A Conversation About Race

Hey Summit family, I want us to do something a little bit different today in light of some of the just tragic and heartbreaking and horrific events of the past few weeks. I know that I know that there's many of our body, our family here that are in pain. And I know that a lot of people are wondering how to respond in a moment like this, how to be the body of Christ.

And so we wanted to take some time to just talk about that, explore that. First, let me acknowledge that this really is a unique time. Of course, we have had racial tensions in the past. That's been a part of our society, but I think just with the stream of deaths of these unarmed citizens, particularly citizens of color, Ahmaud Arbery, people like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, other names, especially the horrific images that we saw with George Floyd of a policeman with his knee on his neck for what, eight minutes and 46 seconds. And many are, are devastated.

The images are terrible. And then we know that there's been responses to that violence and response to violence. And it just feels like there's a lot of chaos. And we know that, that particularly for our brothers and sisters of color, that that they're hurting right now. And we know that for them, this and their consciousness, it connects to a long history of injustices that people of color have experienced in our country going all the way back to the, to the slavery and the Jim Crow eras. You know, as Christians, we are called to a couple of essential things as disciples of Christ. The first is we are to proclaim the dignity and the equality of all people. So that's always been a distinctive feature of the Christian message.

And honestly, shame on us where we have not championed it in the times and the places and in the opportunities that we should have. For 2000 years, Christians have proclaimed the revolutionary message that all men and all women of all ethnicities, of whatever age, of all nationalities, at whatever stage of development, they're all made in the image of God. We've got a common creator, God, we've got a common problem, sin, and we got a common hope that is the death and the resurrection of Jesus. The second essential thing for disciples of Jesus is that when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. Christ calls us to bear each other's burdens, to feel each other's pain, to weep with those who weep. Over the last few weeks as a congregation, we've tried to take time to repeated times, to pray together, to grieve together, to lament together.

But I, I know, I know that some of you have felt like some of the conversations that you wanted to have, the conversations you felt like needed to be had, weren't happening here at your church. And, um, and I grieve, I grieve that you, um, that you felt that way. And I wanted you to know that you really are, that you are loved here.

You are appreciated here. We are family together. And that, that we are all committed to carrying each other's burdens for the sake of Christ, for the glory of Jesus. And because of, of, of love for each other, a phrase that has become controversial today, um, that really should just be plainly obvious for Christians. Black lives matter. Of course, black lives matter. That's because our black brothers and sisters are made in the image of God. Black lives matter because Jesus died for black lives. Black lives are a beautiful part of God's creation, making up an essential and beautiful part of his body. And, and we would be much poorer as a body of Christ without the presence of our, our members of color. Let me echo a friend of mine, pastor Jimmy Scroggins down in Florida and saying that, that, that black lives matter. That's an important thing for us to say right now, clearly, because we are seeing in our country, the evidence of specific injustices that many of our, our, our, our brothers and sisters and friends of color have been telling us about for years. And let's not respond by, by just saying, oh, well, all lives matter.

Of course, all lives matter, but that's, that's kind of missing the point. In fact, I've heard it described this way. Uh, say you're at a restaurant with a group of friends and the waiter brings your food and, and, uh, the waiter, waiter gives food to everybody at your table, except for your friend, Bob. And so you say, Hey, Hey, uh, Bob deserves food. And, and someone at your table looks back and says, all of us deserve food. We're like, well, that's true, but that you're missing the point.

Bob is sitting there right now without food. And so we understand that this is a time to say that we want our brothers and sisters of color to feel the same sense of ownership and ease and safety, um, that, um, that, that, that we feel black lives matter. And by the way, I realized that, that, that the movement and the website has been hijacked by some political operatives whose worldview and policy prescriptions would be deeply at odds with my own, but that doesn't mean the sentiment behind that statement is untrue. I do not align myself with the black lives matter organization.

And in fact, I think saying bald things like, like defund the police is, is really unhelpful and deeply disrespectful to many of our, our public servants who bravely put themselves in harm's way every day to protect us. But I know that we need to take a deep look at our police systems and our structures and ask where we are missing the mark. And I say that because, because black lives matter. We know that honoring Christ in this moment means listening to those who hurt lamenting with them, bearing their burdens, pursuing justice means laboring for the protection of others as fiercely as we would for us or, or for our own children. A racially reconciled church requires more than just sentiment. It requires the humility to, to listen to one another, the empathy, to see things from, from another's perspective, the charity to give their motives the same benefit of the doubt that we would want them to give to us. To some of church, that's what we want to do today. We want to listen because listening to somebody is the first step of loving them. And let me just take a second to frame this in one other way really, really quickly.

