racism

16
May
2022

Love for all, good news for all

A message for the 5th Sunday of Easter

“Love for All, Good News for All”

Readings to consider:  Acts 11:1-18, John 13:31-35


All along, God had made his mission clear. While God had chosen the nation of Israel to carry his promise until the promised Messiah came, his promise always was for everyone.  All people were to be told his good news and welcomed into God’s family through faith, hope, and love.  God described, through the prophet Isaiah, that it was too small a thing for the Messiah to be just for tribes of Jacob, the people of Israel. Rather, the Savior would be given as “a light to the nations,” for God’s salvation to “reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).  God’s people in Christ never have been defined on the basis of the blood running through their veins, but rather on faith in the promises of Christ that lives in their hearts. 

The earliest group of New Testament believers—the church that had gathered around Jesus’ message in Judea and Galilee—was a Jewish church.  As they shared the message of Jesus–how he had fulfilled all the long-awaited promises—their natural tendency was to share the message with other Jews, people like themselves. But the Lord showed Peter, one of the key leaders of the early church, that they needed to expand their vision.  

Peter’s vision by Domenico Fetti (1619)

God gave Peter a profound experience in a vision, then brought Peter to the household of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, to see faith in action there. Peter said to Cornelius and those with him, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,  but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. … All the prophets testify about [Christ] that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:34,35.43). Peter witnessed a strong outpouring of God’s Spirit on the members of that Gentile household. They were people so different from Peter and his colleagues culturally, but they were united by faith as one in the name of Jesus.

If those early Jewish Christians, so deeply rooted in their unique customs and traditions, could begin reaching outside of their cultural community to people very much unlike themselves … what does that say to churches like ours today? We are people who have had the gospel for a long time, who have been blessed richly in our faith community.  But have we been a bit slow, a bit reluctant, a bit hesitant, about speaking of salvation outside of our comfort zone, outside of the rather narrow circles in which our paths usually run?  

Think about the vision God gave Peter–a vision of all kinds of animals for food that would be unthinkable for a Jewish person observing a kosher diet. The vision was about much more than cultural diet laws, though. Peter came to understand God’s essential point–“What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 11:9)–meant that we should not call any person profane or unclean (cf. Acts 10:28).  Do we tend to think of some persons as unclean, unsuitable, unwelcome alongside us in God’s family?  Do we look at people whose ways are different from ours, or whose background is different from ours, or whose lifestyle is different from ours, and completely overlook them as souls with whom to share God’s love and hope and truth?

God wants us to reach out more boldly, more widely with his good news—not just to people like ourselves, but also to people dramatically different from us.  Otherwise we are putting limits on the love of Jesus. When Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34), he wasn’t telling us to love only those already inside our fellowship within the church. Jesus’ call to “have love for one another” (John 13:35) encompasses every other person around us, every fellow human being. Jesus emphasized, as one of the greatest commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). And do you recall how a religious lawyer tried to wriggle away from that responsibility by saying, “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:29)?  Jesus responded with the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35), referring to a people group that Jewish lawyer detested and would have gone out of his way to avoid.  Jesus made quite clear that someone who shows mercy to his fellow human beings–every fellow human being–is the one fulfilling the law of love as a true “neighbor” (cf. Luke 10:37, Romans 13:8-10).

Allow me to share a couple of examples that illustrate how we can be too inclined to limit ourselves and our outreach with the gospel.

A number of years ago, I did a ministry internship in one of America’s largest cities.  The congregations of the metro area were planning expansion, looking at locations for planting additional churches.  I was assigned to do demographic research, to find out which portions of the urban sprawl were projected for population expansion.  This would give cues about where future church work might be warranted.  I didn’t really know the city yet; to me, the research was simply a matter of maps and statistics.  The area I suggested deserved immediate attention, because of swelling numbers of residents, turned out to be a section of slums.  Others on the planning committee looked at me incredulously.  “Put a church where?”  Their pattern had been to put churches in the suburbs, in affluent neighborhoods, so that the ministry efforts could be paid for by offerings from the people who came. The mission planners asked, “How could we afford to start a ministry where the people had no money to support it?” That seemed to go against the spirit of what sharing God’s grace and goodness is meant to look like.* Yes, as we bring others to the gospel, we will urge them to become supporters of gospel ministry themselves. But when the apostle Paul was doing outreach and starting new churches, he made a point not to accept money from people. As he put it, he and his missionary colleagues did not want to put any “an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:12).  A policy of doing outreach only where it seemed the efforts could be financially self-supporting was a form of structural discrimination, neglecting poorer populations who needed gospel love as much as anyone. Such a policy risks Jesus saying to us, “Just as you did not help the least of these who are members of my family, you did not help me” (cf. Matthew 25:40,45). Rather than viewing prospective audiences for the gospel from a worldly point of view, we are called to be “ambassadors for Christ” (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:16-20), reaching out to all persons, without making distinctions. 

