Racism

MOSAIC
RACISM
DR. JIM DIXON
GALATIANS 3:26-28
MARCH 1, 2009

The mosaic was the primary decorative art form of the Byzantine Empire and so, in the Byzantine world wherever you saw a Byzantine church you would see mosaics. You’d see ceilings covered with mosaics, walls covered with mosaics, even floors covered with mosaic, decorative, art. Why? Why did the Byzantine world love mosaics? One of the reasons was that in this nominally Christian empire, in all of these Byzantine churches, there was this belief that mosaics were testimonies to God, testimonies to Jesus Christ, that when you create beautiful pictures out of small pieces, when you create beautiful pictures out of broken pieces, that represents the hand of God. In the Byzantine world the feeling was that mosaics were beautiful pictures of the power of God – to put pieces together and create beauty and wholeness. We begin our new series called Mosaic and we look at the brokenness in our lives and we look at the brokenness in the world and we look at the power of Christ to take the pieces and make something beautiful.

Today we look at racism and I have two teachings. The first teaching concerns the brokenness of racism and the brokenness of hate. And the second teaching concerns the wholeness of Christ and the wholeness of love. So, we begin with the brokenness of racism and hate. I think we all know that this is a world riddled by racism and racial hate. On March 2, 1994, just about 15 years ago, many of you remember that Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish man, went into a Palestinian mosque in Hebron, not too far from Jerusalem, and right near the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham is buried, and he took out his weapons and he murdered 48 Palestinian people. I think the world was in shock. I know all of us were when we read that story. About a week later, the shock was in some sense even greater. In the city of Jerusalem there were two memorial services simultaneously. One memorial service was a Jewish service for Baruch Goldstein who had died in killing the 48, and the Jewish Rabbi Perrin made his horrible statement that one million Arab lives are not equal in value to one Jewish fingernail. At the same time, the same day in the same city, there was a memorial service going on for the 48 Palestinians who had been murdered and at that service Nikhil Aziz made his infamous prayer where he said, “Lord, help us to murder every single Jewish person in the world until they are eradicated from the Earth.” It’s hard to imagine the kind of hatred that can exist in this world, the kind of racial hatred that can exist in the Middle East, and the kind of racial hatred that’s going to drive the world to the brink and to Armageddon itself.

Many of you in the room this morning might be thinking, “That’s a long ways away. All that Middle Eastern stuff is a great distance from us and whatever is going on between Jews and Arabs, it feels kind of distant.” But of course, we have our own issues, don’t we? We have our own history here in America and it’s not always proud. We have our own history of racial hatred. On January 1, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation there were 4 million slaves in the Southern States, one-third of the population in the South consisted of slaves. They were virtually all African­ Americans. This was racism. Four million African-Americans had virtually no rights because of the slave codes. Because of the slaves codes they did not have freedom of speech, they did not have freedom of assembly, and they could only assemble by permission and by allowance: They did not have the right to bear arms, and they did not even have the right to bear witness against a white person in a court of law. Their lives were not their own. They were property and their lives were many times tragic.

In the Northern States you had 490,000 free Blacks and the 490,000 free Blacks in the North really their lives were not much better than the slaves because of discrimination. When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation that was just the beginning of an effort to heal that racial divide and the brokenness that is brought to our nation and to this world. When Barack Obama in his inauguration chose to put his hand on the Lincoln Bible, he not only wanted to honor the Lord, but he wanted to honor Abraham Lincoln for beginning the healing, but it’s still going on. The racism is still going on in America and it exists in subtle and not so subtle ways still today. Certainly, improvements have been made, but this world is still broken because of racism.

Perhaps a few of you have heard of Dr. Charles Richard Drew. Dr. Charles Richard Drew was a great medical doctor and in the 1930s it was Dr. Charles Richard Drew who developed blood matching. It was Dr. Charles Richard Drew who developed blood typing. It was Dr. Charles Richard Drew who developed blood storage, which led to modem day blood banks. And it’s safe to say that Dr. Charles Richard Drew saved tens of thousands of lives in WWII because of what he developed. Of course, millions of lives have been saved if we look back from today – all because of Dr. Charles Richard Drew.

