Equality is Part of God's Dream for the World

Over the past couple of weeks, we have all grappled with the sensitive subjects of race, equality and justice in the light of the George Zimmerman verdict that has captivated our nation. I have been reading your thoughts and feelings through your letters to the editor, various comments and through social media. Many people have opined on the merits of our justice system, the status of racial equality in our nation, and the realities of living in community with one another.

So where does faith come into this situation? How do we react faithfully, and find the hope of God in the midst of such a climate of polarization?

First, let’s establish that it isn’t faithful for us to be “colorblind” as some people have suggested. To ignore our cultural, racial, and ethnic identities is to ignore a beautiful gift our creator has given us all. We all have to come to a realization of how we enter into the dance of life. For instance, I am a white man and I have to acknowledge that.

However, I can’t suggest that I know what it’s like to be a woman, or a person of color, or other backgrounds other than that of my own. I come to the conversation with my own identity, and we must all strive to be like that.

Secondly, while our race is a gift from God, the gifts that God has given us have not been treated equally in our collective history. We cannot be faithful by simply saying that since we were not around during the Civil War, or for some of us during the racial tensions of Jim Crow South, we are somehow not responsible for the implications of the past. Since the dawn of humankind, God has been about reconciling, God has brought the people who often fell wayward back to God’s self. But God was also clear that we are on this journey together, we are a chain that stretches throughout time, and we cannot ignore the past simply because we weren’t there.

So how can we be faithful? How can we address the tensions of our time and find grace in the midst of it? The reality is that we must recognize our differences, and celebrate them! We must work with organizations in our community such as Habitat for Humanity, Iredell Christian Ministries and others that reach across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and political bounds to give and receive the love of Christ. For it is Christ who reminds us that our neighbor isn’t always the people who look like us or sound like us. It could be a boy on his way to get Skittles, it might be a man who is on trial, or someone so foreign from us we couldn’t comprehend God loving them.

God is all about making the circle wider. God is all about grace, and reconciliation and redemption. So when we are faithful to the conversations about race and the dignity of human life, we are faithful to a God who loves all of us as his own. 

The Weight of Our Past Brings the Hope of God’s Future

This past week I was with the youth group from the church I serve on a mission trip to Washington D.C. We were working with different organizations and church groups to better the community space that so many people share throughout that marvelous city. On Wednesday night we had free time to go and see the sights, sounds, smells and taste of the city and we ended up at the Lincoln Memorial as so many tourists often do. I ended up walking around with two of the youth as the others vied for photos we veered off to look at the words inscribed in the shrine to the 16^th President.

            The words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address pierce the room with their powerful implications, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” The girls with me asked the typical historical questions but I couldn’t help but wonder if they knew what those words really meant for the people of the 1860’s and the people of today.

            The nation in 1865 when Lincoln gave that speech was bloodied, broken and in need of some hope, and though our conflicts are vastly different than those of the Civil War era the complexities of many issues we face are no less daunting. We see the horrors of war and genocide abroad, we see political and spiritual infighting that threaten the fabric of everything we hold dear. But it is precisely in those moments when God does God’s best work.

            God reminds us that in our brokenness, weakness and despair that there is a life beyond even the greatest American dream. God reminds us that the hope of our time isn’t found in the leaders of this world but in a Jewish Rabbi who thought that the woman at the well had more wisdom than that of the religious folk of the time. Thousands of years later God took a boy born in a log cabin and made that boy the president who led our nation through a dark chapter. So we collectively and individually remember what God has done and will continue to do.

            Back to those girls who saw the monument with me, though they are young and still have so much to see in life as we all as a youth group walked back to our home for the week they gave me hope. They gave me hope because though the weight of history stood before them, and at times it seemed foreign, mysterious and far from any conceptions they had, their week was full of exactly what we as a people need: hope. So this week, when the weight of our time and history that has occurred before our time stares us in the face, let us remember a faith that gave grace to life, and hope that stands eternal through the ages. 

Remember Whose You Are

           There’s a Jewish liturgy that goes like this, “From Egypt, the house of bondage, we were delivered; at Sinai, amid peals of thunder, we bound ourselves to His purpose. Inspired by prophets and instructed by sages, we survived oppression and exile, time and again overcoming the forces that would have destroyed us. Our failings are many — our faults are great — yet it has been our glory to bear witness to our God, and to keep alive in dark ages the vision of a world redeemed.”

            We come to this week with divisions, differences and realities with complexities far from being

 solved. However this nation bids us remember this week of a group of people who believed in what they held to be true enough to write a Declaration of Independence. They were far from perfect, and often fell short of the high and lofty ideals they aspired to in their quest for liberty. However their intentions to make a nation better than what they knew before can be a lesson to us all in the context of faith.

            Let us give thanks to our Creator that this is a place where equality is cherished and all faiths are respected. Let us forever remember that in our time we are called to be citizens of two lands, this nation and the Kingdom of God. There is tension in that, because God’s will for us doesn’t always match where our nation wants to head.

            Throughout this week of sentiments for our nation, may we always keep our eyes on the Kingdom of God. May we give thanks that we live in a place where we are allowed to aspire to such heights. When the people of the Jewish faith recall their story, they acknowledge what has happened, good and bad. They remind themselves that the glory of their lives isn’t their political party, their country of origin, or their views on an issue. The glory of being alive is bearing witness to the Divine and the world that is redeemed through that Spirit.

            Friends we live in such interesting times. We cannot shy away from the issues we face, and we must do so in the spirit that God is working through us. This may come in various forms for different people, but in the end the redemptive purpose God has in mind for us will come through the unity we find in the grace extended to each of us.

            Celebrate this week, remember that in Christ there is no east or west, no Democrat or Republican, our nationalities become strangely dim in the light of God’s love. In the end, we’re not so different after all. For we were made to manifest the glory of God.