Imitators of God, Live in Love!
A Sacred Conversation about Race
(Ephesians 4:25-5:2; I Kings 19:7)
As much as I love you laughing, loving, loveable, and loquacious Lutherans, I continue to be affectionate to my own denomination the unique, uninhibited, and unabashed United Church of Christ- the church that doesn’t put a period where God means to put a comma, the church which believes that God not only has spoken but is still speaking, the United Church of Christ which offers an extravagant welcome to all of God’s people whoever they are and wherever they are on life’s journey.
The first Afro-American president of the United States was a member of the United Church of Christ until some people thought that candidate Obama’s pastor went too far in decrying the sad and hurtful history of our country in its treatment of people of color. So to disassociate himself from Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama left Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and now he wanders faithfully with his family without a church at a time when he likely needs one more than ever.
Near the time of the ruckus over Barack Obama’s church affiliation, the United Church of Christ called its congregation to begin again to have Sacred Conversations about race. In a Pastoral Letter on Racism our Ministerial Collegium wrote ….”as disturbing as the glaring economic and social inequities between the races is the increasing disparity of perception about the continuing reality of racism. For People of Color in our nation, racism is an ever present reality that White people too often deny. When the prophets of our day name injustice and seek redress, the urgency of their appeals is too frequently met by the trivializing charge that they are ’simply playing the race card.’ If the wound of our people is to be treated with care, our sacred conversations must address this callous and dismissive spirit.”
Then this past month the issue of race again found its way into our lives when a black professor was arrested in his own home by a white police officer and the President reacted to question the propriety of this arrest.  Many accused the President of “playing the race card” by defending one of his brothers and calling the action of the white policeman “stupid.”
In his blog entitled “Our President is an Angry Black Man,” Reverend Efrem Smith, a graduate of Luther Theological Seminary, writes:
“When I hear some evangelicals and conservatives refer to President Obama as the Anti-Christ and a racist angry black man, I see how in denial about racism many in our nation are.  Some conservatives really don’t mind the idea of a black president; they just want them to act White and never raise the issue of racism or question police or military authority. For the president to have attended a Black church which preaches a Black liberation theology and to question the actions of the police is out of bounds. Now to be a White president that attended an all-White church and be a part of all White social clubs, and live in an all-White community and have all that shape your views of what it means to be American is totally acceptable. The problem is, you can be president but if you don’t act American, which in many cases is acting White, then you are an angry black man. We have to deal with the fact that many people have not separated being American from being White. Some of us are in denial about living in Whiteness.
What I’m talking about is that when African-Americans question the actions of European-Americans in authority or when we raise the issue of race in our country, we are labeled as angry black people. It’s like some Whites are saying, “How dare you question my beliefs or my behavior! How dare you say I might have some racial issues I need to work out?” On television this week our president has been called a racist, one who hates Whites and White culture, and one who is angry. This is code language for, ‘Negro President, get in your place.’”
Now I don’t really care whether you voted for Barack Obama or not. As far as I know God is neither a Republican nor Democrat.  But I do care about what you say about people of a race different from your own and how you care for people of another race. So this morning I want to invite you to be honest about how your ideas about race have been formed. I want to invite you to enter into a sacred conversation with someone about race.
We’re going to do some hobnobbing’ like we did a couple of weeks ago when you talked with each other about your mission of forgiveness and love which Jesus called you to. I want to give up some of my precious 50 minutes of sermon time to you so we can have an even more precious conversation about race. I want you to find a partner, preferably somebody you don’t know too well and hobnob for a few minutes about this topic. In what ways were you aware of your racial or ethnic background when you were growing up?
Now how much of my precious sermon time should I be giving to you? To be honest with you this question is so important that there is not enough time left in this Sabbath to do it justice. So how about an arbitrary 6 minutes? Three minutes each to tell each other how you were aware of your racial or ethnic background when you were growing up. Loquacious Lutherans, use this time to enter into sacred conversation!
I want to thank you for taking that time and making it sacred.
This is how I became aware of my racial background. I was born in the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, which has yet to love its brothers. After World War II my parents, Ernest and Fay, couldn’t get away from the city fast enough and by the time I was two years old I was a suburban kid.
The city of Philadelphia was starting to turn from white to black and was becoming a so-called urban jungle. My parents escaped the jungle and left my grandparents behind. We lived in Drexel Hill and drove back into the city a couple of times a month.

