Racial Reconciliation and the Church
When I was born again, whether I liked it or not, you became my brother or sister.
The chances are that if I had met you in those early days, I wouldn’t have liked you at all, but there wasn’t anything that I could do about it. The truth is that when I first surrendered to Jesus, I hated white people. I was born and raised in the public housing projects of Buffalo, New York, to a family that was essentially poor (although we didn’t know that we were poor).
By the time I made it to Howard University in Washington, D.C., I knew that I was poor, but my professors told me to say I was ‘‘culturally deprived.’’ I also learned a lot of other fancy ways to say that I was poor, but they didn’t do a thing to change my economic status. When I left, I was still poor.
My life experience made me think that it was okay to feel such hatred toward white people. One day the Lord confronted me with it, and I said, ‘‘Lord, I really don’t want to feel this way.’’ At the time, I was preaching as a guest evangelist for a church in Los Angeles, California. This large black congregation had a total of three white members. When I finished my sermon, a little white lady with gray hair and a beautiful smile came up to me. I was cradling my Bible in one hand and I had my other arm down at my side, and this little lady just put her arms around me and pinned my arms to my sides. Then she began to say, ‘‘I just love you, Brother Garlington.’’
I said, ‘‘Praise God,’’ but at the same time I was doing my best to break free. That woman had a steel grip on me, though, and she wasn’t about to let go. She said, ‘‘You remind me of my son.’’ I thought to myself, You are lying. I know I don’t remind you of your son. She kept right on holding me. I was still wearing the clerical robe I’d worn for the service, and the perspiration I’d generated during the ministry time was making me feel cold. Then that woman started crying and telling me that she wanted me to be her son, and my kindly response was a silent but urgent prayer, God, get me out of here!
The woman just kept hanging on to me and telling me how the message had ministered to her. All of a sudden I felt something begin to seep out of me. When the lady finally let go of me, I realized that I felt differently about her than before she had come up to me. In fact, I felt differently about other white people too. I began to understand that this woman really was my mother in this New Jerusalem. I remembered the Scripture passage where Jesus promised us, ‘‘And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, shall receive many times as much, and shall inherit eternal life’’ (Mt. 19:29). I have mothers all over the world, and they come in all colors. When I see them today, I don’t view them according to the flesh because I don’t know them that way anymore.
We are not again commending ourselves to you but are giving you an occasion to be proud of us, that you may have an answer for those who take pride in appearance, and not in heart. For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:12,14-17).
When you know people ‘‘according to the flesh,’’ then what you see in the flesh will work in you to activate whatever hostility you have in you toward others. God wants you to know people by the spirit, not by the flesh.
God Has Given Us a Ministry
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
There are two words in this passage that deserve special attention. The Greek word translated as ‘‘ministers,’’ diakonia, and the word reconciliation. I loosely translate diakonia to mean ‘‘the service of deacons.’’ God has made all of us deacons of reconciliation.
So God was ‘‘in Christ reconciling Christians to Himself.’’ Wait a minute. Did you notice something odd about that statement? Does the verse say God was reconciling Christians or the world? When you read that passage, did you think ‘‘world’’ or ‘‘us’’? The Bible says God was reconciling the world to Himself. God was in Christ reconciling you before you ever wanted to be reconciled!
If God Was a Republican
If God was a card-carrying member of America’s Republican Party, He would become reconciled with the Democratic Party! Then He would reconcile with the Independent Party. If He was a member of England’s Labour Party, He would reconcile with the Conservative Party there. The fact is that we can’t expect God to join us and our political parties or private agendas He commands all of us to be reconciled to Him!
Was Jesus conservative? Yes. Was He liberal? Yes. Was He radical? Yes. Was He a heretic? To some people, yes. Jesus came to earth and began to upset everything the devil had worked so hard to accomplish among sinful men. Jesus upset religious leaders and institutions in His day, and He still triggers more hostile responses in our day than any other person in the history of mankind. Yet throughout His ministry He was concerned about only one thing: He was determined to obey His Father by reconciling the world to Himself.
God the Father told Jesus, ‘‘I want You to go down to earth for Me. Do You see that guy who cheats people by collecting more taxes than he is supposed to? I want You to go and make friends with him. Okay, do You see those prostitutes over there? Go make friends with them too. Do You see those people standing on the street corner praying loudly in their choir robes? Stay away from them; they are religious. They call themselves Pharisees, but I call them hypocrites. Just hang out with the sinners, Son. You will be okay.’’ God was in Christ, and Christ was in the world.
