What Does the Trinity Have to Do with Racism? Everything.

Philippians 2:1–11, John 14:15–21

What does the Trinity have to do with racism? Everything.

I do not mean that the Trinity is equal to anti-racism, that the current movement is the Gospel in its entirety. No, our Triune God is such that God responds to and equips us to respond to whatever the pressing issue of the day might be. The Gospel encompasses all justice, all righteousness, all truth, all beauty.

But right now, that issue is racism. And Our God has not left us orphaned.

Each person—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—calls and equips us for such a time as this, and John 14, where Jesus teaches his disciples on his final night with them offers us powerful and practical instruction.

Jesus says, If you love me, keep my commandments. Love in the Bible is not a mental assent, not a feeling; it is action. And no author portrays that with more consistency and clarity than John. Read his gospel and his letters. He talks about love constantly. So, how do we show that we love Jesus, what are Jesus’ commandments?

Jesus is as clear as day:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)

How did he love us? By giving his life. Actually, the first use of the word commandment in John comes from the lips of Jesus:

“No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.” (John 10:18)

Jesus says later in John 12:50 that the Father’s command is eternal life.

Jesus loved us by giving his life for us. Jesus loved us by defeating death. Jesus loved us by giving us eternal life.

We can’t love one another in this way, we can’t give each other eternal life. The cognitive dissonance we experience with his words that we should love others as he loved us and our inability to do so closes the door to any savior complex. If we think we can save others, if we try to love others in our own power, it will fail. It will be an expression of nothing other than pride. Any love we show has to be rooted in the love he showed us.

Because he has given us eternal life, we can love others towards life. What does that look like right now?

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. I am continually impressed with how St. Markers love, each other and those outside the community. You give your lives for each other with time, words, finances, prayers. You are so involved in so many ways to serve: dozens of local ministries and missions across the world. I feel like every time I get to know one of you a bit better I discover ways you are giving your lives in love. You are the real deal. Praise God. Keep Going. You are following Jesus’ command to love as he loved.

But let me speak a moment to the members of our congregation who are white. Many of the things I listed above do serve people of color, but right now, I believe that we are being called to more. The world needs to see in this moment that Christians actually care about racism. If you are white, you can use your privilege to come alongside people of color. I realize that you might hear voices that question the concept of “white privilege.” If you are exposed to those voices, there are many great books you can read. I’ll list several in the resource section. Or better yet, ask a friend of color about their experience in America and see if it is the same as yours. If you don’t have any friends of color, and that is true for many of us in large part because of the history of redlining in Chicago, pray that God might expand your circle of friends to include them.

Jesus is asking us, white people, to give our lives for others. And for white people that means using our privilege to speak and act. I got started on it this week by writing my city council to make police body cams mandatory because body cams are one surefire way to showcase the many great police and prosecute if there are bad ones. We took our children to multiple peaceful protests. We educated ourselves and gave to ministries that work with those hurt by racial violence. If you don’t agree with these actions, that’s fine. Please correct me if you know of a better way. I have so much to learn. I’m sure there are thousands of great ways to get involved. But we must do something. The world is watching and wondering if Christians have anything to say.

I don’t say all this to toot my own horn. In fact, it’s really a confession. I wasn’t doing these things before. Yes, I had learned a bit about racism and passionately taught about it in my classes—the heartbeat of Paul’s gospel is to realize God’s reconciliation with humanity by brining reconciliation between Jew and Gentile—but I had other issues that I was more passionate about. That’s fine. Anti-racism may not be everyone’s #1 passion and calling, but if you are white in America is has to be part of your passion and calling as a follower of Jesus Christ. Why? Its painfully simple. Because as Christians we affirm that every human is created in the image of God, and in our country with painful regularity people of color haven’t been treated equally.

Previously, I wasn’t willing to give much of my time, much of my life to do anything about it. I wasn’t loving my neighbor as myself. That was sin. I was being racist. And now I’m repenting. Trying to love others as Jesus has loved me, who took the greatest privilege of all, being in the form of God and then became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He gave his life for us. White people, it is now time for us to give our lives for people of color. Love is not platitudes. Love is action in a particular time and place. America 2020 is our time and place and so this is how we are being not just called, but commanded, to love.

Jesus is not alone in his command. Never does any person of our Triune God act alone, each is intimately involved in the actions of the others. So this passage also speaks of the work of the Spirit. Jesus says, I will ask and God the Father will give to you another encourager to be with you forever. Jesus promised that the Father will give to us the Spirit of Truth.

What is truth? Pilate will ask this of Jesus just a few chapters later. It is so hard to know these days. Rumor and hearsay spread at lightning speed. My news agency said this, yours took a completely different spin. It is so overwhelming to try to discern the truth. Thankfully, John tells us many things about truth, but one of the clearest appears just earlier in this chapter where Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The Spirit of Truth will lead us to Jesus the Truth, who will make us to be truthful people. And one of the best ways to know Jesus is to read about him, in the gospels and in the letters to see how communities lived in his name, and in Israel’s scriptures the Old Testament to see how God was preparing for his coming.

The concept of Jesus is as pliable as a wax nose, easily bent to the whims of whomever claims it, but the person of Jesus is not. He will not be mocked. And we encounter the person not by holding up the Bible but by actually reading the Spirit-inspired words about Jesus Christ.

So yes do things for others, be active against racism, but never lose your anchor, the ground from which the fruit springs, the anchor of prayerfully reading about the God of the Exodus, who came to set the captives free, to take the mighty from their seats and exalt the humble and meek. If you are reading about him, God manifest, the Spirit of truth will lead you into all truth.

And it won’t be popular. The world is not able to receive the Spirit of truth, Jesus says. Who, though, is the world? Its so easy to politicize that right now, “The side opposite of me is so worldly.” But John is quite clear who the world is: it is people who do not see or know the Spirit. It is anyone who is not a confessor of and fruit bearer for Christ. And that means that within this wide Christian family, within this particular church family, none of us, whether Democrat or Republican represents the world. The enemy is not within. In fact, Jesus says here not that the Spirit abides in you personally but that the Spirit abides in you corporately. All the yous are plural. We need each other, St. Markers, to read and discern together.

Some of you may feel that I’ve been politically slanted in what I’ve said. My ardent prayer with this sermon has been that it would not alienate anyone, but it is also my call as a pastor not to fail to say hard things. You have not called me here to make you feel comfortable. If anyone you know thinks racism is a politically left issue, I’d encourage them to search their heart. To read the Bible. To get to know Christians of color. Racism is a human issue, one of the oldest and most intransigent sins. If you don’t struggle with it personally, that is awesome, but you live in America, the western suburbs of Chicago, so the system in which we all live drips with the racism of the past. And what the cruel and inhumane murder of George Floyd just showed us is that racism is alive and well. Every person of conscience from the left to the right has acknowledged this reality, from Barack Obama to George W. Bush, from our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to the Southern Baptist Convention.

Yes I decry and mourn the abhorrent violence against police and businesses and humans, including the death of retired police chief David Dorn, conducted by violent looters but I must always in the same breath decry the centuries of racial violence that led to this moment.

The world, those who don’t know about him, don’t have to care about this right now, but Christians have no other option.

Finally, the Father. God says, I will not leave you as orphans. Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father, praise God, and God has sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. So that we are not alone. In that day, Jesus says to his disciples – and we are a post-Pentecost people, we live in that day – Jesus says, You know that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.

By the Spirit we are united to the Son who is One with the Father. We are not alone. God dwells in and among us. Our God isn’t far removed. Our God is right here, and so our God really actually cares about our world because our God in us is in it. That’s why the Trinity has everything to do with racism. Our God is with the perpetrators and the victims and in his mercy has promised life to us all.

None of us are orphans now; we are a family. And Jesus has given us a command and the Spirit to empower us to live out that command: love one another.

This resource is part of the series More than Imago Dei: Theological Explorations on Race. Click here to explore more resources from this series.

Amy Peeler is Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. She also serves as Associate Rector at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Geneva, IL. She earned her PhD in biblical studies from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her research interests have included Hebrews, Mark, Matthew, the Fatherhood of God, and Feminist Theology. She is a fellow in the St. Augustine fellowship of the CPT.