Okay. We're a gospel above all people. And that means that it affects even the way we approach questions of justice and injustice.

It matters to us because we believe the gospel, but we also do it without a sense that other people are sinners and we are not. One of the stories that Jesus told was of a, a Pharisee who went into the temple to pray and he sit up in front of everybody. And he, he says, Lord, I want to thank you that I'm not like, and he points to this tax collector, simple tax collector in the back. Thank you that I'm not like that guy. And, uh, and a lot of times when we talk about injustice, we can have that tone about us. I thank you that I'm not like those people.

Here's the people with the problem. I recognize that, um, Jesus had to die for my sin and that I made out of the same, uh, human sinfulness that, um, people around me. And so we, we have this conversation without judgmentalism and we want grace to drive us. We also recognize that being a gospel above all people means that we as a church are called to proclaim the message of Christ. We're, um, we're neither called nor competent as a church to get in and try to say, this is exactly the way to, um, to fix this particular situation. We're going to have Christians in our church that are going to have different, um, disagree. They're going to have disagreements about what the best strategies are, what the best, um, solutions are to this. And we don't want to participate or promote a narrative that says, if you don't agree with my solutions, then you're part of the problem that we recognize that, that Christians can, they can agree on the problem. Um, but they can conscientiously disagree about what the best solutions are. It's like we've said here before, um, the dividing line in this discussion is not between conservative and liberal.

It's between people who recognize there's a problem and grieve it. And then those who don't, uh, we've often said that, you know, if Jesus could choose two disciples, Simon, the zealot, Matthew, the tax collector, which tells you that they were on opposite sides of one of the most pressing political issues of the day. Well, um, that means that, that we can have people in our church who approach certain political questions differently and still find a profound unity in Christ. We can agree on the essential issues and allow each other charity and how we think the best ways for those to work out on. So that's what it means for us to be a gospel above all people.

And I think that'll shape even the discussion that we have today. Um, so having said that, let me introduce to you to, um, what I consider to be very good friends and leaders that I, um, am privileged to serve with. Uh, first here to my left here is Janetta Oni. Uh, Janetta directs our communication here, um, at the summit church. And Janetta, how long exactly have you been on staff? I have been on staff for a year and a couple of months. A year and a couple of months. Um, and, uh, and so a lot of the stuff you see, uh, that the summit communicates with that's going to come, uh, at the hands of Janetta, uh, or through the keyboard of Janetta, I guess we might say to my right here is, uh, Brian Loretz, who I introduced you last weekend.

Uh, he's been a frequent preacher here and a loved leader here at the summit church, although until recently not on staff at the summit church, but God saw fit to bring him and his wife, Corey, and their three boys to be a part of our church family. And so he's still getting his feet wet, but we're here. We are good way to jump in the deep of all the times, but we're excited. Um, well, let me just ask you guys, I said this at the beginning that we're kind of in a, a unique moment. I mean, there's obviously been other racial tension points in our society, but this one just feels, it feels like there's something unique about it. Do you agree with that?

And you want to, you want to speak to it? Yeah, I think it's unique JD for several reasons. One, you, you made mention of it. You got a mod arbery that happens, which is horrific. Brianna Taylor horrific. You also have that incident in central park with what we felt like was a woman who happened to be white weaponizing, uh, our ethnicity against us and appealing to a structure that she assumed rightly would be sensitive to her perspective.

And then you have George Floyd. And I want to be careful to say, of course, not most police officers are bad or, or I would even say many, and I'm sympathetic to their jobs. Um, a lot of times they have a split second to make a decision, but what was different about this is here you have an individual face down on the pavement, handcuffed behind their back. And even, even as I've watched white police officers just kind of chime in on YouTube, they've all said the same thing. The, the rule is once a person is handcuffed, the fight's over. Then you have three other cops who are kind of standing guard as a crowd is gathering, pleading for this man's life.

He's pleading for his life. And for eight minutes and 46 seconds, a white man hands in his pocket, knee on his neck, that image will be forever emblazoned across my mind, my kids' minds, and collectively I think across all of our minds. Finally, I would say along with that is the timing. You know, here we've been pent up in the house, quarantined globally, frustrations, uh, are, are mounting. And I think this was just kind of the trigger that initiated what I hope to be as a tipping point. And you see it all across the streets, across the world. Yeah.