On April 1, 1950, there was a horrible automobile accident in North Carolina and a man was injured horribly in that accident and taken to the Burlington General Hospital. This man was bleeding profusely and desperately needed blood transfusions or he would die. They were able to match and type his blood because of Dr. Charles Richard Drew’s work, and they had blood in storage because of Dr. Charles Richard Drew’s work, but they refused to treat this man. They refused to treat him because he was Black and they told him he would have to go across town to receive medical treatment and medical care. He’d have to go to the Black hospital, they said, where they had Black blood. So, this man was taken across town and he never made it. He died that day traveling across town and his name was Dr. Charles Richard Drew.

Our history is filled with stories like that: our tragic history, filled with stories like that because of racism. Today we don’t have segregated hospitals, but lives are segregated. The workplace is integrated, but the weekends aren’t. So many African-Americans just go back to African-American communities, and Hispanics go to Hispanic communities, and Anglos go to Anglo suburban communities, and there is not a lot of mixing. I think our racism is a little more subtle today, but oh, there is so much brokenness, particularly in Hispanic communities and African-American communities.

We all have this capacity for racism: all of us. We’re all fallen. We’re all sinful. We need a compassionate look at the sin of racism and how pervasive it is in our culture and how through love and forgiveness there can come redemption.

I think that sometimes people in suburbia think, “Wow, the playing field is flat out there and there’s equal opportunity for everyone in America.” I think sometimes we think that we all come out of the starting block at the same place, the finish line is at the same place and it’s fair and equal competition. That might be true under the law, but it doesn’t represent reality. If you’ve ever been in the inner city in the midst of African-American communities or Hispanic communities and you’ve been involved in ministry or service, you know the brokenness that is generational. There are so many kids growing up in subcultures where despite the opportunities that America might present, they are never going to be able to take advantage of it. And so, something has to happen. Something needs to be done.

A few years ago, out at Colorado Christian University, I talked with Yolanda King, the daughter of Martin Luther King. I was then on the board of Colorado Christian and I’m still on the board, and they bring in wonderful speakers, and Yolanda King was one of them. I asked her if she thought that congregations and churches should all be integrated—red, yellow, black and white. And she says, “Oh, I know in heaven that we’ll all be together, and we’ll worship together regardless of our skin, regardless of our color, regardless of our race, we’ll all worship Jesus.” And she says, “Ideally, I would like to see that happen on Earth and I hope that someday it does, but here’s the truth: the truth is we need African-American congregations.” I said, “Why?” She said, “We need African-American congregations. We need them because of the brokenness of my people.”

I know that not all African-Americans that choose to go to a Black church are dealing with issues of brokenness. We have some African-Americans and some Hispanics and Asians, etc. in this congregation. I wish we had more, but the reality is there is brokenness. There is brokenness that Hispanics and African-Americans in many subcultures are desperate to deal with and don’t know how. We all know that not all Black congregations deal with that brokenness equally well, witness the Reverend Wright in the city of Chicago. But there is this great need and it is tragic. Jesus has called his people, whatever their race, whatever their color, to love each other, so we’re supposed to be part of this wonderful mosaic, this wonderful picture that comes from all the pieces and is built on love.

I want us to take a few moments and look at the wholeness that Christ offers and the love of Christ and its power. All of you are familiar with Luke 10, and you know the story of the Good Samaritan. You know that parable of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of you have traveled to Israel with me and we’ve gone down the highway right by the Jericho Road, and the Jericho Road was dangerous in the time of Christ. The road went from Jerusalem down to Jericho. Thieves and robbers. And there was a Jewish man, Jesus said in his story, who was walking down that road and he was assaulted by criminals and by robbers, and they stripped him and they beat him and they robbed him and they left him half dead, Jesus says, by the side of the road. Jesus talks about fellow Jews that ignore this wounded man and they were in the religious establishment, but then Jesus said, there was this Samaritan walking down the road.

