This is the text of my sermon given on Sunday, August 27, 2017 at First Presbyterian Church in Monticello, Arkansas. It was given as a second followup sermon responding the events in Charlottesville and on the day before the 54th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream Speech".
For those of you
who were here last week, you heard my sermon response to the events that took
place in Charlottesville. For those of you who were not here, you can read that
sermon on my Facebook page. As I mentioned in my sermon last week, I would
follow up with more thoughts concerning this today.
The title of my sermon this morning
is not original; I have taken it from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 book, entitled,
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
In
the first chapter of the book, Dr. King describes the state of the Civil Rights
Movement in America and the state of white America’s acceptance of African
Americans a year after the Voting Rights Act.
He asserts:
“With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of
development in the civil rights revolution came to an end. A new phase opened,
but few observers realized it or were prepared for its implications. For the vast majority of white Americans, the
past decade—the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a
degree of decency, not of equality.
White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the
lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed
to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of
discrimination. The outraged white
citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs
and forbade them more cruelties. But
when this was to a degree accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily
inflamed him melted away. White Americans
left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the
aggressor. It appeared that the white
segregationist and the ordinary white citizen had more in common with one
another than either had with the Negro.”[i]
Dr.
King captures so pointedly what I believe continues to be the great sin of our
world. In these insightful and prophetic
remarks, King offers to us a portrait of the repetitive state of humanity that
is blinded by the promotion of exclusion.
Certainly we persist to live in a world that is saturated with oppression,
hatred, and violence, and I shall have something to say about these sins. But Dr. King also draws our attention to a
sin that is subtler than the sin of hate and violence and the sin of
exclusion. We have been duped into
believing that the answer to hatred and bigotry is tolerance. The world has preached a message to us to be
tolerant of others who are not like us, to bear with the differences we have
and to live in peace with them by merely tolerating them. But the downside of the tolerance issue is
that it is very short sighted; it does not go far enough. Sure, tolerance may be the better option in
the face of those who continue to ward off the message of tolerance because, in
their words, it weakens the so-called truth of the Christian message. But those who preach tolerance to us are not
promoting the fullness of God’s love in Christ.
The irony of the tolerance debate is that those who preach against
tolerance and those who preach for it have made the same grave mistake. One side considers tolerance an evil, while
the other considers tolerance the answer.
One group preaches to us that tolerance is a construct of the
pluralistic, and therefore, evil world.
The other side preaches to us that tolerance is the height of humanity’s
progressiveness in social relationships.
But what does the gospel say? In a world where we are torn between two
views of the world, one founded on exclusion and the other based on a very
sappy yet undemanding dream, what does the gospel say to the church in our post-modern
world as to how we are to relate to others of different color, ethnicity,
nationality, sexual orientation, and other forms of division? To use the title from Dr. King’s book quoted
moments ago, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
The
Apostle Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews and a messenger of the gospel to the
Gentiles, had to confront the issues that are so relevant for us today
regarding how we relate to those who are both like us and different from us in
ways that I have just mention. Paul too
dealt with the divisions that existed, mainly those that existed between Jew
and Gentile, divisions that could not be explained by simple dislike of the
other. Indeed, the divisions that
existed between Jew and Gentile during the first century are sarcastically
mentioned by Paul in Ephesians 2. The
denigration of the Gentiles by the Jews is brought to the fore in Paul’s letter
to the church at Ephesus as he states that these Gentiles were called the
“uncircumcised” by those who are the “circumcised”. The reference was not simply to a physical
marker that made the two groups different from each other. The designation was intended, when used by
some Jews, to speak about the other in a dehumanising way; a method by which
the name caller could vilify and demonise someone unlike himself. This labelling of the other, which cannot
simply be limited to the situation Paul seems to allude to here in Ephesians,
is the out growth of much deeper and demonic beliefs that are built on fear and
hatred of people who are not like us, who may not live like us, and who may not
believe as we believe. It is a claim to
possess absolute truth and a claim to having developed the ideal culture and
civilization—a claim that transgresses the biblical call to humility and service;
it is sin. It is the sin of exclusion.
