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Having grown up in an amazingly racially diverse Brooklyn, New York I often find it uncomfortable when I occasionally find myself in all-white gatherings.  In 1986 I spoke about AIDS to a huge assembly at California Lutheran University and was shocked as I looked out on a sea of blonde heads.  I specifically searched the rows trying to find a single person of color and failed.  It was sobering and it was sad.

 

 At the supermarket, on the movie lines, at the mall, we in Southern California enjoy a racially and ethnically diverse population.  We can sample cuisine from around the world; curries from India, spicy Thai dishes, Argentinean empanadas, you name it, we can find it in our own neighborhoods and enjoy it.  Our culture claims that “Variety is the spice of life”; as people of faith we hold that racial diversity is a gift of God.

 

 Yet when we enter the church, far more often than not, we find the church to be one of the most segregated environments in America.  Our own congregation is no exception.  I sincerely believe this breaks the heart of Christ.  Christ died for all of us.  His teachings, life and death all succeeded in challenging and breaking down the racial, ethnic and political barriers of his day.  The challenge persists for us in our day!

 

 The early Church was comprised of Greeks AND Jews, freedmen AND slaves, men AND women, all enjoying EQUAL status!  Any form of domination of one over another was inappropriate for the fledgling new Christian communities.  Paul’s equation recorded in Galatians 3:26-28 serves almost as the criteria of membership in the Body of Christ.  When one walked out of the world of Roman patronage and into the early Christian communities, one’s value was based on only one thing; that Christ died for each and every one of us.  That Baptism in the name of this crucified Son of God required we work to overcome evil with good.  It meant an end to racial and ethnic enmity.  It meant that men had to forfeit the power they enjoyed when outside the walls of the Church.  It meant that slaves were equal to their owners.  [In point of fact, the early Church felt the need to buy the freedom of slaves who had become Christians; taking seriously the part of the Lord’s Prayer that holds “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Acts 2:42-47 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ instruction and communal life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  A reverent fear overtook them all, for many wonders and signs were performed by the apostles.  Those who believed shared all things in common; they would sell their property and goods, dividing everything on the basis of each one’s need.  They went to the temple area together everyday, while in their homes they broke bread.  With exultant and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning the approval of all the people.  Day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

 

 Our hysterical and historical aversion to Marx’ communism blinds us to the Christian heritage of the use of one’s resources to meet the needs of others without qualification.  Not unlike the Roman world of Jesus’ day, our capitalist society clearly has no problem with the growing disparity between rich and poor; of using violence to secure property, and with continuing to blame the poor for their own lot in life, while taxing them at the highest possible level.

 

 The Great Commandment, not the imperialistic Great Commission, needs to be our primary focus;

especially in light of the Church’s shameful history of anti-Semitism.  Our experience of Jesus Christ calls us from complacency to action, from fear to hope.  Jesus calls us now to build up the beloved community in which each person is respected and loved.  He calls us to continue his work of building a community of understanding where we discover each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

 At our recent Transformational Ministry event, Rev. Maria Paiva used the wonderful analogy of a stewpot as an example of what the Church can be.  As opposed to the ‘melting pot’, the stewpot is the place where the meat is still meat, the carrots still carrots, and the potatoes still potatoes.  The implication is that our respective ethnic identities are not lost, but still evident and essential to the unique flavor of the community that sees Jesus as their example.  While we in the Lutheran Church in America know the value of the ‘immigrant church’ in helping to assimilate new arrivals into the American culture; our ultimate goal is to witness to Christ with unified voices calling for peace and justice for all of God’s children.

FALLEN FROM THE DESK OF PASTOR WAYNE