Pastor's Notes

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?

I remember her hands. It was Easter Sunday, 1979. After Easter services and dinner, a staff member of our church in Los Alamos, New Mexico took us down the mesa to San Ildefonso Pueblo to witness the pueblo’s dances, ceremonies, and fascinating celebration of Easter.

While visiting the pueblo, we were invited into the home of legendary American Indian potter, Maria Martinez. Maria and her late husband, Julian, revolutionized American Indian pueblo pottery. If you have ever seen Indian pottery that is completely black (black on black is the name of the style) it is Maria and her husband that created this from a particular clay and unique firing method.

Maria’s work commands thousands of dollars today and is on permanent display in the Louve in Paris. You don’t, however, need to travel to the City of Lights or even New Mexico to see her work. It is on display in the ASU Ceramic Art Museum as well as Basha’s headquarters in Chandler and, of course, the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

The 91 year old Maria was gracious to us. She reached out both hands to clasp ours. My hands at the time were 24 years old, however I immediately noticed how smooth the hands were of this famous, creative, and skilled, potter. Maybe there was something in her secret stash of clay, hidden somewhere in a hillside or river bank on pueblo grounds, that kept them so smooth. Or perhaps her gift as a potter came from those very unique hands that molded and shaped pots and dishes over the decades. Yes, I remember both the smile on her face and I remember the touch of her hands.

We tend to think of God in anthropomorphic terms, taking on human traits and characteristics, even to the point of human physicality. Certainly we believe in the incarnation, that God inhabits the human flesh of God’s creation to do God’s work and to encounter that human creation close up and at eye level. We even have songs proclaiming, “He has the Whole World in his Hands.”

This does mean God can reach out to us and touch us personally, even physically. At times God reaches out with a calloused hand offering some help in a chore. Other times in the wrinkled hands of someone wizened by age, or hands with fingers bent by arthritis to extend some love to us. God can reach out to us in the soft, unblemished hands of an infant or toddler or the hands of someone missing a digit or more. God is unafraid to reach out to us with hands deformed at birth or damaged in some way by life. The point is God keeps reaching out.

With the pandemic still visible but in our rear view mirror, there is not much hand shaking nowadays. I am not arguing for its return, but I do recognize the loss of some person to person contact; a loss that at times may leave us apart from God’s physical touch. You see, I also remember the hands of many who have taken mine over the years in gestures of welcome or expressions of solidarity or empathy.

Ah, but God’s hands while working through those of others are also metaphorical hands; an expression to remind us God reaches out to us in so many ways. Not even a pandemic can take that outreach away. God, after all, does have the whole world in God’s hands.

Every now and then a particular word strikes me for one reason or another. It doesn’t have to be a unique word. It may or may not be the kind of word that finds its way into SAT tests; neither its quality nor its sophistication really matter.

Today the word that struck me is “stage.” It has many uses, not all related. A stage is a platform of one sort or another upon which actors perform or musicians play their instruments or singers sing their songs. Back in the day you could be transported from places like Omaha, Nebraska to Denver, Colorado via a stage of the Wells Fargo variety. Realtors frequently stage a house to put it on the market for sale. You and I say things such as, “There is no need to do that at this stage.” See some of the different usages?

A stage then can be something in place. It can be a verb and an activity. A stage can be something in motion. It can be a place or a place in time as in “not at this stage”.
Stage is a multi -purpose word. It has its origin in an old Latin word meaning to stand in place. Like many words, its use and meaning have evolved over the centuries.

Language in general and the word stage in particular stand in place as examples of how you and I also evolve over our lifetimes. You are not the same person you were a decade or so ago. You will not be the same person after another decade passes. Much of it has to do with what happens to us over time; that is what life does to us over the years.

Much of it also has to do with what God does to us over time often with and through those experiences that continue life’s constant molding, meddling, and shaping of us. Yes, of course part of some inner being in us may be the same throughout life, that is, some core, but as we mature, we adapt many different patterns, change our thoughts and rethink even some of our values. Our faith even evolves a bit over the years often as we become more accepting of what we do not know about God.

Like me you have seen books and magazines with photos of “Then and Now.” Some places even one hundred years later are easily recognized, others completely different and unrecognizable. You and I do not have a book chronicling our life in such photos, but we do have such photos. Often, we find ourselves chuckling at something we once proudly wore, or a hair style quite foreign to today’s styles. What the photos do not reveal are how we have changed more deeply; how we have changed as persons.

Words continue to evolve. The word “prevent” once meant, as its Latin root means, “to come before”, that is, to arrive before another. Now, of course, prevent means to stop.

You and I evolve. Followers of Jesus evolve in their following. This means God is not yet finished with us. We are never finely polished complete followers of Jesus. God is not through with us. This actually is good news for us.

It is easy in a congregation with college students to see young adults as those with so much ahead of them. Some of us as we age don’t always see that even in middle age. It is not about what quantity of time that lies ahead of us. It is instead that simply stated there is time ahead of us. It is God’s time and God will use it as God uses all time to both work with us and work on us. God is not yet finished with us. However large or small, we have following to do, and God has more caring to do.

