Racism

We're just doing family meetings. We are picturing this like a gigantic living room. We believe that believers are supposed to step right in the culture, that we're not supposed coming from culture and the language coming from culture, and that it should emulate kingdom are leading out. And so I'm curious, is it anyone's first week back to church tonight, back to services tonight?

Okay, we're so glad you're here. You're going to get used to wearing a mask and services. It took us a little bit, but then you realize, man, it's just good to be with everyone. So you just start to forget that you're wearing it, even though it is hot.

Are we hot? I'm hot? You're hot? You're more hot than I am right now because you're still wearing a mask and I get a break from it in this moment, but we're going to make it.

We're going to make it. In the last couple of weeks, we have just been diving into what does it look like to emulate kingdom culture? What does it look like to take culture and filter it through kingdom values? What does it look like to walk in unity, the unity of the spirit, through the bond of peace, the unity of the spirit, through the bond or the ligament of peace?

What does it look like to be a people of honor who demonstrate the fruit of the spirit and operate in true biblical love? And last week, we talked about what it looks like to be people who stand in the council of God, not in the council of man. And what does it look like for us to reject being an echo of culture, which is a counterfeit version of the kingdom. Why are we echoing a counterfeit version of the kingdom when we are connected to the source himself?

And so as we check in with what our source truly is, we're reconnecting to Jesus, we're reconnecting to the word and saying this has to be our launch pad. This has to be our anchor as we move forward. And so tonight we are going to talk about racism. For some of you, you could be like, yes, let's go there.

It's about time. We got to go there. And for some of us, it's like, man, I feel a little bit tired on this topic. And I understand that.

But tonight we want to talk about what is happening in our culture that has come to the forefront in this last season, but is not new, has been happening, but it's on the radar. Like I think it's never been on the radar, at least in our lifetime before. The murder of George Floyd on our own city streets has brought the world's attention to the topic of racism. And I believe that it's in the heart of God that we would look this straight in the eye and address it, starting with the church.

This is another one of those topics that I think the church has been really quiet on. And that breaks my heart because I believe that Jesus is the safest place to run when you have questions about this. Jesus is the safest place to go when you have been hurt personally by racism. Yet the church has not been seen as a safe place to run.

And I think we can all see and maybe even agree that people have begun to avoid the church because they experience the same pain of racism within the church that they've received outside. And that they have found safer places outside of Christian communities. And I just want us to come around this topic and say, we want to be a safe place. Individually, I say, I want to be a safe place.

And I want this corporately to be a safe place. That anyone coming through these doors on a Sunday or a Monday or a Wednesday or coming to any of your homes for a community or bringing their children to grow kids. I want this to be a safe place for every person of color and not just for white individuals that are part of our white majority. We talked about this the other week that right now our community is a white majority community.

And we believe that the Lord is diversifying this community and we're not striving after it or going to go and try to seek it out. We are just opening our hands and saying, God, we want to be that safe space for anyone to come through these doors. And so I think that's all of our hearts. I think that's what we all desire.

And so we want to talk about how we can do that as a community and what that can look like. And I think that when we look at this last season and everything that happened in our city, we were on sabbatical at the time. We sent out a video. Many of you probably received that in your email inboxes and we talked about our assignment as a community.

Do you guys remember what it was? We were going to listen, learn and lean in. And as we have watched you, I just want to say we are so encouraged by our community. We have watched you listen.

We have watched you learn. We have watched you lean in when it would be easy to pull back. We've watched you move towards. And so we have been so beautiful to see.

You guys don't know this, but before all of this happened, at the beginning of each year, we create a sermon schedule for the year. And then we offer it up to the Lord and say, you know what we're going to do, but this is our plan, but we yield to whatever he has. And so we have a document that has our schedule for the year. And we had a sermon series on justice scheduled for May and June of this year.

And that is a series that we have been holding in our hearts for the last two years. You have probably heard us talk about that, a similar thing with the same series. Do you guys remember the same series? That's what we were doing before COVID.