Or another story.**  A church had just had summertime Vacation Bible School (VBS).  One young mother had brought her two boys to VBS.  She also babysat another boy who lived in the same apartment complex.  She had asked that boy’s mother if she could bring him to the VBS too, and so she did.

That little boy, who was 5 years old, enjoyed VBS so much that he went home and told his mother, “I want to go to school there all the time!”  [The church had a Lutheran elementary school, starting with kindergarten.]  So the boy’s mother asked about enrolling him for the fall.

The boy’s mother—we’ll call her Sally—was a working mom.  Her profession was the oldest one around, as they say.  She had made her living as a prostitute; had made enough, in fact, to buy the business from … well, we’ll call him the ‘previous owner.’   So now Sally was the proprietor or “madam” for a number of “working girls.”

The church had a policy that any parents who wished to enroll children in its school needed to enroll themselves in a Bible study course.  Sally agreed with that; she said she’d be glad to take the Bible course if they could work it around her schedule.  So, at the next meeting of the congregation’s board of education, the pastor and the ministry intern brought forward the recommendation for Sally’s son to be enrolled in the school … and told them what the woman did for a living.

The school board members panicked.  They erupted with questions:

  • “Pastor, do you really want us to enroll this child in our school?”
  • “Are you sure the mother actually will take the Bible classes?” 
  • “What effect will this child’s presence in our school have on the other children?”
  • “Won’t this cause worries for other parents?”
  • “How can we expect support at home with Bible homework or principles of Christian living when the mother’s life is so at odds with our church’s moral principles?”

The members of that church’s school board were faithful, believing Christians.  But their gut reaction was not from an attitude of new life in Christ.  The pastor reminded them of how Jesus’ own ministry reached out to prostitutes and other public sinners. Still, though, they struggled to get past their aversions.  Each of us typically has the same aversions.   Our thought process is something like, “Well, yes, I know prostitutes and drug addicts and alcoholics and ex-convicts all need to hear the gospel … but do they have to do it in our church?”

Eventually, the Christian love in the hearts of the members of that church committee rose to the occasion.  They talked about the spiritual welfare of the child and how it was unthinkable to turn him away from the gospel he so loved when he heard it at VBS.  They talked about a mother who, in spite of her personal history, was willing to listen to Bible teaching—and about trusting the dynamic power of the gospel’s teaching.  So Sally’s son was enrolled in school, and Sally was enrolled in a Bible information class.  Long story short, not only was Sally’s son nurtured in the good news of Jesus, but also Sally herself was brought to faith and made changes in her life. 

May our attitude as Christians be inspired by the goodness the Lord has shown to us. May we be big-hearted and open-armed and opportunistic when it comes to declaring the praises of him who has called us “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).  May we not be content declaring God’s name only to persons with whom we feel a sort of safeness, people who look like us or act like us or come from the same sort of background as us.  May we be bold to extend our hands and express our beliefs also to those very different from ourselves—whether that means different racial or ethnic backgrounds, or different religious backgrounds, or different moral backgrounds.  Because, in the end, as human beings, we all came from the same background of needing God in our lives. We ought not think of ourselves as somehow better than others, somehow more deserving than others, somehow more inherently righteous than others. We all do well to say, in a paraphrase of St. Paul, “There, but for the grace of God, go I” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9-10). Or, to quote Paul directly from one of his epistles, “There is no distinction [between us], since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [and] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22-24).

That is the message we seek to share, across every human barrier that exists. God’s love is for all. Christ’s good news is for all. We will share that love and good news with all. May God give us eagerness and energy to extend his grace and support the spread of his Word to everyone everywhere. 

Prayer:  “Lord speak to us, that we may speak in living echoes of your tone. As you have sought, so let us seek your straying children, lost and lone” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 676:1).  Amen.

