Sunday's sermon at Highlands re: White Privilege

“The enormous race complications with which God seems about to punish this nation must increasingly claim our sober attention, study and thought.”

I found that in a 1903 book written in the aftermath of the failed Reconstruction period following the Civil War and in the early days of Jim Crow. The book, “The Souls of Black People” was written by W.E.B. Dubois. You should read it to learn about what Dubois called “the two-ness” of black people, QUOTE an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings in one dark body.”

116 years have passed since Dubois wrote those words. This nation still punishes itself with enormous race complications because we never gave the problem “our sober attention, study and thought.”

The cover of your bulletin is from the PCUSA Confession of 1967, which along with the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a few other writings, form the Constitutional documents of the Presbyterian Church called The Book of Confessions.  

People are often misled by the word “confession.” Confession is associated with admission of wrongdoing. Criminals “confess” they committed a crime. Right?

In Christian tradition, however, confession means to take a stand for what you believe. Confessions are statements of what Presbyterians believe now and what we believed at other times and in other circumstances of history.

I went to a Methodist seminary and was ordained in the Christian Church (DOC). These Confessional statements were not a part of my seminary studies. But, the more I learn about Presbyterians though, the more I think I’d like to become one.

The Confession of 1967 is the only specifically American confession in the Book of Confessions, adopted in large part because of the turbulence of the 60’s, including the “come-to-Jesus” days of the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism and environmentalism, and the divisive war in Vietnam. 

Those times challenged all faiths to revisit what they stood for. The 2^nd Vatican Council was reformulating Roman Catholic thought and practice, while Presbyterians were developing the Confession of 1967, its first new statement of faith in three centuries.

The Confession of 1967 noted God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ, that the church's mission of reconciliation is the heart of the gospel in any age, but, as its drafters wrote, the 60s generation stood in “peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.” Half a century later, it is clear that our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.

The Confession continues, “In Jesus of Nazareth true humanity was realized for all.” Were those not the words troubled Christians needed to hear as their country and their world unraveled in 1967? Are those not the words troubled Christians need to hear as our country and our world unravels in 2019?

Luke tells us Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. There is no “region between Samaria and Galilee,” just a border line visible only on a map. So, Jesus is not talking geography. He’s talking theology. He’s somewhere between two cultures; the Jews and the Samarians.

Jesus stands between people who view one another with suspicion, where the tension between ethnic and religious differences is palpable. This story is not about gratitude; it’s about attitude.

As he entered a village, 10 lepers approach him, keeping their distance as good lepers should. They holler, “Jesus, have mercy on us!” Jesus looks to where the voices are coming from, saw them, and said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” As they went, they were made clean. 

Jesus told them to do what they should do under Levitical law, go to the priest, show him you are clean; if you are, the priest will give you a clean bill of health and you will be free to re-join the community. One saw that he was healed, turned back, praised God, prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. We are told he was a Samaritan, the implication is that the other 9 were not, that they, like Jesus, are Jews.

Jesus asked, “Wait. Weren’t there 10 of you? Where are the others? None of them returned to praise God except this foreigner, who most people in my religious and social circles loathe?”

It’s easy to preach this story to be about gratitude and ingratitude and it is often preached that way. But, keep in mind the words of The Confession of 1967. “The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ.” The key word being “reconciliation.” We witness in the story of the lepers Jesus encounters in that space between two cultures as God’s work of reconciliation.

Tomorrow is Columbus Day, a holiday celebrating that day more than 500 years ago when Columbus came to the Americas. The arrival of Columbus and the Europeans who followed him was a calamity of catastrophic proportions. Over time, the population was decimated through war, disease, enslavement, forced displacement and outright murder.

White European colonizers had Christian cover, something called the “Discovery Doctrine,” the ruthless notion that land they “discovered” belonged to them, regardless that it was occupied by Native peoples who were stripped of their ancestral lands and cultural heritage through forced assimilation in brutal Christian missions and government-run boarding schools, injustices that are not ancient history but lasted well into the 20th century.

American Indians were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924 and were not given the right to vote until 1948. They were not granted religious freedom or the right to determine the welfare of children in their communities until 1978. The effects of colonization are clear today.

2019, is also the 400^th anniversary of the day the first African slaves arrived in what would become the United States. Both events happened a long time ago and yet the memory and the legacy of both events continue to plague us, as the Bible would say, to this very day.

For centuries, blacks and Native Americans were treated as lepers were treated in the time of Christ. Today, some white folks have finally figured it out. We’re the ones with leprosy. Our white privilege permits us to ignore the spots on our own skin generation upon generation.

Remember when Thomas doubted and Jesus said, “Look at my wounds”? If you doubt white privilege exists, just look at the wounds it’s left on the bodies and minds of people of color. Those wounds are evident in every aspect of life in America from criminal justice and child welfare to medical care, housing, employment, wealth distribution.

I encourage you to read the NY Times special edition called “The 1619 Project.” It will open your eyes to the extent to which the 250 years of slavery, from the day the first slaves arrived until the day Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, contaminated everything about America from its politics to it economics, its social structure, religion, and what passes for Christianity today.

I want you to hear this. The European Christians who came to the New World reconstructed Jesus into something Matthew, Mark, Luke and John could not recognize. From the day they arrived, they set out to destroy Native peoples and their culture and forced Africans into slavery and to do those things demanded they fundamentally change the nature of the God they worshipped and the Bible they read.

The atrocities of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s redefined Christianity as they defined America and continue to define us today because we fear our white privilege is at risk if we allow Christianity to be defined by God’s work of reconciliation in Christ.

As the church needed a Confession of 1967, we need a Confession of 2019. Our schools failed to educate Americans about the atrocities perpetrated against people of color from the day Europeans Christians first came to the New World to this very day. Now, it’s up the church.

I invite, indeed, I implore you. Read a book or two about the slave experience, about Reconstruction and Jim Crow, about the Civil Rights struggle. Read “The 1619 Project” in the NY Times. Read about white privilege. If you have Netflix, watch Chelsea Handler’s documentary entitled “Hello Privilege. It’s me, Chelsea” and “Living Undocumented.”  

ON Sunday November 3, we are going to watch the documentary “White Savior: Racism in the American Church.” It’s the basis for a new Confession.

God didn’t build a border around the US so that we could protect our privilege. Enslavement of people of color and the genocide perpetrated on Indigenous Peoples is not ancient history. It is continuing history. So, what do we do? 

Here’s the ask. Ready? I’m going to ask this congregation to consider a bold move.

I’m asking you to spend the next few months praying about racism and white privilege, giving it what WEB Dubois called, “our sober attention, study and thought.” and then I am going to ask you to return the stolen land on which this church was built to its original owners.

There’s a story in 1^st Kings about Naboth’s vineyard and a king who killed Naboth so he could have the peasant’s vineyard, which the king coveted. The king was confronted afterward by a Hebrew prophet who said to him you cannot murder and reap the rewards of having done so.  

We are going to have that conversation in order that we might discern God’s will and on Martin Luther King’s birthday next January, we are going to take a congregational vote on whether we should do it. And if we determine it is God’s will, we will set out to encourage other Presbyterians and other Jesus followers to do the same thing.

And we are going to face how we benefit from the worst of our history and have a conversation about how we need to cleanse ourselves of it as much as those 10 lepers needed to be cleansed. 

Like that 10^th leper, we’ll find our way back to Christ where we can genuinely and in deep gratitude witness to God’s reconciliation. You see, it’s pretty hard to do that honestly while standing on stolen land and clinging to our white privilege. AMEN