Some Great Thing

Some Great Thing

2 Kings 5:9-15; Luke 10:29-37

January 28, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I never would have thought of myself as being racist, but I grew up in a small town where, pretty much, everyone was just like me. Middle class, white, rural with a comfortable life. There was one young boy who had been adopted by a family in our church; Todd was the only African-American I knew but he was, as far as I was concerned, just another kid in the church. I don’t remember there ever being a conversation about racism, or even being challenged to think outside our little box. Sometimes I wonder how Todd experienced and perceived things.

When I was in college, a time in which most people find their worldview expanded and when we experience different cultures, I signed up to go with InterVarsity to the “inner city” of the west side of Chicago to work and serve for two months. That’s really the first time I recall having to confront my own prejudices and attitudes, because for the first time I was living in a culture that was quite different from my own. We were living next to and working at a church that was mostly African-American; I believe it was something like 85% African-American and 15% Caucasian. We were working with their day camp program, so we weren’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the church, but we did have a glimpse of some of the struggles the leadership of that church faced constantly. Every quarter, they would have a series of meetings. They called them “chocolate” meetings, “vanilla” meetings and “fudge ripple” meetings, and while the names are humorous, the intent was very serious. These meetings were meant to be an ongoing conversation confronting the racism that resides deep within us, the places where cultures and understandings would clash. You see, that’s what I came to realize that summer: that even though I didn’t consider myself racist, we all have pieces of our hearts that are not inclined to accept everyone as equal. It may come out in varying degrees, or we may do an excellent job of hiding it, but it’s still there. The question is whether or not we’ll bring it to the light so we can deal with it.

Still today, some justify racism by an appeal to Scripture, particularly Scriptures found in the Old Testament. In our history as a nation, many appealed to the Bible to justify slavery, and preachers would support slavery and injustice toward non-whites with Scripture readings. Our own denomination split over the issue: the Methodist Episcopal Church in the north (churches who helped with the Underground Railroad) and the Methodist Episcopal Church South (churches that were slave-holding)—and we did not rejoin until 1939, 74 years after the end of the Civil War. Another way some will justify racism is by pointing to Old Testament passages where God commands the death of all the Canaanites (among other people). Obviously, some say, the God of the Old Testament condones genocide and racism. But is that true? Do the Scriptures say what we think they say? Is God racist? As we continue this morning to tackle the topic of “God Behaving Badly,” we want to add this question to the ones we’ve already looked at. Does God condone racism?

Before we dive directly into that question, we need to talk about racism in general in our world. In January 1969, NBC aired an episode of a show that was, turns out, in its final season, but which still had something to say about the struggles of the 60’s and racism in particular. “Star Trek” was known for social commentary through science fiction, and the episode, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” used its platform to draw attention to the sometimes blatant ways we divide ourselves or (forgive the pun) alienate others. Take a listen.

VIDEO: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

Racism continues to show its ugly head in our world today. A few years ago when we were in Israel, I saw racism play out between Israelis and Palestinians. Mike, our guide, is a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem. He’s lived most of his life in the nation of Israel proper, though he has become an American citizen. One evening, we were set to explore the Western Wall tunnels, a space that is under high security because it runs underground near the Temple Mount or what Muslims call the Dome of the Rock. So we approached the entrance at our specified time and were told by the Israeli soldiers we would have to wait. No one was ahead of us, but we waited. Two or three times as we waited, the soldiers would call Mike over as if it were our turn, then tell him to go back and wait some more. At one point, Mike said to me and the other tour leader that he really hated to come here. He’d been treated like this before. Even though both Mike and the soldiers live and work and love Israel, he was being treated as a second-class citizen. Yet I never saw him lose his cool.