And we were just going along our merry way and then had no idea we'd take a break for a few months. And we'll get back to that series when we feel like we're supposed to. And we said something really similar about that series. We were sitting on that series, I think, for three years where we had the same series in our hearts and we just had it in our list of series that were like, okay, Lord, when it's time, bring that out, similar with the justice series.

And we felt like the Lord is saying this would be the year to have our justice series and then look at what happened in our own city. So we just are thankful for the leadership of the Lord. And this is just a topic that as your pastors, we care about this. This is not a new topic for us in this last season.

This is something that racial reconciliation is something that we've both carried individually throughout our life. But in the last three or four years is something we've really given ourselves to as a family to study, to pray through and to really adopt in our family as we've been pursuing adoption. And I think you guys all know that we have a Hispanic daughter. And so now we are a transracial adoption family.

And so this is something that we carry deeply in our hearts. And so we want to come in tonight, just saying very clearly that we are humbled to even speak on this topic, because we do not consider ourselves anywhere near experts. And it's easy in these moments and maybe you can relate to how we feel. It's like, I don't even know exactly what to say because there's so much I don't know and I'm not an expert.

And so who am I to grab a microphone and start talking about this? Yet at the same time, we've known that it's important for you to hear from us where we stand and what we see and more importantly what we see the heart of God being on this and what scripture says that Jesus thinks about this. And so I just want to invite us tonight wherever we're at. If you're sick of the topic, I want to invite you to reengage and open your heart.

And if you are just ready to go, well, then, great work together on that. I want us to start with something that I think is really unifying for us to start here. And it is to start with saying and admitting that there's a problem. I know that that's really elementary.

That step one is admitting that there's a problem. But I really think that that's where we need to start. I think that we're about to talk about engaging with the heart of God and getting his heart for things and adopting that heart ourselves. But we will be, we're not going to be motivated to grab hold of his heart and ask him for his heart on something if we don't actually think that there's a problem and aren't willing to see the problem and truly draw near to the problem and experience it ourselves and engage with it.

Same with history if we want to invite us to not just come into the middle of the story right now because culture is talking about it. But I want to encourage us to be people that learn the history so that we understand because then when we go and we say, God give me your heart, he's going to say my heart is breaking for this. But if we only know this much, we're going to get a fragmented piece of the brokenness of his heart over this instead of being able to carry it with him and see what he sees. And so I just want to invite us to look at the further story.

But if we can start together before we dive into the word, I want us to just start on this topic of naming that there is a problem. And so we're going to do that and we went back and forth on should we and we just felt that it was important for you to even know where we stand personally on some of these things. And we want to be clear about those things and we don't we want to be unapologetic about what we see about these things. So I'm going to start there.

Does that sound okay? We believe that systemic and cultural racism is real and is a problem today. We believe that unconscious bias is real and a problem today. We believe that through noticing and naming and nurturing the truth of our biases that we're not even aware of, we can just start noticing them, naming what they are.

And then renewing our mind through repentance, changing the way that we think about them. They won't be biases anymore. But the unconscious bias, the bias I'm unwilling to look at because I don't think it's there is what we need to open our hearts and say, God, what's there if it's there, I don't want it. We believe that white privilege is real and is a problem today.

I can say that as a white woman, as a white man, we see that white privilege is real and it is not something to be ignored or minimized. Culture has placed white skin as one of the highest levels of privilege of our culture. Along with other privileges, there's male privilege, right? There's class privilege.

I don't know how hard to talk about that word. White privilege is real and we need to acknowledge it. We believe that white guilt is real and is a problem today. Just because there is privilege that I have as a white individual does not mean that I should carry the weight of the guilt or condemnation or shame.

That is not the heart of God. And I believe that guilt and shame is one of the greatest tactics of the enemy to silence white believers who have privilege. And it silences the white voice because we're paralyzed by shame that we can't even engage. If you are struggling with feeling guilt or shame because of any type of privilege that you hold, I encourage you to give that to the Lord and ask them what it looks like to use the privilege that culture has given you.