Janelle, you want to add anything to that? Yeah, I agree. Um, while what happened isn't a new song that we're singing, I think, um, the African-American community knows the song.

We know the choreography to this dance, right? But like Brian was saying, when you put a pandemic and then you have this compounded trauma, um, and I really want to, I want to use that word trauma because one, I want, you know, even the black people listening to know that that trauma you feel is a real thing. And I think it brings up three different types of trauma. So you got historical trauma.

Um, um, I was talking with a friend, um, earlier and he, he kind of likened it to, um, a mother who's lost three generations of children during slavery, during Jim Crow, and even now during this, what we're seeing. So you just have this trauma of we know where we came from. And then you have the trauma of our own experience. You know, that scar tissue starts to itch when you see someone, um, bringing up a situation where you remember, Oh, I remember when that happened to me, or I remember being beside my dad when he, you know, was talking to that one guy, or I remember when my cousin, or I remember when, and so that brings up our own individual traumas. And then just the trauma of seeing, seeing the eight minutes and 46 seconds, seeing, reading the story of a Breonna Taylor, that, that for the community is like, I'm Breonna, I'm Ahmad, you know, and my husband got up the next day and went for a jog. I'm Ahmad, I'm George Floyd. And so it's just that all that trauma came and it, the scar tissue itched and we felt our bodies screaming, is this us?

Am I next? And so that's not new, but you put that with a pandemic and put us in the house and not let us worship and not let us go to work, distract ourselves. That was a big straw that broke the camel's back. And that helps to understand just sort of how people process and why the emotions are so high. Let me ask just this, you know, cause I know that, um, it's, I noticed when you talk about that, you talk about that with the historical, the way I've heard it described is, um, these sins had a long tail, you know, they kinda, but you know, we have people that would say, and I think rightfully so they w why wasn't there 200 years ago, 300 years ago, I wasn't, yeah, I'm not responsible in a sense for the sins, but help us process that a little bit, because we understand that there is a sense in which this, it just mentally, it seems to connect to that, but then, you know, somebody else say, well, how does that affect me? Because I wasn't even born at the time. How do you, how can you help us process that?

Yeah. So I, I think part of the disconnect JD between the African-American community and our white siblings is, um, I heard a sociologist say that really resonated with me. Our white brothers and sisters tend to see each other as a collection of individuals.

I'm not attaching any moral value to that. By the way, African-Americans, we tend to see each other as a collective or communal whole. So when something happens to one of us, even though we may not share DNA or even close geographical proximity, we feel that deeply, which is why if it happened in Minneapolis, when we go to church the next Sunday or two, it could be in New York, could be in South Central, something in us is going, please say something, please say something because we feel that differently.

So I think part of it is the way our white brothers and sisters naturally see the world is not necessarily connected or communal. Then I would finally say, uh, JD, so just because, um, you would say, I haven't done anything, a part of me would say, that's a part of the problem that we have to take proactive aggressive leaps in the other direction. When uncle Bob puts his feet under your Thanksgiving table, let's say, and tells the racially insensitive joke. I think we've got to create biblically awkward moments. You know what I'm saying? Where we cut that off at the past.

Yeah. I've kind of looked at it like, you know, I've may not be guilty of, of what happened in the past. I mean, obviously not even to be born, but I recognize that whatever blessings and privileges God has given me, um, I'm walking in freedom in those, but as a Christ follower, I ought to be leveraging that so that other people will get the same rights benefits and privileges that I do to where we have a society where there's no longer even a hint of racial inequity when it comes to justice.

I completely agree. Um, this is kind of our, our Christian heritage is to put other people better than ourselves. And we, we just have to realize that we are a product of, of what has been in the past. Now I have my own Christian worldview.

I've been saved for a number of years. And so I build my worldview based on what Christ has done in me, but I'm also an American. I'm also a black woman. And so I'm a product of my mother and my mother's mother and the mothers that came before her and the legacy, um, that they have left for me is something that I can't ignore. You know, I am a product of my family's history and I think we all in America are. So while I would, I would say you weren't born then you don't have, um, any stake or anything to repent of, but if America has built something purposefully in its past, if it has created race or, um, has done something to say, um, three fifths compromise, this is how much a black person is.

