Sermon, "Racism and People of Faith: Log Removal," Matthew 7:1-5

Sermon 9/2/18

Matthew 7:1-5

Racism and People of Faith: Log Removal

Our scripture lesson today is a short but powerful excerpt from Jesus’ longest chunk of teaching. It comes from the gospel of Matthew in what we call the Sermon the Mount. For three chapters in Matthew, Jesus teaches the disciples and the crowds who have gathered to hear him, teaching from a spot on the side of a mountain. He covers a huge range of topics, starting with the Beatitudes, the Blessings, and covering prayer, money, worry, anger, adultery, relationships with our enemies, and more. In the midst of this teaching, we find our text for today. Jesus says, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. The measure we use to judge others is the measure that is used to judge us. Why,” Jesus asks, “can you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but not the log in your own eye? Why do you tell them you’re going to help them fix themselves, when you yourself have a log in your own eye? You hypocrite!” he says. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” The image is vivid and compelling. Does it persuade us?

In my experience, we - and I most certainly am including myself here - we have a remarkable knack for reading the scriptures and seeing so clearly exactly how they apply - to someone else’s life. We hear Jesus speaking and know exactly what our neighbor should do, what the person we’re fighting with should do, what our foes and enemies should do, if only they would listen to Jesus. And then I read this passage, I know Jesus is onto us. Perhaps, even now, we may be saying to ourselves that we know a lot of people who are trying to take a speck out of our eyes, all the while not seeing that they have a log in their own eye. But I want us to try to stop in our tracks right there. Jesus has invited us in this text to self-reflection, self-examination. He has invited us to see that we are not up to the task of judging others, that it is not our task to manage, and that rather if we think that we sincerely, lovingly want to help someone else see things more clearly, we have to first check our own vision, check our own behavior, check our own hearts. Jesus is telling us, telling me, telling the listener, telling the reader, that we may have some logs in our own eyes to remove. The work of honest self-examination is hard. It can be painful to search our spirits and see where we don’t measure up to what we believe is God’s hope and vision for our lives. It can feel overwhelming, like we will never be enough. Or like change it too hard. Or like we’re really more comfortable with our ways than God’s ways when it comes right down to it. And so sometimes, we don’t try very hard to look deeply at what’s in our own souls. We walk around with logs in our eyes.

Today we’re wrapping up our sermon series on Racism and People of Faith. I can tell you this has been a hard series to preach, and I know that it has been sometimes challenging to hear. Today is a little harder still! We know that racism is wrong, and most people rightly reject racist actions and attitudes. But sometimes, our knowledge that racism is wrong and unacceptable prevents us from examining our own attitudes about race. Sometimes, we don’t want to dig very deeply into our feelings related to prejudice or stereotypes. Deep self-examination is hard work, and it certainly isn’t something we can “fix” or “complete” over the course of one sermon or a three-week series. But I hope that today we can give ourselves some courage to look in the mirror and see if there are some logs that need removing.

When I was in college, I was blessed to be part of a small team of young women who got to plan a national gathering of college and university women who wanted to learn more about the United Methodist Women organization. Over the course of a couple of years, we met periodically to plan an event we called, “Young Woman, Rise Up.” Once, during a weekend of meetings, the adult leaders called us back together as a group - we had been meeting in some small teams - to talk to us about something they had observed. They’d observed that the young white women in the room were consistently interrupting the adult women of color in the room. They encouraged us to be more mindful of our interactions, of our ways of speaking, of our habit of speaking over people. They asked us to reflect on patterns, and to consider whether or not and why we were interrupting. And they shared with us that racism - overt or subtle - had no place in our gatherings.

I was so angry. Why? Because I was not a racist, and these people were telling me that I was a racist, and making something out of nothing. I was self-aware enough to be sure that’d I’d interrupted some of the adult leaders - I had lots of brilliant ideas to share, after all. And yes, some of those leaders were black women. But I wasn’t interrupting because they were black. It just happened that way. My intention wasn’t to imply that I didn’t care about what they were saying. I was just excited to share my ideas. I was not a racist. And I resented, strongly, being chastised like a child in this way. When we went back into our small groups, I looked with suspicion, I will admit, at the black woman who was the leader in our group. Was it her? Did she complain about being interrupted? Was she thinking of me when she raised the concern?