Closer to home: last Sunday, as we worshipped here, a church congregation in West Lafayette arrived for worship and found that white supremacists had posted signs in front of their church with words that I wouldn’t want to repeat anywhere, let alone here in church. I can’t even show you the pictures, though some of you may have seen them on Facebook this week. There were also flyers distributed in the same neighborhood with similar things written on them. Even closer to home, an employee at McDonald’s shared with Cathy this week of two experiences she had in the same morning. First, one customer refused to take change from her hand because he said he doesn’t touch black skin. Shortly after that, another customer came to the drive through window, saw the employee was black, and said he didn’t want a pop touched by a black person. He threw the pop at her face and soaked her with it. Friends, this is in our own town, literally just down the road from our church. Racism, sadly, did not end with the civil war or the civil rights movement. It still exists in our community, our nation, our world, our homes, and even in our churches. Sunday morning is still the most segregated time of the week in America, and we might be able to give all sorts of reasons for that truth, the question still remains: is it right? And, more than that, what does the Bible really have to say about racism? Is God racist?

One of the consistent commands all through the Bible is for God’s people to be aware of and concerned for people who are called foreigners, aliens, or sojourners. Those are Bible words that mean “non-Israelite” (cf. Lamb, God Behaving Badly, pg. 72). It became ingrained early on in Hebrew culture that hospitality to the stranger was not just a good thing to do; it was expected, so when three strangers approach Abraham, he immediately offers to feed them (Genesis 18). Later on, as God gives the Law through Moses, we find repeated statements about treating the “foreigner” who lives among you as one of your own. Leviticus (19:34) says to “love them as yourself.” When the fields were harvested, God’s people were told not to glean all the way to the edges, but to leave that for the alien, the stranger, the widow and the orphan (cf. Deuteronomy 24:19-21). And that mindset continues into and, in fact, is intensified in the New Testament, where we are told to “show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). All of this comes from the Biblical narrative that, despite the many clans and tribes and people groups, we are all one family, descended from Adam and Eve. Last week, we talked about how God, at creation, placed within each person the “image of God,” and because that image was present at the very beginning, there is no one on Earth who does not share in that image. Therefore, to set aside one group or another for mistreatment, to denigrate a particular people group because of their skin color or their place of origin is, in one writer’s words, “not only racist but also insulting to the God who created all people in his image” (Lamb 72).

But this was not easy for Israel. It wasn’t any easier for them than it is for us (cf. Konkel, NIV Application Commentary: 1 & 2 Kings, pg. 435). Israel, throughout her history, has often experienced mistreatment at the hands of many other nations—in ancient times as well as in current times—and so it becomes easy, most blatantly in the Old Testament, for them to consider “other nations” as outside of God’s mercy. There is this tension run-ing through the story of the Bible between Israel being a chosen people and the whole world being made in God’s image, worthy of grace and mercy. So, to explore this a bit more this morning, I want to look at three quick stories to explore the idea of God’s supposed racism, and the first is the one we read in 2 Kings this morning, the story of Naaman and his skin disease.

Actually, we only read a little part of the story. The author of 2 Kings identified Naaman as the “commander of the army of the king of Aram” (5:1). Aram is better known today as Syria, a nation that Israel still doesn’t get along all that well with, but in this time and place, Israel was in the middle of a century-long war with Aram. So the commander of the king’s army would be a mortal enemy; he might even be public enemy number one. He’d be high on the “watch list” and considered a terrorist. The problem is, Naaman is sick. Not sick in the sense that he couldn’t do his job. “Sick” in the sense of having an irritating rash. While the translation says he had “leprosy,” we have to remember that was a word used to describe a number of skin ailments, most of them benign. He obviously doesn’t have the sort of contagious disease that was known as “leprosy” in the New Testament or he wouldn’t be allowed into the king’s court or to command an army. He probably had a disease that took the pigment out of his skin, left blotches, or caused an irritating rash. Regardless of the way it manifested itself, there really wasn’t anything to do for it but hope it would go away (cf. Konkel 427-428; Goldingay, 1 & 2 Kings for Everyone, pg. 124).