If we've, if we've instituted those laws, uh, whether it's a law or just the cultural norm, if that was purposeful, then what we have to dismantle also has to be purposeful. All right. Well, let me just go ahead and jump right even further than deep in the pool. A lot of times when these things happen, um, you know, I think a lot of us are kind of gut reaction is, well, let's wait for the facts. You know, you know, we, we don't know. And we certainly have seen illustrations where, you know, there's been a rush to judgment, but I just feel like, I feel like you have a different reaction when you hear that. Just wait for the facts. Um, I mean, you're not saying it's healthy to rush to judgment or let's throw a due process out the window. Are you? I mean, help us process that.

Yeah. That's a great question, JD. Um, Dr. Tim Uhlhoff, who actually graduated from UNC. He's a professor at Biola university, uh, PhD in communications. He's popularized something called the communication pyramid, which to simplify says there's five levels of communication. The most superficial levels cliche, and it's good morning. Good morning.

How are you? I mean, we've communicated, but we really haven't communicated. Next two levels are where most guys hang out. It's what I call sports center talk. Level two is facts sharing what you know, who won the game. Who's the greatest of all time.

Michael Jordan, of course. Um, right. Level three is opinion. It's sharing what you think, but levels four and level five are the deepest levels are the deepest levels of communication that really are valuable in helping me to gauge how me and my wife are doing, how our friendships are doing, how we're dealing with issues of reconciliation. Level four is emotive, uh, sharing what I feel and level five is transparency.

It's sharing who you are. So when these things happen, uh, racial events, you need to know, because again, African-Americans are communal people. We immediately go level four. We're grieving together. This is how we feel. And for our white brothers and sisters to hang out in lawyer land level two is not a recipe for unity or empathy or oneness.

It took me about five years of marriage to figure out when my wife comes to me in level four and I hang out in lawyer land, like that's never worked well for me. Right. And so if I want to experience oneness with my wife, I'm not saying there's not a place for facts, but facts as a first resort, while it may work in a, in a court, it doesn't work in the theater of human relationships. Right. So let me first drop down to level four and feel before we resurface later on and get to the facts. Yeah. You've explained that to me, that whole thing with, uh, that Mary and Martha, the tomb of Jesus. Tell that real quick.

Cause I thought it was really helpful. Yeah. John 11 is just this. It's a heavy emotional passage. You know, they send word to Jesus, you know, Lazarus is on death's door. Jesus actually decides to do something different. He shows up late.

They come to him level four and angry, angry. And they're saying, had you been here? And it's interesting.

The shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus's response, John 11, 35. It's not him debating or bantering back and forth or correcting their theology simply says that Jesus wept. I would, um, I would encourage us to remember that while we can have discussions about this, this whole thing is not a discussion.

Um, and I think a lot of, a lot of times we'll come with our facts and our, our bullet points, but for a lot of people, that's just Tuesday. Like we want to, we want to come with a discussion, but even to kind of take it out of, you know, racial reconciliation, let's just talk about foster care. So foster care is not a discussion. It's someone's lived experience. So if a foster child, um, goes through A, B, and C, and someone comes to them, it's like, I want to hear your, um, experience about being a foster child. And they say, well, when I was five, this happened. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I got some points here. And that doesn't match up with the points I have. That's not very empathetic. It's because foster care is not a discussion. It's that child's last year.

And so bringing it back to racial reconciliation, be charitable. A lot of the times when, um, I have a lot of friends who don't necessarily understand, they want to understand. And a lot of times if I have to bring something up, there's that scar tissue again, I have to re rehash, maybe a trauma. And for other friends who are like, I just don't understand the chart may say this, or the stats say this. And I'm, I'm telling them my husband experience isn't on that chart. It's not there. You can't, you can't cite that in order to decide that you have to go see a day only at all, you know, um, to cite that.

And so just a day only your husband, all the Latin for and others. Okay. Right.

Just, I mean, I'm just like, what if we're talking about research, let's talk about research, but that's, and that's kind of just the, I just want to, um, qualify the different types of research. Yes. That's, um, facts. That's great. But at the end of the day, I've just experienced something that I can't put on a chart for you.

Yeah. I heard, I heard, I can't remember where I heard this, but I think it was somebody that told me, he said, you know, when we were not against due process, due process is justice. And we want to go through that, but understand that historically due process hasn't worked, um, for people of color, the same way it's worked for, for white people who could depend on certain systems almost infallibly.

It hasn't been that. And I think looking historically, it doesn't mean we throw that out, but it means that we just understand that just saying, Oh, just wait for due process. You're telling me to wait for a due process that has really failed us in the past. And that's, that creates, I think a level of, yeah, I would think understanding how we do that, which brings you to a third question.