Somewhere, though, in the midst of my seething, I tried to pull myself together and listen to my own impulses. I found that I did often want to step in and talk over some of the adult leaders, and it seemed to be women of color more often than not when I felt compelled to interrupt. Why did I do this? What made me, despite my desire, of course, not to act in racist ways, be more likely interrupt a speaker who was black than a speaker who was white? I wasn’t able to answer my own question just then. But I think asking the question was the first time in my life I began to do some true self-reflection when it came to racism. It was the first time I had looked in the mirror to see if there were any logs present. One of the hardest things we will do if we are committed to the work of eliminating racism is self-examination. It is so hard not to be defensive. I believe our intentions our good - we don’t want to judge others based on the color of their skin. But sometimes our good intentions actually stop us from getting to the destination we seek.

My mother had a turn of phrase that she picked up from my grandmother that has stuck with me. When I was little, I would sometimes say, “I didn’t mean to” after I did something wrong, or made a mistake, or did something that resulted in harm to someone or something. And Mom - or Grandma - would respond, “Well, mean not to.” When it comes to racism and prejudice and stereotypes, I think we “don’t mean to” engage in attitudes or actions that are hurtful. But I wonder if we can learn to “mean not to,” to actively check ourselves for logs that need removing.

As I told you during the first week of our sermon series, all the clergy and interested laity in our annual conference are currently attending small group meetings to address the themes of the Imagine No Racism initiative. At our most recent gathering, we watched a Ted-Talk video (http://jerrykang.net/2013/12/11/tedx-immaculate-perception/) about implicit bias. Implicit bias is the unconscious way our brains group things together in our heads, so that we can think and process and react quickly. Implicit bias is usually hidden to us - we’re not aware, moment to moment, of the associations our brains make. It is automatic. The speaker showed us implicit bias at work by doing a simple test of something called the Stroop Effect, which demonstrates how our reaction times can be slowed when our brains are confronted with information that doesn’t belong together in our minds. You see first a column of block letters of all different colors, spelling out different colors. So you see some red block letters that spell RED, or the word BLUE made up of blue letters. Our brains can process that very quickly. It makes sense to us. But it doesn’t take much to confuse our minds. The next column also shows colors spelled out, but now the word and color don’t match. So you might see the word RED but the letters are colored white. Or the word BLUE is spelled out, but filled in with green coloring. If you ask people to say aloud what color these words are, not what the word spells, most people hesitate. We can do it, we can see the letters that spell RED but are colored white and eventually say WHITE, but we can’t do it as quickly as we can when the colors and words match. Our brain has associated the color and the word and we just can’t undo that association as quickly as we can do it when they’re paired together. This is implicit bias at work. We need it for our brains to function as quickly as they do.

The trouble comes when our brains slap together value-laden messages for us without our conscious input. In Implicit Bias tests developed by social psychologists at Harvard, results of thousands of participants over time show that many people who have no explicit bias - that is, they express that they do not have feelings of racial bias - still have implicit bias. When shown images of black faces and white faces, for example, test participants more quickly and more consistently are able to match white faces and positive words like good and beautiful. Conversely, participants are speedier at matching black faces and negative words like bad, ugly, or weapon. These aren’t explicit feelings. They don’t represent what we think we believe. But they represent how our brain has learned to group things together. Our brain does that because of messages we receive from culture, from news, from experiences, from stereotypes - all of these things that gel together in our brains, but are hidden from our conscious thoughts. But, our hidden-even-to-ourselves biases can sometimes make a difference in how we behave, even when we don’t realize why we’re behaving that way. It can make us more likely to feel afraid when we meet someone on the street whose skin color is different than ours. It can make us more likely to give a second chance to someone whose skin color our mind has paired with the idea of “good.” It can make us more likely or less likely to see someone as professional and competent at our work, without even realizing why. It can make us more likely to interrupt people if our brain has sent us the message that their words are less important than our own.  