We believe that God is not colorblind and that we shouldn't be either. I don't see color. He does. And he loves it.

He adores it. He created it. It reveals facets of him. God put on Middle Eastern skin.

He did not put on white skin. God became a man and experienced and lived in Jewish and Middle Eastern culture. Yet God does not move away from me or discredit me because I have white skin and he didn't. And he does not discredit me because I do not have Jewish or Middle Eastern culture that I live in.

God was not a white man. I'm saying it again. We need to remember. Okay.

Like maybe one more time. Jesus wasn't white. Yet he celebrates my whiteness and he celebrates my white culture. And kingdom values can infiltrate my whiteness and my white culture and your brownness and your blackness.

That is the beauty of God. And so I just want us to remember that he modeled for us that differences are not bad but differences are beautiful and holistic and paint the bigger picture. We are raised in such a culture of thinking that if you're like me, then you're right. You're correct.

If you think like me, then you're correct and that's good. If you're different than me, that's bad. That's weaker or less than. That shouldn't.

That should be dismissed and not paid attention to. You should probably adapt to be more like me and my culture because it's the right way. Jesus didn't even do that to us. He made space and he made room.

And lastly, we believe that black lives matter. I'm glad to hear some cheers in the room on that. Black lives matter is a very simple statement and it's a very kingdom statement. And I believe that it reflects a tiny portion of the heart of God for the black community.

And I know that some of you are going, okay, I wonder if she doesn't understand about black lives matter like the organization. She doesn't understand what she is endorsing right now by saying black lives matter on the microphone in church. And I just want to set you at ease that I am aware. I know.

Okay. So, black lives matter, the organization, if this is going to help you, I'll just say it. Not kingdom values. Very opposite of kingdom values.

100%. But let's come back and not be petty church. Black lives matter. The statement.

If you go, I just can't say it because then people are going to be, they're going to think I'm affiliating with the organization. And how does that sounds like the church, doesn't it? Isn't that a bummer that I say that and we all go, yeah, that sounds like the church. Why is that what the church sounds like?

So, okay, if you really can't get there, okay, every black life matters. Black lives matter to me. Black lives matter to Jesus. And therefore they matter to, like, what is going to help you sleep that night?

But do black lives matter and can we say that? I don't want to be so concerned that if I say a kingdom statement, oh no, people are going to think I'm affiliated with a certain organization. Absolutely not. I want to be known for what I'm for, not for what I'm against.

And the church is just rallying so often against what we're against. And we are wounding people. And I know that's not what we're trying to do, but we're creating this chasm in this distance. And we are cutting off an opportunity for connection and relationship.

Black lives matter is such a simple statement. When you think about it, there is an entire community that has rallied around the most basic, principle of human life mattering. That in and of itself, that the slogan and the anthem coming from the black community right now is black lives matter, that in and of itself should make us weep. That when we're thinking, okay, what can we say that is going to get their attention and we are at the most basic form of human value and worth, that it's just that they matter?

What this should cause us to halt to attention? Wait a second. As a white individual, what do I not understand that you are just saying that your life simply matters just like everyone else's? This should break us, Church.

I know that it breaks the Father's heart. I just want us to sit in that for one more second. I just, I couldn't move forward, but I'm like, man, if we can just get this. I don't want us to be people that just move past things and take things at face value and discredit movements easily.

I want us to pause and look deeper as children of God. What is behind this? What do I not understand? Getting curious about the things that we have maybe not experienced personally or firsthand or haven't maybe known someone that's experienced it doesn't mean it's not real and true.

And the reality that so many of our brothers and sisters wake up to every single morning that their lives matter. Oh, man, God, give us your heart. Jesus, give us your heart for this. Lord, we need your help.

I just, we have to just pause. We need your help, God, to understand the value that you put on human life. We need your eyes to see Jesus. Help us, God.

We just open our hearts right now to you. We just say, help me to see what I haven't seen before. Help me to see it the way that you see it, Jesus. Thank you.