Twenty years ago, I preached a message entitled, ‘‘Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.’’ I was really interested in Jesus’ coming to get me out of here, but He hasn’t stopped the world yet and I’m still here. It is like He is saying, ‘‘Garlington, if you want it to get better, then make it better.’’ When I asked how I was supposed to do that, I discovered two commissions that we have as Christians. (There are more than two, of course, but I’m just going to focus on two.) Jesus has called us to be light and to be salt.
Light illuminates and rules the darkness, and salt affects everything that it comes into contact with. Salt also provokes thirst. If you take the living Christ with you and begin to live among unsaved people, then sooner or later they will get really thirsty. The more you hang out with them, the thirstier they will get. ‘‘You got any water?’’ ‘‘Yes, but it’s living water.’’ ‘‘I’ll take any kind you’ve got right now, just as long as I can get this salty taste out of my mouth.’’ God has given you and I the same ministry that Jesus had, and that is the ministry of reconciliation. Unfortunately, we don’t act like it.
How can we take up God’s call to be reconciled to the world when we are having such a difficult time being reconciled to any brother in Christ who just happens to be the ‘‘wrong color’’ or have the wrong accent because he lives south or north of the Mason-Dixon line? (The Mason-Dixon line was an imaginary boundary between the state borders of Maryland and Pennsylvania that was a symbolic dividing line between pro-slavery states choosing to secede from the Union and the generally anti-slavery states that remained in it in the American Civil War that followed. Even to this day, it remains a symbol of division between ‘‘the South,’’ or the former Confederate States, and ‘‘the North.’’)
It took me a long time to accept the fact that who I am doesn’t make any difference in Christ. It only makes a difference when you are outside of Christ.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Galatians 3:26-29).
Paul tells us that in Christ ‘‘there is neither Jew nor Greek’’ (there are no racial distinctions), ‘‘there is neither slave nor free man’’ (there are no socioeconomic class distinctions), and ‘‘there is neither male nor female’’ (there are no gender distinctions).
When God came to earth, He chose to hang out with sinners. He had the reputation of being a friend of sinners (see Mt. 11:19). What would happen to you if someone heard that you were a friend of sinners? The first thing your ‘‘Christian critics’’ would say might be, ‘‘Well, birds of a feather flock together, you know.’’ Nevertheless, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. I want you to read several verses from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, and pay special attention to the final verse.
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking: for these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother (Galatians 4:21-26).
We have the same mother. I don’t care whether you are German, Italian, Brazilian, French, Zulu, Hottentot, Norwegian, Spanish, Irish, or Martian we have the same mother in Christ. Male, female, or still in question, once you receive Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have the same mother. Isn’t that amazing? We have the same mother, and we are all free, whether or not we realize it.
Who is it that you are required to hate in this life? Everything changes when God comes to you and says, ‘‘You have a new mother. Your mother is My heavenly Jerusalem, My Kingdom, and it is above. That means you are free, and you can no longer make decisions after the flesh.’’ Your decisions about life and death, and love and hate, must be made in the Spirit from this point on.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m talking about politics or some social program or agenda. This is a message on what we must do with the ministry of reconciliation. What has God given us? What has He called us to be, and how can we fulfill our calling out in the world without fumbling around for answers? So God has made you a minister or deacon of reconciliation. Now sir, what do you do when people tell degrading jokes about women? Do you laugh, or do you speak up and say, ‘‘Guys, I can’t join in that’’? Ma’am, what do you do when you hear someone tell a demeaning story about an ethnic group? What do you say? Paul gives us a simple guideline in the Book of Ephesians: ‘‘Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear’’ (Eph. 4:29).
God knows that we have a tendency to believe the strange idea that we can cut ourselves off from other parts of the Body and still be the Church. We’re especially bad about this if we think we have the tiniest shred of justification.
We need to stop allowing the world to tell us how to be Christians. Jesus said that the disciple is not greater than his master (see Jn. 13:16), so we need to remember how the world treated Christ. We all have the same mother in Christ. We can’t say, ‘‘Well, he just doesn’t act like one of our family.’’ That’s tough. You have the same mother, and you can’t divorce yourself from that fact.