And Jeanette, I'll start with you on this one. Um, the protests that are there, um, how should we think about those protests and when the protest become unhelpful? So I love studying, um, about the civil rights movement, um, the African-American, just the freedom movement of the sixties and uh, fifties and sixties. And what I love about it is that the church was there and it was at the forefront of it and it was organized and they had leaders and they had plans and they executed them, you know, everything like we're going to sit here and they would practice how to, you know, not be violent. They were practiced on violence.

They would, they would actually have times when, um, they would rough each other up and say, well, what are you going to do if I do this? And, and, and so what I love about the protest that we're seeing right now is that one, I'm seeing a lot more people in on it. I'm seeing a lot more of my brothers and sisters in on it. My children got to go to, um, a peaceful protest last week and that all they could think about was how hot it was.

And they won't, they won't completely understand until, you know, 10, 15 years from now to say, I was there in that historical moment. But as a, as a black woman, I've become so, so frustrated in these conversations, these discussions that I so want my anger to lead to people's repentance. And I want to say that it is okay to be angry. I've held, and I've held intention, be angry and do not sin. I want, I want more people to get angrier.

Actually. I want, I want to shake people and say, get mad with me. And so I'm holding intention. I am angry. And I want people to look at my anger and say, Oh, okay. She, you know, like my kids, I want my anger to lead to your repentance.

Go clean up your room. I'm sick of it. But what I'm holding intention is the fact that following the character of God, his kindness led to repentance. And I'm not saying that we put away our anger and that, um, we just be nice and saying kumbaya and everything will fix itself because that's not true, but the anger of man cannot bring about the righteousness of God. And so when we get angry and we sin that, that takes us back. And I want to, I want to say, if you're angry, be angry. We need it. And we need more people to be angry.

But when the anger is made to bring about change in a way that it can't, I think that's when the protests become something that is not as helpful as we want it to be. Yeah. But I understand it.

I want to say, I understand. And if, if I didn't have the hope of Jesus, I would be angry. And am I angry?

I would sin. Yeah. I would co-sign everything Jeanette has said. I mean, it goes without saying, um, you know, the, the looting and the rioting, I think that's what she's referring to as far as unrighteous anger that shouldn't happen.

We all get that. And, you know, specifically from an African-American perspective, you know, I grew up in Atlanta, their mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, you know, she had some very strong words, you know, she's talking about the looters and the rioters. This African-American woman says, Hey, half the businesses here are owned by African America. So why are we tearing up our own community? My pastor, uh, pastors in Inglewood and, you know, he was there during the Rodney King riots. He told me it, it took them 20 years to recover the damage done to their own community. But I also get the frustration.

Like when you have been suppressed and you don't feel like you have a voice, it's almost like a tantrum where do you see me now? Right. I'm not justifying it, but I get it. Right. Yeah.

Um, all right. So, you know, sometimes people will say, you know, especially somebody that's, that's white, they'll say, I felt like I've been being told to repent and I don't, as far as I can tell, I'm not, I know we're all centers, but I, I, I'm not a racist and I haven't done racist things. And I deplore what happened to these people, but I felt like I'm being told to, to repent. What, to repent, what, you know, what is the message for that person that we're trying to give to them? Yeah, I would, I would love, um, love to say the way I understand sin, it's, it's not this static thing.

Like the gravitational pull to sin is downward, right? And so if we want to see a correction, we have to be as aggressive in the opposite direction, if not more, if we're going to see some progress, we're, we're looking at something that needs to be corrected. And to your point, I don't think defunding the police is the problem because if you replace that with another fallen structure, we're back to square one. Right. I think what repentance looks like is that needs to change. It's not thriving and functioning.

So how can we enhance it? As someone we're using different terms, I kind of think of it like, tell me if this is correct. Um, if I'm walking down the road and there is a beaten up Jewish man laying on the side and I say, I didn't do that. That doesn't according to Jesus' parable doesn't relieve me of the responsibility.

I don't need to repent for him being beaten up there, but I would need to repent for my propensity to just keep walking on by and say, that's right. That's right. Right. And so I think there's an engagement that we can all have in this, which leads me to the next question. Um, why do we say this as a gospel issue? And, you know, sometimes people will say, well, this is a distraction from the gospel.