I want to just one last thing that I want to say and then we're going to look at the Bible. That's where we want to stay for the night. But if you are looking at this topic and you are wanting to engage more, I want to encourage you one, we have a resource that is on our website. Maybe you've seen it before when we sent out that email about this topic before we have changed that resource.

We've updated it. Some of the things that we had on there as things have become more and more political. Some of the accounts that we even had on there no longer reflect values that we align with. And so we reworked a lot of that.

And even in the last few months, there's been some new resources that have come up that are so good and so quality. And so that resource is really, really good. I want to encourage you to look at it. If you want to dive further in, there's a bunch of conversations with pastors on YouTube that you can watch and podcasts, books, documentaries, scriptures, and how to reference God's heart on this.

And so I just want to say that before we forget. And second, I want to encourage us towards history. And we talked about this before. And I'm going to just give you a list of prompter questions.

And if it's helpful, you could write down some of this list if you are wanting to learn more for yourself. But these are some questions to ask and learn about through history to understand better what's happening culturally and what has been happening. Okay, so I'm just going to read these. And then we're going to transition.

One, how recent were blatantly racist laws in place? How recent were they? What effect do those recent laws have on the black community, even a few decades later? Why are cities still so segregated?

What is redlining and why did it happen? What is Jim Crow's segregation and how do we still see it today? Why are inner city schools so severely underfunded? What was the war on drugs truly about?

What is going on with mass incarceration? Why is it that my white son has one in 23 likelihood to go to prison? But that if I had a black son, he would have a one in four likelihood of going to prison. What's going on here?

If you include the wealth of all black multi-millionaire athletes, movie stars, billionaire celebrities of all of the black community collectively, how come they have one tenth of the wealth that white families have collectively? We need to be curious. We need to dig deeper. And those are some questions.

If you're hungry to learn more, that will get you started in learning more of what the storyline has been so that you don't feel like you're coming in the middle. But you can learn more of what's happened. So good. What I want to do is pick up where Katie left off and just talk about how did Jesus respond to racism?

And I think that that's important for us to know. How did Jesus respond? What was his opinion? What was his stance?

And before I do, I think some of us might be going, but I'm not racist. Or I'm not like a social justice person. So it's kind of like not my thing. I'm not really passionate about social justice.

I'm like more of a worshiper, not a social justice person. Right? Jesus, like Katie said, was not about what he was against unless he was talking about the religious. But he was more addressing what he was for.

And as people, we get to be less about, I'm not racist. And more about, am I kingdom? Do I follow the way of Jesus in the topic of racism? In the topic of social justice, do I carry myself the way that Jesus does?

Not do I have thoughts that are racist? Now, I just want to acknowledge here that Adam and Eve in the very beginning, they sin. And their sin is the knowledge of good and evil. They already knew the knowledge of good and evil.

But eating of the fruit, put the stake in the ground that they were going to decide what the knowledge of good and evil was. And from that place of I decide what the knowledge of good and evil is, is meism that started to explode. Because now I'm the one, me, defines what is good. And from meism comes, classism.

My class is good, therefore others is bad. Racism, my race is good, therefore other races is bad. And so on and so forth. And so if you think that you don't have any racist bias, you were born with racist bias.

And your soul and your body are still in process. And there's still a little bit of cleanup that the Holy Spirit is doing from the inside as he's starting to renew our minds to change the way that we think. So if you think that I'm not racist, that's great that you don't think that you're racist, but I've got to tell, I've got to break it to you. You have thoughts that you've been unconscious about, that you didn't realize you had, that God wants to weed out of you.

And I'm not talking just to my white brothers and sisters. That racism goes from every color to other colors. And so this isn't just, this is a message for all of us to get his heart. Because he was in a culture and he was in a time that was very racist and very on edge culturally.

Who's at Luke 10? Nobody? Because I haven't even talked about Luke 10. Surprised you didn't know that?

