Racial Diversity and The Music of Jubilee

Is music playing that only you can hear, that others around you cannot?  “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”[i] 

People you know hear other songs.  “Terrorism!”  “Fear!”  “Disappointment.” Those dissonant chords scratch the ears of your friends, your neighbors, the people who cross your path daily.  But your ears are caressed. 

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the thrown will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every test from their eyes.”[ii] That’s the song your hear.

Why does your neighbor despair over morbid tones he cannot escape, while you bask in melodic songs of eternity and life?  Why are you deaf to the deathsong?  Why in your hearing is it drowned out by the promises of God?

            Deidra Riggs writes

Because American society is built on systems that were born out of racialized notions of humanity, it’s extremely difficult to transform a church that historically been comprised of one race into a multiracial congregation.  It’s not impossible, but the cost of such change is great. 

The work of integrating a church is often debilitating because of the way it exposes and uncovers the layers of latent issues, thought patterns, and reticence.[iii]

            I hope you don’t feel blindsided?  I began talking about the music of Heaven, songs sung by angels in the book of Revelation.  And then I dive-bomb in a quote that claims there is inherent racism in American churches?  What kind of sideways turn is this?

            The “latent issues,” to use Riggs’ terminology, derive from the music we hear.  When a person is attuned to the Holy Spirit, she hears God.  He is aware of the Spirit’s prompts.  When a person is spiritually tone deaf, he or she misses the Spirit’s persistent message.  Both the spiritually tone deaf person and the spiritually attuned person live in the same world – one saved at the cross, but currently in the death throes of sin.  Do we see death or do we see salvation?  Are we set on following Christ, or do we wedge small faith into a small, uninfluential corner of our crowded lives?

            In Revelation 7:9-10, people from every human culture stand together, maintaining recognizable cultural distinctiveness, but at the same time completely united in their faith in Christ.  The same picture is described in Revelation 5:9.  The church today that is awake when it comes to institutional racism, and is active in combating that racism, and is determined to bring people together across the racial divide – that church is comprised of people who hear Heaven’s songs, even in the midst of the worst this fallen world has to offer.  Spiritual acuity and actively working for racial unity in the church go hand in hand.  One cannot be blind to the racial struggle and still claim to be actively pursuing the life of a disciple of Jesus. 

            Thus the picture in Revelation 7 is the goal and we construct church to live into that goal.  We do this acknowledging the full weight of Riggs’ observation of how hard it is to lead the church to become multicultural and multiracial.  Her approach is a thought experiment that every church goer should undertake.  What’s it like to be a _________ at my church?[iv]  What is it like to be black at my church?  What is it like to be a single mom at my church?  What is it like to be Mexican at my church?  What is it like to be gay at my church?  What is it like to be divorced at my church?  Another way of asking the question is ‘who would not be welcomed in my church?’

            Answer these questions honestly and it gets really hard.  Because most churches, if we are honest, have someone they won’t welcome.  As we play the honesty out, we realize that whenever we don’t welcome someone, we’re rejecting Jesus.[v]  Jesus loves us all and especially identifies with those who get rejected. 

            The good news is we can go through the hard work of change.  We can have the honest conversation centered on who is not welcome at my church?  In all likelihood, this conversation will need to happen many times because the church is comprised of many people.  As we identify people against whom our church has some prejudice and as we ask the Holy Spirit to root that prejudice out of our church, the opportunity comes to welcome those we previously rejected.  Subtly, we notice that the music we hear has changed.  Our church becomes a body that leans in to the vision in Revelation 7.

            In her own assessment of our times, Deidra Riggs has declared that “Right now is the moment of grace.”[vi]  She believes this is the time of Jubilee,[vii] when debts are forgiven and relationships are made right.  The debt whites owe to blacks in America, a debt born in the Middle Passage, planted in slavery, grown in Jim Crowe, and now flowering in mass incarcerations is forgiven as white society repents and seeks forgiveness.  Of course not all whites seek forgiveness or even acknowledge the debt.  And many black Americans have no interest in forgiveness.  That’s where the music clashes.

            Are we people living in Jubilee?  Or are our feet firmly planted in the soil of death, a soil composed of human sin? 