Remember, Jesus is telling this parable in response to a question and the question is, “Who is my neighbor?” And the deeper question is, “What is love?” Jesus, in Luke 10 has just said, “We are to love the Lord, our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.” And then a man poses the question, “Well, who is my neighbor. Are there boundaries to my love? How far does my love need to go?” And so, Jesus then tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and the Good Samaritan, you see, is the hero of the story. Jews hated the Samaritans. This was the racial hatred of Israel and Jews had no dealings with Samaritans and they called Samaritans “half-breeds” and Jesus makes the hero of the story the Samaritan. He’s saying, “Who’s your neighbor? What’s the extent of your love? Your love -it crosses all racial boundaries. You’ve got to break down those dividing walls of hostility. You need to love people regardless of their race or color. It’s the clear will of Christ.

You come to Ephesians 2 and the Apostle Paul writes that Jesus Christ breaks down the racial wall, that he breaks down the dividing wall of hostility so that in church in general there is meant to be no racism. In Christ we learn to love each other as a community of equals under one Lord, under one shepherd. You remember back to Dr. Martin Luther King’s great speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, I Have a Dream. The words of that speech are so great- they had to have come straight from God. There can be no question. You can download every word in that speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, or you can just look in the encyclopedia. They all give you the full text. His dream really is a mosaic. He dreams of our nation becoming a beautiful picture. He dreams of our nation becoming a kind of mosaic and all the brokenness and all the pieces brought together in healing. It’s a dream where former slaves and former slave owners sit down together at the table of brotherhood. It’s a dream where people are no longer judged on the basis of their skin, on the basis of their color, but they are judged on the quality of their character. It’s a beautiful dream, but that dream is not yet fulfilled. Although progress has been made, the brokenness is still devastating. Christ is able to heal. He has that power.

I don’t think any of you have heard of Richard Graves, but I’ve heard of Richard Graves because I’ve worked with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over many decades and I still work with FCA. I was on the national board of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for six years and that’s where I heard about Richard Graves. Richard Graves grew up in Alabama. And by his own testimony he was an Alabama redneck racist. That’s what he called himself. He knew not Christ. He was not a believer, but as a young man in his teenage years he went to an FCA camp in North Carolina called Black Mountain. Barb and I have been to Black Mountain in North Carolina. That’s where I met Billy Graham, at an FCA retreat there at Black Mountain. The FCA goes to Black Mountain every year with wonderful camps. This kid Richard Graves goes to an FCA camp, he’s not a Christian, but he’s an athlete and he just wants to have a good time. So, he goes to Black Mountain and he goes to his dorm, and his dorm is the Robert E. Lee Hall and he goes to his room and he’s stunned as he goes to his room and he sees that he has been given an African-American roommate, and he’s enraged. He just shouts at this Black guy. He shouts at him and uses horrible language, slams the door, goes to the camp authorities and said, “I don’t want to room with an animal.” They looked at him and said, “You’re going to have to work on it.” And he, two days later, had an amazing thing happen. Richard Graves accepted Christ. He gave his heart to Jesus. At the evening meeting there was music and singing and a message, and then an invitation, and he began to cry. Richard Graves began to cry and as tears filled his eyes, he gave his heart to Jesus and accept him as Savior and Lord. Amazing changes in his life as Jesus began to remake him from the inside out and he began to learn to love and he began to love people of color.

Richard Graves died in Vietnam. He gave his life to save his unit, and he was the only white guy in his unit – 16 Black guys. Richard Graves threw his body on a hand grenade. He launched his body, landing on it to save the lives of the men. A miracle. Nobody who knew him as a young man would have thought that ever possible. But you see, Jesus changes things. Jesus changes lives. Jesus changes us.

