Long Way Here

“Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10)
“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love” (Romans 12:10)
“Have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25).
“In humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).
“Bear with each other” (Colossians 3:13).
“Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another” (Colossians 3:13).
“Teach one another” (Colossians 3:16).
“Admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16).
“Spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).
“Encourage one another” (Hebrews10:25).
“Do not slander one another” (James 4:11).
“Don’t grumble against each other” (James 5:9).
“Confess your sins to each other” (James 5:16).
“Pray for each other” (James 5:16).
“Love one another” (John 13:34).
“Love one another” (John 13:35).
“Love each other” (John 15:12).
“Love each other” (John 15:17).
“Love one another” (Romans 13:8)
“Love one another” (1 John 3:11).
“Love one another” (1 John 3:23).
“Love one another” (1 John 4:7).
“Love one another” (1 John 4:11).
“Love one another” (1 John 4:12).
“Love one another” (2 John 1:5).

These past few weeks I’ve often wondered what a local Church would look like if it took these commands to heart. What’s crazy is this is only about half of the ‘one another’ commands.

I’ve been asking myself:

What would happen with the joys and sufferings each member shared? What would happen to hard conversations and misunderstandings? What would happen to the expectations often held over another?

I bet the Church’s collective witness would be different as they held differences in tension as a “fellowship of differents.”¹ I bet they would do the hard work of choosing to seek what is true, good, and beautiful in a society that denies truth, negotiates goodness, and deals recklessly with beauty.

“Make every effort”, Pastor Peter said, “to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

Life in God’s beloved community formed by the Spirit of Jesus the King takes effort. After all, grace may be opposed to earning but it is not opposed to effort. It takes cooperation with the Spirit of God working in, between and among God’s people.

Maybe I am sincerely mistaken, but the Spirit seems to assure a life-giving outcome if we take the “one another” texts, like the ones above, as commands rather than suggestions.

Pastor Peter goes on to say,

“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. 10 Therefore, brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. 11 For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.” (2 Peter 1:5-11)

What would it look like if a local Church took these commands to heart?

It depends on us.

^{1 I owe Scot McKnight for this terminology}.

Denial has always had a few schools located in the God’s Kingdom. I know, because I’ve taken many classes there. It has employed many pastors, politicians and political pundits as its teachers. As fellow graduates of the School of Denial, these teachers are trained to offer rational, philosophical, sociological and theological explanations that are convincing and compelling. A false narrative of innocence is told in light of what we see, especially when it comes to the “isms” of society. Invitations to indifference and apathy are extended.

A diploma of Denial is gladly received upon graduation in to a life of unrealized complicity to the reign of sin and death, from which we were rescued. The poor are politicized; racism is denied; religious certitude is paramount; the two-thirds world goes on mostly ignored; loving enemies is optional and situational; sexual preferences and orientations are threatening; freedom and hope is built upon nationalistic realities and promises that lead down various paths of entitlement.

The truth is I am an alum of the School of Denial. I have the diploma hanging on the wall of my heart. Occasionally I find myself returning for continuing-ed classes. But the longer I live in the reign of God’s Kingdom and allow the Sacred Text that bears witness to King Jesus confront my life, and do so in community, the more my denial turns to awareness and complicity to compassion. When I don’t allow the Sacred Text to confront my life I choose to manage the confrontation based upon my comfort level. Denial schools me once again.

It was an honor to participate in this important Rally for Greater Williamsburg. The number of neighbors in attendance on June 7, 2020 approximates 800. I am grateful for all who spoke, the civic leaders, religious leaders, the police Chiefs of Williamsburg and James City County and Sheriff of York County, and Virginia legislative leaders. I am especially grateful to Pastor Corwin Hammond of CBC World Ministry for his invitation to offer a word to my White brother and sisters. I am thankful for his friendship and leadership.

The renewal of the Historic Triangle Covenant of Mutuality, Inclusion and Understanding with the African American Community was an important moment in our city. It will continue to bring our community together and create accountability for us all. My invitation to speak included a request to speak mostly to my white brothers and sisters in attendance.

I share this speech here because of the number of requests I’ve received.

As a man and Christ-follower who is still learning about the implications of my own personal formation in white supremacy, and about my unconscious bias still at work in subtle ways, writing this was important for me. I wrote it with much trembling, prayer and at times, tears. I pray it is helpful.

Here is a video of the speech

Here is the text.

Dissent is not disloyalty. 

Love of truth and love of country should go hand in hand. We are a country whose foundation was laid upon the political, economic, and religious system that formed a larger racialized cultural system built to uphold White citizens and press down Black citizens. The roots of our nation’s laws, structures, and institutions grew deep into this soil. The seeds of all beliefs, values, and family systems formed by every man, woman and child were scattered along this ground.

I would like to speak to my white brothers and sisters for a few moments.

First, to my white brothers and sisters that share my religious tradition of the Christian faith, it is possible for someone to have their soul redeemed by Jesus, but still be caught up in a system shaped by sin. The brown-skinned Jewish Savior that we confess as Lord and King may take away our sins, but he doesn’t take our minds. We must do the work of liberating our consciousness and think humbly and deeply about our nation’s long history of white supremacy, anti-blackness, or state-sanctioned violence. The public murder of unarmed black citizens is our nation’s ancient legacy. 

Too many of us have, in the words of Dr. Cornel West, become well-adjusted to injustice and well-adapted to indifference. We cannot let our well-adjusted and well-adapted ways lead us to a willful blindness that schools us in denial.