            The church must declare the New Day that has come in Jesus.  We must make this declaration in the make-up of the church family.  In diverse communities, there must be diverse churches serving as a witness to the community as a whole that all are welcome in the Kingdom of God.  “This is who we are.  We are together people.  We are in-one-place people.  We need to keep reminding ourselves of this.  We are our tribe. All of us.  Together.”

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[i] Revelation 4:8. 

[ii] Revelation 7:16-17.

[iii] D. Riggs (2017), One: Unity in a Divided World, Baker Books (Grand Rapids), p.47.

[iv] Ibid, p.50-51.

[v] Keep in mind the following passages from the gospels: Matthew 25:40; Mark 2:15-17; and Luke 14:21.

[vi] Riggs, p.58.

[vii] The very first Christians believed this too.  The reason they shared their things in common and provided for everyone (Acts 4:32-37), and the reason the gospel gradually spread beyond the boundaries of Israel (Acts 6-24) is the very first Christians believed that in Jesus’ resurrection, Jubilee had come.  

Is this News Good? (Luke 4:14-30)

It’s the Sabbath day, Saturday.  We’re among the faithful of Nazareth, so we’re in the synagogue.  Where else would we be on the Sabbath? 

            But today, the crowd is overflowing.  Where have all these people been?  I haven’t seen that guy in worship in years.  I see him at the market all the time, but not here.  What’s he doing here?  Why today?  What’s everyone doing here?

            The Carpenter’s son has returned.  There is talk that he can do miracles.  A prophet from Nazareth?  That’s what they say.  He was baptized in the Jordan by the crazy man, John, the Baptizer.  Now he’s back and you wouldn’t believe what they’re saying about him in Capernaum.  

            Why do all those wonderful things there when he’s from here, Nazareth?  If Jesus is our prophet, why didn’t he come here first?  It is just as well.  He’s here today and we get to see the wonders and hear the wisdom. 

           

            This is the scene Luke sets.  Your experience of Jesus depends on your circumstances.  The reality of your life dictates whether or not you think Jesus brings is good news.

            He was called rabbi, so the leaders of the Nazareth synagogue invited him to speak.  They wanted to see what the fuss was all about.  They wanted to know why people were making a big deal of the carpenter’s son. 

Or, they could sense that Jesus truly possessed insight from God and these synagogue leaders wanted to bless the congregation by having a sermon from a charismatic speaker.

            In worship that day, both were present.  Gawkers and spectacle-seekers sat right alongside true worshipers and God-seekers.  Church has always been an amalgamation of people of genuine faith, people who are confused, and people who are there because someone else forced them to come.  There are always people in church who don’t know why they themselves are there.  There are judgmental people who can’t see their own flaws.  And there are broken people who cannot see their own beauty. 

It is that way here, now.  Some want to be here.  Some are not sure why we’re here.  Or, we’re here because we know that we need this.  We know how much we need God and we hope to meet Him here.  We have all of it.  Every church does.  And the experience of hearing Jesus – uplifting or troubling – depended and still depends on the situation of the worshiper. 

Let’s start with the poorest people who were in the synagogue.  The people with no money; the people with disabilities; the people of minority cultures who had no rights and rarely received justice; the people on the receiving end of the bullies’ taunts and slaps; the powerless; we begin with how they might hear Jesus.  They were certainly there.

Beginning in verse 17, “[Jesus] stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ¹⁸ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the 0ppressed go free,¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” 

            He quotes Isaiah where good news is promised to the poor.  Release offered to captives and freedom to the oppressed.  And, he mentions recovery of sight for the blind.  Everyone in that crowd would have been aware of Isaiah.  This was a popular scripture with immediate application. 

            Blindness was a common ailment.  We’re going to receive sight?  Remember, we are imagining who would find Jesus’ words to be good news.  The blind.  And the oppressed.  Most Nazareth Jews felt oppressed by Rome and by the poverty that was their life.  This was uplifting.  Furthermore, when is all this good news going to come about?  Today!  Today – with the arrival of Jesus – the scripture is fulfilled.

            Essentially, Jesus is announcing Jubilee.  This concept, Jubilee, comes from another scripture everyone would recognize, Leviticus 25.  “The fiftieth year you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.  It shall be a jubilee for you; you shall return, every one of you to property and to your family” (v.10).  All debt is forgiven.  If someone previously had to sell family land to get out of a financial pinch, in the Jubilee year the holder of the land restores it to the family that originally owned.  If someone sold himself into slavery to cover his debts, in the Jubilee year, the person who owns him frees him.