Two weeks ago, Barb and I were at the National Pastors Conference out in California. I have a love/hate relationship with the National Pastors Conference. I always have moments at the conference where I have epiphanies. I get an insight here or an insight there. I have divine touches where I feel the presence of Christ. I hear some thought-provoking things that make me think and stretch a little. But I always have a few things that I hear that upset me and occasionally I think the conference is just a little too edgy and they try to invite people who are very controversial and sometimes they are just a little too controversial for me. I went to an afternoon workshop, a 3-hour workshop called, “Jesus and Empire.” I thought that might be kind of fun to go to and so, Barb and I dropped into that and there was Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne and Ephraim Smith on a panel discussion about Jesus and Empire. There was no diversity of thought, because they all thought the same and they were all very liberal. Their message was that the Apostle Paul, all of his epistles and all of his letters were written in code. They all agreed that the letters and epistles of Paul were written in code as a stealth attack on the Roman Empire. Of course, I don’t believe that. I believe Paul wrote his epistles to build up the church of Jesus Christ and to see the churches grow in their love for Christ and in their love for people. With regard to the Roman Empire, Paul simply said to honor the governing authority and to pray for them.

They went on and they said that the greatest example of empire in the world today is the United States and that America is an empire with all of its abuses and Jesus hates empires. They went on to say that America is characterized by colonialism and imperialism. I was beginning to get pretty mad, beginning to get pretty upset, because I think they don’t understand US. history and the behavior of the United States in the world and certainly we have at times, I’m sure, done things wrong, maybe even abused our power, but for the most part we have not been colonialistic or imperialistic as a nation.

And then they went on to a third category, which is the mega church. They said the greatest example in the ecclesiastical world are the empire of mega churches and the abuse of their power. Now I’m really pretty upset. That night I went to hear Bill Hybels. Bill is one of my friends. I really love Bill. Barb and I heard him, and I as he spoke. I cried when he was done. I cried because Bill wasn’t trying to be edgy. He wasn’t trying to be controversial. He just was talking about Jesus and trying to glorify Christ. He talked about his life and the whispers, when he heard God whisper, and those changed his life, and the greatness of Christ. He said that years before he was going on vacation and a man on his staff, another pastor, an African-American guy, came up to him just as he was leaving the church and this co-pastor came up to him and said, “I’d like you to read this book,” and the book was called Divided by Faith. Bill looked at it and it was thick and he kind of thumbed through it and it looked serious. He said, “Hey, man, I’m going on vacation, and this isn’t the kind of book I read on vacation. If I read on vacation, I try to escape and I read fun stuff. Really ” And this Black man, this co-pastor said, “Please, please.”

So, Bill took the book and he’d been on vacation for a few days with his wife and family and he was having a pretty good time, but then he heard the whisper. He heard Jesus and he just knew in his heart and soul that Jesus was saying to read the book. He read the book and his life was changed. Changed his life. Changed his ministry. Changed his church. Changed Willow Creek. The book is about brokenness and the brokenness in the African-American community and some of the generational brokenness. The book is about how so many Anglos in suburbia don’t understand. They don’t understand what it’s like growing up with the history that Blacks have had and, in the subcultures, where so many African-Americans live. They don’t understand how hard it is to take advantage of the opportunities that might be here in America. It changed Bill’s heart. Now you go to Willow Creek and the city of Chicago and what you see are wonderful programs that are designed to help the poor and wonderful programs that reach out to minorities, Hispanics and African-Americans. But it didn’t used to be that way until Jesus whispered and Bill heard him and changed.

I heard Jesus whisper many years ago. I was reading Luke 16 where Jesus told the parable about the rich man Lazarus and how this rich guy has this poor guy living at his gate begging. A poor guy, Jesus said, who would be glad to have eaten the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. The rich man ignored him and the judgment came upon him, and I knew Jesus was warning that the poor are at my gates and I’d better care. I heard him whisper when I read Matthew 25 and how at the second coming of Christ, he will judge the nations and to some he will say, “Come, oh blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. Naked, you clothed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was sick and I was in prison and you came to me.” I knew then, as I know now, that this church is supposed to reach out to the poor and we’re supposed to reach out to minorities. We have 21 ministries in the inner city. Some of the 21 ministries we have in the inner city have been birthed and founded by this church or members of our congregation. All of these ministries are ministries with which we hold hands. They are opportunities for you to get involved in forming a picture, a great mosaic, a healing of brokenness.