There’s a nameless captive girl who enters the picture at this point. She’s a Hebrew, captured in a raid by the Aramean army, and when she learns of the man’s skin condition, she suggests he go to see the prophet Elisha in Israel. Elisha can cure the commander, she says. Now, let that sink in. She is a Hebrew, captive in a foreign land, suggesting that public enemy number one go into hostile territory to see a religious leader who hates him and his race on the off chance that the religious leader might be able to provide healing. This is a crazy scheme, and yet for some reason Naaman decides to do it. That’s where we came into the story in our reading this morning. Naaman comes to Elisha, and he expects the kind of greeting he usually receives, being an important man and all. Instead, Elisha sends a messenger out to Naaman to tell him what to do. His healing will involve washing himself in the Jordan River seven times. If he does this, he will be healed.

I don’t know that Naaman even heard the instructions because he’s so busy being angry that he didn’t get the presence of the prophet himself. He got a messenger. Him! Commander of the army of Aram! How dare Elisha blow him off! And these crazy instructions: aren’t the rivers in Aram better than the Jordan anyway? What difference is taking a dip in the Jordan going to make? It’s only his servants who get him focused. They remind him that if Elisha had asked him to do “some great thing,” he would have done it. Why will he not do this simple thing? And so he does. And he is healed. Now, what does this have to do with racism? Well, remember again that Naaman is in enemy territory when he comes to see Elisha. And yet, rather than striking out in anger and vengeance, Elisha chooses to obey the directive from God to love even those who are enemies, those who are of other nationalities. Naaman, in this case, is a foreigner in a strange land. And, even more than that, Naaman’s healing shows that God does not show partiality. God chooses to heal this enemy of his people; it’s not the Jordan River waters that really heal Naaman. Washing in the Jordan River is just an act of obedience. It’s God who heals Naaman, without respect to his nationality, his background, or his faith. “God welcomes, heals and loves foreigners” (Lamb 86). That’s part of why this story was included in the Bible.

But in case people didn’t get the message there, there’s another whole book dedicated to this idea. A lot of times, we know the story of Jonah and the whale as a cute Bible story we tell kids, but in actuality it’s a story of racism and inclusion. It was written to remind Israel that other nations were also the objects of God’s mercy (Konkel 435), and while we don’t have time to go in depth with Jonah’s story (you’ll read it in this week’s Scripture readings), it’s an important development in Biblical thought. You might remember the story, how God calls Jonah to go preach repentance in Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Jonah, however, doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want these enemies of Israel to have a chance at forgiveness, so he gets on a ship to go as far away from Assyria as he can. Then comes the most famous part of the story: God sends a storm to get Jonah’s attention, and Jonah himself suggests that the only way the ship will survive is to throw him overboard, which turns out to work. A big fish comes along, swallows Jonah and takes him back the right way, toward Nineveh. After the fish vomits Jonah out on the beach, Jonah grudgingly goes to Nineveh, preaches repentance, and then goes outside the city on a nearby hill to see what happens.

Now, I want you to imagine how you would respond if you heard a half-hearted message suggesting you repent of your sins from a preacher who smelled and looked like he’d been half-digested inside a fish, a preacher who wasn’t from your community, who spoke funny and looked funny. Do you think that’s someone you would take seriously, especially if it became evident that he was from an enemy nation? And yet, the Ninevites repent and God puts off the destruction he had planned. And Jonah, of course, jumps for joy and holds a worship service, celebrating God’s forgiveness. Right? No, that’s not what happens. Jonah complains, loudly and longly. “I knew you would do this, God! I knew you would forgive them! That’s why I didn’t want to come here! What part of ‘we hate these people’ don’t you get? What part of ‘these people are our enemies’ don’t you understand?” And Jonah sulks. This is the part of the story that normally isn’t told in Sunday School, but Jonah’s mad that God forgives these people he hates. Jonah is racist—but God is not. Jonah has no problem with God showing mercy to Israel, but he has a huge problem with God showing mercy to Israel’s enemies. The book, honestly, has a terrible ending. It ends with an unanswered question, a powerful question asked by God. God asks Jonah, “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (4:11). God’s even concerned about the animals, but especially he’s concerned about the people. The ones whom Jonah hates, God loves (cf. Konkel 435).

