(This sermon was preached in 1997 and needs updated examples)
There was once a subway car, almost empty, except for a Chinese man and a Jewish man, who sat in their seats, silently, holding their newspapers high as they read. Suddenly the Jewish man stood up, rolled up his newspaper, walked over and whacked the Chinese man over the head.
"Hey! Cut it out! What did you do that for?" said the Chinese man, putting his arm up to defend himself against any further blows. The Jewish man sat down, and said, "That was for Pearl Harbor."
The Chinese man said, "It was the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor. I'm Chinese. We didn't have anything to do with it."
But the Jewish man said, "Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, . . . . It's all the same."
They glared at each other for a moment, then they went back to reading their newspapers and all was quiet.
But then, suddenly the Chinese man stood up, rolled up his newspaper, whacked the Jewish man over the head, and said, "And that's for the Titanic."
The Jewish man said, "The Titanic? It was an iceberg that sank the Titanic. I didn't have anything to do with that!" But the Chinese man answered, "Iceberg, Rosenberg, Goldberg, . . . It's all the same."
There is a very human tendency in every nation and every age to lose sight of the individuality of people who are different from us, to take the lazy way and lump them all together. Its a tendency that is all too easily learned. But it can lead to terrible injustice.
For example, the New Testament deals a great deal with relations between Jewish people and the Gentiles. The Jews used the word Gentile to mean everyone who wasn't Jewish. That probably includes all of us.
God blessed the nation of Israel with a wonderful history of demonstrations of what God was like and all the teaching of the Old Testament. And God did it as a demonstration project so that all the world could see what was really on God's heart and join in and be part of God's family.
But something went wrong. Many of the Jews developed a sense of privilege. They figured that the blessings were only for them, that the Gentiles were inferior, that God didn't care so much about the Gentiles, that the privileges were for Jews only. So they felt they could sit back and enjoy the blessings and it didn't matter what happened to the Gentiles.
But God called a man, we call him the Apostle Paul, a Jew, to make it very clear that God's invitation was to all nations, that Jews and Gentiles were called to be citizens side by side in the kingdom of God. Paul refused to accept this idea of Jewish privilege. All the blessings of God were for the Gentiles, too. Jesus had died to end the separation. Paul dedicated his life to breaking down the barriers and bringing the Gentiles into the church. And we, who are Gentiles, owe Paul a great debt for his faithfulness to God's call.
Our sermon text for this morning is Ephesians 2:11-22. In it Paul lays out very clearly his understanding of what was on God's heart. If you want to have it open in front of you, its on page 192 of the New Testament section of your pew Bible.
"So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called "the uncircumcision" by those who are called "the circumcision" a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."
The passage breaks down into three main sections. The first section, verses 11-12, describes the division between Jew and Gentile. Paul tells how the Jews saw the Gentiles as being "far off" from God, "aliens" with an emphasis on being different. The Gentiles ate different foods, they dressed different, they talked different. And, for the most part, the Jews couldn't see past those differences. Just keep them away. We don't want any Gentiles in our churches or in our neighborhood.
But then, in the second section, verses 13-18, Christ has come to break down the barriers. He demolished the foundation for all the walls of prejudice which divide us. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Who can stand up and brag after that happened for us? We all stand as sinners before God. Our only status before God comes because of Jesus' forgiveness and acceptance of us. Who dares to set themselves above anyone else after Jesus has done such a thing for us? The cross of Jesus Christ is the great leveler of all humanity.
And then the third section comes in verses 19-22, the results. No longer are the Gentiles strangers or aliens before God. They are "citizens with the saints." A citizen is someone who belongs there, who has certain rights which are to be respected.
The Gentiles are now "members of the household of God." They, and this includes us, so maybe I'd better say we, belong in the family. We have a seat at the table, too, and an important function to fulfill. We don't have to become Jews to be part of the family. We don't have to follow Jewish dietary laws or old customs. We can be ourselves and still part of the family. And it is Jesus himself who provides the glue that brings us all together. The closer we come to Jesus the more foolish those divisions look.
Well, what does this have to do with us? Especially with the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, we can't forget that we still have walls that divide God's people. Its very easy for us, who are white to have that same sense of privilege, to sit back and say, "I've got it comfortable, what's the problem?" It's easy for us to assume that its just always going to be the case that whites have it good and blacks have it bad. And while we have made some improvements in the law, the walls still haven't gone down.
In the past two years something like 124 churches with black congregations or white churches who had reached out to break down racial barriers were burned, one hundred and twenty-four. And some officials question whether this is racism or not, but I sure don't know any other explanation. Peoples' churches were burned down because of the color of their skin. How would you feel if someone torched Embury because they didn't like the way we look?