*This story was previously published in Faith Lives in Our Actions by David Sellnow, available on Amazon.com.

**A version of this story, expanded from the actual events, was included in the book, The Lord Cares for Me, by David Sellnow, available on Amazon.com.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Posted by David Sellnow
18
Jan
2021

Thoughts for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Reject racism; God shows no partiality

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC (8/28/1963), the Rev. Dr. Martin  Luther King, Jr., famously said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He dreamed that one day the United States would be a nation where individuals would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at University of Minnesota, Saint Paul campus, 1967 – Wikimedia Commons

Recent events reveal a distance still to go before King’s dream can be realized. Instances of propaganda and recruitment to white nationalist organizations have shown a more than fivefold rate of increase over the past two years.  The rate of death from COVID-19 for Native Americans has been 73% higher than for white Americans, and 40% higher for black Americans than white Americans.  What Dr. King said at a meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (3/25/1966), sadly, still rings true today:  “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death” (Associated Press, 3/26/1966).

A dozen days ago, a self-proclaimed “shaman” stood at the rostrum of the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US Capitol (after invading that space). He invoked the name of Jesus Christ and led a prayer of sorts, thanking God for “allowing the United States of America to be reborn” and “for allowing us to get rid of the traitors within our government.”  In response to such a misuse of Christ’s name, it seems fitting to gather together things spoken in Scripture and by recognized religious leaders about our call to work for peace and kinship among all human beings–children of God “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).   In King’s words, may we “speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Bible statements

  • “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  – The Apostle Peter  (Acts 10:34,35)
  • “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  – The Apostle Paul  (Galatians 3:28)
  • “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.” – God’s word revealed to Moses (Leviticus 19:33,34)
  • “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” – James, leader in 1st century Jerusalem church  (James 2:8-9) 

Statements by religious leaders

  • “Discrimination based on the accidental fact of race or color, and as such injurious to human rights regardless of personal qualities or achievements, cannot be reconciled with the truth that God has created all men with equal rights and equal dignity.” – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Discrimination and Christian Conscience (11/14/1958)
  • “Racism—a mix of power, privilege, and prejudice—is sin, a violation of God’s intention for humanity. The resulting racial, ethnic, or cultural barriers deny the truth that all people are God’s creatures and, therefore, persons of dignity. Racism fractures and fragments both church and society.” – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (8/31/1993)
  • “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech (12/10/1964)
  • “Racism can ultimately never be benign, nice and respectable.  It is always evil, immoral and ultimately vicious and not to be tolerated by Christians and people of goodwill as well as those of other faiths. … Racism claims that what invests us, each person, with worth is some extraneous arbitrary biological or other attribute, skin colour or ethnicity. … The Bible and Christianity teach a categorically different position.  What endows the human person with worth is not this or that attribute.  No, it is the fact that each person is created in the image and likeness of God.  This is something that is so for every single human being. … It does not depend on status, on gender, on race, on culture.  It does not matter whether you are beautiful or not so beautiful, whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated.  … Reconciliation [of all people] is really the heart of the Gospel message.  Therefore to say that people are fundamentally irreconcilable is to deny … the central tenet of Christianity.  Jesus said of himself, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all to me’” (John 12:32). – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speech to the Parliament of Australia (12/6/1994)


To see additional thoughts here on The Electric Gospel that speak against favoritism and prejudice, go to the following link and scroll through previous posts on the topic:

https://theelectricgospel.com/tag/favoritism/

 

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
04
Jul
2020

Mortal Monuments

by David Sellnow

“All flesh is grass” (Isaiah 40:6 KJV).

Statues are falling across the land. They are being removed, destroyed, defaced.

In Richmond, Virginia, the bronze image of Christopher Columbus was torn down, set on fire, then shoved into a nearby lake.  

In Minneapolis, outside Target Field, the Minnesota Twins removed a statue of former team owner Calvin Griffith, acknowledging racism he had exhibited. 

Image credit: Wikipedia Commons

In New York City, the American Museum of Natural History has requested that the city remove the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which depicts the former US president riding high while leading an African American and Native American man on each side of his horse.

In Portland, Oregon, outside Jefferson High School, protesters spray painted “SLAVE OWNER” across the base of the Thomas Jefferson memorial and toppled the statue itself onto the ground.