I was talking last week to my brother Greg, who is Chairman of the Board of the Denver Street School, and we have a couple of elders at our church who are on the board of the Denver Street School, and it’s one of the ministries that we’re linked with in the inner city-Tom Tillapaugh. It’s a wonderful ministry to Hispanic and African-American kids. It’s a Christian school and these kids get to grow up and receive a fine, quality education and also learn about the love of Christ and what it means to live for Christ on this Earth. I had the privilege a little over a year ago of speaking at the graduation ceremony for the Denver Street School and it has become such a model that now 50 of these schools have been established all under Tom Tillapaugh’s service – 50 schools established across the country. Every time you give a dollar to Cherry Hills Community Church, part of it goes to the Denver Street School. A portion of every dollar you give goes to all 21 of the ministries down in the inner city with which we are linked. I want you to know that and I want you to be excited about it. I also want you to consider that God doesn’t just want our treasures. God wants our time and God wants our talent.

In ’06, just a few years ago, I got to know John Hickenlooper some and he invited me to be on his Homeless Initiative board, and I invited many of you to join in adopting a homeless family through the mayor’s program and through the Denver Rescue Mission, a Christian organization. Many of you have responded and we have over 200 of you working with homeless and with the love of Christ. Many small groups here at the church are involved as a group in adopting a homeless family. We’re so excited about that.

Heather and Chris were telling us how their small group has adopted a homeless family now and they’ve gone through the training and just today Heather and Chris and some folks from their group are going out to the Aurora Mall and meet with this single mom and her kids and just love them with the love of Christ and help whatever way they can. It’s the beginning of a six-months journey seeking to help any way that they can. Your small group could do a similar thing or maybe just a group of you who decide you want to do this together or maybe just a few of you – there are so many ways. There are just so many ways that you can reach out to people who are broken. Many of them are of a minority race, some of them aren’t, but all are wonderful people loved by God and to whom God has called us. So, we have these opportunities. We want to encourage you to get involved – maybe go into the inner city with our mentoring program with Save Our Youth or with Whiz Kids and mentor a child. Maybe you get involved in some other way in one of our 21 inner city programs; maybe you get involved with some of our ministries that reach across the racial divide somewhere else in the world. We have many opportunities. I want to encourage you to pray about doing something.

There is a wonderful quote here from Rudy Giuliani. This was in the aftermath of 9-11 with the nightmare that that was. There was a memorial service in a Brooklyn Tabernacle and Rudy Giuliani spoke these words, “You know, people, I’ve learned something through all this. Let me see if I can express it to you. When everybody was fleeing that building, and the cops and the firefighters and the EMS people were heading up into the building, do you think any of them said, ‘I wonder how many Blacks are up there for us to save?’ or ‘What percentage are whites up there?’ ‘How many Jews are there?’ Let’s see, are these people making $400,000 a year or $24,000 a year? You know, when you’re saving lives, they are all precious, and that’s how we’re supposed to live all the time. How would you want the cops to treat you if you were on the 75th floor that day? Would you want them to say, ‘Excuse me, but I’ve got to get to the bosses out first.’ Not exactly. I confess I haven’t always lived this way, but I am convinced that God wants us to live this way and he wants us to value every human life the way he values every human life.”

I hope you feel that way. You see everything we’re doing is an effort to value human life and love people the way Christ loves people. When we minister to people physically, and when we minister to the poor, we care about the whole person. We also minister the Gospel because we care about people’s souls and their salvation. We seek to have a holistic ministry to people and to love people all the same. Jew or Greek, red, yellow, black or white.