            For some people Jubilee means losing a slave or losing the advantage of being the only landowner in a community of poor tenant farmers.  If Jesus’ words in fact come to pass those who are in a superior social position because of their wealth lose their edge.  The neighbor they looked down upon is now at their level, looking them in the eye. 

            Jesus says, with his arrival, Jubilee has come.  What did the slave owners think when they heard this?  What about the debtholders?  Were there any curious Roman soldiers or officials in the crowd, just there to check out the Jewish worship practices?  Did they enjoy Jesus’ reading of Isaiah’s line about freedom from oppressors?

            Luke tells us everyone was amazed by Jesus’ preaching.  That would have been the perfect time to do the mic drop.  Jesus exits stage left to sound of deafening applause.   But, he didn’t do that.  Jesus kept preaching.  The amazement quickly turned into something else.  He could see it in their eyes.  They heard he had worked miracles.  The synagogue was packed because they wanted to see one! 

            “No prophet is accepted in his hometown” he told them (4:24).  Then Jesus regaled the congregation with more stories they would know all too well, stories of the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  In both cases, the men of God rendered God’s miraculous provision to people other than Jews. 

All those amazed people in the Nazareth synagogue put it all together. 

He’s known as a miracle worker and he’s from here.  He’s ours, but we stand condemned because we don’t welcome the poor.  We don’t love and help the blind.  We may be oppressed, but we step on the backs of those who have it worse than us.  He holds himself up like Elijah and Elisha.  The great prophets.  And he judges us.  He’ll help others and he’ll criticize us. 

“When they heard this,” Luke writes in verse 28, “All in the synagogue were filled with rage.”  A mob action happens next as they drag Jesus to a cliff intent on throwing him to his death.

            I don’t think there were any slaves or blind people or debtors in the lynch mob.  All those at the bottom, those who live in the gutter, heard Jesus promise them that his arrival meant rescue from their pitiable condition.  No, this crowd that is seeing red and breathing murder are those who got upset when Jesus said he came to heal and liberate and release.  Not only did they not need what Jesus offered, but they did not like it that Jesus would welcome and care for the lowest in their community.

You see how our circumstance colors how we hear Jesus?  Is his coming good news for us?  Are we happy when he pronounces Jubilee for those who suffer under the crushing load of debt?  What would economic justice cost us?  That depends.

If you are among the poor, the blind, the oppressed whom Jesus is here to save, then economic justice costs you your pain.  If you are among the wealthy in the world, and this includes the American middle class, so most people here, then Jesus’ announcement of Jubilee costs you – us – our prestige.  We give up our advantage. 

We’ve been talking about the way Jesus’ arrival surprised people.  Maybe the surprise to us is that Jesus didn’t come for us.  At least, he didn’t come for those who see themselves as “the have’s.” 

We don’t discover Jesus – as one here to save us – until we understand that we are as weak and as pitiable as the homeless man who has not changed clothes in months because he can’t.  We are as powerless as the undocumented immigrant who came here as a child and feels adrift in danger all time.  We are as helpless as the Syrian who has not eaten in days and is unable to move from the building he is in because he’s complete boxed in by ISIS and Syrian government forces. 

The most accomplished professional, the department chair, the lead surgeon stand before God as naked, exposed, and impotent as these examples I’ve shared.  Common sense would say that’s completely ridiculous.  It is absurd to juxtapose the leaders among us with society’s dregs.  But Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, the blind, the captive, and the oppressed.  We cannot understand or receive the blessing of God’s salvation until we understand ourselves as poor, blind, captive, and oppressed. 

Presuming we want the blessing of God, how do we do this?  First, we see sin for what it is – that which utterly destroys our souls.  In our popular culture, sin is something that elicits giggles.  Sin sell.  Movies with the highest box office sales are the ones rated ‘R’ for violence, sex, strong language, and nudity.  In our culture, sin is celebrated and purity is mocked.  We have to see sin for what it is – a killer.  We acknowledge sin, admit we cannot escape, and turn to Jesus as our only hope for rescue.  In sin, we are at the bottom until Jesus lifts us out.