The killing of George Floyd by police officers on Memorial Day has pushed our nation to reevaluate its past and what we memorialize. Monuments to Confederate generals who fought to perpetuate slavery have been targeted especially. Other figures have been questioned and their history reassessed too, such as the examples mentioned above.

The history of each individual human life is complicated. Thomas Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves over the course of his lifetime. Jefferson also fathered children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, who was his wife Martha’s half-sister.  (Martha Jefferson’s father also had fathered children by a family slave.)  However, in the draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included strong condemnation of the slave trade that the British government had made a part of colonial life.  He blamed the king for waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery or to incur miserable death in their transportation” from Africa to the Americas. That portion of Jefferson’s Declaration didn’t make it into the final version of the nation’s founding document. Too many other leaders, too invested in the slave economy, forced such statements to be deleted.

Any human beings whom we hold up as heroes are inevitably flawed because, well, they’re human. Some have engaged in actions that were hailed as bold in their time but are seen as oppressive in retrospect. Statues fall. No mortal man or woman in reality could be as monumental as the monuments we construct to them. Our tendency to elevate human individuals to hero status and idolize them is a pattern fraught with problems.

God’s Word wisely advises us (Psalm 146:3-4):
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.

The same Psalm (146:5-9) then tells us where to focus our trust:
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

God alone is worthy of our worship and praise. He is the one who can guide our paths forward, heal our society, inspire individuals to love one another regardless of race or other differences.

As for people from our past and people in our present, we do well to be honest about who they were and who they are — and to be honest about ourselves too, acknowledging our own failures and imperfections. The Bible is honest in that way about people whom we admire as persons “commended for their faith” (Hebrews 11:39). In Scripture, we hear not only that Noah believed God and built an ark for facing the Flood, but also of an occasion when he got so drunk he passed out. We hear not only of the times Abraham acted in great faith, but also times he was afraid and lied to protect himself. We hear not only of David’s great victories as leader of the people, but also of adultery and murder he committed. 

Isaiah’s prophetic words still ring out about our human condition.  No persons are pure, and no monuments to human achievement can ever be permanent.

 All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever  (Isaiah 40:6-8).


THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
19
Jan
2020

Encourage one another

With this post, I am launching the new and improved version of The Electric Gospel.  For Christmas, one of my daughters set up this new site (with expanded possibilities), upgrading from my previous blog. I credit her with site design and with doing much of the work of moving over archives of past devotional writings. The Christmas gift, a labor of love, was my daughter’s way of encouraging me to keep writing, to keep working at offering spiritual encouragement to others. I invite you to enter your email to subscribe for receiving new posts as this blog continues in this new form.

In launching the new site, I had thought about re-posting an updated version of something from the archives, such as a New Year’s post (from 2015) or a Martin Luther King Jr. Day post (from 2019).  But you can get at those posts in the archives (follow those links).

A better way to begin the new version of The Electric Gospel is to post something new.  Thinking of my daughter’s much-appreciated encouragement to me–as well as the intention of the blog site–it seems appropriate to speak about encouraging one another in faith and hope. If you wish to post a reply, please do!

Encourage one another

by David Sellnow

When I was doing college teaching, I made a habit of offering encouragement to students individually. Sometimes it was about a spark of spiritual energy I saw evident in them. Some I urged onward in their writing or other forms of creative expression, because they had talents to be explored. In many cases, I encountered young adults who felt out of place, who had questions or doubts, who weren’t sure the answers they were being told were consistent and true. Perhaps they were willing to share their doubts and wonderings with me because I was one who wondered along with them, a fellow learner, not someone who seemed to know all already.

On one occasion, I sent an email to a freshman student who had been offering novel insights in a history course. I encouraged her to continue sharing her thoughts, which were elevating the level of discourse in our classroom. Not long after receiving the email, the student came to my office, in tears. She was overcome with emotion, she said, because this was the first time in her life that a teacher had praised her work. I thought perhaps she was exaggerating, but her story was compelling. She had been raised in church schools where errors were duly noted and corrections expected.  Perfect papers got praise. Her assignments mostly got marked up with red ink, pointing out every imperfection. She felt dismissed and disregarded by teachers, labeled as an underperformer. Her confidence and desire to do well diminished year by year due to the lack of positive attention.

