“We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”[1] Amen.
The Catechism teaches us that “the mission of the Church is
to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”[2] St.
Paul describes it as the ministry of reconciliation, which Jesus has given to
us to continue in his name.[3] St. Paul eloquently describes his own
willingness to go to any lengths to remove the obstacles that get in the way of
overcoming our cruel divisions. Both
Jesus and Paul endured dishonor, rejection, and death because of their
steadfast commitment to the ministry of reconciliation.
Reconciliation is the central concern of Paul’s ministry,
never more evident than in his letters to the churches in Corinth. The churches there were riven by divisions
among competing leaders, rival political and ideological factions, and between
rich and poor (sound familiar?). Hanging
over it all was the racial and cultural divide between Jews and Gentiles, which
Paul worked so tirelessly to bridge in Christ.
This is our mission:
claiming and sharing the power of God’s love so that the human race can
become the human family. But there are
many obstacles to this work. So, each
year, the Church sets aside this season of Lent as a time to identify and let
go of the obstacles that get in the way of our being reconciled with God and
one another.
This is serious business.
We aren’t playing around here. It
is too easy to treat our Lenten observance as a superficial ritual, just going
through the motions, never touching on the things that really matter. We need to pay attention to the prophet
Isaiah’s warning, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble yourselves but you do not notice?”[4] Lent isn’t about giving up chocolate or even
social media. It is about waking up,
paying attention, and responding to the reality of a suffering world. Otherwise, we become like the religious
hypocrites whom Jesus criticizes; who love to look good, but are unwilling to
do the deeper work of vulnerability with God and self-examination.[5]
This year, I invite us to view our Lenten observance as an
opportunity to confront a serious obstacle to reconciliation: the reality of
racism. Instead of giving up See’s Candy
or Facebook, what would it look like to give up racism? Not just for Lent, but forever, to become
truly antiracist? How might we address
this most pressing need for reconciliation in our country?
I want to offer some reflections along these lines; a
personal confession speaking as a recovering racist, beginning with a couple of
caveats. First, I’m going to be speaking
as a white person to other white people.
White folks are responsible for doing our own antiracist work. People of color are welcome to listen in, but
racism isn’t primarily about you even though it primarily affects you. Second, for simplicity’s’ sake, I’m going to
speak about racism primarily as the expression of white supremacy over
African-Americans, even though I recognize that other people of color
experience similar, yet different, expressions of racism.
In offering a personal confession as a recovering racist, I
do not mean confession as an admission of guilt. That goes without saying, but antiracism work
for white people is not about groveling in guilt. I mean a confession in the sense of a
confession of faith, a witness to the truth.
In my experience, people of color are not interested in my feeling
guilty. How I feel about racism is
beside the point. They are interested in
my acknowledging the truth of racism, and working to dismantle it.
Now, I know it is hard to talk about racism. The first reaction of many white people when
the topic comes up is defensiveness. “I
am not racist. I don’t hate black people.” We are uncomfortable being made to think
about it. Looking back on my own life, I
realize now that the first sign of racism was that I didn’t have to think about
it. I took it for granted that I was the
norm, and lived in a rigidly segregated world in which I didn’t have to think
about racism, its effects, or what black folk’s lives were like. My racism was invisible to me, because black
lives were peripheral to my experience. And that made it all the easier to believe
the lies I was told about African-Americans, and I was served up every
stereotype white culture has created.
So, white friends, we’ve got to let go of our “not racist”
defensiveness. If you were born and
raised in the U.S.A, you drank in racism with your mother’s milk. It is simply an unexamined foundation of our
history and culture. We don’t see it
because it is so ubiquitous. As
historian Ibram Kendi points out, "There is no such thing as a ‘not-racist’
policy, idea or person. Just an old-fashioned racist in a newfound denial. All
policies, ideas and people are either being racist or antiracist. Racist
policies yield racial inequity; antiracist policies yield racial equity. Racist
ideas suggest racial hierarchy, antiracist ideas suggest racial equality. A
racist is supporting racist policy or expressing a racist idea. An antiracist
is supporting antiracist policy or expressing an antiracist idea. A racist or
antiracist is not who we are, but what we are doing in the moment."[6]
Any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or
superior to another racial group in any way is racist. Social structures, policies, or practices
resulting in racial inequities are racist, regardless of their intent. For example, since African-Americans account
for 5% of the population of San Francisco, yet more than 50% of the inmates in
the county jail are African-American, we have a racist criminal justice system
in San Francisco. It is a result of
policies that promote and protect over-policing of communities of color,
prosecutorial discretion that favors white people, and judicial sentencing that
punishes black people more severely. To
believe otherwise, is to believe that African-Americans as a group are more
prone to criminality. And that is a
racist idea.