Over and over again, God expresses concern and mercy for even the enemies of Israel; after all, Abraham was originally called to be a blessing to the nations (cf. Genesis 12:3). Israel has no other purpose. When Jesus wanted to help people understand this truth about God, he told a story that we typically call “the good Samaritan.” Those words, in that culture, would not have been put together. It would be like today telling a story called “the good terrorist.” Jews hated the Samaritans, and yet in Jesus’ story (Luke 10:25-37), which takes place right after Jesus has sent seventy-two of his followers out to share the good news with others, the Samaritan is the hero. A man is beat up, left dead along the road, and two men pass him by without helping him. Those two were people who should have helped: a priest and a Levite, or today we might say a pastor and an associate pastor. The one who helps, who even pays for his medical care, is an enemy, a Samaritan, a man most of the people listening to Jesus would never have stopped to help. The Samaritans were half-breeds; they were the ones who had once been Jews but had intermarried with other nationalities when Israel was taken into exile. Most “good Jews” would go out of their way, the “long way around,” to avoid walking through Samaritan territory. And, lest we beat up too much on the Jews, the feeling was mutual. The Samaritans hated the Jews, too. There was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. But Jesus, the Son of God, loved the Ninevites. He’s the same God who loved Naaman, who loved Israel and who loves you and me.

So, if God has so much love for all peoples, why is there what we could call genocide in the Old Testament? Let’s be honest: there are times when Israel is told to completely wipe out their opponents, most particularly the Canaanites early on in their history. In the book of Joshua, we’re told that Joshua, commanding the Israelite army, “totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded” (Joshua 10:40). In the next chapter, we’re told again that the Israelites killed all the people by the command of God. The author says, “As the Lord commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did it; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses” (11:15). These are, without a doubt, troubling verses. Now, we know that the author is engaging in a bit of hyperbole here, because not all of the Canaanites were destroyed. There are later passages that describe Canaanites living alongside the Israelites. While we might want to say such hyperbole is “lying” or at the very least “exaggeration,” it wasn’t considered such in the culture in which it was written. It was normal “kingdom speak,” to tout the virtue and power of your own kingdom over others. Other cultures did this exaggeration even more than Israel. This is another example of how the Bible reflects the time and place in which it was first written. But, still, that does not excuse the people who were killed. What was really going on here? Does such genocide prove God’s racism?

Biblical scholars offer several explanations for these commands of God. First of all, some point out that Israel, in the conquest and in this conquering of Canaan, were really reclaiming land that had once been theirs. Before Joseph took all of his family down into Egypt, this land had belonged to and been promised to the descendants of Abraham. This land was a blessing from God to the people of Israel so that they could be a blessing to the world. Now, when you visit the land of Israel today, you can’t help but notice that it’s not the most beautiful or even the most desirable real estate in the world. If God wanted to give Abraham and his family a real blessing, he should have given them Italy or maybe a tropical island somewhere. The land he gives them is desert and desolate, extremely hot in the summer and dry much of the year. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that land is beautiful and I always look forward to going there. But it’s not what you would think of if someone was going to “bless” you. The reason God gave them this land is because of where it is; it’s right in the middle of everything. Every ancient trade route passed through Canaan. Everyone, at one time or another, ended up going through this land. As is still true, it all boils down to location, location, location. If you want the world to learn about the God of the universe, you put his people right smack dab in the middle of a place where everyone is going to be. So the land was theirs, promised from centuries before.

Other scholars point out that this was, in fact, an act of judgment on the people of Canaan. The people there had been warned for centuries that what they were doing was, in Biblical terms, wicked. Idolatry, child sacrifice, sorcery—not to mention their unwarranted attacks on Israel. At least six different times, they tried to take advantage of Israel’s weak position as a group of wandering refugees. Israel, at that point, only fought back to defend themselves, but God’s patience for the nations of Canaan had run out. They had not responded like Nineveh would later, and it was time for the sentence to be carried out. It’s sort of like how, as parents, we might say, “If you do that one more time, you’ll be punished.” If we don’t follow through with the punishment, our authority as parents is in question. However, lest we think God is racist because he only punished Canaan, let me point out that much of the writings of the prophets in the Old Testament are words of judgment that God is going to carry out on Israel. Eventually, the people are taken away from their homeland, conquered by the Babylonians and the Assyrians, and destroyed for centuries as a people. Many of them never come back; ten tribes of Israel are absorbed into the other cultures. If anything, God was less patient and less tolerant with his own people than he was with the people of Canaan. It seems that our modern discomfort with such passages has to do with our discomfort with judgment in general. We don’t like judgment; we think it will never come. But it does, and it’s not about racism as much as it is about being who God calls us and expects us to be (cf. Lamb 76-80).

