Beloved Church

I ate looted breadsticks. 

When I was a child, in the days following the L.A. Riots of 1992 my Dad went to help clean up the wake of the looting and rioting. He brought home a case of breadsticks that had been given to him by a grocery store manager. 

I love bread. But I could barely choke down half a breadstick. They tasted like garlic and guilt. 

For weeks I had been catching glimpses of the video of an unarmed Rodney King being beaten by police officers.

To my 9-year-old eyes the brutality was obvious. If police were supposed to be the good guys, why were they being so mean? 

When the police officers were acquitted, I was confused.  

When the angry mob began pulling white people out of their cars at an intersection a block from my house, I never felt paler. Pale from fear, and pale by birth. 

I remember being thankful that my Dad wasn’t blonde. Maybe he could pass as Latino while he drove around, or when he took up a defensive post at our church ministry offices with a garden hose. 

When the smoke settled, and breadsticks were eaten, the ironic catchphrase on the school playground was, “can’t we all just get along?” 

Following the devastation of the riots, the justice system tried again, and two of the four re-indicted officers were sentenced to thirty months in prison. 

I am not anti-police. I am anti abuse of power. 

While this is a highly politicized issue, I tend to view this as a Church problem. A capital C Church problem. 

I am my father’s daughter, and the great love of his life was the Bride of Christ. The Church. In spite of her flaws, and sin, and blasphemies. He devoted his life to empowering the Church and planting new ones. I have inherited this as the lens through which I see. 

Once as a teenager, I was riding in the car with my Dad. I was on a tangent about how fake a particularly large “mega church” was. How all they cared about was money and attendance numbers. How they sank millions into their enormous building while neglecting the poor and—

He cut me off, “Laura. Stop. You are speaking about the Bride of Christ. Be careful what you say about her.” 

My Dad was a gentle man. He was unfailingly patient. His corrections lacked edges. So when he did address me with any kind of sharpness, I heeded and listened. The correction immediately sank into my soul. 

The Bride of Christ: Never perfect. Always beloved.

It is to you, beloved Church, that I address today. I believe in you. I believe you can be the epicenter (to use pandemic terms) of this change.

The churches of my adulthood have been predominantly white spaces. I’ve sought out a multi-racial church to attend, but they are a unicorn and hard to find. 

Anyone that knows me well (and I mean really knows me), knows that racial reconciliation, specifically within the Church, is something I am passionate about. This is not a new “bandwagon” for me. I resent the assumption that these are new issues conjured up by the media to distract and divide. None of this is new. 

For years, when I would bring up the divisions, and the racism that I observed in the church— the eyes of my white brothers and sisters would glaze over, and their mouths would habitually form into a polite smile. The silent nodding would commence until my words would fizzle and trail off… nevermind.

I found it confusing and disheartening that it was so rare I would get any level of engagement from believers on this. From good, godly, Jesus loving people. 

It is not that I always said or did the right thing. I have fallen short in many ways throughout my life to stand up against racism. I have been loudly called out, and gently corrected. I am still wrestling with the areas of my life that have been hurtful to communities of color, many of which were done in the name of Jesus Himself. 

What am I to do? I am the daughter of what has been labeled: “White Saviorism,” and “Colonialism.” Can my Daddy really be reduced to that? Did he cause harm as he sought to do good?

I wish he were here to defend himself from my own mind.

The sense of betrayal is real. This paradoxical feeling has become common in my psyche, as I am the descendant of Pacifists and am now married to a military man. Oh the irony. These intersections, I feel, have lent a level of balance to my life.  A balance I see sorely lacking these days. 

In all of my processing the intricacies and complicated nuances of these discussions, I have come to the conclusion that the component and context of relationship is absolutely crucial. 

It is easy to fling around Bible verses against homosexuality in careless aggression. That is, until you have to look a close friend or family member in the eye who identifies themself within such a category. The harm is reflected back in their gaze. Is it worth it?

Our God Himself works within the context of relationship as He Himself is three. 

Church in its purest form, is about community. It is the place where you build relationships that are founded on God’s Word. If, in that place of godly relationship building, you only come into contact with people that are similar to you, there is a very good chance that your understanding of God’s Word, as well as any of these important issues will be grossly limited. Malnourished. Superficial. Incomplete.

It is the relationships forged at the heart of my Dad’s ministry that bring redemption and even intercession to the “White Savior” label that tries to stick to my father in his grave. Because it is through relationship, that motivations are checked. People won’t be reduced to projects. Issues are given eyes, and faces, and hearts. Pride is not tolerated. Active listening happens because real love and care is there. 

I am encouraged lately because I see the Church finally beginning to acknowledge that we have a problem. The glazed over expression is animating, and I am exhilarated by the interaction I am observing and experiencing. 

The foundations of the earth are being laid bare. (Psalm 18:15b)

The peeling back is happening and it is incredibly painful. 

What I find most discouraging, is the pharisaical tendencies and habits that are instinctively activated. 

