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Ah, we find ourselves this February meandering toward Lent. We have little side junkets here and there on the road of faith, but eventually we find ourselves with dirty foreheads and our spirits a bit more serious in demeanor.

The Lenten trail ends at the cross with the suffering and death of the one come to bring hope to a people both occupied and oppressed. An innocent one, the only truly innocent one who was to lead these people out of their oppressed circumstances was arrested, tortured, and put to death.

You and I often question why bad things often seem to happen to those whom we deem innocent or good. If we take the gospels seriously, then you and I also need to realize this should not at all surprise us. In fact, we can go so far as to say this is the founding principle of the Christian message. An innocent one, proclaimed God’s Son, was arrested, tortured, and put to death. In First Corinthians Paul writes, “I decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

This is not to criticize our questioning of suffering in this life be it ours or another’s. It is not to classify this or similar questions as whining or being unappreciative. It is instead to put ours and all suffering in perspective. Suffering is very democratic. It happens to all, though admittedly in differing proportions.

Andrew Hodges Hart writes in his book, Knowing Darkness, “The cross of Christ is especially shocking because it’s not a religious answer at all, but a divine answer that is luridly profane in nature. An instrument of torture and capital punishment, reserved for the slaves and dregs of human society, becomes the means of salvation right here ‘under the sun’ – and in fact the sun itself is darkened by it.”
That is, the problem of evil is solved neither by Jesus nor scripture. But it can be lived through and overcome because of the Jesus whom we know through the Bible; the Jesus who lived through, overcame, and lives still among, in, and through those who follow, those also are acquainted with suffering.

Traveling through Lent does not make one a Christian. Neither does it earn points with God or favors in this life. It does not enable us to escape pain and suffering. It might even cause us to engage more pain and suffering. Traveling through Lent can make us more trusting as we trudge along in hope. We trust our suffering is not some judgement on us from God but an unescapable part of living. We hope in Jesus that this will not be life’s final judgement on us. We can get through it, beyond it, and live again.

Don’t be afraid to get your foreheads dirty. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty in service for one another. Don’t fear unclean places. Don’t give up in dark places. A time of cleansing is ahead. Light awaits. Keep trudging.

There are no white people in the Bible. There are hosts of Semite peoples, Persians, Egyptians, Ethiopians and others, but no white people. In the midst of Black History Month I find it surprising no one mentions this in opposition to many of the white supremacists who too often claim the Bible as the source of their reason to discriminate and spread their vitriol concerning people of color.

Actually I think an argument can be made that the Bible doesn’t know anything about race as we understand it today. There is never mention of anyone’s color. When the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, rails against a people it is because of their religion, not race. Even in Roman times, the backdrop for New Testament writings, the enslaved where not slaves due to their race. They were slaves because they were from a people conquered by Rome, regardless of race.
From college onward I always wondered how any who take the Bible seriously could make judgements against a race of people. Have they never read the creation accounts in Genesis? More and more I discover many who quote the Bible ought to read it.

Some years ago I wrote that I was in high school history class when the first Black History Month was created. What a sanitized history that was, told through film strips accompanied by a record sound track that would beep when the teacher needed to change the picture. There was a brief nod toward slavery and some acknowledgement that it was bad, but only mention of African Americans who were palatable to white Americans. That is we learned about George Washington Carver, but not W.E. B. Dubois, one of America’s greatest intellects and a profound author. Harriet Tubman? Sojourner Truth? Frederick Douglas? We didn’t even learn about the Underground Railroad. And Malcom X? Too close to the times for emotionless study. I was near middle age when I first heard of the horrors of the Tulsa Massacre.

Today many want to suppress such history because it makes people uncomfortable. Do they not understand that is one of the roles of history…why we teach it? Is it not understood that to change something we have to acknowledge it, learn from it, and work for that change. Do we not understand being a Christian often begins with being uncomfortable?
I would think Christians of all people would understand such a need. The Christian faith is in many ways built upon recognizing and acknowledging our sins, repenting from them, and working to change our ways. How can the story of God’s redemption for God’s people be told without first telling the story of the sins of God’s people?

Somewhere among my books (unless I have loaned it to one of you) is a book written a few years ago by a Jewish woman, that describes how Germany has done a better job with their anti-Semitism than we Americans have done with our racism. It certainly has not been a great or complete job of eradicating anti-Semitism in Germany, just better than our efforts. The reason, she writes, is because Germany has done a better job at acknowledging their collective and individual sin while we put more effort into covering it up and denying it.

You and I also need to recognize though slavery is long gone, attitudes of superiority and inferiority persist. Attitudes are passed on from generation to generation. A book on my seminary’s history makes this point about meals in the seminary dining hall. My generation of students griped about the meals. The first class of 1826 made notes and mentioned in letters how much students did not like the food. Similar comments were shared over the nearly 200 years since the seminary’s founding. “Could all the cooks in the seminary dining hall had during that time been poor cooks?” asked the book’s authors? Instead it seemed the attitude toward dining hall food was passed along from generation to generation making certain expectations regarding the food were realized.

One of my confessions to make is that of all the books on race, American history, and politics I have read, I have yet to read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that exposed much of America to the horrors of slavery and the treatment of blacks. Written in 1852 some historians go so far as to say it laid the groundwork for the Civil War in its expose of slavery as it became a best-seller.
Having said this, I must also realize reading many books on race and racism does not cure racism. We need to stop thinking of African Americans as a problem to be solved and instead look first at ourselves, then look at African Americans as brothers and sisters with whom we share a planet and a nation. They are not a problem to be solved, instead they are a people to be loved and respected. In fact, they are not even a “they”….African Americans are Americans, like all of us.

For Black History month, I am vowing to read Uncle Tom. Want to borrow it when I am finished? Let’s be unafraid to learn from history’s horrible mistakes so we don’t repeat them. Will we change or simply remain sympathetic? Is repentance only for some others?