What's, how do you respond to that? I would encourage us to be all of Ephesians two Christians. I think Ephesians two is really the seminal text on what we're talking about. Um, if you've been around the church for a while, you may have heard many messages on verses one through 10. And, uh, you know, Paul opens up by saying the opening verses, this is who you were prior to Christ. We were by nature, children of wrath. If I was preaching this text back in the nineties, I'd call it naughty by nature.

Um, I don't know if they'll, if they'll get that, but that's who we were prior to Christ. You get that J.D.? I do get it. I don't know what that says, but I get it. And then verse four, but God being rich in mercy, and then several times by grace, you have been saved through faith. And we love that.

Yeah. But then verse 11, right? Where he goes, therefore, which now he's connecting what he's just said to what he's about to say, you Gentiles in the flesh, and you don't need to spend a day in seminary to figure out he's now connecting our vertical reconciliation to God in Christ with now our horizontal reconciliation, not just in general, but ethnically speaking. So it goes without saying, this is not in order to be saved, be nice to a person ethnically different.

But one of the indicator lights that I've been authentically reconciled vertically is that I am not apathetic towards people who are, who are ethnically different. It reminds me of when, you know, Jesus is asked, what's the greatest law and what's the greatest law and all the commandments. And, you know, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And you didn't ask what I'm going to tell you anyway. The second one is just like it. The second one is just like it to love your neighbor as yourself. And I even think we say that as a love your neighbor as yourself, you know, and it's kind of this blanket statement that has no nuanced and detailed merit to it. Like, how do I love Brian as myself? Well, I got to figure out what's going on in Brian's life to love him as myself.

And I also have to look in my own life, like, how do I love me when I feel loved? And that gets into a lot of details. And if we don't do that as the church, there are a lot of people who won't even trust us with their soul. That's right. That's a good point.

If I can't trust you with my body and my melanin, then I don't know if I can trust you with my soul. That's right. Brian, real quick, we don't have the whole lot of time left, but I wanted to ask a couple more real important questions about the future. I've heard you talk before about the three quadrants of solution. Could you just address those for a minute?

Yeah. You know, I want to be careful, you know, because sometimes in our haste towards solutions, we can bypass lament. And if we don't learn to really sit and connect well with each other, as we talked about, you know, that leads to a cheap reconciliation. And so genuine authentic reconciliation involves listening and hearing things, even hard things. But once we move past that, you know, I look at the Bible, and I see that the way God really deals with the problem of sin, one of the ways is three institutions He's created, the family, government, and the church. And I think all three of these have to be working in harmony with each other if we're going to see generational progress.

The first is the family. And, you know, Psalm 127, you know, children are like arrows, not boomerangs, arrows. You know, we release them off into the future. Not to come back and move again. Right.

That's right. And, you know, Corey and I view ourselves as the tenured professors in our home. And we've got to teach and disciple our kids. But I think discipleship needs to be holistic. So I'm not just giving them a robust soteriology, doctrine of salvation, where I'm teaching about prayer and life in the Spirit and not have a quiet time. I think I also have to give them a robust anthropology, doctrine of humanity. And how do you see other people who are ethnically different than you? My challenge as an African American man is how do I raise my three boys with wisdom without instilling bitterness or cynicism towards white people in them? So we got to have the talk.

I got three teenage boys about driving and what to do when you get pulled over. And look, I need your hands clear. And I know you may be angry, but don't express that.

No sudden movements without getting permission first, because I need you to come home safely. But that's a tightrope because I don't want them to view white people as the enemy. Ephesians 6 says we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

But on the other side, we also need our white brothers and sisters to create those awkward moments as we talked about right earlier and cut that off at the past. The second institution is government. And, you know, I know in our church people vote a million different ways. And that's great because you and I both know the Kingdom of Heaven does not nestle neatly in one political party. You listen to Jesus's sermons and at times it goes, you leave his sermons going, is he watching MSNBC? And at other times you feel like he's binging on Fox News.

I actually think that's what a Kingdom of Heaven person looks like. And so we need to give each other freedom in a Romans 14 way as we go to the voting booth to pray and follow the Spirit and vote your conscience. But we also have to understand that the problem of sin is both personal and structural.

So how do we attack these issues? And the Word of God does not give us the option to a la carte our social issues, our justice issues. So show me anyone who's passionate about life inside the womb, which I am. I think abortion is sin. And those who are listening, maybe some have had abortions. God's grace is sufficient. So hear me say I believe it's sin. But show me anyone who's more passionate about life in the womb and then apathetic about it outside the womb. I'll show you someone who's pro-birth, not really pro-life.

