color you are. I'm color blind. Everyone is exactly the same to me.
Not so fast. No offense if any of you think this way, or if any of you have ever said something like that. It's a very good thing when people say things like this because they want so badly for our world to start moving past these racial tensions and divisions. The intention is good, but that's not the way to end racism.
Because we're not all the same. We're magnificently different. And if you act like you're color blind and all people are just gray you fail to see the incredible beauty and richness that each unique race and ethnicity brings to our human family. You should care what race someone belongs to, it's a big part of what makes them who they are.
But I think about this famous painting called "The Peaceable Kingdom". In this painting you see lots of different kinds of animals--cows, lions, leopards, sheep, bears, tigers--and even some people. And even though you really wouldn't expect all these different animals to get along, they do. And it's not because they've glossed over their differences. They're all perfectly proud to be the animals they are, and they've attained a state of harmony with each other.
If we could achieve a peaceable human kingdom, one where we celebrate our individual heritages and yet learn how to coexist and work together, that would be the end of racism. The problem is that it's not possible for us to get there on our own.
We need Jesus to achieve that kind of peace. We need something that only Jesus can give us.
In this morning's Gospel passage, we hear about Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan. Mark tells us that even though Jesus' cousin John was baptizing lots of people, this baptism was like nothing anyone had ever witnessed before. Mark tells us that in the moment that Jesus received John's baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. And then God said to him, You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. John the Baptist proclaims that all who receive Jesus' baptism are baptized not with water, but with the Holy Spirit.
Our world thirsts for something that only Jesus can give us. By living in a world that has received Jesus, we have received the Holy Spirit on this earth, descending upon our whole human family like a dove.
What does that mean, like a dove? Remember the story in Genesis about Noah and the ark? Noah wanted to know if it was safe to get out of the ark. He wanted to know if the flood was over, if the violence and death and loss of the great flood was over. So he sent a dove out of the ark. And when the dove came back with an olive leaf, he knew the world was at peace again.
The dove is a symbol of peace. Jesus has brought us the Holy Spirit, which descends upon us like a dove and brings us peace.
Well, ok then, Pastor Natalie, that's all well and good, but if this world has really received the peace of Christ, then why do we still see all this tension, and fighting, and prejudice? It's because there's two ways that evil persists in our world: there's people who do evil things, and then there's people who witness the evil around them and do nothing to stop it. Or, from a faith-based standpoint, there's two types of sin: sin by commission, and sin by omission.
It's not enough for us to just play nice and mind our own business. It's not good enough for us to say, Well, I'm nice to everyone, I don't treat anyone any different than anyone else, I'm not racist. That's an excellent step in the right direction, but you're only halfway there.
In order for us to ever see a world where people live in harmony, in order for us to ever see a world where everyone is treated with dignity, in order for us to ever get past racism, we need to speak up for what's right. And, more than anything, those of us who have light skin need to check our white privilege and stop taking the easy path of ignoring the things that don't directly affect us, because whether we realize it in the moment or not, racism hurts everyone. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
A world without racism is a world where everyone is nurtured, and everyone has a chance to thrive. In a world without racism, we don't gloss over our differences, and we do more than just tolerate each other. In a world that's over racism, in a world where racism is dead, we embrace our differences. We acknowledge that we all receive the same baptism from Jesus, we all receive the same Holy Spirit, and we all have a special place in the Peaceable Kingdom of God.
Amen.
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