Epiphany has often been seen as a time to focus on missionaries. In all the congregations I served sponsoring missionaries, this is often the time we would focus on some aspect of their work, and, if they were in the country on furlough, have them come on a Sunday to teach, preach, and get personally acquainted.

In a time of US church decline we need to remind ourselves that all the church is not in decline. It is just in the southern hemisphere that the church is thriving. Africa, South America, and parts of Asia continue to be very receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our missionary efforts work!

They also work to help lift up some of the health, poverty, and hunger issues suffered especially in these regions. One missionary a church I served sponsored worked high in the Andes of Peru teaching locals dealing with great hunger how to use one of their best resources, rivers and streams, and raise fish for food.

Not all missionary endeavors now or in time past were so focused on the gospel nor on helping the needs of those being evangelized. Too often colonialism went hand in hand with mission work. A saying even these days in Hawaii is, “When the missionaries came we had the land and they had the Bibles. Now we have the Bibles, and they have the land.” Indeed. Though most land belongs now to the Hawaiian government, some land continues to be owned in Hawaii by the descendants of missionaries, rented out to those who built or own houses on the land. At one time the entire island of Lanai was completely owned by missionary descendants.

We are only too familiar with stories of South Africa, the former Rhodesia, and other nations on the African continent where missionary work and colonialism sometimes seemed indistinguishable. Our own efforts with Native Americans often seemed more interested in destroying their culture so they could adopt our western values.

Sometimes I wonder if this is part of the resistance so many Americans in main line denominations have with anything appearing to be evangelism. Perhaps we cower at the word evangelism because of the aggressive approach that many often use in their outreach in our own country. They seem to be unaware that the root word of evangelism is “good news.” I was part of a group of many campus ministries at ASU that had one such group removed from the campus ministry association (CORA) at ASU due to their very aggressive methods often with painful results.

Yet mission work is heart and soul of who we are as followers of Christian. On the road to Emmaus the travelers asked one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us as he was talking to us on the road?” Too often we let that fire burn within us but are afraid that others might see a sign of smoke from us and we work to disguise it. Missionary work is good work when done by sharing good news. Years ago a company called Amway thought they had a unique way to grow a business. Those recruited were to recruit others into the business. They failed to realize the church had been using that method throughout its 2,000 years.

Now many from Africa and other continents new to the Christian faith are sending missionaries here to the US. One time at an Arizona Cardinal event I sat with a player, Sam Acho, from Nigeria. His father is a pastor and came to the US to evangelize Americans. As a more recent recruit himself he thought maybe he could reach out better than those of us uncomfortable with doing so.

You and I in the church surrounded by other churches often fail to see what a life might be like not only without our own faith and church, but without any. We have become a bit comfortable in our Christian privilege. Don’t be afraid. We don’t go alone. And over time good mission efforts work. We also have to be secure enough to face rejection as that often is the most common response. Is the Good News of Jesus worth this? What good news do you have to share?

There are lots of debates regarding human nature. It seems there always have been. Some say we are mostly a product of nature, others say its nurture that makes us who we are, while still others say both play a role. What about one’s unique individuality ask some?

On the other hand, some arguments are based on the goodness or lack of such in human nature. Are people basically good or are we intrinsically bad or evil? Or does it vary from person to person, and we can therefore divide people into categories of good or bad?

John Morley, a mostly 19th Century author, newspaper editor, member of Britain’s Liberal Party and onetime Ambassador to Ireland once wrote, “The belief that human nature is basically good is the key to that secularizes the world.” That is, if humans are basically good, there is no need for God, confession, redemption, and forgiveness.

Yes, at creation God created humanity and said it was good. Yet I had one Hebrew scholar say the word good (tov) in Hebrew meant more that “it works” than it did any moral assessment. And in the creation account this good creation went out on its own and rebelled from any created goodness. This still good creation continues to do so.

We Lutherans tend to have a “both/and” view of many things, including human nature. Calvinists are much more pessimistic about us humans while Unitarians and many others are much more optimistic. We tend to go along with Martin Luther’s “simul Justus et peccator” view, that is, we are simultaneously saint and sinner.

This view of Luther’s means we are not one moment good and another moment bad. It means even when doing good, we are yet sinners. It also means even when sinning we are those yet loved and redeemed by God.

This all means you and I and all those billions around us cannot be boiled down to something as simplistic or clear cut as “good” or “bad”. We are the whole human package. We are very much those of the “simul Justus……” variety. We are those called to love the neighbor and those loved ultimately and best by God.

Perhaps the ultimate place to see human nature is the cross. In the cross we see what humanity tends to do with God’s will for a creation called good. Humanity tends to reject it even at times to the point of violence. In the cross we also see the value God places on humanity. We see the length to which God is willing to go to redeem and remake rebellious humanity into a creation that can yet be called good but only because God makes it so.

We are inching toward Lent. Lent is not to be a morose time or a season to depress us. It is to be a serious time. It is a time to take seriously who we are and who we are not. It is a time to take the grace of God in Jesus seriously….seriously enough to trust that God’s work is to redeem sin, not conquer or subdue those who sin.

So what is human nature after all? It is something God cares for and cares for deeply. It is not ever left to its own. We are free to argue about nature vs nurture and such. We do so under the grace of one who can and does redeem the ills and errors of both.