So we've got to be holistic as we look there. But the third institution is the church. So because of Dr. King, you know, I can drink out of any water fountain that I like.

I can sleep in any hotel room that I like. These are wonderful privileges. But the shortcomings of the civil rights movement and government is that while government can change laws, it cannot change hearts. And that's where the institution of the church comes in. And in the Old Testament, Jesus, God says, here's what I'm going to promise in the New Covenant. Here's what I'm going to change you. I'm going to rip out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. In other words, God's prescription for transformation isn't to just deal with our hands or our behaviors, because God understands our hands are an extension of our hearts. And I want to change you that way. The last thing I'll say about the church, J.D., is part of the reason why I'm excited to be here is I've given my life to see the multi-ethnic church become the new normal in our society.

Just think of the power of George Floyd worshiping next to Darren Chauvin or sitting in a small group with him. Wow. Proximity breeds empathy. When we're close with one another, when we're doing life with people who don't look like, act like, think like, or vote like us, now the generalizations and the stereotypes fall and we now see each other.

And that buffs off some of the abrasions. So I think when those three institutions are moving in lockstep, now we're going to make some progress. Yeah. If I could just say something before I come to you for the last question here, one of the things that we've said around here is this really ought not be a politically conservative or politically liberal issue. It ought to be that people care about it. And, you know, we may have discussions about what the best way to deal with that educational problem is, but we can say we're united in, we want to see rights and privileges extended equally to all.

And so that's great. Janetta, you know, I think the way I maybe just get you to chime in here is just asking in our church, how can we move this from being kind of a event by event? You know, what are things that you think of that would take this beyond just national spotlight into an ongoing, ongoing gospel community? I think this is a discipleship issue as much as it is a gospel issue. And we always say the gospel isn't the diving board, it's the whole pool. And so we can't wait for an event to tell the church how it should respond.

The church, and I'm talking about the individual people within it, our discipleship, our discipleship should present us mature in a way that, one, we know that we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we know that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. And so when these things come, they're not a surprise to us. We're not, you know, gathering a statement. We're not, it's not a new hashtag.

It's not a new statement. It's not, it's not even new theology. It's, okay, I'm going to walk out my faith in what I've been learning in the word and what I've been learning in the church, meaning all these individual image bearers. And I would just say that we need to have the same view as Isaiah sometimes when he said, I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. And knowing that, you know, God will, as we confess that together, God will take that coal and put it on our lips.

He will forgive us if we, if we come together and confess together and walk together and be sanctified together and be discipled together. If we bear each other's burdens, we bear this sin together, or we bear this world together. I think as slow as sanctification is, we all know there is no done to sanctification.

I think this, that's that same posture we should take with this. We are being sanctified as a church here in America, and we shouldn't jump to solutions any more than we should jump to. Here's three ways to get sanctified real quick. This is a sanctifying issue and we've got to walk together and we've got to acknowledge him and all our paths and he will make our path straight. This, just think about it as sanctification. It's the long haul. Right.

These are the kinds of things that don't happen through violent jerks, but they happen through a prolonged kind of pull. And I think this can catalyze the discussion, but one of our previous pastors who actually went with one of our church plants in Wellington, Chris Green, used to say that there are kind of four stages in this ignorance. And I'm sure there's a problem.

What's everybody, you know, I don't even get what's going on. Awareness is stage two, intentionality is stage three and gospel community is stage four. He said people, the problem is they think that once they get to stage two, which is awareness, well, that automatically qualifies as gospel community.

And he says, it's not true. Intentionality means that there's taking time to have conversations like this, which I hope that we've modeled. I mean, there are things that I would imagine that when I think about this conversation later, it's like, I'm not sure I'd say it exactly like that.

Or I may, you know, what about this question? But I think that kind of listening and intentionality, and we've often said here at the church that, you know, it's like Dr. King used to say that the most segregated hour in America was between 11 and 12 on Sunday. Not to at all correct or one up him, but there might be one other even more segregated hour, and that's five to six every night around the dinner table. And that what we're not after here is a multicultural event on the weekend. We want to live multicultural lives, and that takes intentionality. It takes humility to listen.

And, you know, I think as somebody said earlier, being quick to listen and slow to speak. And so I hope that we've at least given a picture of that. And I thought the best way in fact, well, you and I thought the best way to end this, cause it was your idea was that we as a family take communion together. Cause what better symbol of our unity in the body of Christ, not just the three of us, by the way, but everybody together. And I know that you're like, all right, what we, who's going to pass out the, you got the little cups there.

