Expectations can be difficult things.
For example, when you came to today’s sermon podcast today you probably had certain expectations; that a scripture or two would be read, followed by something of a theological deep-dive into what it was about, and why it’s important. Something that left you feeling generally uplifted, fed, and spiritually fulfilled.
Of course, as you’ve probably noticed already, that expectation isn’t exactly playing out as one might have…well…expected.
We didn’t read a scripture passage today and, though it may surprise you to hear it, I didn’t come today to preach a sermon to you.
Because sometimes those usual things, those expected things, just don’t serve the reality at hand.
This past week, in the United States, a white man opened fire at a massage parlor in Atlanta Georgia, killing eight people in a crime that was both racially and sexually motivated It was brutal, horrific, terrifying and, to members of the Asian and Asian-American communities and their families…not even remotely surprising.
And in the wake of this shooting, I have had the uncomfortable privilege of watching all my white acquaintances come to the realization that my racially-blended family has known for a very, very long time;
It’s not safe in this world when you don’t fit in. Especially in the United States.
So when I saw the wash of that white tide of protestation and pearl-clutching roll in, when I saw that great fluffy cloud of condescension and realization settle over the pasty complexions of friends, colleagues, and extended family members; as, slowly but surely, everyone’s Facebook profile pictures dutifully adopted colored banners reading “Stop Asian Hate” like oddly—etched picture frames around blank sheets A4 paper…I realized then that I wasn’t so much moved to preach.
I was angry.
I was hurt.
And above all…I was immensely, disquietingly sad.
And in that tumultuous mix of emotions, I wanted so badly to put my voice out into this virtual pulpit and tell you, all of you, about every obscure detail of the long American history with Asian racism; every cobblestone in the road that brought us to a time and place where a man could write the story of his unconscionable racism and impotent sexual frustrations in the blood of 8 innocent victims, while a police chief hand-waves it all away by saying that this man was simply “having a bad day.”
I wanted to tell you so many things.
I wanted to tell you about the great and terrible legacy of the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882, signed by president Chester A. Arthur, which prohibited all Chinese immigration to the United States on the grounds of we don’t like Asian people very much.
I wanted to tell you about the Page Act, some 7 years earlier, which creatively sought to accomplish the same thing on “moral” grounds, by barring anyone from entering the country who engaged in immoral sexual acts. Of course, it first laid out that Asian women were by definition sexually immoral, therefore any and all Asian women could be considered prostitutes, and therefore denied things like immigration, or even basic human rights.
I wanted to talk to you about Japanese internment, but without the hilariously propagandized imagery of the noble, proud Japanese farmer stoically walking into the concentration camps, head held high. I wanted to tell you about how the whole thing was orchestrated by white farmers in California who, upon realizing that Japanese immigrants were WAY better than they were at efficient land use and were as a direct result of this making much more money than their white counterparts, reasoned that the best thing to do would be to convince the government to just give all their land to white people. WHICH THEY DID.
I wanted to talk to you about fetishization, yellow fever, and the how the myth of the model minority is a means of turning oppressed racial groups against each other in much the same way that conservative economic propaganda encourages poor Americans to hate each other while ignoring the ever-growing hoards amassing beneath the ruddy claws of the draconic1%.
I wanted to tell you all these things, and so many more; a primer on every historical spike hanging over the heads of the Asian and Asian-American communities in America, like stalactites made of white supremacy and fear.
But…I just couldn’t’. There’s so much much to tell, never enough time to tell it…and the voice of a white man living abroad probably isn’t the best voice to speak to the experiences of the Asian and Asian-American communities anyways.
So instead, I thought I might take the time to tell you about what the Bible says about this sort of thing.
I thought I might talk about how each and every one of us is created in the imago den; the image of almighty God. Right from the beginning, in Genesis, we see that.
I thought we could maybe talk about the radical love of Jesus to the Samaritan woman at the well, sharing in that moment God’s love to a woman who was in several different ways, not the sort of person that a “good Jew” like Jesus “ought” to have been talking to.
I thought I could share with you the words of the Apostle Peter, who said “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him (Acts 10:34-35).”
Or maybe the Apostle Paul, that first great missionary, who said, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13).
Or maybe James, who said, “But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (James 2:9).
Maybe I could talk to you about how God took the people of Israel out of captivity, into the wilderness for 40 years, and finally brought them to the promised land, telling them that this land would be theirs if they would but follow the law of God. You know, the one about treating the immigrant as a citizen, caring for those who are different than you, thou shalt not kill; those sort of things. All this, only for the very next verse to start with the header “Preparations for the Invasion,” in which ol’ Josh starts telling’ folks about how they’re gonna start putting these different, indigenous folk, right to death
I thought maybe we could do something like that, and end on the high of that great verse from Galatians 3:28, “ There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
But…every time I tried to bring that sermon up in my head, move it through my soul to start putting words in the page I found it just turning to ash in my heart as I remembered those eight beloved, beautiful children of God now lying dead because of all these sermons that went un-preached throughout our history.
These eight bodies, and every broken and suffering heart surrounding them in families and communities, along with every single broken and murdered body that came before them, whether it be Asian, Black, Central or South American…or anyone else who was broken or murdered because some other person perceived in them some difference that evoked violence and hatred in their heart; each one is an echo of a sermon like this, delivered just one week too late.
