One Blood Coalition

Prayer Breakfast

Introduction and Welcome

It is, at least for me, and I know for so many who love the churches in our nation, quite painful to see and experience the depths of division in the churches and throughout our good land. Of course, there are different dimensions and facets to division. There are political divisions, social divisions, and economic divisions. One kind of deadly division we’ve experienced in our country as well as in churches is racial division.

Many mistakenly believed that we lived in a post-racial America. Yet, in recent years the curtain hiding the division and hatred has been pulled back. We are in fact not living in a post-racial America. Americans and churches throughout America are disdainfully divided still along “racial lines”.

We need to pray for unity and healing. And this morning, I thought we might pray, especially for churches that in particular proclaim a strong allegiance to the Christian gospel.

I want to tell you a story to help us know how to pray.
One qualification, first.
    I am speaking to you as white evangelical Christian, at least I want to address the problem from that perspective. On the one hand, I do not intend to indict all white evangelicals; many care deeply about these issues. On the other hand, historically, white evangelicals have possessed the majority of power in this country. Furthermore, not to be too frank, I believe we have acted as if the race problem is not our problem and I believe it is our problem. It’s not all our problem. But it is our problem.
Hot Chicken   

I was in Nashville, Tennessee for class in July. One Wednesday night, we were invited to a conversation on racial injustice. There was a very kind, white evangelical couple who had invited a very ethnically diverse group of people into their home: one Indian, several African Americans, and the remainder were white. She worked for Intervarsity Press, a very well respected Christian evangelical publication company; he was an accountant with a masters in business. This couple struck me as not only kind, but sensitive, intelligent, and hospitable, not to mention humble. The discussion was over hot chicken. Basically, there was a small mom-and-pop restaurant owned by African Americans that fried up good hot chicken. Apparently a big a company came in making hot chicken the biggest newest thing in Nashville. But this mom-and-pop had been there for years! This became a story of possible racial injustice and made a popular Nashville news magazine. And, we came around the table to discuss this. It was very stimulating! I learned a lot.

Before our discussion, and while we were eating hot chicken,  I made the comment to the husband that I did not believe many of Christians I grew up with were aware that certain texts in the Bible on ethnic and racial division existed. For example, I never heard Ephesians 2:11-22, preached. At that moment I lost him. He was no longer present in the conversation. He dismissed himself and I kept on eating good hot chicken!

In a short time, he came back and asked me if I come sit with him for a minute. He had taken his Bible and looked at this passage in Ephesians 2:11-22. Humbly, he began to show me all the areas that were marked up.
    Of course chapter one speaks of all these great blessings people have who follow Jesus. He’d marked up plenty chapter 2:1-10…all those bits about being saved by grace through faith. Said, he’d heard it all his life. There was  plenty marked up in chapter three, particularly the prayer about the God of the Bible’s never ending love. Chapter four and the way Paul calls Christians to live…chapter five and the metaphor of marriage, chapter six and all that stuff about who the battle is really against, and the famous passage describing the armor of God.

But, there was not one mark on Ephesians 2:11-22 and it just happens to be the one and only place where Paul explicitly mentions the cross–a pretty important part of the Christian faith!!

The verses are situated in this racially loaded section where Paul calls out jews and gentiles for their racial hatred. They call each other racial slurs “you circumcised” and “you uncircumcised.” But, the passage with the cross, nothing. And, he said, “I really never have read it.”
Paul, The cross and Racism

Paul deals with racial hatred. He argues the Jews and Gentiles received two things. Verse 18 they both get access to the Father. Neither one came to the Father except through the son…a message folks in my circles understood quite well (John 14:6).

But, not only to the Father. Notice in verses 16-17, says it gave us access to each other. The cross that made peace between me and God has also made peace between me and anybody who does business with God at the cross. Listen from the Message:
“Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of  animosity and hatred, he created a new kind of human being.” Verses 15 from the Good News Version– “By his death on the cross , Christ destroyed their enmity.”
    That doesn’t mean we can’t hate one another. It means we have no basis for hating one another. You can’t find theology that will support hate. The cross has destroyed any reason for hatred of other people group. Because that group has the possibility of coming into the Messiah by the blood of Jesus poured out at his death on the cross….This just hasn’t been preached.

Perhaps part of the reason the churches I grew up in are losing credibility is because of something Dr. King warned us of only a few years ago… “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

We’ve been silent.

The message of the cross has something powerful to offer when we churches preach and embody its lavish love to one another and the community.

So, my encouragement to us this year as we pray for our nation, is to pray for the churches in our nation. We claim to have salt, light, and leaven…touched by Prince of Peace.

Let us pray for bravery in white pulpits. Black pulpits. Let us pray for ministers and pastors and priests to check our egos at the door and come together around the table like Jesus did and think prayerfully and creatively about how to demonstrate what self emptying love looks like. It will at least listen.

Let us pray for courage to share the whole counsel of God. Let us pray for the many hearts that still sit on pews every Sunday in cities just like this all over the nation….pray that they might be open to the message of reconciliation. Many churches have been nourished in the doctor of justification by faith, to the neglect of Paul’s doctrine and reconciliation.

Let us pray that God will give us a second chance to seek community and not chaos.
University of Mississippi was  

Speaking of chaos, only 60 years ago there was a riot on the Ole Miss campus. Some of you still remember it like it was yesterday–in 1962 James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University. During the mayhem and violence…a car screeched into the Armory parking lot, and a federal marshal raced inside to ask Chooky Falkner (William Falkner’s nephew) for as many gas masks as he could spare.

Falkner ordered a man to fill up a duffel bag with masks for the marshal.  But, they thought Ole Miss students supposedly murdered by the marshals, the Mississippi soldier refused. Falkner issued the same order to another Guardsman, but he refused as well, so Falkner had to fill up all those bags himself. After the U.S. marshal left with the masks, Falkner called his men into formation.

A Corporal Antwine described what happened next. “This is a court-martial offense,” Falkner told the two soldiers. “You disobeyed a direct order.” Addressing the whole formation, Falkner declared, “We’re now federal troops. You’re federalized. It had better not happen again.” If it did, Falkner promised, he’d launch a court-martial.

As the Guardsmen fell into formation, Falkner called his immediate superior, Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Williams, at squadron headquarters in Ripley, Mississippi to confirm the unusual order. “I just got the craziest chain of command,” Falkner said, explaining the presidential command that had just managed to bypass the entire U.S. military command structure. “Better do it,” Williams noted, “JFK is the commander in chief.”
Doyle, William (2002-02-05). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (Kindle Locations 3335-3339). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
    I This morning let us pray for the nation and let us pray for the churches. That we will be in the headlights driving through the dark toward reconciliation, mercy, love, and justice.
Instead of staring at the tale lights as in the 60’s.
    The commander-in-chief has given churches an order. We have not been called to like it. We’ve been called to follow it.

Let us pray…