Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

July 4th is a holiday celebrated by many Americans with backyard barbeques, parades, and vacation getaways.  During non-COVID-19 periods, Disneyland would be absolutely packed, and wait-times for rides would soar.  Have you been to Disneyland?  If so, what’s your favorite ride?  One of my favorites in Splash Mountain, where you ride in log down a river, moving through a storyline where a bunny outwits a fox, all leading to the climax: a 52.5-foot drop that gets you up to 45 mph and usually wet.  It’s a fun ride.  But I digress…. Back to July 4th!

            Thomas Jefferson didn’t wake up July 3rd and think that writing the Declaration of Independence might be a fun, cathartic journaling exercise.  He wrote it with the encouragement of his leader-peers after years of injustice.  The Declaration lays out the reasons why the colonies were leaving Great Britain:

 

·      He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

·      He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

·      He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

·      He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

·      He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

·      He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

·      He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

·      He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

·      He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

·      He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

·      He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

·      He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

·      He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

·      For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

·      For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

·      For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

·      For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

·      For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

·      For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

·      For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

·      For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

·      For suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

·      He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

·      He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

·      He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

·      He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

·      He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

It’s a long list.  It took a long time before the colonists were willing to make such a declaration.  Jefferson even noted our human tendency to put up with a lot until we simply cannot take it any longer: 

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The breaking point had been reached, and the rallying call went out: Colonist Lives Matter!  I don’t know if CLM ever actually caught on…

            One of the most powerful lines that we Americans love to celebrate is at the beginning of the Declaration: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  This is part of the American Dream that makes us proud of our melting pot country.  The reality is, however, that not all of the ingredients in the American Stew were willing participants, and some were clearly celebrated while others systematically sidelined, used, and abused.

            Jefferson himself embodied the paradox.  The one who penned that all men are created equal is said to have owned 600 slaves over the course of his lifetime and had 130 slaves on hand to keep up his Monticello property – many of the slaves there were multi-generational.  Some call Sally Hemings his mistress but make no mistake – she was Jefferson’s slave whose primary job was to bring him “comfort”. Six children she bore evidenced his debauchery and the pain she surely endured. Thomas Jefferson, while trying to end slavery in the United States for reasons unrelated to equality and equity, died having actually strengthening it in part because he never really woke up to the deeper reasons why slavery needed to end in the US.  

Jesus lived with a similar paradox.  There is a story remembered about him when he was outside of what we call Israel (Mark 7:24-30, The Message):

From there Jesus set out for the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house there where he didn’t think he would be found, but he couldn’t escape notice. He was barely inside when a woman who had a disturbed daughter heard where he was. She came and knelt at his feet, begging for help. The woman was Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth. She asked him to cure her daughter.

He said, “Stand in line and take your turn. The children get fed first. If there’s any left over, the dogs get it.”

She said, “Of course, Master. But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children?”

Jesus was impressed. “You’re right! On your way! Your daughter is no longer disturbed. The demonic affliction is gone.” She went home and found her daughter relaxed on the bed, the torment gone for good.

What we may have here is evidence that Jesus really was a human being and was shaped by his Jewish culture to despise non-Jewish people.  Thus, he uses the term “dogs”.  Make no mistake, when he uses this term, he is not thinking lovingly of family pets and cute Facebook posts.  This was a term of great degradation which the woman fully understood.  Jesus, here, is prejudiced.

            But he didn’t stay that way.  As he moved forward, he became famous for being incredibly inclusive and promoting equality and equity.  The first person with whom he identifies himself as the anointed one was a Samaritan woman – a picture of the most hated group in ancient Judaism.  In addition to this woman and a hated non-Jew, he extended grace and welcome to everyone – people born with diseases, tax collectors, prostitutes, etc., and was greatly criticized for it.  His stands did not come easy.  In contrast to the tyranny of the prevailing culture in which he lived, he broadcast:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)

 

            The disciples were slow on the uptake.  They struggled in predictable ways as their worldview was blown up by Jesus.  Their experience with Jesus and beyond reshaped how they understood God and what God was trying to do in the world.  They increasingly woke up to the Kingdom of God and its beckoning while they lived in a very Roman-occupied Jewish context.

            The Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus, was completely oblivious to the dream of God until he was stopped in his tracks with an experience of Christ manifest as blinding light.  It’s hard to say what happened, exactly.  Did the experience blind him?  Or did he realize that he had ben blind all along?  Either way, he was taught to see by the very Jesus followers he was bent on destroying and became the most influential voice of Christianity other than Jesus, writing two thirds of the books in the New Testament.

            Awake as he was, Paul lived in paradox.  He is the guy who declared the counter-intuitive and counter-cultural message of the Kingdom of God (Galatians 3:28-29, The Message): In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises. All men (and women) are created equal!  Hoorah!

