Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.
Why this series, why now? February holds several important distinctions that most of us are aware of. Valentine’s Day reminds us to show love to the most important people in our lives, and in grade school, a little love for every kid in class with a cheap little card. Also celebrates Presidents Day in honor of two very different US presidents: Washington and Lincoln. And, for the purposes of this series, February is Black History Month. As a Jesus follower, I am invited to follow in Jesus’ way of life, which is founded on an understanding of God being known primarily by love which then leads to us viewing and treating all people from a loving stance. The first and second greatest commandments are to love God and our neighbors, respectively. Jesus was convinced that this orientation leads to an abundance of life and a transformed world:
This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. – John 15:12-13 | NLT
I agree. Yet I am fairly aware that I easily love some people while struggling to love others. I am quite certain that in our beloved United States, love has been afforded to some more than others, which can be traced through our history, our laws, religious debates, and the varied experiences of citizens who call the US home. We might think we are loving, but perhaps we are not loving in the same way that Jesus loves us. Why do we see this so differently? What has happened? How does our faith mirror our reality, and how does it call us forward? This series, for me, is an outworking of some very pertinent issues in our world related to what it means to be a Jesus follower in a very divided world. Interestingly, though his call to love was very challenging, the disciples rose to the occasion, evidenced by this much later instruction from the Apostle John to the churches:
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. – 1 John 4:7-8 | NLT
I grew up in a healthy home and household. Human, for sure, but healthy. My parents are still married – on June 14, 2021, they will celebrate 64 years. My dad’s job was as a pastor (or pastor-related), which meant our family was very involved in our faith. Church every Sunday, some sort of weekly youth group gathering, and often a church camp in the summer. My parents were solidly mainline in their theology, reflecting the core of American Baptist beliefs, which meant that we were on the progressive side of things, even if quietly. There was never much talk of heaven or hell as the primary motive for faith. Faith was taught more as a way of life, a culture.
My parents were also model “nice people”. My dad’s professional reputation is that everyone he met felt valued by him. The same could be said of my mom. We were taught by example to respect other people, regardless of who they were or what they drank or smoked (in our house, drinking alcohol and smoking anything were vices eleven and twelve, respectively, of the Ten Commandments). My folks modeled generosity, too, both directly with people in need as well as toward the church and the extended efforts of the church nationally and internationally. I’m trying to paint a picture of a balanced home life where I was taught by example how to be a good, compassionate person along the lines of Jesus. The older I get, the more grateful I am for the foundation they provided.
As good as it was, however, I found myself in some uncomfortable situations that I couldn’t quite make sense of, mostly with people who were American but did not look much like me, especially along racial or ethnic lines. Not so much with people of Asian descent, however, but more so with Latinx and African Americans (only recently did I learn why). I remind you that my parents treated all people really well – including Latinx and black people (as few as they numbered in our suburban world). My folks never used overtly derogatory language about any person different than us in terms of ethnicity or race, ever. In retrospect, I realize that we simply never talked about it. Maybe my siblings did? I was the last of four, after all – my parents kind of dialed it in with me...
What was the discomfort about? I am pretty sure the discomfort I felt had much to do with a heightened awareness of the “otherness” of (especially) African Americans – there weren’t many Latinx people where I grew up back then, in Kansas and Michigan. I remember being really self-conscious, not wanting to say something stupid, being really careful to be polite, trying to make a good impression, and feeling really anxious the whole time. My personality drives me to want to make a good impression - in this environment, it was exponentially turbo-charged. The few black people who sparsely inhabited by extremely Caucasian world might as well have been from Mars, they appeared so foreign to me. I also was aware that black people got a raw deal in the United States beginning with slavery. I wasn’t sure how to feel or act in light of it, it just created an awkwardness in me.
All the while I knew the ethic of Jesus which directed its adherents to love our neighbors, even if – or especially if – they didn’t look like us. Somehow, this kid (me), raised in a loving home where seeing others as equally valued and loved by God, still manifested a significant degree of awkwardness and clumsiness when it came to interacting with and processing my feelings related to people of other ethnicities or race. It was almost as if something were in the air. How much worse for those who were raised in homes that were not so genteel?
The early church recorded a remembrance of Jesus that served to answer some things about Jesus’ development. Did you know that Jesus developed his identity and thought? I think sometimes we think of Jesus like a Jack-in-a-Box – at just the right time, God turned the crank and out popped Jesus-in-a-Box! If we really, really believe he was fully human, we need to let him have a fully human experience, which, if any depth of maturity is involved, includes coming to grips with how we’ve been shaped by our context and deciding who we want to become. In the following story, I think we get a glimpse of the prejudice Jewish people held toward non-Jewish people. I believe Jesus had to work through this in his development.
Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Gentile woman who lived there came to him, pleading, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! For my daughter is possessed by a demon that torments her severely.”
But Jesus gave her no reply, not even a word. Then his disciples urged him to send her away. “Tell her to go away,” they said. “She is bothering us with all her begging.”
Then Jesus said to the woman, “I was sent only to help God’s lost sheep—the people of Israel.”
But she came and worshiped him, pleading again, “Lord, help me!”
Jesus responded, “It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied, “That’s true, Lord, but even dogs are allowed to eat the scraps that fall beneath their masters’ table.”
“Dear woman,” Jesus said to her, “your faith is great. Your request is granted.” And her daughter was instantly healed. (Matthew 15:21-28 | NLT)
I think we see an undeveloped Jesus in this story where the forces that shaped him were in full view. Commentaries that want to preserve an idea of Jesus being “perfect” in a very specific way will excuse Jesus’ rude exchange, even suggesting that he made the comment with a twinkle in his eye and a wink. Just kidding around like we do. Scholars who think differently about the full humanity of Jesus see it quite differently, akin to a white person today essentially using the “N-word” toward a black person: “Why would I waste anything good on a “N...” like you? The picture changes a bit, doesn’t it?
I will teach more about the culturally held views of non-Jews held by Jewish people more next week. Suffice it to say that Jews in Jesus’ day and age did not view the “others” around them with favor. They were under Roman occupation and they hated it, and clearly hated those who enforced it. Ugly yet understandable. Jesus was raised in a backwater community in the shadow of thriving Roman-influenced and Empire-money-infused shiny cities like Tyre and Sidon, which were in contrast to the relatively shabby city of Nazareth. Jesus’ contemporaries were not particularly educated, and really didn’t care a lot about what was happening in the bigger cities funded by their tax dollars. I maintain that Jesus’ insult to the woman who asked for help was a reaction based on everything that had formed Jesus up to that point, both the obvious and the subtle shaping forces that human beings experience by their families of origin, their culture, their moment in history – all of it has its affect.
This may startle some folks who want Jesus to be squeaky clean to the point of being dismayed and disheartened. Why bother with Jesus if he was THAT human?
I find that this interpretation actually makes following Jesus more compelling, not less. Jesus somehow overcame those culturally infused biases and was transformed before our very eyes to see the woman not by her label but as a human being worthy of compassion. I need to learn from that! What happened to foster such a shift?
One of the things that helped my discomfort with people of color was exposure to people of color. The more I was in the same space with these colorful friends, the more I realized we were much more alike than not. We might structure our language differently and see the world differently, but at the end of the day we share a deep longing for the same dreams to come true. We long for love, wellbeing, harmony, a good life for ourselves and those we love. The deeper we dig into that great dream, the more we realize that we want it for everybody.
I was afforded little opportunity to rub elbows with people of color growing up. My high school in Michigan was in Okemos, an affluent suburb of Lansing, Michigan. Until my senior year, there were only a couple of African Americans in my school. College was a little better, where I became good friends with Adolphus Lacey who, like me, was headed toward pastoral ministry. My Masters degree threw me into the deep end, reflecting the full diversity of the Chicago area. Older, wiser men and women of color provided friendship and conversation that was so helpful in overcoming my fears of “the other”. I wonder if that exchange with the desperate mother was one (of many) with non-Jewish people that exposed Jesus not just to the shared humanity with all other people, but also exposed his own jaded vision born from all the forces that shaped him. He saw himself from a different plane, as an observer viewing himself, and could then decide whether or not he wanted to keep his jaded lens or get corrective lenses afforded by the Spirit of God.
Oh, if we could do the same... Jesus invites us to follow, which implies that we can should we accept.
Stuff to think about...
1. What was your upbringing like on this?
2. How did your family of origin communicate (or not) about other ethnicities or races?
3. How colorful was your view of the world?
4. How much interaction did you have with people of other ethnicities or races? What was your experience like? Any obvious discomfort or attitude or held values regarding these folks?
5. Did any of your personal influencers use a different tone, or makes jokes more at the expense of some than others?
6. When listening to someone else describing an encounter experienced or witnessed, was a person’s race ever mentioned even if it had no relevance to the story (e.g., were people’s color or ethnicity noted unless they were white)?
7. How does the idea that Jesus needed to mature along these same lines mess with you?
8. What are the concerns you have as we move forward in this series that might hinder you from more deeply engaging this subject?