Scripture: Isaiah 58:5-9; Ephesians 6:10-20.
I don’t know how you feel about “racism” as a sermon topic. I suspect that even at Sojourners it may be somewhat of a questionable topic. I know I can come up with a few arguments that would question the wisdom or appropriateness of a sermon called simply “racism”.
For one thing, the word just doesn’t have a very inspirational or spiritual ring to it, does it? Even in a congregation where justice concerns are big, we just might want something more out of a worship service than more talk about social justice. In fact it may be that especially in a congregation where justice concerns are big, that we need to seek a different dimension of our lives when we come into worship. That’s one thought I have anyway.
And along those lines, we don’t need a lecture in place of a sermon, that is a sociological, psychological, political, legal, or historical treatise on racism. There are no doubt many things we could all stand to be better informed about. We don’t need to turn the worship service to such purposes.
For another thing, it is a rather large topic, and there’s no way anyone could do more than just begin to slightly scratch the surface in a few minutes on a Sunday morning. So if we’re going to be superficial, why do it at all? That’s a good question too, in my mind.
And then there is the question: Why preach on this topic at Sojourners, which I have been told is one of the few churches in Charlottesville that is not color coded, and where many people may be here at least partly for that reason, that here Sunday morning is not the most segregated time of the week.
And then too, maybe this is just not an especially appropriate time to preach about racism. It may seem kind of arbitrary to just plop down a sermon on racism in the middle of Lent, when there is nothing on the calendar that says this is race relations Sunday, black history month, Martin Luther King’s birthday, or anything that would suggest that this is the appropriate time to deal with race relations.
But now maybe by this time you are sensing where I am going with this. All these reasons I have been giving about why maybe racism is not the best choice of sermon topic, all those reasons are really reasons in my mind why I have to preach a sermon on “racism”. Because all those reasons are exactly the kind of things white people have always said in order to avoid the unpleasantness of dealing with racism.
As I was writing those paragraphs about maybe why I shouldn’t be preaching on racism, I was reminded of an open letter that a group of liberal white ministers addressed to Martin Luther King while he was taking advantage of the public accommodations of a Birmingham jail. What they said to him was predictable and forgettable. That change takes time. That it’s a complicated issue. That now is not a good time for demonstrations because they will undo all the progress that’s being made. And so forth. The letter did have one good thing about it. It caused Dr. King to write “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.
I was reminding myself of that specific incident as I wrote the first part of the sermon, but even more I was thinking how skilled white folks are generally in avoiding dealing with racism. There are always good reasons not to do it. And the better the reasons, the more useful they are in helping us escape confronting the issues at the level we need to confront them.
We do avoid…(I say “we” this morning as a white person speaking to white people. I don’t usually preach as a white person, just as a person, but this morning I can’t help it. I understand racism in this country to be a problem of white people. The effects of racism, of course, are felt by everyone, but racism is a white problem. We have often asked people of color to speak about racism. It is time for white people to speak about it.)
We do avoid. We also do something very similar; we find ways to distance ourselves from the issue. We find ways to give some attention to the issue of racism but keep it sort of at arms length. It’s easier, always easier, to talk about things that are “out there”, to talk about the racism of the past, or the racism we can see and condemn out there in society. It is not so easy, it is sometimes downright uncomfortable, when we let matters come closer to home.
That leads me to the next thing I want to say about racism this morning. My first goal this morning was not to avoid the subject. Whatever I said—and I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to say—whatever I said, I was going to say something. I was not going to let the fact that I wasn’t sure what I would say in 20 minutes prevent me from saying something. Then my next thought was that what I said could not be a kind of abstract discussion of the evils of racism and the desirability of racial reconciliation.
What I need to say next is that I know the sin of racism is alive within me. I do not mean this as some sort of confession about what an awful person I am, or about all the secret prejudices, all the sinister stereotypes or bigoted feelings that I have lurking somewhere in the corners of my spirit. I don’t want to make any great claims for myself about being free of racial prejudices and stereotypes, but neither do I have a particular need to pretend that I am a warehouse of prejudices and stereotypes.
What I’m talking about now has nothing to do, for you or for me, has nothing to do with whether we are well meaning or kind hearted or have good values. What I mean when I say this morning that the sin of racism is alive within me is that I know that I am a person of privilege in this society. On more than one account I am a person of privilege, but for purposes of this morning primarily because I am one who in the terms and definitions of our society is designated “white”.
Being white is not a sin. But being white means that I have benefited from the racism of our society. I have benefited from the removal and genocide of native Americans. I have benefited from the enslavement of Africans. I have benefited from the injustices of every shape and size done to people of color in this society. And that is true regardless of whether I wanted to benefit in that way or not. It is true even though I abhor the injustices that have been done.