So, as the people of God, how should we respond to and engage with racism and racist attitudes that we find in our culture, or even those we find in our own hearts? Like Naaman, we are not required to do “some great thing” but we must do “some thing.” We are called to do what we can in our own neighborhoods and circles of influence. We may not solve the problem of racism on a large scale, but we can confront it on a local and personal scale. First of all, we need to learn all we can about the issue of race and not simply “speak from the cuff” or assume we know what “those people” are like. Become educated. Don’t assume that you are exempt from racist attitudes; I learned in Chicago and have continued to learn in other ways that there are assumptions I make about others, that they think and live just like me, that they see the world the same way I see it. That’s far from the truth. I can only understand if I take the time to understand their context.

Second, speak truth to racism as Jesus did. In Luke 4, when confronted with such an attitude, Jesus cites two examples from the Old Testament (one of them the story of Naaman) where God worked outside of Israel with foreigners, strangers and widows. Yes, it made people angry with him, but Jesus still spoke truth. Later on, in Luke 10, Jesus tells that parable of the “good samaritan” and used that compelling story to confront attitudes that were in his audience, to call into question who was “good” and who was “bad.” Jesus’ point: it has nothing to do with their racial heritage. It was all about the character of the person. As God’s people, and as followers of Jesus, we must speak against racist attitudes that show up. We should not allow racist jokes or other speech become a way of shaming other people. Yes, contrary to what the children’s rhyme says, words hurt, as much as or more than actual “sticks and stones.” I heard Tony Campolo once say that freedom only exists in a nation where it’s safe to be in the minority. And it’s only safe when those in the majority speak up for those in the minority. A quote Jess shared this past week has really stuck with me: “It’s not your fault, but it is your fight.”

Third, we make friends with folks from a different background than our own. It’s not easy, and often there are a lot of missteps and miscommunications, but I know the effort we made on our mission in Chicago, the efforts we made on mission trips on a Native American reservation several years ago, the efforts we make here in Terre Haute are worth it. It’s frustrating, because often we’re using the same words but not saying the same thing. The call is not to get it right every time, but to stay in the conversation. In  the year 1219, when Christians were actively persecuting Muslims all over the world, St. Francis of Assisi traveled thousands of miles to talk to Muslims about Jesus. In the midst of one siege, Francis risked his life to befriend a sultan in northeast Egypt. These two were as culturally different as anyone might be able to imagine, and yet they managed to make a connection. The sultan was impressed with Francis and reportedly said to him, “I would convert to your religion, which is a beautiful one, but I cannot: Both of us would be massacred” (Lamb 90-92). Here in Vigo County, we don’t live in a war-like culture such as that, so reaching out beyond our comfort zone, befriending someone of a different culture ought to be easier than it was for St. Francis.

If you want to learn more about this and practice some of these principles, I would encourage you to join me and many others on our summer mission trip to St. Louis. Ferguson, Missouri is synonymous in our day and time with struggles in the area of racism. In many people’s minds, that’s where the current struggle began, though it’s really only perhaps where much of it came out in the open. But as we go to serve in that geographical area, race and issues around it will be something we’re learning about and dealing with. My prayer and hope is that, as we learn from others who are there, we can translate that back into dealing with the racism that exists here as well. I invite you to join us, and if you’re interested and able to consider going, talk to Jess soon.

Here’s the bottom line, paraphrased from words of Mother Teresa: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” God has not asked us to do “some great thing,” but he does ask us to show great love for all people who bear the image of God—and that is everyone. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight—Jesus loves the little children (and the big adults) of the world.” Let’s pray.