While you're turning to Luke 10, I want to just acknowledge here that I believe that this topic of cross-cultural reconciliation is not a flash in the pan, little topic that Jesus passively hit once or twice. This topic is all throughout the New Testament. All throughout the New Testament. Here I'm going to just go through a couple of examples.

Jesus first and last Passovers. He comes into the temple and starts throwing tables as an accusation against the racism that was fueling greed in the temple. Then Jesus first trips home to Nazareth. He's taken up to the cliff.

And he's by a mob. A mob is trying to throw him down a cliff because he confronts his friends and family from his hometown of their racism. That's within the first couple weeks of Jesus' ministry. Then Jesus is from a multicultural city called Nazareth.

And his future disciple says in a classism mindset, could anything good come from Nazareth? At the end of the age, Jesus says, nation will rise against nation and ethnicity will rise against ethnicity. What we're experiencing right now, a war between ethnicity and ethnicity is what Jesus prophesied about. It's been happening since century after century.

And it's just getting more and more heated because we're getting closer and closer to the day of the Lord. Jesus is praying in John 17 for unity. Then Jesus, the last thing, oh my goodness, the last thing that Jesus says before he ascends into heaven. Let's read it.

But you will receive power. We know this. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses to Jerusalem and Judea, the Jews.

You'll be my witnesses to Jews. Then you'll be my witnesses to biracial Jews, Samaritans. Then you're going to be witnesses to the ends of the earth, Gentiles. Now, this statement is quite the statement if you understand the culture in the first century for the Jews.

It was common understanding and belief among the Jews that the whole reason why Gentiles and Samaritans were alive was to add fuel to the fires of hell. They believed that the whole reason why Gentiles and Samaritans even were breathing is to add fuel to the fires of hell. That's what Jesus was entering into. It was it was uncustomary for Jewish doctors to help Gentile women give birth to babies because it was frowned upon to have one more Gentile enter into the world.

And then Jesus speaks to his disciples and says, go to Samaria and then go to the Gentiles. Book of Acts, a racist mob of Jews tries to stone Paul and Barnumus in Acts 13. Acts 15, they're having a medium at Jerusalem about what do we do with these Gentiles. Romans 10, there's no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord as Lord of all.

The books of James and Ephesians, Galatians, fam. Oh my goodness. Literally, the Apostle Paul is confronting the leader of the global church publicly for his racism. The Apostle Paul is confronting Peter, the rock that is going to, the church is going to be built on for his blatant racism at Antioch.

The Bible ends in Revelation with every tribe, nation and tongue. In unity, worshiping a brown king. Jesus as the king is the leader of every single tribe, nation and tongue. Every cultural group is his and he calls him, he actually takes pride in every single one of the tribes and tongues and nations.

And he looks at his people, unified and worship at the end of the story. And he says, oh, this is what I was dreaming of, them to be one and unified under my leadership. I believe that God is calling us to have heaven come to earth. That'd be the prayer of our hearts.

Luke 10, are you guys ready? Luke 10, it's the parable of the good Samaritan. The history behind this is that in 700 BC, the Syrian army came into Israel and conquered Israel. And so Jews got exiled out of Israel, but there was Jews in the northern kingdom.

And the Jews in the northern kingdom began to intermarry with the pagan Gentiles. And when the Jews got back from the exile, they realized that their northern Jewish brothers and sisters had slept with the pagan Gentiles. And those northern Jews were the Samaritans. And for 700 years, hatred brewed year after year between the biracial Samaritans and the Jews.

And so Jesus steps in, and before we get into Luke 10, I know I keep on putting it off. I know. I want you to turn to Luke 9. Yep.

Luke 9, 57, says this, as they were going along the road, oh, nope, 51, I apologize. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him who went in the village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him because his face was set towards Jerusalem.

And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, hey, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them? Hmm. It's like, I wonder what Jesus is going to say to this. But he turned and he rebuked them and they went on to another village.