Who's going to pass it out for us. We did this when we took communion previously is that we realized that ideal is when you have you know, the fruit of the vine and the, the bread, maybe you have that in your house. We're going to give you a couple of minutes to go grab those. If you don't have something, you just get the closest equivalent.

You can't because the point is not the actual element itself, but what it points to. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put a two minute timer up there and you're going to go get that while you're getting that. I'm going to put up a few resources because people have been asking me like, Hey, I'd like to get more into this conversation. Kind of where can I, I start this.

So that two minute timer is going, and let me just kind of talk you through a few of these, a book that we used years ago. We actually had him come in, do some stuff at the church. And it was one of the, I think one of the biggest moments where we really kind of, I took some, some big steps forward. It was George Yancy. He's an African American sociologist from out in Texas. He wrote a book called beyond racial gridlock.

That's been a real helpful grid for us. One blood by John Perkins. John Perkins is one of the grandfathers, a hero of the civil rights movement. And he's actually preached here at our church.

And he wrote a marvelous book called one blood. That's been very helpful in processing it both historically and in the present. One that I'll recommend right here by our own Brian Loretz. I love saying our own Brian, Brian Loretz.

It's good to have you, man. But is, is right culture, wrong color. And Brian's written several books and on, on, on, on these kinds of things. But I think that one in particular is a good foundational one. And so you might want to grab that one, Brian, while we're waiting on people to get the, the rest of the stuff that you've recommended a couple of books on history. To me, that helps us understand a little bit about the kind of where the situation came from. So yeah.

Yeah. So I think the best thing on the civil rights movement, which would be great to read given our current milieu is Taylor branches. Three-part series won the Pulitzer prize on the civil rights movement. Okay. And you also recommended to me one that I is my most recent read for the warmth of other sons by Isabel Wilkerson and a story of the great migration and the Jim Crow era. And just really helps you understand kind of the historical context that shapes some of the, the present present narrative. So anyway, I, those are some things that may be able to get you started. But hopefully you've got your your bread equivalent and your cup equivalent. Brian, why don't you lead us?

Yeah. And so as we prepare to come to the table and to take communion together wherever you may be I've been meditating a lot in first Corinthians, chapter 11 and first Corinthians chapter 11 is a, it's a multicultural church that Paul is writing to. And we know that because as Paul is just walking them through communion and the sacramental nature of it, Paul is saying, I've got a problem with you because here's a church of the haves and the have nots and the haves are preventing the have nots from coming to the table. I used to think communion was just a time for me to just look at it individually of just what's happening in my life where Paul actually says in first Corinthians chapter 11, no, we also need to look at it communally. I think as Paul writes first Corinthians 11, he's also thinking of what Jesus says in Matthew chapter five.

He says, Hey, if you are in the middle of worship and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. And so I think it's just appropriate as we are just looking at a world and nation that that's divided that we look at this, not just personally, but also communally and just spend a moment. As Paul says, let, let a person examine themselves and to look not only at your own personal heart, but also your relationships. And if I've got any relationships that are out of whack, we can confess those things to God. First John one nine says, if we confess, he's faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then I'd encourage you to make it right. But some of you are sitting here and you would say, I'm not a follower of Jesus Christ.

I would say to you, the bad news is we would ask you to hold off from taking the elements. But the good news is you can have a relationship with God today through his son, Jesus Christ, that if we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts, as Romans 10 says, we shall be saved. So right now, let's just do some business with God, asking him to examine our hearts. And in a few moments, we'll partake of the elements together. On the night in which Jesus was betrayed, he was in a little upper room and JD's already made mention of it.

It's a pretty diverse group. We've got Simon the Zealot on one side and Levi the tax collector on the other side. And yet he calls them together. And they were expecting to kind of observe the Passover, but Jesus throws them a curveball. He now institutes the sacrament of communion. And taking the bread, the Bible says that he took it, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, take, eat.

This is my body, which is broken for you. Let us all eat together. Likewise, the Bible says that he took the cup. This cup is symbolic of his blood that would be spilled for us.

In fact, one biblical writer says without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission or forgiveness of sins. Let us all drink together. The Bible says they actually sang a hymn. They went into worship. And so now we end this service by going into worship together as one body, cuddled in various places, scattered throughout the triangle. Let's worship together.