Celebrating Racial Healing

This blog is a continuation of our series through the season of Easter. This is the second of four celebration services, and on Sunday we’ll celebrate racial healing. This celebration corresponds to the lament for racial brokenness that we wrote and prayed together on February 18 and can be viewed here.

How might we live differently if we believed that our race isn’t a temporary problem to be endured, but an eternal reality to be celebrated? What if our discipleship invited us to reimagine race as part of God’s good creation, and as something that exists even in heaven?

Let’s enter into this mystery together through this blog. And every regular reader of this blog already knows: I like to start by defining our terms.

If our discipleship invites us to reimagine race, then what is discipleship?

P E N T E C O S T (1).png — We need two points in order to establish direction. We need to know the beginning, and we need to know the destination, in order to know what direction Jesus is inviting us to walk in.

For this upcoming worship service, and the next three worship services during this season of Eastertide, the beginning point is the story of Pentecost, and our ending point is at the end of time when Heaven comes down to Earth as depicted in the story of Revelation 7. Spring Church is located between those two points in time, and we are invited to walk in the direction Jesus is walking in, starting from Pentecost and finishing in Heaven. That’s the direction this journey is going.

First, let’s look at how race is depicted our Beginning Point: Pentecost.

Before we read the story of Pentecost, I want to focus our attention on one particular miracle when the Holy Spirit arrives. While I love the miracle of fire, the miracle of wind, and the miracle of speaking in different languages, I want us to pay very close attention to the miracle of the Spirit bringing the Story of God deep into our hearts and revealing our place within God’s Kingdom. We see this at the end of this excerpt below when the people in the crowd say, “They’re speaking my language and praising God’s amazing works!” The original Greek in this phrase goes way beyond simply using understandable words, and implies that Jesus’ disciples were speaking the very heart language that spoke to the core of their identity.

The story of Pentecost includes a list of an incredible amount of countries.

All these different races and cultures, including many historical enemies, are coming together in unity. They aren’t united because the Holy Spirit took away their race, and they aren’t united because one race established dominance over the other races.

What unites them is worship.

They are united in worship to God, and they hold onto their race while submitting their racial identity to their new found identity in God.

Let’s revisit the questions at the beginning of this blog: How might we live differently if we believed that our race isn’t a temporary problem to be endured, but an eternal reality to be celebrated? What if our discipleship invited us to reimagine race as part of God’s good creation, and as something that exists even in heaven?

At our beginning point, the Holy Spirit doesn’t ignore our race, or language, or where we’re from. Our race still matters enough to be listed in the story, and the very core of our identity is gently held by the presence of the Spirit.

Holding this in mind, let’s read our beginning point now.

Acts 2:1-11
And when the Fiftieth and final day marking the completion of Passover had arrived, everyone was together in the same place. And then, out of nowhere!, from the heavens a strong and heavy wind, full of possibility, filled the whole house and everyone who was sitting there. And the wind appeared to them like dancing tongues of fire, and it rested on each and every one of them. And all of them were filled by the Holy Spirit and they began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.

Now there was dwelling in Jerusalem some Jews, devout people from every nation everywhere. And at this sound a huge crowd assembled, because each and every one of them was hearing all the people of God speak in their own language. And this totally blew their minds, and they started saying, “Check this out! Aren’t all these people speaking Galileans? So how is it that we hear, each one of us, in our own native language?

Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and religious pilgrims from Rome (both Jews and non-Jews learning their new Jewish faith), even Cretans and Arabs!, “They’re speaking my language and praising God’s amazing works!” And all were confused and completely stumped, and were saying to one another, “What's the meaning of all this?"

So if we’re going to walk in the direction Jesus is walking in, and our Beginning point is the story of Pentecost, then…

we need to hold the tension of taking race seriously while also submitting our racial identity to the Kingdom of God.

That’s where the journey of Spring Church begins.

Now let’s take a look at where this story ends.

Let’s fast forward to the scene at the end of time, when Heaven comes to Earth in all its fullness. Here’s a vision of what it will look like when we’re all in Heaven together, and please notice what sort of bodies we’re going to have. In heaven, it’s not that we’re going to be without bodies, or have some totally different body. We’re still going to have bodies! There’s going to be enough continuity between the bodies we have now and the bodies we have in Heaven that our race can be identified. (NOTE: If you want to read more on this, I’d encourage you to check out the article shared a few weeks ago that reflected on how Jesus still has scars on his heavenly body, rather than Jesus having no scars and/or no body at all.)

Which brings me back to the questions I asked at the beginning of this blog. How might we live differently if we believed that our race isn’t a temporary problem to be endured, but an eternal reality to be celebrated? What if our discipleship invited us to reimagine race as part of God’s good creation, and as something that exists even in heaven?

As we read this vision of Heaven, please notice that our race is located in Heaven, too:

Revelation 7:9-12
After that I looked, and check this out! A huge crowd, too big to even count em all, from every ethic group and tribe and poeple and language. There they were, standing before the Throne and the Lamb, all decked out in white, and palm branches were in their hand. And they were shouting at the top of their lungs:
Salvation!
Salvation to our God, who sits on the Throne,
And to the Lamb!
And all who were standing around the Throne - Angels, Elders, Animals - fell on their faces before the Throne and worshiped God, singing:
Amen!
The blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving,
The honor and power and strength,
To our God, forever and ever!
Amen!

As we walk in the direction Jesus is walking in, we find ourselves in a story which begins with the Spirit meeting us exactly where we are, including our race.

And we find ourselves in a story which ends with our race still being an element of it. On the one hand, our race never goes away, so Jesus doesn’t invite us to live in a way that ignores, belittles, or dismisses our race. On the other hand, our race isn’t the most important thing, either. It’s a significant part of the story, but it’s not the most important.

Several weeks ago, we wrote and prayed a lament for racial brokenness (you can find that lament HERE and the blog for that service HERE), and that felt very appropriate, because there's lots of racial brokenness on display in our culture.

This Sunday, however, we’re going to have the opportunity to write and pray a celebration of racial healing, which seems very strange to me for all sorts of reasons. Let’s not overlook the fact that I’ve never really done anything like this. I’m not even really quite sure what it is we’re being called to celebrate. But, to find a way forward, let’s go back to the questions at the beginning of this blog:

How might we live differently if we believed that our race isn’t a temporary problem to be endured, but an eternal reality to be celebrated? What if our discipleship invited us to reimagine race as part of God’s good creation, and as something that exists even in heaven?

We can celebrate that this story has a miraculous beginning, where everyone gets to hear about the Kingdom of God played on their own heartstrings. This gives us space to celebrate the diversity of our races and cultures, and gives us the freedom to celebrate the incredible varieties of ways Jesus reveals his Kingdom to us. There’s a lot to celebrate there.

We also can celebrate that this story has a miraculous ending, where these things that divide and harm us will ultimately fade away. We are united, not through pursuing fairness, but through walking in the direction Jesus is walking. There's a lot to celebrate there, too.

And I’m grateful that this isn’t a story we’re inventing, that many others have gone before us and go with us on this journey. I’d love to conclude this blog post with an observation from an American who demonstrated how to walk in the direction Jesus walks in, bounded in between the story of Pentecost and the arrival of Heaven.