What can we do then? Can we have an impact on our implicit biases? The answer is good news: yes we can. It turns out that the more we come into contact with people that “don’t fit” the associations that our brains tell us go together, the less power those associations have for us over time. Our implicit biases change when we are exposed to stereotype-busting images and experiences. And we don’t have to be passive in hoping we encounter things that fly in the face of the subtle messages we get elsewhere. We can mean to expose ourselves to other perspectives. We can be intentional. We can pay attention and be purposeful about not discounting voices and experiences and lessons that will help us expand our way of thinking. We can be intentional about seeking out voices and perspectives that are different than our own, that go against what our brain is telling us to group together. Some simple things have a big impact: One of my niece’s favorite things is Doc McStuffins. Doc McStuffins is a Disney show about a young African-American girl who is the Doctor to all her toys and toy friends, just like her mom is a doctor. If Siggy could be Doc McStuffins, her life would be complete. She’s got a strong association in her 4-year old mind that young black girls are smart and competent and she wants to be just like them. My personal commitment this year has been related to the books I read. I try to read a certain number of books every year, and I’ve noticed that if I am not intentional, most of the books I was reading were by white male authors. White male authors aren’t bad! But there many other voices and perspectives that I’m hearing less frequently. I’m trying to correct that, intentionally looking to read more books authored by women and people of color. It’s not a solution, but it is a starting place, helping me to see others, and see myself more clearly.     

Jesus calls us to examine our own hearts. Let’s try to raise the veil on the hidden messages our brain receives all the time about race, and to acknowledge the explicit stereotypes and judgments we hold about people who are different from us, who are of a different race, or ethnicity, or nationality than we are. Jesus calls us, too, to be gentle with each other as we do this hard work. We’re learning. Transformation rarely comes from banging each other over the head in judgment.

I shared with you the first week that Bishop Webb asked those of us participating in Imagine No Racism to consider signing a covenant. Today, you have a copy in your bulletin. It reads, “Before God and with my family in Christ, I vow, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to oppose and work to eliminate the influence of racism from systems, institutions, relationships, and my own life.” If you are ready, I ask you to consider signing this covenant too. I’m not going to ask you to turn them in, or to raise your hands if you plan on signing. It’s a covenant to encourage your own self-reflection today. But I hope you will seriously consider signing the covenant, or figuring out what might be holding you back. I hope you will read it more than just today. And I hope that together, we will do just as we vow: Work to eliminate the influence of racism from systems, institutions, relationships, and our own lives. With the help of God, may it be so. Amen.

Sermon, "Racism and People of Faith: Crumbs," Matthew 15:21-28

Sermon 8/26/18

Matthew 15:21-28

Racism and People of Faith: Crumbs

Today we’re continuing the hard work of thinking and talking about racism and our life of faith. It isn’t easy, but you’re already doing something meaningful to address racism: you’re here today. I’m not kidding - unless you weren’t here last week, and didn’t know what we’d be talking about today, you’ve already made a choice that’s important: you’re here again, while we engage in this conversation about racism. Last week was hard! Talking about racism can be hard. But you came back! That has meaning, and I’m thankful that however you’re feeling, you were willing to come and be here again.

I had a clear sense of where I wanted to start last week. And I have some clear ideas about what I want to say next Sunday. But for this Sunday, I’ve been struggling. I imagined that I might share with you some statistics or comments about racism today. I was looking up facts to share with you - like how people of color are more likely to receive longer jail sentences than white people for the same crimes, or how people who have “black-sounding” names are less likely to get called for a job interview than applicants with “white-sounding” names, or how people of color regularly get charged higher interest rates on loans than white people of similar financial means. (See, I snuck some things in there anyway.) But, facts, as clear cut as they sometimes might seem, do not usually change hearts. Our experiences change hearts. Stories draw us in and change our hearts. And encounters with Jesus change hearts. As usual, if we stay with the scripture, we’ll find our place and our call to action and transformation.  