We’d like to think of church settings as places where seldom is heard a discouraging word. Sadly, often much discouragement occurs.  This is at odds with God’s gospel imperative to provide ongoing spiritual support.  “Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11).  It’s good that the Christians at Thessalonica were in the habit of encouraging one another. We do well when we follow their lead.  In a similar vein, a writer to early Jewish believers urged them, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24,25).  Those Christians were enduring difficult times.  But they held onto each other in faith and looked ahead to Christ’s return.  The letter writer reminded them how they had “endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions” (Hebrews 10:32-34).

Mutual encouragement is especially important when enduring hard times, injustices, or oppression. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 1963), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., decried the lack of support from mainline churches for African Americans who were being deprived of their rights. How could this be, in a nation founded on the principle that all persons “are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (Declaration of Independence)?  King wrote:  “The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.  Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.”  Establishment churches were good at supporting and encouraging themselves within the circle of privilege and prosperity. They were ignoring the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the despised.  King pointed to the people on the front lines of the civil rights movement who supported one another faithfully as they struggled to achieve liberty and justice for all. One day the country will know, King said, “that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

If you are someone enduring struggles or suffering, I pray The Electric Gospel blog can become a source of encouragement to you. Fill out the “Contact Us” form if there’s a specific concern on your heart that might be addressed here.

If you know someone in need of spiritual encouragement, by all means, reach out, speak out, help out. Let that person know they have a friend on their side and by their side.  Don’t let anyone continue to be starved of needed praise and support in a world full of criticism and judgment.  We are called to be there for one another. As the proverb reminds us: “Two are better than one …. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).

Dear God, help us to help one another and lift each other up, in Jesus’ name.

———

All Bible quotations from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
18
Jan
2020

No room for racism among God’s people

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on August 6, 2019.

No room for racism among God’s people

by David Sellnow

Last week, an old recording was revealed. Ronald Reagan (then the governor of California) described people in African nations as “monkeys” and added: “Damn them—they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”   We might want to dismiss such statements as outdated ideas from decades ago, but racial and ethnic slurs are still heard in our cultural climate today.  And now there’s more than a war of words.  Ugly violence and murder has occurred.  Over the weekend, a young man posted a hateful manifesto online, complaining of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He then went to a Walmart in El Paso, where he killed twenty-two people and wounded many more.

As people who live by God’s grace and under his direction, our attitudes are guided by his Word.  This seems a fitting time to review Bible lessons on race relations—on how we relate to all of our fellow human beings.

Episode one:  “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman” (Numbers 12:1).  “Cushite” means Ethiopian.  Miriam instigated the animosity against this woman from a different ethnic background.  Miriam’s prejudice did not please the Lord. In response, the Lord afflicted Miriam with a visible and painful leprosy for a period of seven days. That was a real case of being “unclean” or unhealthy.  Skin color differences are not problems or impurities.

Episode two: A proud religious man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a parable: A Jewish traveler was robbed and beaten and left half-dead by the side of the road. Two prominent Jewish men came along … and each of them walked by without helping the man. Then a Samaritan man came along, and “he was moved with compassion” (Luke 10:33). He helped the man, bandaged his wounds, and took him to a place where he could recuperate.  Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36). The proud teacher of Jewish law had to admit it was the man who showed mercy. Bear in mind, Jews of that era typically despised the people across the border, the Samaritans. Jesus’ story illustrated that true human compassion knows no boundaries.

Episodes three and four: Christ’s apostle Peter was called to the home of an Italian Regiment commander. Prior to the request from the Roman centurion, Peter had been given a vision to show him that “God doesn’t show favoritism” (Acts 10:34). God accepts people from every nation. And yet, on a later occasion, Peter didn’t show that same attitude. He didn’t stand up to Jewish purists in a congregation where there were many Gentile members. The apostle Paul challenged what was going on and called it hypocrisy to favor one group over another in the church (cf. Galatians 2:11-14).

Episode five:   The scene opens in heaven, and we see the countless multitude of the family of God. Where did they come from? “Out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages” (Revelation 7:9). There is no racial tension or discrimination in heaven.

There is also no room for racism in a godly heart on this earth. There is no room for disdain toward others, of any race or culture.   If someone says, “’I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20)?  Our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends are the other members of our common human family.

