23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
⁓Jesus, Matthew 23.23-24
It is a frightening picture to see those whose ancestors came on the Mayflower and other ships screaming for others to be thrown out of a country that technically does not belong to them, and one they stole from the native inhabitants. Yet, that is where our nation is today.
I suspect that many who attended the Republican National Convention returned to their sanctuaries singing John Oxenham’s famous hymn, “In Christ There Is No East or West.” The third stanza has these profound words, “Join hands, then, people of the faith, whate’er your race may be. All children of the living God are surely kin to me.”
The ongoing rhetoric that spews from the lips of many who say they are believers in Christ does not represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus consistently broke down barriers by crossing lines to expand the kingdom of God. A faith anchored in Judaism became opened to Gentiles. Women were actively a part of the ministry of Jesus, even being the first ones at the tomb on resurrection Sunday. They told the disciples that Jesus had risen!
African American know too well what an exclusionary policy looks and feels like. We worked the fields and lived in shanties. We did not receive a quality education, but endured segregation and mediocre texts from which to learn. We did not get forty acres and a mule. We got a nightmare and successive generations of broken promises. We, too, heard the cries to return to Africa.
Yet, it was African Americans that held this nation accountable to the founding documents that lifted an ideal that was noble. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness (Declaration of Independence).” Whenever given a blank check, we used the founding documents, the noble principles of this nation, to remind our citizens that hypocrisy is unacceptable. If Jesus called it out, we must call it out, every day, every time! Amen.
