Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I was tooling down Bel Air road to go home, and I was listening to the Christian radio station 95.1 and I heard a beautiful song. The lyrics were moving. Like any great song the tune was catchy and the concept was simple. The words in the title say it all “It’s All Yours God”. Stephen Curtis Chapman, one of our best contemporary Christian writers penned the words. He talks about the streets of London, orphan children in Uganda, people like us, people in Singapore, Manila and he touches all the continents and the refrain hits the theme and drives it home.. “It’s All Yours God”, It's All Yours God”. Tears came to my eyes as the spirit of Jesus drove home the message. We are all creatures of the same God. We are all brothers and sisters. Really one in our belonging to the only true and living God.
I’ve tried to live by that notion my whole life. I remember learning a song in Sunday School, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white”, you probably know it too.
In 1957, the schools of Baltimore County were integrated. African American children became my classmates. It seemed natural enough. Especially on the play ground and the playing fields, we were all one. Our teacher took us on a field trip to one of the bird sanctuaries and to the zoo in Baltimore. Back then we had separate bathrooms and drinking fountains. The ones for “coloreds” were inconveniently located and our teacher told the black kids, “Ignore those signs, you use them like all the rest”. I remember feeling that she had done something daring, defying the law like that. I even felt that she was being prophetic, that she was striking a blow for justice. Her act made a real impression on me. I loved and admired her for her courage.
We don’t talk too openly about race and our race troubles in the USA, do we? It is an awkward and uncomfortable subject. Yet, our issues are like the proverbial elephant in the room – obvious to everyone, but a taboo to discuss.
As an American, I struggle with these issues too. I haven’t arrived yet. Even thought I lived in Africa for five years and grew up in a Christian home where people of color were always referred to in terms of respect and dignity, as a society we have been conditioned to fear and suspect each other.
When I was a child and we drove through a poor neighborhood of Baltimore, my Mom would have us lock all the doors. This was years before carjacking actually happened. She didn’t say anything but the non-verbal message was tattooed on my psyche.
In Philadelphia, where we were visiting relatives, an interracial couple shared some space with us. My Dad didn’t say anything but the look of shock and disapproval that he was trying hard to suppress was imprinted on my spirit permanently.
Yet, I lived in a world of dissonance. The tune, “red and yellow, black and white” danced in my head along with the non-verbal messages my parents gave. We call the process cultural conditioning. We have made tremendous progress in wiping out those prejudices, but the journey is far from over, far form over.
In our Lenten journey of healing, tonight’s lesson speaks to us about blindness. The lesson opens with a discussion about whose sin caused this blindness. In Jesus’ day, almost everyone believed that physical infirmity was a punishment God inflicted on those who sinned. Some of that lingers around even today. We’ve all felt it ourselves when tragedy hits, when a loved one unexpectedly dies, or a child of ours gets into trouble with drugs or the wrong crowd. We look around too, to find a reason, to find someone to blame.
Then Jesus takes dirt, spits into it and makes a poultice or a salve and rubs it on the man’s eyes. Remember how God took the earth and formed it into Adam? I love the image. Here is God at work in the Garden again. Healing through the amazing medium of divine touch. People can’t believe that he’s healed.
I want to talk abut people who have helped heal my blindness. At our Synod assembly three years ago, we focused on the issue of race and the church. In the 1850’s race issues tore the church apart – including our own Lutheran church. It took 69 year for us to regroup and reunite.
We talked honestly at the Synod assembly about our history. We had a young law professor, Sherrilyn Illiff who wrote about how black men were lynched on the Eastern shore in the 1930’s. These events terrorized black families and did violence to the whites who perpetrated them and who stood by and let it happen. If anyone can flout the law and violate it in this way, then no one is really safe, black or white.
Linda Chinnia, on the Bishop’s staff, talked about her own history as a woman of color, and the fear she had every time one of her three sons was late coming home. She spoke of being paraded in front of a class as the first black child to enter the 4th grade and of being told verbally, “You better not make any mistakes”. It was hard to believe that any adult could have been so insensitive to a terrified child 9 years old. Hearing her story helped me to remember that God has called me and you and all of us to work hard to overcome the legacy of racial tension that separates us and keeps us from seeing each other’s beauty, each other’s humanity.
As a smart white guy (and I say that in humility), God has given me a good head, I seldom met students who were smarter than I am. While teaching in Africa, I met a young Zimbabwean, Canisius Manumwa. Canisius was what you’d call a genius. I was teaching a linguistics course, I really didn’t want to but I was more qualified than anyone else on the English Language faculty to teach it. The theory I was attempting to teach was by Benjamin Whorf. It was complicated, a theory about how our climate and geography, our “environment” are reflected in the way our language evolves.
Eskimo languages have dozens of words for snow because it impacts them so. While teaching, I explained things as best I cold. Canisius raised his hand and asked to speak. He could see I was struggling to explain things. He essentially took over the class and made the theory come alive with examples from the Shona language which he and most of the students understood. Even I understood the theory better when he sat down. The class was quiet for a minute until I led the class in clapping and applauding him. He beamed with delight.
Being shown up by your student was humbling, but as I reflected on my experience, I realized that Canisius had set me free form a subtle racial stereotype that had limited both him and me.
Blindness is not just about not being able to see physically. Blindness can exist in our heads, the result of cultural conditioning that affects everyone, in effect imprisoning us and limiting our ability to see what is right in front of our eyes and in our hearts.
In Jesus’ name. Amen
Pastor John