The Gospel Kills Racism

Jesus came to kill racism. Jesus came to kill ethnocentrism. He came to kill how we judge people by setting our own culture as the standard, and seeing their culture as less valuable. Jesus came to give life to a new people: His people.  He’s the cornerstone of their life. The kingdom of Jesus has nothing to do with color or cultural practices or birthplaces. It has everything to do with faith in Jesus. And what price did Jesus pay for a church like that? His life. It would kill him to create this new people. Jesus died for a diverse, multi-raced, multi-ethnic church. Ephesians 2:16 makes it as clear as possible. In talking about the great cultural divide between Jew and Gentile, it says that now these radically different people would be one: “and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” He died to reconcile us to God first, make peace between us and God, but also to reconcile us with each other.

So, how can we as a church display the beauty of what Jesus did in this way? How do we display the beauty of reconciliation and peace for all people here are Harbor West?

1. REPENT – When we see any of this ugliness in our heart and minds, we should repent of it. We should be honest with God about how we judge those who aren’t like us, and how we devalue those who are different. In Psalm 51 David confesses his sin to God and asks God to forgive him, to cleanse him. David says, “I know my sins.” He didn’t wash over it like it wasn’t a big deal. He confessed to God that he really was a sinful, broken person. Have you ever asked God to expose any type of racism in your life? Please don’t think that you don’t struggle with this sin because you weren’t born in a certain place. This is a human problem. And we should repent of it however big or small it appears in our lives. Are you repenting of this ugliness in your life?

2. WELCOME – We as individuals and Harbor Church West Oahu should be a place of welcome. A place where anyone in Ewa Beach, Kapolei, Kunia, Waipahu, Nanakuli and Waianae could come and feel welcomed, accepted, valued, cared for. Jesus said that people are going to come from the East and West. God has a people from everywhere that He’s saving. Our brothers and sisters are dead, and God is giving them life! We should welcome them into our family. It’s easy for a church to drift into feeling like a high school. The jocks hang out with the jocks, the band people with the band people, the emo group, the skaters, the popular people and all the other little cliques. And just like a high school, sometimes you can see the divide between people in churches, but it’s not just shared interests, the divide happens between shared identities. Instead, what if we were known for being welcoming to everyone? Just like God welcomes everyone from the east and the west to eat at his table with him, we as a church should welcome everyone into our lives. Is your home only open to a certain group of people? Is the space in your life only open to a certain group of people? Or are you displaying the welcome that God showed you when you hated him?

3. SERVE – Do you know what the greatest killer, the greatest inhibitor of service is? What keeps people from sacrificially for each other? Pride. Being full of yourself. When you’re full of yourself, you believe that everyone should be serving you. But when pride is killed and you’re humble, you’re freed to serve others. Racism is fueled by pride. A proud person is inevitably ethnocentric and racist because he or she is full of them-self. But the humble person, who sees himself rightly before God, will serve anyone who God brings into his life. How are you serving those around you? In your neighborhood? At your work? Are you taking the initiative to serve, or do you feel entitled like others should be serving you? Because Jesus struck a death blow to racism, his followers should be people who are sacrificially serving our neighbors, whoever they are. But a lot of times we only want to serve this just like us. We chose a neighborhood to live in based on who our neighbors might be. We join this league or this club based on who is in it. Or we go to that church because it feels more comfortable; more like the culture we grew up in. A church with Jesus as their cornerstone will look for ways to serve everyone around them, like Jesus did on the cross.

4. LOVE – Not awareness. Not tolerance. Not acceptance. Love. Affection. For those who aren’t like us. Do you love people of other races, other ethnicities? In all their differences and uniqueness and possible ignorance? This is going to get messy, because whenever two cultures come together there is ignorance on both sides. Heejung and I can tell you many funny stories of how we figured out that we were fighting or disagreeing about something that was rooted in the difference in American South culture and Korean culture. It’ll be messy. But are you aggressively pushing forward to loving people who are different from you? I remember once inviting a group people to go to South East Asia with us one summer because we have brothers and sisters there. We don’t “support people there”, we have family there. And one person said no that they didn’t want to go. They said maybe if we were going to Italy or France or Greece or something, but not a “difficult, weird” place like the country we were heading to. Racism. In the church. Racism. In our family. God have mercy on us. Are you pushing forward in your life to love people who are radically different from you? Are you teaching your kids to love people radically different from them?

Jesus lived and died to create a new people; a people at peace with God and at peace with each other. Colossians 3:11 says, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” When we’re a people who believe that Jesus is all in our own lives and in our church, that HE is the cornerstone, then we won’t give racism an inch of life. We won’t despise, or hate, or avoid or make jokes or gravitate. Instead, we’ll celebrate. We’ll celebrate that Jesus himself is our peace with God, and our peace with each other. God please let us be people like this, a church like this.