Second, we stand with those people society would say are on the ladder’s lowest rungs.  A moment ago, I used the word “dregs.”  From where God is standing, there are no dregs.  The refugee, the illegal alien, the mentally ill, the poorest of the poor – these are all lost sheep.  They are beautiful people made in the image of God.  Jesus leaves the 99 healthy ones sitting comfortably in the sanctuary of HillSong Church.  He leaves us to go out and announce his Isaiah-fulfilling, freedom-proclaiming, belly-filling, life-giving news to the homeless and the downtrodden.  He came for them. 

If we want to receive what Jesus gives and experience it as good news, we admit our sin, and we sit arm-in-arm with them.  No wonder people in Synagogue crowd wanted to throw him off a cliff.  They came for miracles and got slapped by God’s truth.

In Luke 4, God’s truth slaps us with his truth this morning.  And the truth is there is greater joy in love and in sharing love than there is in prestige and wealth.  Do we have the faith to believe that is true?

What do we do now?  That’s up to you.  You can clench your teeth in anger.  You can bow before the cross and open your heart to the Holy Spirit.  You can start thinking right now about who you will love this week.  What disadvantaged person will you stand with this week?

We have heard Jesus’ words.  Each of us can decide who we are and then decide if this is good news.

AMEN

Defeated and Down, but Never Out

“Do not human beings have a hard service on earth?” These remarks of Job begin Job chapter 7 and come in the middle of his second monologue after Eliphaz has spoken (Job 4-5). What do we hear in Job’s words?

“Are not the days of [human beings] like the days of a laborer? Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who long for their wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness” (Job 7:1b-3a). Brite Divinity School professor Leo Perdue comments on ‘ebed’ the Hebrew term which means ‘slave’ that Jobs uses in verse 2 (in the book Wisdom & Creation, p.143). He points out that after 7 years, the slave was to be freed (see Leviticus 25:40-41). Even though the slave may have owed much to his creditor, all debts were forgiven in the Jubilee year.

However, Job does not lean such a hope in his present outcry. Graphically, he describes his circumstance. “My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. My days … come to an end without hope” (7:5-6). Have you ever experienced such calamity that it seemed hope was impossible? Has life ever been so bad, you decided hope was too heartbreaking because it was sure to fail? That’s where we find Job.

He doesn’t ask God for relief or restoration. He doesn’t dare believe that God could be on his side. Job believes God is against Him. Mournfully, he says, “remember that my life is a breath” (7:7). And, he challenges God. “Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity?” Job is sure of his own innocence and he equally sure that God against him. If God is against me, what can I possible do? Thus his lugubrious lament, “now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be” (7:21). Perdue notes that Job doesn’t seek the freedom of Jubilee; rather he just wants God to leave him alone.

As I have written previously, Job’s problems began exactly when God left him alone at Satan’s prodding. A person’s life is most forlorn when that person is far from God. Whether Job’s suffering was a caricature or an accurate historical accounting of a man who went through a living hell, the principle holds. Human beings experience pain. Sometimes they go through a lot of it. It is that much worse if the sufferer is also alienated from God. Job was not, but he thought he was. His pain created despair that submitted him to the deception that God was his enemy,

I urge you, reader, to think about Jesus’ assurance of what he desires for all who follow him. I say this knowing that Jesus’ disciples in fact go through all kinds of pain (cancer and other diseases, ridicule, persecutions, economic loss, accidents, divorce, etc). Christians get hurt just like everyone else; still we lay claim to the words of Jesus. “Whoever enters by me will be saved; … I came that they might have life and have abundantly” (John 10:9, 10).

Stubbornly, we who follow Jesus hang on to those words even though the situations we are in may make those words appear foolish. We refuse to go where Job went. We refuse to despair and give up on the Jubilee (freedom, release) that God promised. When Jesus says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32), we believe Him.

Yes, followers of Jesus get knocked down. Yes, we experience loss. We are sometimes defeated. But, we do not give up. We do not forfeit hope. Because of the cross, we will not descend to darkness of the soul that Job could not escape. We learn from his example that faithful people will go through debilitating pain. But, we learn from Jesus that faithful people will be delivered and blessed, even in times of trial. We reach out to God in the name of Jesus, and God reaches out us and pulls us through.