We heard on the news last fall that several large Avis franchises had been operating with a simple policy not to rent to blacks. How would you feel if you were black, needed to rent a car, and were turned away? The national office of Avis has dealt with that decisively now, but it happened. The walls are not gone yet.
Recently the U.S. Justice Department sent 6 people to try to rent apartments in a large apartment complex in the Detroit suburbs. Three were white and three were black. They all had similar backgrounds and financial assets. The three whites were all told, one after the other, that there would be apartments available for them soon. The three blacks were told that it would be a very long time before any would become available. The walls are not gone yet.
Chester, Pennsylvania is a predominantly black city of about 40,000 people, just south of Philadelphia. It is located in Delaware County, which is pretty much white everywhere else. In Chester there are 8 plants for treating waste, industrial waste, sewage, and such. In the rest of the county, the white neighborhoods, there are only 3, and they are much smaller. Today, due to all the waste that is brought to Chester and processed there, Chester has the highest infant mortality rate in the state, the highest death rate due to several types of malignant tumors. Sixty percent of children who have been tested for lead levels in their blood exceed the safety levels. The white suburbs of Philadelphia won't let the waste be processed in their back yards. Send it to Chester. We don't care what it does to them. And Chester is only one of many examples of minority neighborhoods being used for handling wastes that nobody else would accept. How would you feel having your children exposed to such an unhealthy situation because you were a different color?
Huge Texaco Oil Company has been in the news this last year. They made a very huge settlement when it was discovered that they had discriminated against blacks in the giving of promotions, that when questions were raised the evidence of the discrimination was destroyed, and some of the top officers of the country were taped using racist language as the discussed it. How would it feel to be treated like that? Every person should be advanced on the basis of their own personal strengths, not the color of their skin.
A study in New York State last year determined that the state courts have often given stiffer sentences to black and hispanic criminals than to whites who committed comparable crimes and had similar records. The study estimated that each year some 4,000 blacks and hispanics are sent to jail in New York State in circumstances where whites with similar crimes and records would not have gone to jail. Each person charged should be treated according to what they had done, not the color of their skin.
Other studies have shown that murderers who kill whites are 4 times more likely to get the death sentence than people who kill blacks. We don't like to admit it, but our culture just does not value the death of a black person as much as the death of a white person.
It's so easy for us to sit back and say that the problems of racism have all been solved. But it's not true. People are still treated largely on the basis of the color of their skin.
Even in the churches the saying is still true that 11:00 a.m. is the most segregated hour of the week. And as long as God's family is divided, God will be calling out for those who will make the effort to heal the divisions. And each and every one of us has a place in fulfilling that call.
Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, in the book More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, have a very simple way of describing what the church needs to do to finish breaking down the walls. They summarize it with three words, admit, submit, and commit.
First, we need to admit to ourselves that there is a problem. We cannot responsibly pass by on the other side of the road and leave our black brothers and sisters being treated in such ways. We need to watch the news, we need to watch our own hearts and actions. We need to admit that the problem is still here.
Second, we need to submit, submit to God, recognizing that apart from God we will probably just ignore the problem, apart from God we'll settle for halfway solutions. We need the love of God to melt our hearts. We need to humble ourselves beneath the cross of Jesus. He's the one who can finally break down those walls.
And thirdly, we need to commit, to commit ourselves to removing all the barriers that keep our races apart, to making God's welcome clear in our own lives every time we cross paths with someone from a different race, to going beyond occasional polite encounters, to getting to know one another, to spend time together, to learn to understand our cultural differences and to recognize the ways that all races are the same, to recognize that we really are all part of God's family.
It's a most suspicious coincidence, but this week as I was preparing this sermon, I got a phone call from Rev. Darnell Thomas down the street at St. Martin Missionary Baptist Church. He was calling us with an invitation to join with them for a service of reconciliation on a Sunday afternoon in February. Maybe that was coincidence, but I suspect that the Lord was involved with the timing. We talked tentatively of February 16 at 4:00 in the afternoon. What do you think? Could Freeport Christians, who worship every Sunday one block apart join in a worship service together? Do we dare to talk about the things that have divided us? Do we dare to step out to break down those walls? I hoe we can pitch in and make that reconciliation service a powerful event for God's kingdom.
After all the things that have been done to say to the blacks in our nation, you are second best, stay away, God calls us to give a different message. The door is open. We are fellow citizens together. We are members of God's family together. AMEN