It is true regardless of whether I have a personal commitment to racial justice, whether I have tried to rid myself of harmful prejudices, regardless of how many picket lines I have marched in, how many times I have sung “We Shall Overcome”, regardless of what I have sat down for or stood up for. Regardless of any of those things or anything else, I am a person of privilege in this society. And because I am a person of privilege, I am a part of the racism of our society and that racism is a part of me. That is not the way it is supposed to be, but that is the way it is.
Now here’s the next thing I need to say: This is a spiritual issue. It is not just a social issue, not only an ethical or moral issue. It is a spiritual issue. It is not just a question of doing the right thing. It is not just a matter that has to do with trying to bring about a more just situation and saying that’s spiritual because God is interested in justice. The reading from Isaiah says this, that basically prayer or fasting or any other activity we may think of as spiritual is really not spiritual if it is not part of doing justice. “Is not this the fast that I choose? To loose the bonds of injustice…” Isaiah is pretty clear on this and pretty forceful. God is interested in justice. But the connection between fasting and justice suggests something else to me as well.
Racism is a spiritual issue because this question of how one lives as a person of privilege will permeate our inner life, if we allow it to, just as fasting will do if we really do it. Now of course racism is a spiritual issue for people of color as well, but in a different way and I will not presume to speak of that this morning. But I need to say that I believe racism is a spiritual issue for white people and that it is connected with being people of privilege. How we deal with that will spread itself out into matters of confession and repentance and guilt and forgiveness, into matters of prayer, into questions of meaning and wholeness. And if this issue doesn’t touch our spirits at those levels then we haven’t really begun to deal with it. It is still that problem out there that needs to be solved, whereas it is also a trouble in the soul that puts us in need of healing and conversion and transformation.
Let me elaborate a little bit. There are lots of things that being a person of privilege means with regard to race in our society. There are big issues of course. Jobs, education, housing. We all know that there has not been and is not equal access in those major areas of life.
But also because I am white, I have a better chance of getting a taxicab on a city street. Because I am white, I have never been followed around a store because my color makes me suspicious. Because I am white I am not asked to speak for my race. (“Jim, what do white people think about that?”) And because I am white, I do not even have to think about racism if I choose not to.
Two comments…
As long as these things are true, as long as I benefit from the history of racism in this country and continue to benefit as a person of privilege in the society, then there will be something wrong with me on the inside. Not wrong in the sense of “bad boy”, but wrong in the sense of “not the way it’s supposed to be”, something that is just not right, something in need of prayer, in need of mending, in need of redemption. Clearly people of color need for racism to end. The movement to dismantle racism would gain a great deal of strength, however, if white people came to realize that in reality we need for it to end too, that it’s in our self-interest too for racism to end. But that realization will require some spiritual work on our part.
What also will require some spiritual work is making racism an ongoing part of what we bring to God everyday, and what we let God bring to us. In this sense it needs to become an ongoing part of our prayer life, a regular part of what transpires between ourselves and God, whatever form that takes. I said a moment ago that one of the privileges of white privilege is that I can choose, if I so desire, not to think about racism. That is a privilege that I believe I need to give up. I need to resolve not to exercise that option. But that requires spiritual effort on my part. It does not just happen.
It also does not just happen that this issue is kept firmly but uncomfortably on the table at Sojourners. I don’t have a chart to pull out to tell you what that means. I don’t come this morning with proposals, plans, or programs. But I remember saying back in February that I wanted, in my first several sermons, to just speak to you about some of the things that were on my mind as I begin my ministry here and become part of the many ministries at Sojourners. The need for a prayerful attitude. Some thoughts about being sojourners, about consensus and being people of God. And this sermon today I need to say is in that same spirit.
Racism is one of those things I have on my mind and in my spirit as I begin at Sojourners. I did not say it before, so I need to say it now. It is one of the things I am dealing with in my spirit as I come here, and I believe it needs to be on our agenda here at Sojourners, and as I say, uncomfortably so, not just in ways that come easily and naturally. That’s why I was attracted, by the way, to the other scripture I asked to have read this morning, the one from Ephesians where Paul encourages us to be ready to do battle. “Put on the whole armor of God,” he says and goes on fill out this picture of being ready to engage in struggle.
I was reading that passage, before I knew exactly what I was going to say in this sermon, I was reading that passage, and it spoke to me. It spoke to me of the sense of struggle or battle that will be necessary to deal in any way meaningfully with racism. There are struggles each of us probably needs to have within us, struggles that may surface in our life as a congregation, and struggles any one encounters trying to confront racism in our world. Paul talks about fighting against evil spiritual forces at loose in the world. And we know there are forces of overt hatred, bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. There are also powerful forces that tell us to do something else, to stick to what is easy for us, or nice, or pleasant. May God help us to be ready to fight those forces too, to put on the whole armor of God, if you will, and to move forward. There is work to do. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 26, 2000