The children’s song written by Rev. Clarence Herbert Woolston (1856–1927) states the simple truth:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Posted by David Sellnow
27
Dec
2019

Being Christ to our neighbors in the city

Originally published on The Electric Gospel on August 11, 2015.  Henry Tyson wrote this powerful testimony in connection with his ministry in Milwaukee WI. He passionately urges all of us, in every city and town and village, to be living witnesses for Jesus to those among whom we live — to the communities we are called to serve in the name of Christ.

******************************

Living as Christians in Milwaukee’s Central City

by Henry Tyson

How is it possible that there can be so many Christians and churches in Milwaukee’s central city and yet the church seems powerless in the face of segregation, poverty, and crime?  What can we say about the life of Christian and what such a life will look like in a city so gripped with ungodly behavior?  From a biblical standpoint, one can see that the life of a Christian in Milwaukee’s central city – in the face of all that we see – will be marked by extreme joy, increasing holiness, radical love, and urgent, prayerful solitude, all to the glory of God.

Satan has laid claim to this city by leading people away from the Lord and thoroughly destroying the fabric of traditional families and communities.  The resulting chaos enables Milwaukee to lay claim to the ignoble titles of most segregated city in America, city with the highest incarceration rates among African Americans, an extremely high homicide rate, and one of the highest rates of child poverty in the richest nation on earth.  If Christ were a Milwaukeean today, what would his ministry look like?  Where would we find him?  What would people make of him?  Surely we would find him joyful in demeanor, radical in love, urgent and prayerful in solitude, and fruitful in his ministry.

In his first letter, the apostle Peter explained why the life of a Christian will be a life filled with joy.  Following a clear and concise explanation of the pure gospel, Peter wrote, “Though you have not seen Christ, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls”  (1 Peter 1:8-9).  The “salvation of your souls” is in reference to the Christian’s movement from eternal death to eternal life as described by Paul: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24).  Therefore, the life of a Christian is filled with joy regardless of events or circumstances, because we have been justified by faith and our salvation is certain.  This is not something that we have to wait for but it is something that we have already received.  For this reason alone, the life of a Christian will be marked by a length and breadth of joy that cannot be understood by the world.

In addition to joyfulness, the life of Christian will be marked by increasing holiness.  What does this mean?  It means that the life of a Christian, as he or she matures, will be increasingly identified with the life of the Lord Jesus and therefore increasingly look like the life of the Lord Jesus.  The apostle Paul got at the heart of the matter when he wrote:  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2).  The process of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” is the process of sanctification – the process by which the Holy Spirit shapes the Christian’s life into a oneness with Christ.

The great 20th century theologian, Oswald Chambers, captured this wonderfully when he assured his readers that “sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus being made mine manifestly,” and “it is his patience, his love, his holiness, his faith, his purity, his godliness, that is manifested in and through every sanctified soul” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest). The Christian life therefore — in Milwaukee and at any time and in any place — is a life that increasingly reflects the holiness of Christ.

It is this concept of increasingly becoming and reflecting the holiness of Christ that mandates that the life of a Christian in a broken city and a hurting world will be marked by radical love.  Martin Luther King, Jr., understood the radical love of Christ when he wrote from Birmingham City Jail, “Was not Jesus an extremist for love – ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you’” (Letter from Birmingham City Jail)?  Dr. King understood that “Jesus love” goes far beyond the usual interpretations and extends as far as loving enemies and blessing those who insult us.  Further evidence of Christ’s radical love is found in Jesus’ tendency to hang out with sinners (Mark 2), his willingness to break social norms and talk to a Samaritan woman (John 4), and his willingness to forgive the very men who were conducting his execution (Luke 23).  And for those who doubt the radical nature of Christ, perhaps it is worth considering his very death – a wicked, lonely, brutal death that he chose out of obedience to the Father and love of mankind.

What sort of actions, then, does radical love display in the life of a Christian?  It will certainly look different from one to another but it will always be radical.  It might be radical in how much one gives to the poor, or where one chooses to live, or how much time and energy one sacrifices for children, or the boldness with which one speaks against the moral depravity of 21st century America.  Certainly, the life of a Christian in our hurting world will look nothing like the pursuit of the American dream, for the American dream is contrary to the holiness of Christ.  Indeed the natural reaction of the world to the radical love of Christ will be to persecute the Christian and view him or her as someone strange and different.  Peter identified this reality in his first epistle when he referred to the friends to whom he was writing as “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11).  The life of a Christian, therefore, is on track and appropriate when he or she completely identifies with Christ and self-describes as an alien and stranger in the world.  This is the natural outcome of the radical love of Christ.