Our refusal to believe what our fellow citizens, members of the same faith have told us, reveals our timidity.

When we do not say something we are saying something. 

I come from a tradition where there’s a belief that when God doesn’t have your attention He will disturb what does.

Protest, like the Blues, is the language of disruption. It is meant to disrupt the well-adjusted and well-adapted by disturbing the status quo. Protest gives voice to injustice and allows the suffering to speak. Imagine having to demand that your country stop killing you for hundreds of years, and being told time and again to be patient.²

After fighting through 246 years of chattel slavery, 89 years of segregation with the promise of equality without equity, and with most of those years fighting Jim Crow, then fighting the Neighborhood Composition Rule and Redlining, should we be surprised when our brothers and sisters of color say, “We can’t breathe?”

With 62 known hate crimes committed against Black Virginians in this last year, the highest in our state, should we be surprised when our brothers and sister of color say to us, “We can’t breathe?”

While being only 14% of the City of Williamsburg’s population but 47% of the city of Williamsburg’s incarceration, and hundreds of years of standing before and unjust legal system, should we be surprised when our brothers and sisters of color say, “We can’t breathe?” I wanted to share JCC and YC but the statistics aren’t readily accessible or available. Chief and Sheriff, it would be helpful to all of us if we could know the statistics. It would go a long way to include the community, as you’ve expressed.

White supremacy suffocates Black lives. White silence suffocates Black lives. White fragility suffocates Black lives. The language of, “You shouldn’t say white supremacy, white silence, and white fragility because you’ll turn people off,” suffocates Black lives. The White moderate mindset suffocates Black lives. A desire for tranquility and the status quo suffocates Black lives. Not listening to the pain, anger, and rage, suffocates Black lives. Not being willing to share in it suffocates Black lives. Being too afraid of losing a paycheck or your job suffocates Black lives. And if I am of the Christian tradition, and especially if I am a Christian pastor, weak gospel proclamation will suffocate Black lives. 

My white brothers and sisters, if we choose not to suffocate Black lives we will lose white friends. Some of us will lose family. But Ahmaud Arbery’s mother lost a son. Breonna Taylor’s family lost a daughter. George Floyd’s daughter lost a father. The parents of 14-year-old Emmett Till lost their son to a lynching in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. I think the least we can do is lose some friends. 

Now is the time we must join with others to live the protests we have marched embody the cause of this rally. Integrity will demand that we live the speeches we give and embody the social media posts we write. It won’t be perfect. It won’t be enough. 

But it will be something more than a momentary effort or meaningful word in a status. It will be an embodied commitment to faithful presence and participation in anti-racism action to break down the systems that uphold injustice and racism, and promote liberty and justice for all. It is the freedoms struggle brothers and sisters of color have so resiliently lived even til now. Let us be faithful. Let faithfulness be our witness.

Because Black Lives are worthy. Black Lives are beloved. Black lives are needed.² Black Lives are sacred. Black lives matter. 

 ^{1 _{I owe Pastor David W. Swanson for first posing this question publicly.}}

^{2 I got this phrase from a viral picture on the internet}

I am perplexed.

I have found that Christians generally have no problem saying, “I’m a sinner!” until it comes time to name it. It seems we prefer living in the abstract generalities of our faith rather than the concrete specifics. When we move away from the abstract generalities to the concrete specifics the conflicting values, ethics, and ideologies buried deep within the soul are revealed. Once they are revealed we will have to make a choice, and a choice is always costly.

That is how I believe we can raise up generations of Christian children formed in the Christian tradition, teach them how to be godly spouses, good citizens with good “morals”, yet still have a white supremacy problem or xenophobia problem or patriarchy problem or lack-of-compassion-for-the-poor problem in the church and in society.

We have to name things, especially sin, concretely and specifically.

I’ve been asked many times, even by church family, why I’ve preached about racism and other specific injustices with frequency, and why I believe the Church must concretely name things like white supremacy, etc.

Look around society now. Revisit history. This is why. It’s what happens because many do not.

Either it is a part of our discipleship or it’s not.

Let’s change that. That, I believe, is how it begins with you and me.

Last night I watched Freedom Summer on Amazon Prime. I heard the newsman from 1961 describe SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) as a ‘militant group’ again and again, ever so causally. If you’ve studied your history you know SNCC was the absolutely opposite of militant. I remember the stories Bob told us (in addition to what he talks about in his book) and how they got beat, bruised and burned. ⁣
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What dawned on me is how the current day rhetoric is applied the same way. Back then white supremacist citizens needed to hear SNCC called a ‘militant group.’ They needed to confirm their ideological bias, uphold their *preferred*to way of life. They needed an enemy to which they could aim their scorn and against whom they could take action. Since they couldn’t make *every* Black citizen an enemy outright, they could make SNCC one. So the local media that shared their ideological bias obliged. What happened then, happens today.⁣
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For those of us constantly crying out how media leans into a bias, yo, it’s always been this way. Not because media is the devil, but because we are the devils and we run the media too. We want our ideology affirmed and confirmed. We want someone else on our side to justify our enemy-making ways. We want to uphold our deepest beliefs and biases at work so that our preferred way of life is upheld. ⁣
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We need to see the little devils at work inside ourselves. We need to own it. And we need to repent. We need to let go of our enemy-making ways. We need get across tables and into trenches and shut off our TV’s and screens. ⁣
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If we are Christians, we need to come to Jesus.⁣
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*This picture above is of me and Bob from almost 6 years ago. I along with 5 others spent a few days with him and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove learning how to organize for the long haul.