And then at the bottom, it says, some manuscripts add, do you not know the manner of spirit you are of for the son of man came not to destroy people's lives but to save them? So take this as context. About a week ago, Jesus and his disciples get run out of a Samaritan village. The people that they're supposed to hate, they run them out of the village.

They get out of here. We don't want you. And Jesus is now having a conversation with a Jewish lawyer. And behold, in verse 25, 10, 25, behold, the lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, teacher, what shall I do and to inherit eternal life?

And he said to him, what is written in the law? How do you read it? And then the lawyer said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, with all your mind, with all of your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this, and you will live.

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? And Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. And it continues. And we know the parable of the Samaritan.

A priest comes past, walks past him. Then what happens is a Levite comes past, and he passes him. And then a Samaritan comes back. A good Samaritan?

Think about that phrase for a Jew. A good Samaritan? What are you even talking about, Jesus? Jesus, what did you just say?

You made the Samaritan the hero of the story. The lawyer is picturing himself as the one that's rescuing the person, the Jew, that's in a pile of blood. And Jesus says it's a Samaritan, but doesn't Jesus realize those are the people that mistreated him last week? What is Jesus thinking?

I wonder what the disciples are like, Jesus is what? Wait, I think you got it wrong. The Samaritans were the robbers. And you're, wait, do you know what Jesus is doing?

He's addressing the bias of the lawyer. Do you know what the lawyer is doing? He's a very good defense attorney. And we're all born with that defense attorney thing inside of us.

Arguing and ready to go, I am righteous. I'm good. I'm not. I'm not racist.

No, I've got a good defense attorney in me measuring myself against the law. But I want to justify myself. Who's my neighbor? Because as I see my neighbor, my neighbor is my brother of Israel.

And Jesus is going, no, no, no, no, no. Follow the way of the Samaritan in this story. Oh, that's so... man, that's offensive.

Follow the way of the Samaritan. And then Jesus starts unpacking, hey, it seems like you need to humble yourself and go low because God gives grace to the humble. We all have to actually notice, name, nurture, just like what Katie was talking about, and allow the Lord to expose anything that doesn't match up with the mind-set of the kingdom of heaven. And then he says, this is who you love.

So you love people that are different than you. That's what the Samaritan was doing. Because he's helping a Jew out. So you love them.

And then Jesus goes on and tells them how to love with compassion close enough that you can actually touch the wounds. Where you can pour oil on their wounds, that close type of compassion. That type of sacrificial servanthood where you're putting him on the donkey for the rest of the 18-mile trip from Jerusalem to Jericho. That sacrificial generosity of I'm going to put him up in an inn and I'm going to take care of him for a couple days.

I believe Jesus is teaching us what long suffering love looks like. And he's reframing our neighbor to not be someone that looks like us, has the same culture, likes the same music, dresses the same, has the same social class. But he's going, your neighbor is the one that has the different culture, the different ethnicity, the different race, the different color of skin, the different style, the different type of house, the different type of architecture. That's who your neighbor is.

The second commandment of love, your neighbor, was never meant to be, love the person that looks like you and acts like you. Jesus is saying, no, love the person that's different than you, not even the one that's different, but your enemy. The one that you grew up hating, that's who you're supposed to love. Now I'm not saying that you hate people that are different than you.

Because you could discount everything that I just said because you would just say, well I don't hate them. I'm just indifferent. Totally sounded like Jesus. I'm just indifferent.

Like it's fine, I'm fine with them. That doesn't sound like Jesus. God is calling us to step closer. Luke 4, or no, John 4, I'm sorry, John 4.

John 4, we know this story. Turn there with me. It's the woman at the well. Another Samaritan.

Jesus is hanging out around noon at a well. He decided instead of going around Samaria, which would have added a day to their trip, he was going to go through Samaria to the demise of his disciples, and then he said, disciples, I want you to go inside Samaria to get some lunch. And so now Jesus is hanging out by himself by the well. And he sees a woman walk up.