When the life of a Christian is full with a glorious and inexpressible joy, is increasingly holy, and responds to the world with an exhausting, radical Christian love, the Christian life — like the life of Christ himself — will be drawn toward and indeed will depend on times of solitude and prayer.  We note in Christ’s life, how in response to the beheading of John, the feeding of the five thousand, the fear of the disciples, the faithfulness and subsequent faithlessness of Peter, and the healing of the sick, that on more than one occasion, Jesus “went up on a mountainside by himself to pray” (Matthew 14).  So engaged is the Christian worker in the life and activities of Christ, that he or she will, by both desire and need, find himself or herself in regular solitude and prayer.  Just as Jesus needed this time to connect with the Father, so the Christian worker needs this time to connect with Christ and the heavenly Father.  The Christian life is not just praying in church or at bedtime.  The Christian will, in the words of Paul, “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:16).  Regular times of solitude and prayer will be a mark of the Christian life in the central city.

The Gospels and the books of the New Testament paint a wonderful picture of the life of Christ, the lives of the earliest church workers, and provide a clear road map for modern day Christians.  In a city with so much hurt, so much divisiveness, so much ungodly behavior, it is easy for Christians to retreat to their homes and churches and disengage from the world.  But we must not.  Instead, we stride forward and exhibit the glorious joy that comes through our justification by way of the cross, the holiness that comes through sanctification, the radical, engaging love of Christ, and constant times of prayer and solitude that fill us up and draw us ever closer to oneness with Christ.  This is the life of a Christian in Milwaukee’s central city.

Posted by kyriesellnow
27
Dec
2019

Do we truly love each other in the church?

Originally published on The Electric Gospel on June 26, 2015.

In a religion course that I taught, I asked participants to say something in a personal way about the church — either in the form of an essay or in poetry or song or by an artistic creation. They had much freedom of what form their words or images would take.  I received many thoughtful and beautiful pieces.  One of the most striking testimonies came from a dear soul who came from the Caribbean island nation of  St. Lucia to study in the United States. She wrote in urgent, stream-of-consciousness fashion.  Evodia evokes our heartfelt response.  She speaks of  struggles within what is supposed to be the loving community of the church.  How often within the body of Christ, the church, do we leave individual members feeling similar aches and distress?  How often do we forget what Christ’s apostle urged of us? 

  • By the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.  For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. … Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.  Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.  (Romans 12:3-5, 10-16).

I pray you will appreciate Evodia’s honest expressions of hurt and hope … and that we all find greater hope and love in community with one another.  This is a longer item here on The Electric Gospel blog, but well worth your time.

Running on Empty

by Evodia Cassius

I wish I were able to truly express how I feel. This my sixth attempt to write this essay and the words still do not pour out of me naturally. I am hesitant and unsettled. I guess my title “Running on Empty” is proving itself to be true on many accounts. Apart from the five failed attempts at this paper, I also have two failed poetry attempts and two failed paintings. Honestly the paintings were not failures, they just do not accurately express my story.  Neither did the poetry or the other writing attempts. Hence this blog entry … this series of blog entries. This real-life talking style about my failed successes and empty full life. The irony is painful. As I write, the butterflies in my stomach seem not to enjoy the frenzy in my head because they are trying their best to escape. This is my story, my blog, my irony.

Insanity

Shy? Afraid? Unsure? Quitter, deserter, pitiful coward, downer … these are not me. So why do I feel like it is becoming second nature to be all these things? Why do such attributes seem to be the very essence that makes up this temporary dwelling in which my soul lives? Why has living become so hard? Why do I feel defeated before I even attempt something? And more, why do I keep trying if I know that the outcome will be the same?  I am beginning think that I MISSED SOME IMPORTANT LESSON that God attempted to teach me, so as a result I go through and do the same things over and over again expecting a change. The very definition of insanity.