            And yet, Paul lived at a time where slavery was a part of the economy and culture (albeit nowhere near as awful as American slavery).  When he had the opportunity to be a voice for emancipation, like Jefferson, asked a Christian slave owner (ahem), Philemon, to be kind toward the runaway slave, Onesimus, who found safety with Paul.  Here is the entire letter of Philemon (The Message):

I, Paul, am a prisoner for the sake of Christ, here with my brother Timothy. I write this letter to you, Philemon, my good friend and companion in this work—also to our sister Apphia, to Archippus, a real trooper, and to the church that meets in your house. God’s best to you! Christ’s blessings on you!

Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, “Oh, thank you, God!” I keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the Master Jesus, which brims over to other believers. And I keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do, and that people recognize Christ in all of it. Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel, doubly so when I see your hospitality to fellow believers.

In line with all this I have a favor to ask of you. As Christ’s ambassador and now a prisoner for him, I wouldn’t hesitate to command this if I thought it necessary, but I’d rather make it a personal request.

While here in jail, I’ve fathered a child, so to speak. And here he is, hand-carrying this letter—Onesimus! He was useless to you before; now he’s useful to both of us. I’m sending him back to you, but it feels like I’m cutting off my right arm in doing so. I wanted in the worst way to keep him here as your stand-in to help out while I’m in jail for the Message. But I didn’t want to do anything behind your back, make you do a good deed that you hadn’t willingly agreed to.

Maybe it’s all for the best that you lost him for a while. You’re getting him back now for good—and no mere slave this time, but a true Christian brother! That’s what he was to me—he’ll be even more than that to you.

So if you still consider me a comrade-in-arms, welcome him back as you would me. If he damaged anything or owes you anything, chalk it up to my account. This is my personal signature—Paul—and I stand behind it. (I don’t need to remind you, do I, that you owe your very life to me?) Do me this big favor, friend. You’ll be doing it for Christ, but it will also do my heart good.

I know you well enough to know you will. You’ll probably go far beyond what I’ve written. And by the way, get a room ready for me. Because of your prayers, I fully expect to be your guest again.

Epaphras, my cellmate in the cause of Christ, says hello. Also my coworkers Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke. All the best to you from the Master, Jesus Christ!

 

Hmmm.  Paul was on the right track, yet not fully there, kind of like Jefferson.

            The reality is we human beings are complex creatures.  We live in our respective cultures and are generally unaware of how powerfully they shape our vision of absolutely everything. At some point, a combination of things takes place.  The reality of our existence in our multi-layered cultural context (personally and corporately) becomes so unbearable that we have to change, or we die (literally or metaphorically).  And/or, we become captivated by a vision of something so compelling that we willingly leave our present cultural context in favor of the new, different one.  Either way, we set out to make a change.  We plan our way forward and give it our best shot and discover what Peter Drucker famously noted: organizational culture eats strategy for breakfast.

            Change is often experienced as very difficult for good reason: it is very difficult.  In faith, becoming born again is just the beginning, the waking up – the growing up, living “woke” is hard and ongoing and evolving. In family systems and politics and the general culture, the same is true.  Sometimes we cannot see our blindness.  Sometimes we see it and don’t want to wake up as fully as we know we should.  The whole thing is a process.

            The early Jesus followers struggled through this yet prevailed – they kept moving forward.  

            The United States engaged civil war – Jefferson’s predicted fear – that resulted in emancipation.  Legal equality (on the books, anyway), didn’t show up for another century.  Experiential equality and equity still call us forward – a dream that beckons us to realize more and more in our time. Jefferson’s Monticello recognizes the paradox and shines a light on it rather than trying to keep it in the shadows so that we see our history in plain view.  It in no way celebrates Jefferson’s inhumane treatment of fellow equals.

            Disneyland, which keeps moving forward as a cultural mandate, is reshaping Splash Mountain, letting go of the Song of the South motif with all of the ugly characterizations it subtly perpetuated of slavery and slaves, and instead is investing in a new story that celebrates the accomplishment of Princess Tiana, and African American self-made woman who defeats those who worked against her.

            We will continue to hear cries of injustice in our nation whose pledge to pursue liberty and justice for all is not yet realized.  It will take time.  It will take longer if American citizens do not take their pledge seriously.  It will take longer if Jesus followers remain asleep toward the Kingdom of God and perpetuate the dominant culture that will not change on its own. It will be hastened if we allow the Lord’s Prayer to fashion us more and more into the likeness of Jesus, which means living primary in the Kingdom of God even as we exist here and now.  That prayer is one that is uttered globally, as evidence of something bigger and better than puny kingdoms and countries that, in comparison to the age of our earth, are but a breath.

            What are you going to do to become more awake to the Kingdom of God and it’s beckoning?  What steps are you going to take that are different than the culture that perpetuates the very ills that plague us?  How will you live more like Jesus?

Check out this site for resources specifically related to racism in the US: https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea