This article is Part 2 of a two-part series from CPT Fellow Phil Anderas.
Click here to read Part 1.
Part 1 of this essay sketched a biblical theology of racial peace in the churches of the gospel. That was the “doctrine” part of the sermon; here you have the “use.” The order is crucial: when theology isn’t in the driver’s seat, ideology takes the wheel; and ideology has no promise of grace to offer the vicious, violent, victimized children of Adam. If we would be a people of the gospel, our question cannot be: how do we eradicate injustice from the earth? If that were our question, it would make us a people not of the gospel but of the law; and if we answered it honestly, we’d have to begin by eradicating our own selves (Solzhenitsyn – and Luther). One lesson of 20th century history is – or ought to be – that utopian visions animated by confidence in our own righteousness lead to gulags and gas chambers, regardless of whether the intended goal is racial purity or the classless society or the anthropocentric realization of shalom in the progressive secular state. So in our wrath, in our rage against injustice, we will remember mercy. Our question therefore is: as the people saved by mercy, as the nation of nations redeemed by blood, as the “one new man” indwelt and vivified by God: how do grace-saved Euro-descended sinners like me seek and find ecclesial peace with grace-saved African-descended sinners like my siblings in the central city churches (and vice versa)? To put a fine point to it: how do the doctrines of grace crafted with such care in the year of our Lord 1619 speak to, salve or even transfigure the gaping wound first cut into Black flesh in that very same year, 1619? How does the gospel of the Jewish Messiah break the power of America’s “original sin” and overthrow the spiritual-institutional powers (Marva Dawn) that hold the churches themselves bound by the pride and prejudices of the flesh?
Alas, the bitter truth is there is nothing we can do to “fix” the problem of racial injustice, division, and schism. March, post, vote, read, talk, dialogue, like all you like: the demon is in too deep; our virtues, signaled or even real, are not up to the task of saving the church or America or our own selves from our sins. But there is a balm in Gilead, and the Sun (and Son) of Righteousness has arisen with healing in his wings, and together we battle under the blood-stained banner of Jesus Christ. Is anything too hard for the Lord? What is impossible for man is possible for the God who created the stars, liberated the slaves, and raised his Son Jesus from the dead. “O our God …we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us; we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You” (2 Chron 20.12).
Here then are five practices that powerless people like Jehoshaphat can use to conquer our racial evils in utter dependence on the God of slaves.
1. Above all else, the saints must pray. There are two reasons for this. First, the reality of God – the living God. You see, with all due respect to the erudition of a Taylor or the savvy of a Smith, our God is alive, as is the nail-scarred Jew who is his Son, as is the Spirit who renews the face of the earth. The epistemic constraints of a secular age pose no impediment to the Lord of the age to come (Heb 2.5). Though it is true that a deeply skeptical social imaginary afflicts the churches of the west with a disposition to unbelief, it is far more true that the God of creation and covenant is the living God who hears the prayers of the afflicted and acts in history to save his people. Exod 2.22-23: when Israel groaned in bondage and cried out for help, “their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the people of Israel – and God knew.”
Is it the brutal truth that racial injustice is intractable in American society? But it was the brutal truth that the Egyptians had enslaved the Hebrews for centuries when Moses was born. It was the brutal truth that a few words before Pharaoh and a few prayers by the elders and a bit of lamb’s blood sprinkled on the doorposts and the lintel had no chance against the greatest empire on earth. And it was certainly the brutal truth that with the imperial army on one side and the Red Sea on the other, everyone was about to die. Yet the Lord burst through the cement ceiling of the immanent frame, defeated the empire, and saved the slaves. Exod 14.13-14: “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” That is: you have only to cry out day and night before the God of slaves, of the oppressed, of the redeemed – and he will fight for us. “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?” (Luke 18.7; cf. Martyn Lloyd-Jones)
The second reason we must pray – and make prayer our #1 priority – is that it is primarily through prayer that our own hearts are transformed. How easy it is to put a sign up in my front yard. But do black lives actually matter to me? Do I have any real friendships with black people? Do I give sacrificially to support black churches? Are we willing to change our liturgy, to honor our sister church? When the cultural momentum of this summer dissipates, will we find that we never really cared? How easy it is to put a poster in my window. But does hatred really have no home here, in this family, in this heart? I know that nothing good dwells within me, in my flesh: for I have the desire to love my neighbor as myself, but I see in my members the very prejudice, fear, suspicion, resentment, jealousy, hatred, and racial superiority that I condemn in the unwoke. What a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – grace means that Jesus will.
In prayer, we experience communion with God through the blood of the Jew and the Spirit of adoption. Our darkness is exposed by his light, our hatred undone by his love, our prejudice upended by the glory of his abasement in our flesh, our bitterness broken by the violence of the love of the cross (Romero). In prayer, in company with the God who is love, we become love. Friend, I know you are unimpressed by this pietism, but you must begin here – for you must begin your work for justice by conquering the evil in your own heart. If at all possible, begin to climb the mountain of God with others at your side. Pray with brothers and sisters who look, dress, talk, pray, sing different from you. Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door that leads to costly love will open up before you. The God of Pentecost will give you his Spirit, to give you a new heart.
2. Pastors must preach the Word of God as it speaks to the questions of race, justice, evil, redemption, reconciliation, etc. This, only partly because of the instructional content that the people of God do indeed need to receive and apprehend from the Scriptures on these themes. (Possible texts include: Gen 11-12, Exod 15, Ps 67, Isa 60 or 66, Amos 4-6, Acts 2, Rom 9-11 or 15, Gal 2-4, Eph 2.11-22, Rev 7.9-17.) The bigger reason by far, is contained in a question the Lord put to his weeping prophet: “Is not my Word like fire, declares YHWH, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer 23.29) In prayer, we ask God to act, to arise, to do for us what we cannot do ourselves. In our very human preaching, God acts by his divine Word and Spirit; he arises such that his enemies are scattered, and those who hate him flee before him. The Word of God is at work in you believers (1 Thess 2.13). The Word of God is able to save your souls (Jas 1.21). The Word of God does not come back emptyhanded; it accomplishes what the Lord purposes to achieve by it and succeeds in the mission for which he sends it (Isa 55.11). Do you want to really do something about racial injustice? Preach the Word. You are weak, ineffective, and afraid, worse off than Jeremiah himself. But the God of Jeremiah, whom you serve as well, is omnipotent, and he loves to do things through his Word: to create ex nihilo, raise the dead, topple empires, and recruit cowards and persecutors as apostles and erstwhile racists as ministers of peace. Never forget Bullinger’s gloss on Luke 10.16: “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” Here is our biblical transubstantiatio, the miracle that takes place every time a sinful man preaches the Word of God not on the basis of his experiential authority or his savvily signaled virtue or his profound authenticity, but on the basis of the call of God, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the anointed power of the Holy Spirit.
3. We must receive the gift – and embrace the reality – of the sacraments of the gospel. In baptism, we are torn away from old-Adam allegiances and grafted into the body of Christ the King. Never was there a ritual-political action more pointedly opposed to the family values, restrictive covenants, and nationalisms we never quite overcome and sometimes outright idolize. “Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt 10.37). Together with his gracious word of forgiveness, this is the absolute claim that Jesus Christ speaks over every child, woman and man he washes, drowns and revives in baptism. He matches it with a remarkable promise: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matt 19.29).
This is the language and logic of the kingdom of God. To enter it, we must leave everything and follow the King in the way of the cross. Yet when – by grace – we find ourselves limping along this narrow way that leads to life, we find to our amazement that we are not alone but surrounded by the poor and rich, simple and clever, gifted and unemployed, black and olive and pale-hued people of God. This is our family, given us in baptism. These are our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers and children given to us a hundredfold.
One way, perhaps, to highlight the gift is to coordinate joint baptismal services that cross racial lines and vividly display the many-splendored kingdom of grace.
Another is to share together in the Lord’s Supper. This, I realize, is a tender point for some – so I press it all the more. Will you decline to receive the body and blood of the Lord from the hand of your black brother, because he does not have the proper orders or the orthodox confession of grace? Might it not be you who are guilty of a breach of propriety at the table set by our gracious Lord? Might it not be that your concern for the integrity of the confession undermines the grace you intend to confess? “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10.17). In America, we who have inherited the many divided denominations are not “one body” – unless the dismembered body of the Levite’s concubine counts as a body united in peace (Judg 19.29; cf. Radner). Is our not-being-one-body due at least in part to the painful fact that we do not partake together of the one bread (Leithart)? Is it not, alas, a legacy of the early Anglicans, who took pains to convert their slaves and then took care to ensure that baptism had no effect on their social status as slaves? Or of the disastrous doctrine of the spirituality of the church, invented by Southern Presbyterians but inimical to the Irenaean catholicity of John Calvin?
But if we started to wash together, and to eat and drink together, would we not become an earthly anticipation of what Mrs Turpin saw in her bewildering moment of “Revelation”? “A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven …” Might we not begin to see Baptists and Anglicans, Pentecostals and Presbyterians emerge from the water and walk from the Table shouting and clapping and leaping together like frogs? (O’Connor)
4. Yes, we must learn to sing together. From a practical point of view, this is sometimes one of the hardest practices to implement. The fact of the matter is, we all have our way of singing and – while an occasional variation is not unbearable – we do not want to change “our way of doing it” or “the way we have always done it.” I’ve witnessed the alarmed looks that appear on white Christian faces when the gospel choir begins to sing – and dance! I’ve seen the disappointed faces of my black brothers and sisters, underwhelmed by retooled hymns that theologize indelible grace and make for happy hipsters. But I have also felt the chills run down my spine when an aged sister – born in the south, in the time of Jim Crow – broke out spontaneously in a spiritual that her ancestors composed in a cotton field. And I know that it amuses my black siblings to no end when I attempt to sing and clap at the same time or even, wonder of wonders, to move my Presbyterian body, just a bit, in praise. And we all know who wrote “Amazing Grace” – some of us know what he was still doing when he wrote it – and how sweet a sound it is when we sing it together to the God of our salvation.
But it’s Jehoshaphat who displays the real reason we must learn to sing the new song together in harmony:
When the king had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and to praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say: “Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever.” And when they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed (2 Chron 20.21-22).
When white Christians learn to sing the Song of Moses with the descendants of the slaves, the waters of the Red Sea will part before us. Yes, and when we sing the Song of the Lamb in the unity of the great catholic people bought by his blood, the demons will flee, the Cross will triumph, the Father’s love will abound, the Spirit will make us one.
5. Finally, we must become willing to suffer together. Here, in the mystical experience of the cross, we come to the climax of church life and discipleship this side of the glory. Prayer pulls us up into communion with God through the blood of Jesus. Preaching kills and brings to life, convicts and justifies and saves, for we preach Christ crucified – the word of the cross. Baptism plunges us into Christ’s death, in the Supper he makes us one koinonia by giving us koinonia in his body and blood, and with one voice we sing the new song of the Lamb slaughtered for our sin. We are the people of the cross; that is why we do not flee suffering, but embrace it. Privileged, wealthy and generally Laodicean white Christians such as myself and the churches that I have served as a pastor must enter into a fellowship of suffering with our kinfolk in the Black Church. The details I leave to the leading of the Spirit and the preaching of the Word in our particular contexts. But the call is clear enough: every white Christian in America who wishes to seek racial justice and peace must be willing to share the sufferings of the descendants of the slaves. Cheap grace is impressed by your courageous stance on social media. Costly grace calls you to the cross.
Speaking of Bonhoeffer, the time has come for the white churches in America to learn from the Black Church what it means to be a people under the cross. The young theologian’s experiences in Harlem in 1930-1 left a permanent stamp upon him and decisively shaped his witness and work in the Confessing Church under Nazism (Bethge, Williams, Marsh). This was not merely a matter of the spirituals he recorded on his gramophone and played for the seminarians at Finkenwalde. The family he found at the Abyssinian Baptist Church showed him that God is not a concept, but the living and true God of the Bible; that real or church theology is not a parlor game for intellectuals but “something worth staking your life on”; that when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. You sometimes hear it said that the Church in America has never experienced persecution. The only way to come to that conclusion is to forget the Church of the slaves. For there is a Church in this strange land of our pilgrimage that has suffered under the cross for its entire history. She has learned to cherish the precious name of Jesus more than life itself, and to sing for joy to the living God in the midst of injustice, loss and sorrow. Dear brothers and sisters, please, help me and the rest of us in the pitiable, poor churches of the privileged and the powerful (Rev 3.17) to lift up our hearts to look for the chariot that swings low, “coming for to carry me home.” For in large part we are in love with this present world, and we do not much hope for the kingdom of heaven, and we have invented a smiling unscarred Jesus to suit our own desires, and we do not know how to suffer.
This resource is part of the series More than Imago Dei: Theological Explorations on Race. Click here to explore more resources from this series.
Phil Anderas is a Reformed pastor and missionary theologian with operations based in Milwaukee. He holds a PhD in Theology from Marquette. He is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
