[todaysdate]
By Eric Blauer
The Apostle Paul was good friends with a Christian slave owner and the New Testament contains one of his personal letters. It’s worth reading, it’s called Philemon, but don’t go to if you want a railing condemnation on the scourge of slavery and racism. You won’t find it. Instead read it with Gospel eyes, that’s an approach to racial reconciliation that often gets lost in the passion of personal or corporate condemnation of whatever injustice is plaguing people.
But the Gospel is a seed that needs to be planted within the human soul in order to bear fruit that will displace injustice in us, through us and around us.
“For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus…”(Galatians 3:26-29)
I found myself at odds with what I read in the New Testament and what I heard in some of the presentations and views expressed at the ‘Coffee Talk’’ on Racism and Prejudice. I approach the issue from a biblical point of reference and at the core of that is the Gospel “ministry and word” of reconciliation. The heart of the Gospel is reconciliation between God and humanity, which then results in reconciliation in relationships with one another and is expressed in right relationship with creation.
This is beautifully clear in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21:
“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
In order for that reconciliation to fully come alive there has to be a new spiritual birth. That inner transformation and outward reordering of life is pictured in the watery baptism Christian’s take, that proclaims a true spiritual death and rebirth. The result is a new life and the old life is gone. It is buried, never to be dug up, reanimated or consulted as to how to live or be, in the new creation of God. This new life is so real, in some ways, we don’t recognize anyone as they were but instead embrace who they are now in Christ.
“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
A lot of secular and even some sacred, racial reconciliation approaches seek to bring about reconciliation through rectifying a whole complex construct of historical, personal and societal systems and structures. The ever expanding depth, height and length to which connectivity and culpability has grown, imprisons people and communities in a vicious cycle of blame, demands and increasing division.
At the Coffee Talk the image of Jesus violently overturning table in the Jewish temple was referenced as an example of a powerful political and religious confrontation of systems of human government that oppress, exclude and provide privilege to some and not others. I agree wholeheartedly with that, but I think the examination of the story has to go farther than systems but should expose our own hearts, which is a central tenant of true Christian repentance.
Discipleship means we pursue transformative change from within and then outward things begin to alter or if they don’t, we are able to interact with them differently, as changed people.
An example of this is the New Testament’s letter called Philemon, who was a Christian slave owner and close friend of Paul. Paul had met Philemon’s young slave Onesimus in prison and led him to faith in Christ. It’s a provocative letter that cuts against the grain of some progressive racial rhetoric today. In fact, for some people this letter is an embarrassment to even acknowledge, instead of a glimpse into a liberating way of life that equalizes first from within and then slowly and sometimes dramatically from without.
“For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while(he was probably a runaway slave), that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”(Philemon 1:15-16)
True reconciliation happens face to face and it always involves letting go, making right, renewing the mind and allowing love to replace hate. All of this can happen even when temples still stand. One can overturn how their lives are conducted within temple structures, until eventually the temples themselves are burned to the ground. Jesus prophesied both in his confrontational over-turning of tables and his prophesy about Jerusalem’s eventual destruction (Luke 19:41-44).
I see these challenges and opportunities in my own neighborhood. Within one large block of my house there are people from Cuba, Japan, Ethiopia, Burma, Russia, Vietnam, Native Americans and African Americans all struggling to figure out how to live here peacefully and productively. I don’t buy the idea that only one group of those people get a pass on their own responsibility in the word and ministry of reconciliation. Everyone of those people groups have endured tragic stories of oppression, injustice, prejudice and genocide.
I believe the real hope for racial healing is the biblical ministry and word of reconciliation. It takes the “word,” both academic and religious and the “ministry” of reconciliation to see justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an overflowing stream.
I think this tension is like the whip fashioned by Jesus, that drives out the “buyers and the sellers” within the temple systems we have created. We are all guilty and in need of repentance and reconciliation and God is calling peacemakers to follow him into the waters of baptism, to emerge with vision, hope and courage to face the challenges of our day.
Pope Francis said in his, Apostolic Exhortation: “Ideas – conceptual elaborations – are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis. Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism and nominalism, capable at most of classifying and defining, but certainly not calling to action. What calls us to action are realities illuminated by reason. Formal nominalism has to give way to harmonious objectivity. Otherwise, the truth is manipulated, cosmetics take the place of real care for our bodies. We have politicians – and even religious leaders – who wonder why people do not understand and follow them, since their proposals are so clear and logical. Perhaps it is because they are stuck in the realm of pure ideas and end up reducing politics or faith to rhetoric. Others have left simplicity behind and have imported a rationality foreign to most people.” http://bit.ly/Q9ypf7:
I think this quote speaks to a number of comments threads on Facebook that I have been engaged in. This is what I have been saying about the challenge and failure of some in academia in helping with racial reconciliation.