Tuesday: The New Testament Way of Dealing with Race
WEEK 11
TUESDAY
THE NEW TESTAMENT WAY OF DEALING WITH RACE
Matthew 8:5-13
If we should break up the segregation in the churches, it would not be a strange innovation; it would be a coming back to our original position, the place where we started.
Consider this illuminating passage, “The church at Antioch included prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon (nicknamed Niger), Lucius from Cyrene, Manaen (a childhood friend of Herod the ruler), and Saul” (Acts 13:1). Two things may be noted: one, that Manaen, a member of the court of Herod, was a big fish and by our standards should have been Exhibit Number One; instead he is stuck into the list of prophets and teachers, not in the prominent first place or the prominent last place but in the middle. This society was class-blind. Two, that Simeon, called Niger, literally the Black, was a prophet or teacher in that church. Simeon was a member of the church and not on the edges; he was a prophet or a teacher. Moreover, he, among others, laid his hands on Paul and Barnabas and ordained them and sent them forth to preach the gospel in Asia and white Europe. We got our gospel from men who were ordained by a Black man.
If therefore every church would become an interracial church, it would only be going back to where we began. For our gospel came out of Antioch, and the Antioch church was interracial. If we did this, we would be richer for it. For instance, a woman came to one of our Ashrams, about as frustrated a piece of humanity as you could find; her nerves were tangled and, with them, her life situation. She left a week later one of the most radiant persons imaginable. Her husband came to take her home, and said: “I never saw such a change in a person in all my life.” And he found Christ before he left! The woman told me that when she saw she was to live in the same room with an African American, she backed out and went to another room. “And to think,” she added, “that woman was one of three women who took me aside and prayed and loved me into victory. My prejudices came near making me miss this!” Prejudices produce poverty.
O Jesus, help us to be enriched by the riches of all races. For as we give to them, we get from them. May we see beyond the extraneous to the interior. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I segregate another, I segregate myself and segregate myself into poverty.