And all of the women of Samaria would go out and many of us know this would go and get water earlier in the day because noon was really hot. But there's one woman that chose to go at noon because she was an adulterous woman. And there was shame that she had from her own community where she couldn't even show herself among her peers. And Jesus sees her walk up and he's moved with compassion.

And he's moved with empathy. And he starts a conversation. Now we have to pause and just acknowledge. The whole reason why Jews hate Samaritans is because they co-mingled with Gentiles.

And so this Samaritan woman literally represents everything. She epitomizes everything that the Jews hated about the Samaritans. And Jesus steps close and starts a conversation. And then she in the conversation tries to bring some conflict.

Like what you think doesn't, and we think that, right? And Jesus just goes right through the conflict that she was trying to create. And he says present revealing his heart and who he is. And then I want to pick up at the end of that portion of the story in verse 39, John 4 verse 39, look at this.

Many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them. And he stared there two days.

And many more believe because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe. For we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Not the Savior of the Jews.

They had a revelation, Savior of the world after they spent a couple of days with him. Okay. So you have the conversation with the woman. You shouldn't even be talking to a woman, but especially that woman.

Then she's those in town as an evangelist and brings back all of the people that she's an outcast with. And then they invite Jesus and his disciples to sleep at their houses. Okay, time out. And eat their food.

Wake up in their bedroom and play with their kids in the morning before breakfast. A Jewish rabbi and a bunch of his scraggly teenage disciples that grew up where they had parents that taught them to hate Samaritans. They had parents that had political stances about Samaritans. They had parents and grandparents and a history of mindsets around the very people that they were hanging out with that three-year-old Samaritan little girl playing dolls on the ground.

God's calling us to get closer. God's calling us to step in when it feels uncomfortable. God's calling us to not distance ourselves but to step in near and close and understand these are my neighbors and I'm destined to be in family with people that look different than me. The only way that we step into empathy like Jesus is to not avoid Samaria.

The only way that we actually step into mourning with those who mourn is if we sit at kitchen tables. Go to houses, sit with people that look different than us. That maybe we grew up judging. Maybe we grew up thinking they just, there's so much dysfunction there.

I don't like their music. It's evil. Being right is not the goal of being a Christian. Becoming like Jesus and becoming love is the goal of being a Christian.

God is calling us to become love and weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn the only way that we can step into the lament that our brothers and sisters in our nation have experienced, our black brothers and sisters and our brown brothers and sisters have experienced these injustices that we don't understand. And the only way that we can even step into understanding is if we step closer to them and we actually hear real stories and we hear how they're processing things as traumas are getting triggered over and over and over again. Can we weep with those who weep or do we have so much privilege that we can just go on as if nothing's ever happened? That there's no problems.

I can literally in my privilege, I can wake up every single day not thinking about the color of my skin. I don't have to think about it at all. I don't have to think about the injustices that are being done to other people because if I don't have a kingdom, I don't see them as my people. But God is calling us as a people.

Greek, Jew, black, white, male, female. We're part of a people that is an alien to this world. We're part of a different kingdom, a different culture, a different family. And so God has called us family with people that look different than us.

And so if my brother or sister is experiencing mourning and I'm acting like they don't exist or that there's no mourning that's even happening or that their mourning is an overreaction, I need to step in closer to see maybe what my brother or sister has experienced and what they're facing on a day-to-day basis. God is calling us to listen and learn and lean in as a people. God is calling us closer to one another, to not avoid Samaria. How would it feel if it were me and my family?

What if I was always suspected of shoplifting every time I walked into a mall? What if because I drove a nice car it was assumed I must be an athlete? Or maybe I just stole it if I'm driving that nice of the car? What if I had to arrive early to church so I wouldn't have to walk through the neighborhood and have someone call the cops because I was suspicious because of the color of my skin?

What if I had to think twice about attending Grove because it is near where Philando Castile was killed with his daughter in the backseat? What if my parents named me a white man's name so that I would get an interview when I sent in my application for a job? What if my real estate agent assumed I only wanted to live in North because of the color of my skin? Or that I was only interested in Section 8 housing?

