Sermon on June 14, 2020: 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
One of the privileges that comes with being a white man is that I can forget about the fact that I am a white man. I am not, most of the time, confronted with the reality of my race, and I suspect that this is probably true for most of my fellow white men. For the most part, we don’t experience the world in a way that constantly reminds us of our whiteness. We have the luxury of not having to think about our race. I don’t know how many black men or women in this nation go about their days without being reminded of their racial identity, but I suspect that it is very few. And if that is true, then it means that black men and women are seeing themselves and the world in a way that I, as a white man, am fundamentally incapable of seeing. Or even if I can see it, I have the luxury of forgetting it.
For example, a colleague of mine—a priest in this Diocese—was recently driving to his home in Philadelphia. As he drove through his neighborhood, he encountered a roadblock that prevented him from reaching his home. His was the third car in line as he approached the roadblock, and he saw that both of the drivers in front of him were white. The police officer standing guard spoke briefly to them before waving them both through. My colleague is black, and when his turn came to go through, he was not allowed to proceed until he showed his ID, to prove that he lived nearby. Certainly much could be said about this encounter, but one thing is for certain: he did not pass through the roadblock without being reminded of his blackness, and of all the potential consequences that this encounter might have for a black man in America.
By contrast, I’ve never had to give a single thought my whiteness in any of my encounters with the police. It’s clear that my priestly colleague is forced to see the world in a way that I, for the most part, have the luxury of not seeing.
By now, you may be wondering what this sermon has to do with any of today’s scripture readings. Here is the connection: in the same way that white people have the luxury of forgetting their whiteness, Gentiles also have the luxury of forgetting they are Gentiles.
Forgive me if I am being presumptuous, but I assume that most Gentiles don’t actually think of themselves as Gentiles. For most Gentiles, this is not a category that has any real meaning. A Gentile is, of course, someone who is not a Jew. And since Jews comprise only about 2% of the total U.S. population, and only around 0.2% of the global population, it may seem odd to have a label for everyone who is not a member of this particular minority group. And for Gentiles who are Christians, it may seem odd to be identified as a Gentile Christian. Some may even ask: what other kind of Christian is there?
The way we answer that question will have a lot to do with the way that we read today’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew.
In my Christian upbringing, I was raised to read the Bible as though it were the Word of God addressed directly to me. At its best, this way of reading the Bible says that Scripture is not only relevant to my life—even more, it should form and shape it. But at its worst, this way of reading the Bible erases the identity of its principal audience—and its principal audience is the Jews. Most of the Bible, including the New Testament, is written for Jews, by Jews. Jesus was a Jew. The disciples were Jews. St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was a Jew. And yet, for one reason or another, Christians today don’t really seem to get this—or to see that they are not the primary audience of the Jesus they follow and the Scriptures they read.
When Christians read Scripture, we want to place ourselves in the drama. We want to think about where we would be if we were there when it all happened. We want to know how to imagine ourselves in response to it. But oftentimes, Gentile Christians imagine too much. We read a passage like today’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, and our first thought is, “How am I like one of Jesus’ disciples, being sent out to proclaim the good news today as they did then?” That’s how I was taught to think when reading about Jesus’ commissioning of the disciples in this passage. How can I preach the good news? How do I know when to shake the dust off my feet? How can I be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove? What I most certainly was not taught to think was that I am not really a part of this story. Or rather, that I only show up as an outsider, as we hear in verse five, “Jesus sent out [the disciples] with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles’.” Jesus (a Jew) is telling his disciples (who were Jews) to spread the Gospel among “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (who are, of course, Jews). The Gentiles are not really a part of this story, because they are not the primary audience of the Gospel; the primary audience of the Gospel is the Jews.
Fortunately, for Gentiles, the good news of salvation includes them too. In the language of St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans (not today’s reading, but in chapter 11), the Gentiles are grafted on to the People of God—the Jews—in the same way that a branch is grafted onto a tree. In the course of time, that branch grew so large that Gentile Christians began to mistake it for the tree itself. And as a result, church history is littered with anti-Semitic atrocities committed by Christians who were under the impression that the Jews were not the People of God. This is the heresy of supersessionism: the idea that the Gentiles superseded—replaced—the Jews as the People of God. It is not a Christian doctrine. Salvation comes to the world through the Jews, the People of God, a people into which the Gentiles are grafted in—included, adopted, saved by grace.
Sometimes, when we find ourselves examining the content of Scripture, we need to take a step back and take a close look at the lens through which we do the examining. For most of us, that lens is a Gentile lens, and as Gentiles, it is essential that we not forget this fact. It is essential. The story of the Gentiles is the story of gracious inclusion—of being children of God not by nature, but by grace. And if we fail to remember this, then we will always presume too much, and at the end of that road there is only violence.
There is no shame in being a Gentile, just as there is no shame in being white. The shame is in the power that is claimed by the luxury of forgetting, and the assumption that white Gentiles are the primary audience of Scripture, and the principal actors in God’s drama. This is the heresy of white supremacy—which is also not a Christian doctrine.
But scripture gives us the remedy, and will make it possible for us to remember. Like the lost sheep of the house of Israel, even now, in our time, to be a Gentile Christian in America feels like being in a flock of sheep without a shepherd. And the only way we can hope to be a people who proclaim God’s truth with boldness and to minister God’s justice with compassion is if we are listening to the voice of Jesus—and following in the way of our dark-skinned, Jewish Lord.
By his grace, he has seen fit to include even us in his story, even while we still were sinners. By his grace, we become the children of God. Not by right, but by grace. In this way, we too can be adopted as the People of God.
“For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.”
Amen.