Our gospel lesson for today is a challenging one. We read that Jesus is traveling to Tyre and Sidon. We’re not given any reason for his journey, and it is out of the way from where he was - Gennesaret - and where he goes - back to the border of the Sea of Galilee. Tyre and Sidon were mostly populated by Gentiles - that is non-Jewish folks - and more specifically it was a region populated by people the Bible refers to as Canaanites. Back in Genesis, when God first tells Abraham that he will be a great nation, and that God has a new home for what will become the Israelite people, the land God is talking about is already full of people: people called the Canaanites. The meaning of the name Canaan is a little unclear, but some suggest “to be low, humble, or subjugated” as a possible meaning. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan) When the Israelites eventually occupy the Promised Land, the Canaanites, who had already been living there, are defeated by Joshua and his army, and pushed out. They are never wiped out entirely though, and by Jesus’ time, Canaanites are a large and diverse religious ethnic group that live in close proximity to the Jewish people. Today, descendants of the Canaanites make up a large part of the population of Lebanon, neighbor of Israel.  Race isn’t present in the Bible in the same way we would speak about it today. The categories of race that are common to us today are fairly recent ways of thinking about populations of people. But ethnic division was certainly present in the scriptures, along with hatred and animosity based on ethnic differences. Canaanites and Jews had different religions, different practices, different traditions.

So, Jesus travels to a predominantly Canaanite region, far outside of his usual path of travel, for some unknown reason. A Canaanite woman immediately approaches him, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” We don’t know how she knew to seek healing through Jesus - she must have heard something about him, his reputation. Jesus ignores her. Ouch. The text says, “He did not answer her at all.” But the disciples aren’t satisfied with that - they want Jesus to actively discourage her, sending her away, to stop her shouting. Now, at least, Jesus responds to her. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Has Jesus ever before turned anyone down for healing? Still, the woman persists. She kneels before Jesus and pleads, “Lord, help me.” Jesus answers her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Some biblical scholars try to soften the blow, pointing out that the word here for “dogs” is diminutive: “little dogs.” But insinuating that someone is a dog was as insulting then as it is now. Jesus says his work, his mission is for Israelites. And still, still, this Canaanite woman who needs healing for her daughter is not deterred. She doesn’t disagree with Jesus. She just stretches what he’s said, turning his words back. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” “Woman, great is your faith!” Jesus responds. And her daughter is healed immediately, and Jesus, apparently accomplishing what he intended in the region, heads back to the Sea of Galilee.

So what is this text all about? It’s hard to read about Jesus in this exchange. It doesn’t mesh well with our picture of his kindness and compassion, his love, his constant work to draw marginalized people to the center. There are two primary schools of thought about this passage. Some scholars think that we get to witness Jesus learning. We get to see his idea of his mission expanding. The Canaanite woman teaches Jesus about the broadness of God’s mission. I’ve sometimes been drawn to this interpretation, even though it is uncomfortable, because I’m hesitant when we try to explain away uncomfortable parts of the scripture, and I think that we have to be careful not to let our interpretation of the text be motivated by our desire to find a way to get Jesus off the hook for the way he interacts with this woman.  

But there’s too much “set up” for me to rest with that interpretation either. This passage takes place in Matthew’s gospel right after Jesus spends time talking about how it is what comes from inside of us that makes us clean or unclean, what comes from our hearts that defiles, and not what comes from the outside in, external things. It seems strange, then, that he immediately goes from that conversation to a Canaanite region to insist that the woman’s exterior wrappings make her ineligible for God’s healing. Also, in both Matthew and Mark, the other gospel where this story appears, Jesus has already healed people who are not Jewish by the time we get to this story. He doesn’t hesitate in those other accounts or talk about “the lost sheep of Israel.” And again, he goes way out of his way to get to Tyre and Sidon for no reason that we know of other than this very interaction. The whole thing reads like a lesson, a demonstration that is set up for our benefit. Jesus is letting us see the breadth of God’s mission in action. The text may never settle smoothly for me or for you, but hopefully, we can focus on what it is Jesus might want us to learn.