Instead, I found myself oddly coming the words of an old female friend of mine from years past, as she was recovering from a particularly nasty breakup with a long-term boyfriend. She said, in the immortal words of quite possibly every woman who has been recovering from a particularly nasty breakup with a long-term boyfriend:
“Men are dogs.”
Of course, if I’m being honest, these words first settled on my heart this week because they eloquently if somewhat stereotypically express the sort of emotionally depressed, resigned disappointment one has with a person or people who seem to insist on making personal decisions that are not only hurtful and destructive to the people around them, but absolutely bonkers as well. In my case, this hurt and disappointment was directed at white people in general (even though I am very much a white people), rather than at men in general (which, in the interests of fairness, I also very much am).
But the more I began to dwell on it, the more I began to realize that there might actually be something deeper here. Though I’m not much of a dog person myself, I’ve spent enough time on the internet to realize that most people see the defining characteristic of a dog not as some sort of disloyal rascal (as my exasperated female friend meant the term), but rather as someone who just wants to be patted on the head and called a good doggo.
God’s great creation, of which we are an integral part, is written in love. Love is the thread from which God wove together this entire world, and everything in it. So when we take it upon ourselves to discuss sin, whether that sin is racism, violence, misogyny, or murder (or racist violent misogynistic murder), it all really amounts to the same thing at it’s core:
A perversion of that core thread of love, a twisting of God’s pure love into something broken, demented, and other.
Think about that for a moment.
At the heart of each and every one of us is, I think, that good dog mentality; an excited kid who just wants people to give them a hug, a high-five, or to tell them that they’re awesome. When you boil it down to brass tacks, isn’t that exactly what each and every one of us wants? What is at the core of every one of the deepest desire of our hearts, but to have someone, anyone, look at us and see a person who is trying so hard, struggling so immensely, just to connect with a little bit of love?
And what is a sin but that desire perverted into hurtfulness?
The desire for fame, fortune, power and prominence? What is a desire to succeed but a desire for that pat on the head; the desire to achieve in order to fill our lonely hearts with the love we were built for?
What is greed but a desire to quench that thirst for love with money, possessions; things, rather than people?
What is lust but a desire to find love in the physical rather than the relational?
And when these desires are unmet, when our expectations of fulfillment are met with only silence, coldness, and the lonely despair of our own empty hearts…is that moment of emotional desperation not the wellspring from which sin emerges in a desperate bid to fill that hole within ourselves?
When we can’t find the love we are built for, when connection is denied to us, community falls away from us, and love seems more a distant dream than font of living water we are all welcomed to drink from…how easy is it for us to turn that emptiness to blame? To direct our feelings outward, rather than inward?
When we find ourselves on the outside looking in, it’s so easy to blame those who are still inside.
When we find ourselves lonely, it’s so easy to blame those who are not.
When we are suffering, it’s easy to blame.
And in that moment, can you see how love is bent out of shape, turned to rage hatred, and othering.
As much as I really wish I could, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be able to solve all racism, even just the Christian variety, in a single sermon. There’s no way I’m even going to be able to begin to educate you fine and wonderful folks on the full details of the history of what racism has already been experienced in America, even by this one particular group. There’s absolutely no way I can stand here myself and declare that this is a solution that God will bring a miraculous fix to, or that great healing will come upon, or some other pseudo-gnostic magical bullcrap like that.
Because I’m as much a part of the problem as anyone.
Because my heart is just as tired, just as wounded, and just as love-starved as anyone.
Because the root problem is that we have all forgotten to love properly.
So for this week, before you even think about taking on the world’s problems with racism, sexism, bigotry, or the like, I want you to consider these two things:
How powerfully, wonderfully, emotionally wrecked would you be if someone came to you, today, and told you, in terms so clear and firm as to command your immediate understanding and acceptance, that you are beautiful and wonderful, and that the things you do are appreciated, respected, and deeply meaningful?
What’s stopping you from being that person to others today?
When Christ Jesus said to us that the entirety of the law and the prophets hangs on the love of God and neighbor, I am convinced that this is what he was talking about; that the secret to living in the fullness of God’s perfected creation, to shattering these artificial barriers we have placed between each other, these fictional lines of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and everything else; all these things are are broken when we simply show to others the same love that our hearts cry out for desperately.
I know it sounds like the great white cop-out; love as the panacea for all the great segregatory sins of our beleaguered human race, but let me be clear; I am not saying that if we just hold hands and sing “kumbaya” that all will be well with the world. The challenging of systems of oppression is gonna take a hell of a lot more work than just that.
But, taking down these great and terrible systems of sin is a lot like clearing out a garden overrun with great and choking weeds. You can spend all your time slicing off stalks and flowers, clearing everything down to the dirt again and again, firm in the expectation that you are doing work that is good and true and necessary, but unless you go after the roots, those weeds will just grow back in the fullness of time stronger and deadlier, and no fruitful growth will be able to arise in that space ever again.
That’s my challenge to you today, my friends. Go after the roots. Show that unreserved, undeserved, unanticipated love especially to those folks that your own heart screams at you not to love. Because when you show that love to people, you begin to build those heart-to-heart connections that drive out loneliness, drive out rage, drive out hatefulness, and calm vengeful and violent hearts.
When you love, the roots of hate dry out, and we can finally begin to bring down the weeds once and for all.
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