But we might offer a defense of our
lives by claiming that we are not exclusive in our treatment towards
others. We might claim that we are more
civil than our ancestors in relating to people who are different from us. We might claim that we are now tolerant of
others who are different in color, ethnicity, nationality, religion and
lifestyle. But if that is our claim, a
claim to be tolerant, have we not stop short of the goal that Dr. King
expresses in his statement? No one
doubts that Dr. King delighted in the fact that white Americans were being
convinced that the brutality carried out against African Americans was
immoral. But in the words that I have
read from his book, Dr. King is certainly lamenting the fact that this is not
enough; it fell short of what it needed to be.
True victory, as I see Dr. King expressing it, is not in the removal of
exclusion and the replacing it with tolerance.
Dr. King appears to be saying, at least implicitly, that tolerance must
move beyond itself to embrace. Some call
for an abandonment of tolerance, while others call for an acceptance of
tolerance, but the gospel of God in Christ calls us to move beyond mere
tolerance to full and vulnerable embrace.
So, the question we must ask
ourselves is, “Has God called us to be exclusive, tolerant, or embracing?” Are we to follow the prophets of division
that call us to reject tolerance? Or are
we to follow the empty promises of the tolerance message? Or, does the ministry of embrace hold the key
for our faithfully living out our mission as God’s people? To answer these questions, let us deal with
both the sin of exclusion and the sin of tolerance so that we might expose the
immorality of the one and the weakness of the other. From there we will be able to grasp the biblical
call to embrace one another and, perhaps more challenging, to embrace our
enemies.
In his 1996 monograph, Exclusion
and Embrace, Yale theologian Miroslav Volf captures the essence of the
biblical and theological ideas of exclusion and embrace.[ii] In this book Volf offers a broad definition
of exclusion that helps us see our own sinfulness of exclusion towards others
who are not like us. His broad
definition is a tableau of exclusion that does not limit the sin of exclusion
only to hateful actions done to others.
Indeed hatred and bigotry are part of it, and perhaps the most violent
and repulsive. But the sin of exclusion
is the sin of all, and we stand here guilty with blood on our own hands if we
have transgressed one part of this sin.
First, Volf points out that
exclusion is evil, for perpetrators of exclusive viewpoints will seek to
eliminate the other. Whether we speak
about the fundamentalists and radicals within Islam, Judaism, or Christianity,
or the political demagogues, imperialists, or dictators on the world stage,
elimination is certainly the expedient and ultimate goal of those who hold
stringent and exclusive points of view.
The promotion of fear of the other and a dehumanising of those who are
different serves these persons well as they are able to raise mob support to
promote their fear of the other. The
only goal in the eyes of those of practice exclusion through elimination is,
“The enemy must be destroyed.”
Volf offers a second, but just as
brutal, facet of exclusion when he designates exclusion as assimilation. “We must make the other like us before they
make us like them.” Again, the momentum
for this viewpoint is based on the vilification of the other through fear. The belief is that our way of thinking and
believing is better, more superior to everyone else, and therefore we must
assimilate the other, the enemy, into our way of thinking, believing, and
living. This may seem reasonable enough
to us, but behind this motive is again a sense of power and a desire to possess
and control.
And, should they not become like us,
Volf suggests that there exists a third option to carry forth an exclusive
agenda: Domination. If we cannot
eliminate the other, and we cannot assimilate the other, then our option is to
dominate them. Through domination we
force our own views and ways on the enemy.
But sadly enough, while history has
proven that the church has been guilty of all of these forms of exclusion, it
is the fourth facet of Volf’s tapestry of which the church is most guilty: Abandonment. A neglect for justice and peace, a turning
away from the real needs of the oppressed, and a quote/unquote spiritual
message of evangelism that takes the place of ministering to real world needs
is the darkness of the church’s sin of abandonment. We have practiced exclusion by abandonment
because we feel that it is not as bad as the other three and because we do not
want to get our hands dirty with the real work of being the crucified body of
Christ. We find comfort in neglect. Like the priest and Levite who walk by the
man lying on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, we have
abandoned the world and its real needs because we are too wrapped up in our own
agendas of religiosity. We have
abandoned the call of Scripture to embrace others as God in Christ has embraced
us. We may or may not fall into the
first three sins of exclusion, but we are most assuredly guilty of exclusion
through abandonment. And because of this,
we walk off hand in hand with the oppressors, leaving the oppressed on the side
of the road.