Here’s what I come away with: First, Jesus is intentional about crossing some boundaries, going out of his way to put himself in a place where he can build a connection with someone from a different culture than his own. He doesn’t say that he wants to be in relationship with all kinds of people, and then sit and wait for these relationships to fall into his lap. He is intentional, and enters into spaces and places where he will be the one who is the stranger, where he will be the one who doesn’t fit in, where he will have made the effort to break down barriers. Second, Jesus is open to what he hears from this woman, and changes his actions based on what she says. Jesus, or at least Matthew, apparently wants us to see this demonstration of Jesus having a change of heart, and being impacted by the witness of this Canaanite woman. And third, this brave, bold woman refuses to let go of her place at the table, even if there are only crumbs left to be offered to her. She insists there is room for her in God’s plan, and she’s right. I love the way that she advocates so fiercely on behalf of her family.

I think that we can take these lessons from this across-ethnic-lines conversation and draw on them in our ongoing quest to confront racism. If there was one “learning” action I could get you to take away from this sermon series, it would be to convincing you to read Anxious to Talk about It: Helping White Christians Talk Faithfully about Racism by Carolyn B. Helsel. I found this short book to be extremely helpful, and a great starting place particularly if you’ve found thinking about and talking about racism to be challenging. In her book, Helsel talks about being responsible vs. response-able for racism. She says, “Often, persons sharing their frustrations about racism need you to simply hear them, not to take personal responsibility. You can be response-able, having the ability to respond with compassion and care … Alternatively, responding by trying to explain, rationalize, defend, or otherwise dismiss their experience limits your response-ability, and you are less likely to build a meaningful relationship with them.” (25) She continues, “Building relationships with people of color involves being able to respond to anger without becoming overwhelmed or afraid or defensive … Building relationships with people who have been discriminated against means believing that their experiences of discrimination are real, and that their feelings are what we would feel if we were in the same situation on a daily basis. … We are called to respond by being witnesses, accompanying our brothers and sisters, [our siblings] and supporting them in whatever ways we can.” (28, emphasis mine.)

What do we do to bear witness to racism in the world? I think Helsel’s suggestions sound remarkably like what Jesus does in our gospel text. She says that the spiritual practice of bearing witness involves two key components. First, she says, to bear witness, you have to be aware of the experiences of others, and to be aware of the experience of others, you have to have close enough relationships to witness the things others experience. If you are white, you cannot bear witness to racism unless you have real relationships with people of color. We have to intentionally cultivate relationships with people who have different experiences than we do, something we see Jesus do in the gospels all the time, including today’s text. Second, she says, to bear witness, you have to “bear” something. You have to bear someone’s experiences alongside them. That doesn’t mean, she writes, that “you know exactly what they felt like when things happen, but it means in that moment you are recognizing the pain these experiences caused them, and you are not dismissing their experiences. To bear witness means to sincerely bear what they are telling you, not to suggest how their experiences could be reinterpreted … You are honoring their sharing of these experiences with you.” (114)

We must cross boundaries on purpose, with intention. We are called to listen to and believe the experiences of racism that people are vulnerable enough to share with us. And we must be willing to learn and change based on what we hear, bearing witness. I am thankful for the witness of people who, experiencing the harmful pain of racism, boldly speak up to claim a place at the table, when we’re tempted to insist there is no room. In response, I hope those of us who are white listen, connect, open our hearts to transformation, and get ready to offer more than crumbs. Our God of abundance always has more than crumbs for us. May we offer a feast of love to others in God’s name. Amen.

Sermon, "Racism and People of Faith: Clothed with Christ," Genesis 1:26-27, Colossians 3:9-17