What if my children dreamed of having different skin tone when they looked in the mirror because of what culture taught them? What if I was consistently stopped and asked what I was doing on this side of town? Which is where I live? What if every story of police brutality triggered past trauma and memories of my cousin's death?

What if I always had to worry that a routine traffic stop could escalate into an incident? Harassment, arrest, or worse? What if I was assumed guilty before being proven innocent? What if my husband, son, or grandson was believed to be dangerous and could be killed because of it?

What if my family moved into a nice neighborhood with excitement? We were confronted by neighbors and told that they don't want to know us, they don't like us, and wish we weren't here because of the color of our skin. A baby passed away, drowned in a pool, and there's a funeral that happens, and the church people come to the funeral, and in passing they have a conversation with the family. And it was just a passive thing, but they said, man, if only you had put a gate around the pool, then that probably wouldn't have happened.

That's what many of us have done in the church in America. As the family as mourning on the front row, we're saying, what if you wouldn't have done that? If they wouldn't have done that, then when we should be sitting next to the mourning family with tears streaming down our face as the people of God. God is calling us as a people of empathy.

These statements aren't just random statements, they're real stories from people in our community, from people in the church. We didn't make these up. They're stories that we've heard from our black brothers and sisters. This is our moment as a body to follow in the footsteps of our leader.

We get to follow him with joy. It's not a flash in the pan social justice issue. This is one of the topics of our day, and we get to make it not political. We get to make it a kingdom thing, not a political thing.

We get to swear allegiance to our king leader and not to a political party. We get to swear allegiance to the one that wept outside of tubes. God's calling us as people that love our neighbor. That's different and that is set up to be our enemy in our culture.

I want to wrap up, but I just want to acknowledge that I know in this conversation, it can become really overwhelming to think of how do I engage? How do I be a part of this conversation? How do I even be a part of change? I just want to simplify again what we've already said tonight, and that is to start with learning our history next to connect with real people, not just people we watch online.

Real people in our living rooms and across dinner tables and hearing real stories of real experiences and then getting God's heart through the word. And through prayer. God is not looking for the next activist necessarily or for the perfect social media post or the person who's going to get really angry about injustice or he's not looking for the guilt driven change maker. The word says that the eyes of the Lord are searching to and fro across the foundations of the entire earth, searching longing for a heart that is fully his or a heart that is fully yielded.

When our hearts are his, when our gaze and our affections and our attention is his, he can give us his heart. We can feel what he feels and see what he sees and experience and understand what he understands. And that's where change happens. When we are changed.

When our marriage is changed. When our parenting is changed. And our children's worldview is changed. Then our schools, our churches, our workplaces, our neighborhoods can be changed.

When we're changed. We're going to commission. Let's stand up. Jesus were reminded of your commission that you sent your disciples out with.

Your mission that you were going to accompany them on by the power of the Holy Spirit. To go to their own people. To go to the people that they hated. To go to those that were different than them.

Lord, we thank you. That as your sons and daughters, you've called us to be humble. So that you can give us grace. To expose lies that destroy us and others.

To uproot everything that hinders love. So that we can actually be connected to your heart that you have for others. That you have for our neighbors. So Lord, we just declare as a people that we don't want to be spectators as there's culture wars.

But we want to be sitting on the front pew. Be with those who weep. Morning with those who mourn. Being people of empathy that go to the well when nobody shows up.

People that would go and follow the way of the Samaritan in the story of love. Lord, this is our yes that we give you. To step closer, wherever we are. I just declare over this group that there is no shame wherever you are in noticing, naming or nurturing.

Wherever you are in noticing, bias, or racist thoughts or mindsets. Wherever you are in naming the lies or nurturing the truth of God's heart. Wherever you're at, there's no shame. It's okay where you're at.

But we all get to take steps forward. It's a Lord for me. You guys can do this yourselves. For me, Lord, I want to take another step into your heart on this topic.

We love you and in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.