So where does the answer to the sin
of exclusion rest? Is it tolerance or
the rejection of tolerance? Should we
hide behind a false gospel that calls us to separate ourselves from those not
like us, which only reinforces our stereotypes of others and increases our
hatred? Or should we accept the
comfort of tolerance, knowing that tolerance merely calls us to grit our
teeth and bear with others not like us, but keeps us at a distance from
them? The biblical answer lies neither
in abandonment of tolerance nor the reluctant acceptance of tolerance. The biblical answer lies in the activity of
God in Christ, who has come into the world not to cast us aside, and surely not
to tolerate us, but to embrace us in Christ. You see we have forgotten all too
often that we stand with the world in solidarity, solidarity in sin. Certainly there is evil in the world, and
evil needs to be called evil. But we who
consider ourselves good, and even Christian, cannot claim innocence. The blood of the Son of God drips from our
hands, and our exclusion through either elimination, assimilation, domination
or abandonment of others makes us all the more guilty of the evil that takes
place in our world. And because of this
solidarity we cannot rightfully stand in judgment of others, no matter what we
may believe about them, and we cannot exclude them from community in an attempt
to exclude ourselves from guilt.
How shall we proceed, then, as the
body of Christ called to be the light of the world? If the liberal proclamation of tolerance is
short sighted, and the fundamentalist proclamation of exclusion is anti-gospel,
where does the mission of the church lie?
It lies in the modelling embrace of God.
I certainly cannot take credit for
this model, for it comes forth first in Scripture and has been interpreted by
many scholars and theologians. And here
I turn once again to Volf’s book, Exclusion and Embrace for he says it
better that what I could say. But I
shall also add my two cents worth to the mix.
If exclusion is sin, and tolerance
itself is sin, then embrace is indeed our only faithful option. But can we find a motivation for embrace and
the strength to embrace those whom we may see as different and even those we
call our enemies? Does the story of
Jesus model for us a real story which we can live out in the world in order to
stomp out both the message of exclusion and the message of tolerance? Indeed it does. Jesus offers to us practices that are
fundamental for our being the inclusive body of Christ in the world. He models
and teaches that we must practice love, service, humility, forgiveness, peace,
and welcome.
What is our response to the gospel
message of inclusion? Will we bunker
down and remain exclusive and prejudice towards those not like us and towards
our enemies? Will we be duped by the
attractive, but shortsighted message of tolerance? Or, will we faithfully follow the Crucified
One and embrace the world through love, forgiveness, humility, peace and
witness? We are left to respond to God’s
Word.
In
the final pages of Dr. King’s book, Where Do We Go from Here, we find
these words:
“We are now faced with the fact that
tomorrow is today. We are confronted
with the fierce urgency of the now. In
this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too
late. Procrastination is still the thief
of time. We still have a choice today:
non-violent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to
choose between chaos and community.”[iii]
And
so, the time is now. We as the church,
the redeemed people of God who have been embraced by God in Christ, must redeem
the time that has been lost to exclusion, oppression, hatred, and violence. We must repent of our sin of exclusion and
our sin of mere tolerance. We must be
prepared and empowered by God’s Spirit to embrace others, even others who are
not like us, even others whose lifestyles are not like ours, even others we
call our enemies. In so doing, we live
out the power of the crucified Lamb of God by expelling exclusion and chaos and
by embracing all people in what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.
[i] Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or
Community? (New York: Harper & Rom, 1967), 3-4.
[ii] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration
of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1996), esp. 74-77.
[iii] King, Where Do We Go From
Here?, 191