Sermon 8/19/18

Colossians 3:9-17, Genesis 1:26-27

Racism and People of Faith: Clothed with Christ

I grew up, as many of you know, in Rome, NY. Rome, at the time, was home to Griffiss Air Force Base, and so the community as a whole was a little more racially and ethnically diverse than it might have been otherwise. But my own personal childhood experiences didn’t really reflect this. Though I went to Rome schools, I actually lived in Westernville, a tiny two-street town, surrounded by farms. Population about 500. Westernville was not a racially or ethnically diverse community. And Rome had lots of elementary schools - eleven at the time - and so the small group of us from Westernville were bused to Rome to a school that encompassed students from a small sliver of Rome that was home mostly to wealthy, white families. In my whole elementary school, I remember there being one African-American family - the family of the pastor of the Pentecostal church in Rome. But when I was in fifth grade, my school hired a new gym teacher: Coach Washington. Everyone loved Coach Washington. He was young and cool and funny. He was also black. I loved him, even if he did call me “Beth Swift” or “Beth Slow” depending on his mood and my performance in gym on a given day. But when I described him to my mom, this new teacher, I told her everything about him except that he was black, which, in my very white school, was certainly his most distinguishing physical feature. I’d learned though, not explicitly but in practice, that commenting on someone’s race, their skin color, was rude. I had a vague sense of what racism was, and I believed that it was wrong to treat people differently because of their skin color, and I didn’t want to do that, and so my best strategy was just to pretend that the difference didn’t exist. We might talk, affirmatively, about being “colorblind.” I didn’t see color, just people, I would like to think. But that wasn’t quite true. I saw the differences between me and Coach Washington just as easily as I could see the difference between me and people with blond hair. I just thought that mentioning our difference was bad. Unfortunately, the subtext of that impulse is the hidden belief that being different is bad. Often, when we don’t want to talk about things it is because we think of them as bad, shameful, or embarrassing. We don’t talk about things when they make us uncomfortable. We hide things that we don’t want to see the light of day. And in the shadows, then, the things that we hide away can become hurtful and destructive.

This summer, in Rome, fliers encouraging folks to join the KKK appeared around town. I am thankful that the pastor at my childhood church, Rev. Brian Lothridge, has been leading the congregation in a strong response against racism, encouraging the church and community to speak out boldly against racism - overt and covert racism, individual and systemic racism. It is not easy, if we’ve been used to avoiding conversations about race and racism, to confront hatred. But I believe it is necessary - as good neighbors, as followers of Jesus, as children of God.

Today we’re beginning a new sermon series called Racism and People of Faith. It was back during my annual worship planning retreat in January that I schedule this series for this summer, and lots of things happening in the world led me to feel we needed to be talking about race and racism, from the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville last summer, to reactions to NFL members kneeling during the National Anthem, to the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the shooting of unarmed black men. We have things we need to talk about. But in the way that God is often at work, the timing made even more sense than I realized. This year, our Annual Conference has begun to address racism in more specific and concrete ways through the Imagine No Racism initiative. The initiative is a response to action taken by our jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church, the body that encompasses United Methodist Churches from Maine to West Virginia. At the quadrennial meeting in 2016, delegates adopted a statement that included this call to action:

“The people of faith called United Methodist have not mobilized nor been proactive enough [in responding to racism]. While there have been pronouncements, calls to prayer, moments of silence and candlelight vigils, we have not moved from rhetoric to action. Racism, white privilege and white supremacy which are inconsistent with the kingdom of God, are still the order of the day ... Therefore, in an effort to address, confront and otherwise demand systemic, fundamental and institutional change both within the church and the world we strongly encourage that … each annual conference do the following:

1. … Confront y/our racism, and affirm that, while all lives matter in God's eyes, and the current cultural and social context of this country, Black lives and all lives of color really do matter.
2. … Collectively and as individuals commit to lead the church in healing the wounds caused by unchecked racism, white privilege and internalized oppression...  

4. … Initiate ongoing internal and external conversations on white privilege, white supremacy, racism and oppression, including internalized oppression... [r]ealizing that viewing each other through the eyes of Christ and remaining at the table during the hard difficult discussion is the only way/path to new genuine relationships and partnerships.” (http://www.unyumc.org/images/uploads/NEJ_Call_to_Action_2016.pdf)

Our Annual Conference responded to this call with the Imagine No Racism initiative. All clergy and interested lay folks have begun meeting in small groups this summer, using a curriculum designed to help white people confront their own racism, and to help work toward reconciliation and change. I am proud to share that our own Cadie Hockenbary is our District Advocate, one of the folks responsible for coordinating groups around our region, offering support and guidance, and helping us stay on task. I can tell you already that the conversations we are having are not easy. I’ve told you before that I’m a conflict avoider at heart. I want everyone to get along, and I want everyone to like me. But one of my goals, my commitments to God and myself as we do this work is to not let my desire to avoid conflict result in being silent in the face of racism. My being uncomfortable is not a good excuse to let racism go unchecked. If you’re a conflict-avoider like me, maybe we can make the commitment to speaking up together. The Bishop has asked us all to sign a Covenant that reads, “Before God and with my family in Christ, I vow, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to oppose and work to eliminate the influence of racism from systems, institutions, relationships, and my own life.” At the end of this sermon series, I plan to offer you all an opportunity to sign this covenant as well, and I hope you will prayerfully and thoughtfully consider your response.