I see the church clinging to its pharisaical robes and insisting they are robes of righteousness. With their hems dipped in blood they wave their arms and argue that the mere act of even suggesting that racism still exists is anti-Christ, and anti- Church, and anti- family, and anti-country.

This is unreal to me because Jesus literally launched his ministry on a platform of anti-racism.

In Luke 4:14-30, directly following His temptation in the desert, Jesus stands at the front of his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, and reads the words of the prophet Isaiah: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

After reading this aloud he declares, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (v. 21)

The people were amazed at the authority of his presence. 

Then, he goes on to state that although there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, Elijah was specifically sent by God to a widow of a foreign region. Also, there were many in Israel with leprosy, but only a Syrian was healed by Elisha. (vs.25-27)

After Jesus said this, the people in the synagogue grew furious and they tried to throw him off a cliff. This is the start of his three year ministry.

It strikes me that, only when Jesus begins to speak out against the racism that permeated Jewish culture in those days that the people grew enraged. They stopped listening, and tried to kill him. 

This is what I see happening today. 

I urge you brother’s and sisters, do not miss this divine revelation of God’s heart because it looks different than what has worked for you in the past. 

Do not be so defensive and protective of your way of life that you hinder what God is trying to do through this movement! 

Do not be so focused on looking for government conspiracy theories that you miss the opportunity for a revival of the heart of the church. A repentance that has the capacity to shift the entire Bride of Christ into a depth of Christlikeness that it has never experienced in this modern age. 

Don’t get so caught up in the noise that you miss the holy whispers.

If you think that church was good and just fine as it was, I challenge you to re-think that. 

In my church-going life, I have seen the American flag being used as a gag to silence. I see this done by my fellow Christians who have mistaken patriotism for Christianity, and have held the Constitution up as equal to the Bible. They are not the same thing. Only one is God breathed, and divinely inspired. 

We have made the unborn our idol. On its altar we have sacrificed our vote, and succumbed to blind partisanship with disregard to any of the other voices of the oppressed that have been crying out for generations. I’m not saying leaning left is the answer, but if we are truly after God’s heart, we must be more than simply pro-birth. 

We have set up the nuclear family as our golden calf. We are fearful of anything that might challenge our white picket fence theology. We have stiff-armed entire communities so as to not be tainted by their sin, while ours is left to run rampant. 

We have become managers of behavior rather than lovers without condition. We neglect to pursue relationships outside of our whitewashed boxes with the Ten Commandments neatly displayed on the outside. We sever relationships when the rules aren’t followed, and then click our tongues, and shake our heads in wonder at the rebellion. 

What many of us do not realize is, “Thou Shalt Not Use the Name of the Lord Your God in Vain,” is more than not using the name of Jesus as an expletive, or a careless “Oh my God.” It is saying and doing things in His name, that are actually in direct opposition of who He is. 

Too long church. 

I have been called divisive. And secular. I have been told I’m overreacting. I have been given the condescending pat on the head and sent back to my lane. 

Whatever lane that is. Don’t they know I’m too free for that? 

How can I be divisive to something that is already divided? I’m simply a voice saying, “watch where you step!” Lest you careen into the cavernous abyss— the crack in the Church’s foundation that swallows whole the voices of the oppressed. The truth tellers. The witness bearers. 

Maybe if we cover it up with boisterous patriotism, and odes to those that sacrifice for our country. To that I say— how dare you dishonor my husband’s service to our country with your trite, superficial freedom.

Love is not blind.

I love my children. They are flesh of my flesh. I would die for each one of them. I also will correct them when I see them causing harm. 

Church. We are causing harm. 

My son, with innocent inquisitiveness recently asked whether his best friend, who happens to be Black, is allowed to visit our church because: “I know segregation was outlawed, but don’t know if that was for churches too?”

Mark my words, the division is there, and has been there for generations, and now it is split. It is cracked open and our sins are spilling out into the streets. 

Still, even as we hold our stomachs in an attempt to push our entrails back into our gaping wound we insist that we are not hurt! 

We’re fine. Everything’s fine. 

Church of my heart. Bride of Christ. Body of our Lord. We are not fine. We haven’t been fine for a long time, we just haven’t seen it. We have swept it under a red, white, and blue rug made of bygones.

Not that policy doesn’t matter, because it clearly does. But don’t get so hung up on policy that you refuse to hear. It matters how we handle this. There are Kingdom ramifications.

This conversation needs to continue, and it is crucial that we, the Church, champion it. Lest it is trampled under the Right and Left feet of our culture.   

God wants to bring about a new creation. One that acknowledges the pain and grief that it has caused and perpetuated in the past, but seeks true reconciliation. Not manufactured pretend unity, or a facade of peace at the expense of the tormented. 

Healing. Redemption. Forged in the fires of relationship.

A healing that has never come because the wounds have remained deprived of air.  This is the uncovering. The revelation of the wound.

Let it breathe.