Before we get started, I want to hold up these two pictures. I’ll tell you who these people are in a second, but for now, just notice them. As a warning, we’re going to get in pretty deep today. Because wow, has it been a week. It feels important that we have a conversation about what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend. Let’s start by naming what happened in Charlottesville. Throngs of white men parading through the streets carrying KKK signs and confederate flags and swastikas was white Americans proclaiming superiority over Americans of color. There are not multiple sides here. What happened in Charlottesville is racism; it is sin and evil manifest in the world. But before we get into this, I want to point out that this picture (left) is of the man who drove a car into a group of people protesting against the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, injuring nineteen people and killing one. And this picture (right) is an artist’s rendering of what Jesus probably looked like. And of these two men, this is the one who looks like he could be my brother (left).
What happened in Charlottesville, Virginia is not some horrible but far away tragedy that we should pray about, but cannot really do anything about. We also have to talk about this because just because this didn’t happen here, in Calhoun County—which, as an aside, is named after John C. Calhoun, noted for calling slavery “a positive good” ordained by God—just because this did not happen here, does not mean that it could not. Did you know that there are twenty-eight identified hate groups in Michigan? Or that there is a Ku Klux Klan chapter headquartered in Battle Creek? Racism is real and it is vile and it is happening here.
But the most important reason why we have to talk about this, why we have to react to this, is that this sort of hatred is being perpetrated in the name of Jesus. Let me read to you from the home page of the Battle Creek chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. “We are White Christian patriots of the true Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan of our great country. We are for the future of our white Christian children and for our generations to come, join a traditional white klan who believes in the teachings of Jesus.” The eighth commandment declares, “you shall not bear false witness,” and this is false witness. This is a perversion of our sacred scriptures in the pursuit of evil. This man could be my brother; he is my brother in Christ. And when Cain asked God “am I my brother’s keeper,” God’s answer was clear. Yes, we are our brother’s keeper. Those of us who look like we could be related to this guy cannot claim that we follow this guy if we are silent in the face of it.
Of course we know this. We know racism is a sin. We know God created everyone in God’s own image, and that includes all ethnicities and skin tones. None of us carried tiki torches and marched through the streets last weekend. And we don’t know this guy. I don’t know any of the people who marched in Charlottesville. I don’t know who the Klansmen in Battle Creek are. I’ve been wrestling with how even to talk about it with you all, because I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to tell you to do. White supremacist protests, the fear that seems to drive our political discourse, the school-to-prison pipeline, and all of the countless large and small ways that systemic racism plays itself out all around us every day is a huge problem, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. It is not enough to preach a fiery sermon about the sin of racism, we know that already. It is not enough to offer prayers that do not lead to change. As a white, heterosexual, middle-class, well-educated, Christian American, I benefit from the systems of oppression that keep others captive. I am in bondage to the sin of racism and privilege. I did not ask for it, I do not want it. But it is mine, I have it. We all do. And for me to stand up here and preach some kind of fire and brimstone sermon about how evil they are so that I feel better about myself is nothing more than chaff. So what then are we to do? If this is sin, our sin, even though we were not a part of it, and had nothing to do with it, how then do we live?
So that is the Law, dear sisters and brothers. But here is the Gospel. This Gospel reading for this morning tells us that the grace and the love and the forgiveness of the kingdom of God is so big, so expansive, so all consuming, that even God cannot contain it. I know, it doesn’t make sense that the kingdom of God cannot be contained by God. I have to assume it’s one of those things that’s beyond human understanding. Maybe someday I’ll get to ask God about it, or maybe when I’m faced with the full blown glory of the kingdom I won’t care anymore about the specifics, but that’s what this reading tells us. So powerful is God’s plan for the salvation of the world, that even God will not be contained by God’s own theology. Check this. We know the plan for salvation, because Jesus told the disciples. Before Jesus, there was Israel as God’s chosen people. Then Jesus came “only to the house of Israel.” This wasn’t the first time he said it, remember him saying that to the disciples a couple weeks ago? Then, after the resurrection, Jesus gave the disciples the Great Commission, that they were to “go and make disciples of all nations.” Jerusalem, Samaria and Galilee, and then the world. That’s the order. Except this Canaanite woman showed up and was like, no, the kingdom of God is for me too. And God through Jesus was like, yep, “great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Even God’s own plan for the salvation of the world, necessary and valuable as it is, does not stand in the way of the overwhelming compassion and grace and love of God. So yes, the entrenched horror of racism in our nation, the violence and hatred in our world, the wages of sin and evil and death that hold us captive no matter how much we try to escape them, those things are real and they make us feel powerless. Dear friends in Christ, they may be too big for us to comprehend and to handle, but they are not too big for God. What this story tells us, what the whole of scripture tells us, is that nothing, not even death itself, not even God’s own plan, will keep God from drawing God’s whole creation to God’s self.