Broken

Helpless, needy, clingy, desperate, attention-seeking … these are not me. But someone said even though you glue the pieces back together, you can still see the cracks. Someone else said once it is broken—though you may make the unit whole again—the element is now weaker than it originally was. If these theories are true, what can be said for something that is repeatedly broken and smashed? Does it not stand to reason that one day like Humpty Dumpty the pieces will not be able to be put back together again?  I wear a mask. A façade, a camouflage, if you would like to call it that. Something that hides the cracks and the holes where the pieces that once were are now lost.  Yes I admit it, I am broken.  … And just when I think that by some miracle I am healed and whole, something bumps me over again, reminding of how weak my structure is, of how fragile I have grown over the years. Of how unstable I really am.

Empty

Depressed, sad, lonely, losing faith? These are not me.  A priest once told me that questions do not equal lack of faith. I agreed; it was more my curious nature that drove the questions. But when the questions have been answered and yet still they linger or they resurface, a door is opened. A door that allows more things to come in, but not go out. This door brings past hurts and darkness creeping back in. Slowly but surely, the once brightly-painted room is overcome with a darkness, and the fear is that all the light will be gone.

“What brought all this about?” you may ask. God, the devil, myself? That is an excellent question. You see, I had thought not too long ago that life was splendid. Grand with images of butterflies and rainbows behind every corner. Allow me to explain what I believe happened.

Seeing the light

You know that feeling when some startling revelation occurs, when a conspiracy is uncovered, when some big holes are poked into something you thought was all good? That feeling you get of deep despair and confusion and a stomach ache that you cannot explain? That is the feeling that I felt. That is what I experienced. I came to this unknown place with the best of intentions. I was told, “You will be among God-fearing people, people who believe in the same thing you believe. People who love God just as much as you do.”  And that brought me face to face with a painful irony … I love God … but I don’t love you?  The Bible itself asks how can you love someone you cannot see but hate the people you see.  “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

So which love is it? Which love will mine be?  Which love will be in the hearts of those around me?  It’s hard to come to terms with love within the church when the church has lost the love it had at first (Revelation 2:3).  Where is love when your loyalty to God is measured on your attendance statistics at each and every religious service, and not on how you treat and relate to the people in your very presence?  Where is love when you can have a conversation with someone now, and five minutes later not acknowledge their presence? Where is love when you are treated differently because you are different, or just because?  When judgment is cast without knowledge of the person?   It is sad. It is hurtful. It is infuriating.

I asked my mother, “How can they say they love God, my God, and behave the way they do? Is it just me? Am I the wrong one?”  I pray almost constantly, “God, if I am at fault, help me see and help me change.”  But it had gotten increasingly difficult to deal with life within the lukewarmness of my surroundings.  Increasingly difficult to smile, to be, to live.  A minister friend tells me, “You are exactly where God wants you to be.” And I need to believe this because it is the only thing that keeps me going at times. But is it true … or is it a means of pacification so I stop questioning things? I am not saying that I am the only person who struggles, and the Lord knows that my issues may be rather insignificant compared to others. So who am I to complain? But I do feel empty and low. I feel like a failure because I am not happy where I am. God has richly blessed me and all my endeavors; he always has. I cannot say that he has ever left my side. But where I am at the moment feels wrong … in my gut, in my soul. Sometimes if feels like everything around me is rejecting me, telling me constantly, “You do not belong. Something here is different, you are the odd one out, a foreigner that has infiltrated and is not wanted. A cancer. A poison.” I walk into a room and people go quiet. Conversations cease and people walk away. People’s attitudes towards me change overnight. I am not so self-centered to think that I am always the topic of conversation, but I am old enough to know when life is like high school all over again.

Should I stay in my room and brood or cry?  That’s not me.  I feel like I need to stifle myself and change to be accepted as one of the masses. That’s not me. I do not want to fit in, be one with all others, if being one of the masses means that I am no longer an individual but a drone. I want the respect I deserve.  I deserve it not because of the color of my skin or the country of my origin, not because I am better than anyone else. I deserve respect as a child of God – not because I have not done anything to deserve that title.  But the Lord has lavished his love on me and called me his own in Christ (1 John 3:1).  And, I will remember, the Lord has called many others as his children too – people different from me, people not like me.  And we owe each other love and respect as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Prayer

Lord, help what Paul prayed be true for me.  Help what Paul prayed be true for those around me.  Help us, within your body, your church, to be more and more filled with the love of Christ and with love for one another. …

  • I pray that out of his glorious riches, the Father may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:16-19).
Posted by kyriesellnow