I know our time is up. I want to share a little story that took place in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court established desegregation of schools. The eyes of the nation were on Little Rock, Arkansas where the schools for the first time would be desegregated. This was a scary thing in that community, I think for Blacks and for Whites and Hispanics, for everybody it was a scary thing. There was this Anglo family, this White family, and the mother was named Rose Cole, her daughter Sarah. Sarah was just going into the 1st grade and she’d be going off to school that morning and this would be the first day that there would be desegregation. You’d see White kids with Hispanic kids and mostly with African-American kids in that community. The mother, she didn’t know what this would be like and in their subculture, this was just hard and so, she put her daughter Sarah on the bus and she went into her house and she prayed and she prayed pretty much through the morning.

When her daughter came home and got off the bus, she was really just so excited. She hugged her daughter. “How’d it go?” Her daughter said, “You know, Mom, it was really kind of neat. All the buses had police officers on them to make sure that there were no problems, and when we got to school the police officers were everywhere, and I had a nice police officer lead me to my class and to my desk,” and she said, “Mom, at the desk right next to me was a Black girl.” Sarah’s mom said, “Oh, how did that go?” and she said, “Oh, Mom. It was so great. We were both so scared. We were both so afraid. We just held hands all day.” Held hands all day – sometimes you can learn a lot from a child, from children. This world is a scary place. It’s a scary place and we need each other. White, Black, it doesn’t matter -we need each other. We need each other. And we need to reach out and hold hands. Christ calls us to do that. This is the will of Christ for us.

One just final word about Juan Carlos Ortiz. I know some of you, many of you have heard of Juan Carlos Ortiz. You’ve read his books. He’s a pastor at the Crystal Cathedral in California. He is a wonderful evangelist. He was a pastor for many years down in Argentina, in Buenos Aires. Juan Carlos Ortiz tells about when he was a young man as a pastor in this impoverished community. A family in the church had their son die. Eighteen years old, he died tragically in an accident. Juan Carlos Ortiz as a young pastor went over to the house to be with the family and comfort them however, he could. In this culture when a loved one dies, you put the body in a casket and you just exhibit in the home, and you do that immediately.

He arrived at the house and the casket was right there in the living room and the 18- year-old man was in it. Juan Carlos Ortiz greeted the family and he just didn’t know what to do. A thought occurred to him, “Maybe I should pray for this 18-year-old young man. Jesus has power to raise the dead. Jesus did that. Maybe he would allow me to do that.” He didn’t want to mention it to the parents because he didn’t want to appear crazy and he didn’t want to give them false hope, but just as everybody was talking slipped into the middle of the living room he stood by the casket and he began to pray that God would raise this 18-year-old guy from the dead. You got to love the faith of that young pastor. Well, nothing happens, there was no resurrection, but there was a kind of epiphany. Juan Carlos Ortiz says that as he stood there and as he continued to pray, he suddenly felt like he heard Jesus whispering. It was like Jesus said, “You have not the anointing.” Of course, that is true. Christ is the anointed one. He is the Christ, “Cristos,” the Messiah from “mashiah.” It means “the anointed one.” He is the anointed one. All of our anointings are piecemeal, oh so small. But it was like Jesus whispered to him, “But give what you have. You have not the anointing but give what you have.” Juan Carlos Ortiz knew what Jesus was referring to because he had a $100 bill in his wallet, and though he was poor and he was in a poor community, he had saved for a long time and that $100 bill kind of gave him security, and he knew Jesus was saying, “Give it up. Give it up. Give what you have.”

I was thinking about those words and how Jesus would whisper them to all of us. None of us have the anointing, the full anointing of Christ. So, many times in my ministry I’ve wished I did. So, many times I’ve wanted to heal somebody, but I have not the anointing- although I’ve seen Christ do miraculous things. I think Christ whispers to me and to you, “Give what you have. Give what you have.” I know the poverty and the racism that is in this world and it seems like an ocean and all we have in our love bucket is just a bucket. What can we do with a little bucket with an ocean of need? Jesus just says, “Give what you have.” We start small. There are so many opportunities. That’s what we’ve been talking to you about and Jesus wants us to consider offering not only our treasure, but our time and our talent for the sake of the mosaic. Let’s close in a word of prayer.