My Dad would say, almost every time we crossed the Schuylkill River, “I’m so glad we don’t live here anymore.” I always wondered why he said that. The only difference I could see was that things were a bit more crowded and there were black people in the city while there was not a black person to be found in Drexel Hill- not one black person on my street or any street, or in my school or in my church.

And as soon as my parents had established themselves, we moved even further away from Philadelphia to the town of West Chester which interestingly enough had a significant black population but we lived out in the country and my parents never had a black friend and I never had a black friend. My mother would have a black house cleaner come in every once in awhile to clean for us.

When I went to high school our classes were “tracked” which means that the brightest and best students were in the same class for every subject. In my class there was not one black kid although our high school was 20 percent black and the school was located very near the black section of town. There were no black kids in the top three sections of my class and there were two black kids in the fourth section.  What in God’s name were those educators thinking of?!!!

Our church was located at the intersection of Church and Barnard Streets and had black families living within a block of it. The only black member of the congregation was a light skinned Negro man who was superintendent of schools in the neighboring town. He was a friend of Ozzie Spellman, a dentist who attended our church and was the chair of the local school board.

I learned to dance at a club called The Cotillion where there was not a black kid waltzing, or fox trotting or jitter bugging. What kind of a town was that?

No wonder one of the great civil rights leaders and organizers of the poor people’s March on Washington where Martin Luther King had a dream, Bayard Rustin, came from our town of West Chester which was practically, if not legally, segregated. Nobody told me about Bayard Rustin when I was in school. Nobody said: “Let’s go down to Washington to hear Dr. King and to march in Bayard Rustin’s march. Nobody said that. I wonder why? I was 16 years old. I was a Boy Scout. I knew about marching. Nobody said: “Let’s march in Washington!” I wonder why?

Is it any wonder, with all of those not-so-subliminal messages creeping into my young psyche, that there is not a bone in my body not filled with fear and suspicion of black people? Is it any wonder, with my good parents so afraid for themselves and for me, that racism fills the very core of my being and I can feel it in my bones?

Now none of us can undo our past. If your past is anything like mine then what can we do about ourselves? We can turn to God and pray that God will recreate us and convert us and makes us new beings. We can look to scriptures like Ephesians and let the Spirit work in our lives so that our actions and attitudes reflect the love and forgiveness we have received from Jesus.
Let me read that second reading to you again this morning and ask you to hear it in light of what we know to be true about our relationship to our sisters and brothers of color.
“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger and ado not let room for the devil. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your works may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice, and be kind and tender hearted forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.”
That is a powerful image of who you are called to be- imitators of God, imitators of God living in love.
Now we United Church people like to put commas after things rather than periods because we know that God is still speaking and there is still light breaking forth from God’s holy word. A comma means that there is still more to be said. A period means that’s all that can be said. We certainly don’t have the final word about God but we do have a word. And I think that we can very safely say that God is not a Republican or a Democrat, and that God is not a Lutheran or a United Church of Christ member, COMMA, God is not black or white, COMMA, red or yellow or brown, COMMA, and God is not Hindu, COMMA, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish or Christian COMMA. But knowing what we know and believing what we believe I think we can say with a period that God is not a racist, PERIOD. God created us black, white, red, brown Hindu Buddhist, Jew, American, Iraqi, and we are holy in God’s sight. God is a lover. God loves what God created.
And if we are imitators of God then we are lovers. We love everything that God creates. If we truly imitate God then we love each other.
We need to know that each one of us is created in God’s image and not vice versa. God is not created in our image. God is not the hater of the things that we hate and the destroyer of things that we would destroy.
Anne Lamott says  “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” (Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)). Let us sons and daughters of God turn that around to say: You can tell you are created in God’s image when it turns out that you love the people God loves.
Martin King in his sermon Loving Your Enemies preached: “the reason we are commanded to love is expressed explicitly in Jesus words, ‘Love your enemies…that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven.’ We are called to this difficult task in order to realize a unique relationship with God. We are potential sons (and daughters) of God. Through love that potentiality becomes actuality. We must love our enemies because only by loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of His holiness.”
I am sending you out on a mission again this week. It is a mission to be who you truly are- an imitator of God. It is a mission to live in love. It is a mission to love what God has created, even your enemies, even white people and black people and all people. It is a difficult mission. It is a mission for which you will need to be fed by the bread of heaven otherwise the journey will be too much for you.
Imitators of God, live in love! Live in love!

To the glory of God for the congregation of Our Savior Lutheran Church, Hanover, NH

August 9, 2009

Gregory W. Marshall
Sabbatical Pastor

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