So how are we to live? We have a model this morning in the Canaanite woman. Who identified Jesus for who he was, Lord, Son of David, and demanded that he live up to that identity. What the Canaanite woman did was say to him, Jesus, I know who you are, I know how powerful and merciful and mighty you are, I know that you are God incarnate, and I demand that you be God. And for demanding this of him, for demanding that he be who he is, Jesus called her faith great. Peter said, “Lord, if it is you…” and Jesus said he had little faith. This woman said, Jesus, do this, and he said she had great faith. Demanding that God be God is an act of great faith that has rich scriptural tradition. Jacbob wrestling an angel, Job, the Psalmist, the prophets, all stood in the glory of God and said, God, I know who you are, be that now. God is not some small egoed being who needs us to speak nicely to make God feel good. God is God. God big and strong and powerful, the creator of the universe, who holds all of time in almighty hands, God can hold our anger and take our demands. To argue with God, to demand that God be God is, as Jesus says here, a mark of great faith.
So one thing we can do is we can, like the Canaanite woman, demand that God show up and be God. That God show up in a broken and hurting world and bring peace. That God make clear that racism and violence and oppression are not God, but are false prophets, and to bring about the kingdom of heaven now. We can, and we should pray that God be God and that God come now. But here’s the caution. When we pray that God be God, and that God show up, God may well show up in us. Remember what happened when Jesus told the disciples to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest? The next thing he did was send them. Or when Peter said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water”? Jesus said, OK, come on out here. The danger in demanding that God show up is God will; God will show up in us. Will make us the ones who are bringing peace and hope and healing to a broken world. God very well may show up in us naming racist systems and dismantling oppression and standing up to false prophets who tout God’s name to justify their prejudice.
So while we are praying, we can prepare ourselves to be sent. The Center for Diversity and Innovation at KCC has all kinds of classes and workshops on recognizing and dismantling racism. Go to their website, attend a training, check out some online resources. Or ask me. I have some books in my office I can lend you about faith, racism, and liberation theology. I can also give you a reading list of other options. Get with some friends, or other folk here at Trinity, pick a book, start a discussion with each other. Based on what we read in the Bible, it seems very likely that God may well be sending us out to be about bringing the kingdom of God on earth, so it behooves us to be as prepared and educated as we can when that time comes.
You can also practice having real and honest conversations with people about difficult and sensitive issues. On Sunday, September 24th, a couple of people from Open Hearts, Open Church will be here to lead us in a discussion about the LGBTQ community and faith. And yes, that is a different issue than racism, but the LGBTQ community is another group who has had scripture used as a weapon against them, and some of the tools are the same. We can practice having hard conversations, practice being open and vulnerable with each other about our own biases, so that when we are faced with such questions in the world, we know who we are, what the Bible says, and where we stand. Knowing how to respond takes practice. I have a seminary degree and it still took me all week to draft this sermon. But we can practice. We can learn. And we can have the words, so that when God sends us into the world, we can be confident in our response.
I want to close this morning by sharing where, over the course of this week, I have inexplicable come to find hope in what happened in Charlottesville. As resurrection people, we know that there is always hope in the midst of the deepest despair, and here’s where I found hope this week. The hatred that was on display is not new. These pockets of violence and anger have been seething in secret for years. And how God must have been weeping at all the evil festering silently in God’s name. That evil has been there, and we have not known about it, so we could do nothing about it. But now we know. As Jesus told the disciples earlier in Matthew, there is “nothing in secret that will not become known,” and we know now. We know from our sacred scripture that evil is always defeated when it is brought out of the shadows and into the light. So I give thanks to God this morning that what had been invisible has now been made visible. And I pray that I, that we, may have the faith and the courage of the Canaanite woman to proclaim the power of the kingdom of God. Amen.
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