Crossover Text: Acts 8:26-40 It happened one night before store closing time. I was working in a retail store called Crazy Chester s that sells women s clothing on Laurier Avenue as my part time job to help me subsidize my tuition fees. I was a student at St. Paul University that year in 1995. A drunk man went in the store demanding me to sell one of the dresses displayed on the rack. But all he had was a few coins in his pocket and I politely told him that his money was not enough to buy a dress. To which he responded in a loud voice with his fingers pointing at me You little Chinese girl I need to buy this dress and you will sell it to me! I told him that his behaviour was not acceptable and asked him to leave the store or else I d call the police. As soon as he heard the word police, he became agitated and said you little Chink go back to China where you belong! Of course he did not know that I was Filipino. But that s exactly the point of being a racist. You label someone based on their looks or colour of their skin. There were no other customers at that time so I called the manager who was in the back room checking the inventory. The manager came to my rescue but the drunk man laid down on the floor and he said he will not get up until we give him the dress that he wants. I called 911 and told the incident to the dispatcher. When the man heard that police officers are coming to the store, he got up and left. Admit it or not, the issue on racism is widespread has always been present in almost all sectors in our society including the church. Racism is present in both explicit terms, as verbal and physical abuse, but also in less explicit ways, more hidden, covert and unconscious. Racism is both a personal and a communal sin, a wound that seems unable to be healed. In 2009, a few months after being settled in Osgoode-Kars Pastoral Charge, I was requested by the Montreal & Ottawa Conference Executive to participate in a 3 -day Racial Justice Train the Trainers event in Toronto. Racial justice training for all active ministry personnel was mandated at the 39th General Council 2006. The proposal came out of a long history of the United Church's engagement with issues of Anti-Racism. Racial justice training is one the many efforts to help the church continue to live out its principles. Today I would like to do a teaching and learning sermon on racial justice. I want to preach on this topic partly because the church hardly ever talks about it or probably do not think it is an issue we need to talk about. I am fairly confident that most of you who belong to this church would not consider yourselves racist or if most of you are,
I will not be standing here, of an Asian origin as your minister. I know it is not a simple topic to discuss but we need to address this issue here and now. To understand what racial justice means, we must first understand two important words: race and justice. Race is often determined by one s skin color and what you look like in general. Your race could be white, black, yellow, brown or red or a mix. These are categories society has developed to classify people into groups. We should note however, that race is different from ethnicity, although the two are often confused. Race is about what you look like; ethnicity is about your culture, like religion and language. For example, your race could be Asian if your parents are from an Asian country, while your ethnicity could be Canadian if you were raised in Canada. Most people view racism primarily as the result of individual action: personal prejudice or stereotyping, and intentional acts of discrimination by individuals. However, racism is also defined as a set of societal, cultural, and institutional beliefs and practices that subordinate and oppress one race for the benefit of another. Justice is a rather simple word to understand. We know that a simple definition of justice is fairness. The Hebrew word for justice is mishpat. Its most basic meaning is to treat people fairly and rightfully. It also means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race or social status. Anyone who does the same wrong should be given the same penalty. But mishpat means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing. It also means giving people their rights. Mishpat is giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care. Put together, racial justice means having policies, beliefs, attitudes, practices and actions that promote or advocate fair and equal treatment of people of all races. Racial justice is both an individual and a communal responsibility that involves all sectors of society government, school, religious, community. To talk about Racial Justice is an opportunity to name this wound and seek to find the balm to heal it. Our story in Acts is one of many stories of racial justice in the Bible. On this road in the desert Philip meets an unnamed Ethiopian eunuch, who was evidently a person of faith. We know what an Ethiopian is a black African man whose origin is from Ethiopia. We know what a eunuch is - a man who had been castrated. In the eyes of others, he was a half-man. This particular Ethiopian eunuch was a court official serving the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. Now, while rulers entrusted eunuchs with certain key positions, eunuchs were pretty much shunned by
