“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness
like an ever-flowing stream.” - Amos 5:24

I recently spent three years teaching at Patterson High School in Baltimore, Maryland. In three years of working with over 400 students, only four were white. Most of my kids were African-American, Latino, and newly arrived refugees or immigrants from all over the world.

All of our students were required to wear school uniforms, except for our ninth graders. One of my administrators told me in my second month of teaching, “They don’t need to get uniforms, they’re just gonna drop out anyway.” The senior class that year was graduating 223, out of an original freshman class of 600.
Fast forward to Seattle, where I come home and think, Oh, things aren’t that bad here. But I’ve realized racism here, while not as blatant, is more insidious and covert, and has no less of an impact on systems in our city.

One of my good friends from Seattle came to visit me when I was still in Baltimore. She is a highly educated African-American. We were walking down at the Inner Harbor when a black teenager stopped us and asked her, “Why you talk white?” She said nobody in Seattle would ever dare to ask her this, but she knew they were thinking it, and would never, ever bring it up. She said she preferred the kid who just asked.

Race is a very real factor in determining power, privilege, access, and equality in this city. An unwillingness to see it as such results in an incredible cost to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ who are people of color, and to ourselves, for we miss the call of Jesus to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Our upcoming sermon series is around the Spiritual Disciplines, and I’ve been thinking about the disciplines of submission and service in regards to racial issues. Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline) delineates the difference between self-righteous service and true service, noting that self-righteous service is a temporary, one-time event, a list of things to do, a service that rejoices in impressive gains and is duty-motivated. True service is a lifestyle. It sees no difference in large or small offerings, because all are important in the Kingdom. True service comes out of relationship with God. It “breathes life and joy and peace.”

Submission, too, is something Foster sees as coming out of the freedom we have in Christ – the freedom to give up our way of doing things in order to serve others. Dolphus Weary spoke of this discipline at the joint worship service on September 16. He called us to put our personal way of doing things on the shelf, and be uncomfortable, in order to advance the unity of the Kingdom of God. He pointed out that that to really make inroads in the reconciliation conversation, we must deal with the real hurt and real pain of racism.

Dolphus used the example of a pool to help illustrate: He noted that to truly get into the work of reconciliation, we must get into the deep water, as opposed to dipping our toes into the shallow end. Deep water Christians, he said, are people willing to be intentional about this work, willing to make costly changes that affect their internal landscape, willing to be sensitive in hearing the words of fellow Christians, and willing to address injustice, because injustice has no place in the Kingdom of God.

To become deep water Christians, we must see the work of racial reconciliation as more than one meeting, one event, one relationship. We must be willing to practice submission and truly serve each other.

Let us not be a people who ignore the injustice in our midst. Let us be a people that desire to seek God’s justice. I’m looking forward to seeing how God will use the new Bethany Race & Justice team and Dolphus’ visit to change us.