Jesus came and essentially said, ‘‘I’m here to make some changes, but most of all I’m here to show you that the Father has a different attitude toward the world than that of the Pharisees.’’ Many of us have been stuck with Pharisees all our lives (and some of us have even been Pharisees). You can spot a Pharisee by the telltale signs of hypocrisy. Pharisees don’t like anybody and they don’t appreciate anybody. No matter what or how often you do something good, that kind of Pharisee will find something wrong with it. If you dare to preach a sermon about something like reconciliation, they will tear it apart and say, ‘‘Wasn’t that a shame what Pastor Garlington preached? Wasn’t that a mess? Where did he get that stuff?’’ Oops, you just stepped in the puddle of a Pharisee.
Pharisees pray like this: ‘‘God, I thank You that I’m not like other people. Thank You for making me better than that poor street person, that alcoholic, and that rotten lost person.’’ The honest truth is that we are like them! Countless numbers of Christian men act like misogynists, or ‘‘womenhaters,’’ while saying they don’t hate them. Millions of Christians hate millions of others Christians because they have different skin colors, eat different foods, or say different words over their communion wafers. We need to take personal responsibility for what we have done to one another. First we need to repent and get right with God so we can be reconciled to one another. Then we can reconcile the world to God as well. Paul warned the Corinthian believers:
And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘‘I have no need of you’’; or again the head to the feet, ‘‘I have no need of you.’’ On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body, which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our unseemly members come to have more abundant seemliness, whereas our seemly members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:21-25).
We need to turn to one another and say aloud from our hearts, ‘‘I need you.’’ We need to see each other as significant parts of the Body of Christ, and without each part fulfilling his or her God-given call and destiny, we will all be impoverished.
We have been expressly commissioned to go into our world, a world that is hostile to the Word of God, hostile to Christians in general, and hostile to the purposes of God. The world has its own way of seeing things, and in a way, we can’t be upset just because the world doesn’t see things like we see them. Our challenge is to make all men see the mystery of a supernatural Church composed of diverse people from different cultures bonded together in love and diversity. Why should society believe that mankind’s prejudice and division problems can ever be solved when the Church can’t even model unity in Christ with all Heaven’s resources at her disposal?
In this season of the Church, the issue isn’t, ‘‘Who’s done wrong?’’ It isn’t ‘‘Who has enslaved who’’ and ‘‘Who responded to it,’’ or how much one group has stolen from another. The issue is, ‘‘Do we want to be reconciled?’’ The truth is that if we don’t want to be reconciled, we won’t be. If you insist on being ‘‘right,’’ then you can’t be reconciled. Even if you are right, you can’t insist on it. You have to give up your right to be right. God basically said, ‘‘I can kill you or I can die for you. I have the right to kill you, but I’m going to give up My right to be right so I can reconcile you to Myself. And while I’m doing it, even if you are upset with Me and call Me dirty names, I’m still not going to count your trespasses against you.’’ Jesus made it easy for us to get saved, and it ought to make it easy for us to forgive as well.
I can’t stop people from hating each other. We shouldn’t say, ‘‘You people shouldn’t act like that.’’ We should say, ‘‘Be reconciled to God.’’ If we can get people reconciled to God, then He will get them reconciled to each other. When racists hate each other, the Church must model racial reconciliation. In a society of class distinctions, the Church must model a classless society where people are neither bond nor free. When the battle of the sexes rages out of control, the Church must model unity among equals where there is neither male nor female in Christ.
The best way for us to help others is to make the right choice ourselves when the question comes, ‘‘Will you be right or reconciled?’’
Right or Reconciled?
Reconciliation is more than a teaching for Pastor Joseph Garlington—it is a life message.
In this hard-hitting and thought-provoking book, Pastor Garlington emphasizes the need of the Church to be about God’s business of reconciling the world to Him. The message of reconciliation that the Church must declare is simple yet profound: “God is not holding your sins against you!”
With this in mind, Joseph then focuses on more practical reconciliation issues and asks the question, “Do you want to be right or reconciled?” Your answer to this question will determine whether or not God can use you in the ministry of reconciliation.
Pastor Garlington is at the forefront of modern reconciliation issues whether he is pastoring his church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or speaking at Promise Keepers rallies. If you are concerned about racial, gender, or denominational reconciliation, then this book is for you. And once you read it, you won’t ever see reconciliation in the same light again.