Our first scripture reading today from Genesis is a short excerpt from near the end of the hymn of creation in the very first chapter of the Bible. We read in verse 27, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” I think this is one of the most powerful, most important verses of scripture in the whole Bible. It tells us, right from the start, that we - human beings - we are created in God’s very image. We, God’s creation, are reflections of God’s very being. Not just some of us. But all of us. We bear God’s image in our identities. More than that: God’s image is reflected both in maleness and femaleness. Written in the context of a patriarchal culture, that’s a pretty bold and important statement. Both maleness and femaleness reflect God’s very image. A couple verses later, repeating the pattern of God’s reaction to creation, we read, “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Femaleness and maleness reflect God’s image and it is indeed very good. I think, then, that we can extrapolate. The whole diversity of human creation - from red hair and brown hair, older people and younger people, taller and shorter people, people with white skin or beige skin or brown skin or black skin - we all reflect the image of God. God is so much, so big, so beyond our containing that no one gender or race or hair or eye color or size or shape can on its own reflect God’s image. So we all do. Every iteration of human creation is a part of the image of God. Every one of us.

Our second reading is from the letter to the Colossians. Colossae was a city in what is now the southwestern part of Turkey. Most Christians there in the early church were Gentiles, which means that they were not Jewish and did not convert to Judaism as part of their journey to become followers of Jesus. As our passage begins, the author uses language that might sound familiar to us - it is similar to what Paul says in both Corinthians and Galatians, and some biblical scholars think this language was part of the earliest baptismal liturgies in the church. We read, “You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” We’re called to clothe ourselves with compassion, humility, kindness, and love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. We’re reminded that we are called into one body. And we’re to do everything in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to God. In Galatians, Paul speaks similarly about there being no male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free in Christ. Instead, we are clothed in Christ. We “put on” Jesus. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, they are new creations, and the old has gone away.

I think we can read these words in Colossians or Galatians or 2 Corinthians and think that we’re meant, in Christ, to sort of cover up or erase the differences between us. No male or female, no slave or free, no circumcised or uncircumcised, no different nationalities or races. But I don’t think that’s what it means. After all, followers of Christ in the early church did not, in fact, live as if there were no differences between people. What changes, in Christ, is the status assigned to those differences. In society, women had an inferior status to men. Slaves had no power and their masters had all the control. Some Jewish Christians looked down on Gentile Christians. Some nations and races were hated and despised. But in Christ, we have true equal status, because Christ is all and in all. The differences between us are not erased, but we are brought side by side in Christ. Any power differences, and elevated status we give to one group over another is false and a failure to reflect God’s intention in the way we order our world. As Paul says in Corinthians, as we say in communion, as we sing in our hymns, “we, though many, are one.” We are not one because we are the same. We are one because we belong to Christ, made in God’s image. Beautifully diverse, and yet one in Christ, with equal standing before God.

In his last Sunday sermon before he was assassinated, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached a message titled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC on March 31st, 1968. In his message, King said,

“No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

“.... [Our] world is a neighborhood … We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured…

“[We] are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame. It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism. Something positive must be done.” (https://stanford.io/1ABRiXS)

Friends, it is 50 years later, and this work is still urgent. The disease of racism has no place in the body of Christ. We cannot live into God’s vision for our world when we have not confronted and eliminated racism. We cannot truly embrace the reality of our mutual creation in the image of God, nor the hope of newness in Christ if we cannot affirm that indeed Christ is all and in all. Please, engage with me in the weeks ahead in this work. Search your hearts. And work with me to clothe ourselves with Christ, to clothe ourselves with love, which binds us together. Let the word of Christ dwell in us deeply, as we remember, again and again, that we are many, and yet all created in God’s image, and yet equal before God, and yet one in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.