While racism certainly can result in hatred of people of
color, it is not rooted in hatred. It is
rooted in discriminatory policies that benefit some white people at the expense
of pretty much everybody else. And white
folks at the top of the pyramid are adept at stoking racial hatred to mystify
the political and economic roots of racial and class inequities and keep people
divided.
This can be difficult to grasp because it is the reverse of
what we have been taught. We think that ignorance
and hatred gives rise to racist ideas that lead to racial discrimination. But as Ibram Kendi has brilliantly argued in
his book, Stamped from the Beginning: The
Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, the historical record reveals
just the opposite: racial discrimination
gives rise to racist ideas to justify the discrimination, which promotes
ignorance and hatred.[7]
Being “not racist” isn’t good enough. “Not hating” black people is the tip of the
iceberg. St. Paul, endured “afflictions,
hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless
nights, hunger” for the sake of reconciliation.[8] What would it cost white folks to get serious
about antiracism work? I do know that in
San Francisco, the cost of our inaction is, on average, about ten years of life
for African-Americans. If my getting to
live ten years longer doesn’t constitute white privilege, I don’t know what
does.
Reconciliation requires two things: repentance and forgiveness. Repentance means acknowledging the harm done
to others, and being willing to make amends for the harm, to set things
right. When it comes to racial
reconciliation, our work as white people isn’t really that complicated: acknowledge the harm done to
African-Americans and make amends, including reparations for past harms and
enacting policies that promote and protect equity and equality today.
For African-Americans, reconciliation requires forgiveness. Forgiveness beings with recognizing the
reality of the harm done to them. One of
the reasons we find talking about racism to uncomfortable, is because the harm
done was and is so horrific. If it makes
us uncomfortable as white people, please try to imagine how painful it is for
our black sisters and brothers. For
them, this painful acknowledgement is the necessary precondition for healing,
so that eventually they are no longer defined by the harm done to them. Forgiveness is freedom.
Reconciliation is possible only when both repentance and
forgiveness are present. It is
possible. But white people cannot set
the timetable for black people’s healing.
Black people don’t need to just “get over it.” They don’t need us to
help, fix, or control them. Our job is
to acknowledge the harm and make amends.
We must be willing to see, to notice the reality of oppression, before
we can become repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.
The spiritual benefits of antiracism work for white people
are tremendous. Self-centered delusion
will give way to genuine self-knowledge.
Ignorance and willful blindness will be illuminated by awareness, a
capacity to be present to reality in all its pain and promise. Cruel indifference and fearful avoidance will
be swallowed up by compassion, as we become allies in the work of antiracism;
co-conspirators in the subversive ministry of reconciliation which Jesus has
given to us.
How do we begin? “By
purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful
speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right
hand and for the left; in honor and in dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.”[9] We can begin, this Lent, by claiming
antiracism work as essential to the Church’s mission of reconciliation, and by engaging
in conversation with each other about the obstacles that get in our way. It begins, like all spiritual work with
vulnerability and humility. We will
create the path by walking it together, one imperfect step after the other.
In the name of God, the one, holy and undivided
Trinity. Amen.
[1]
II Corinthians 5:20b.
[2]
An Outline of the Faith, The Book of
Common Prayer, p. 855.
[3]
II Corinthians 5:18.
[4]
Isaiah 58:3.
[5]
Matthew 6:1-6.
[6]
Ibram X. Kendi, “This is what an antiracist America would look like. How do we
get there?” The Guardian, December 6,
2018.
[7]
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the
Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York:
Nation Books, 2016), pp. 8-11.
[8]
II Corinthians 6:4-5.
[9]
II Corinthians 6:6-8a.