the rest of society. They were outcasts. The Bible is very clear on the subject of eunuchs and worship. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, eunuchs were forbidden to worship in the house of God. In this story, this Ethiopian eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home. I m pretty sure that the religious authorities in Jerusalem did not welcome this Black, African, gentile, Ethiopian, Eunuch, in the Temple. I can just imagine him riding back home, upset that he wasn t welcome in the temple because of his identity as a eunuch, reading of all things, the book of the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit tells Philip to run after the chariot and have heard that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading the Suffering Servant of God, who was cut off from the people of God. It was no accident he was reading this. Surely, he was trying to figure out why he himself was being cut off from the people of God because he was different. The eunuch must be reading this part in Isaiah: Sing, O barren one who did not bear; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! and do not let the eunuch say, I am just a dry tree.i will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off Thus says the Most High God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel Philip asked him: Do you understand what you are reading? To which the eunuch replied: I m afraid not. I need someone to guide me. Philip came and sat with him in the eunuch s chariot. Suddenly the labels that prevented this man from full inclusion as part of God s family are overcome and asks Philip: What is to prevent me from being baptized? Philip did not hesitate. Philip jumps into the water and baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch. No, messing around, no consulting the rules, no calling the church authority to see if it s all right. What can we learn from this radical act? Maybe instead of talking and arguing among ourselves, we, like Philip ought to just jump into the water and trust the Spirit to take care of the details. We need to sit down and dialogue instead of imposing that our doctrines or dogmas or our skin colour is much better and superior than others. On his way rejoicing, this unnamed Ethiopian eunuch, became the first Christian in Africa, and is the patron saint of Ethiopia. Growing up I always heard that this story is called the Conversion of The Ethiopian Eunuch. I was always told that the message of this text was that we should tell everyone we meet about Jesus because in doing so we might save them. We might change them into being us. But after thinking about it, I began I think this story from Acts is not the Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, but the conversion of
Phillip. Philip understood for the first time how God s love is universal and inclusive. The nameless Ethiopian eunuch was a triple outsider -- a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority -- and his story shows that the early Christians welcomed all kinds of outcasts, regardless of race, gender identity or other differences. Through the teachings of Jesus, the dividing wall that separated us has been taken down, and a new humanity, a new creation has been made in Christ. Why is talking about racial justice important? Because if we think we are better than others, if we proclaim that we are at the centre of God s purposes, we lose our humility, and we lose sight of God s grace. The sad truth of the church s history, is the Christian church largely acted to baptize the colonial racism as it ventured into Africa, Asia, North and South America. It saw the indigenous peoples of these lands not as human beings, but as an inferior, barbaric race, defined only by the colour of their skin. The tragedy of the Christian church s involvement in the subjection and slavery of much of Africa was its close relationship with the political and economic powers. Rachel Chakasim remembers the first thing that happened to her on her first day at a residential school was to re-mould her image: I remember how they took our clothes, the clothes that we wore when we left, and they also cut our hair. We had short hair from there on. And they put a chemical on our hair, which was some kind of a white powder. Racism is all around us and it will continue to flourish if we will not put a stop to it. It s time to act. Where racism seeks to view some people as inferior, the truth of the gospel says we are all made in the image of God; the justice of the gospel says that God shows no partiality; the peace of the gospel calls us practices of reconciliation and forgiveness; and the faith of the gospel reveals that we acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. To dream like Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed. I have a dream he proclaimed, a dream of sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners sitting at the table of brotherhood, a dream where children will not be judged by the colour of their skin Marci Ien, a black broadcast journalist claims she was pulled over because she is black. Marci Ien, a co-host for CTV's "The Social," wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail alleging racism played a role in her recent traffic stop outside her home. "For the third time in eight months, I was being questioned by a police officer -- and I had broken no law," Ien wrote in the
piece published on Monday. "If you are black in Canada, you are subject to a different standard and, often, seemingly, different laws." Sisters and brothers, to be the church today is to be healing communities, transformed by the lives, gifts and spirits of their own people, and to uphold the interconnectedness of life as a whole. Most importantly, we need each other to advocate racial justice so that when we sing these words we can really mean it: Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood and stone, to heal and strengthen, serve and teach, and live the Word they ve known. Here the outcast and the stranger bear the image of God s face; let us bring an end to fear and danger: all are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place. Thanks be to God. Amen. Sources: http://andygoodliff.typepad.com/my_weblog/2015/09/racial-justice-sunday-a-sermon.html Pastordawn.com, Even Eunuchs and Foreigners are Welcome! Easter 5B Acts 8:26-40 Racial Justice Training, United Church of Canada website