My Brother George Floyd was murdered. My sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters and my cousins and grandparents - all of them have been tormented, tortured, hated, slandered, ridiculed, discriminated against, not heard, not listened to, not allowed to flourish to the fullest capacity that God has created them to for far too long.
It's been happening since Cain killed Able and their blood cries out for justice. Their dignity is crying out for restoration and reconciliation.
As long as another human being who holds the capacity to act without regard to their own preservation stands idle, unresponsive, there remains culpability and complicity in our inaction.
My brothers and sisters - Speaking for Christ followers like me - we all need to repent. I repent. Please forgive me. Please forgive us.
We are created to know better and empowered to act, we are enlisted and commissioned by Almighty God to offer answers and solutions.
Wherever we may find ourselves identified within the human race by skin color, or nationality we must acknowledge the disproportionate allocation of privilege vs discrimination towards our brothers and sisters of darker skin color. Because of those identifications in the human race - because I am a white man - I'm hard pressed to empathize. I have never come close to experiencing the horror of discrimination. So with all the grace I can don - I commiserate and I sympathize with my brothers and sisters of African American heritage who are so heavily and mercilessly persecuted.
So with what I have been given, never having been a victim of such injustice I can only speak up and share my perspective, from my conviction and my understanding of God's Word.
I can't remain silent. But my voice has a specific context that doesn't share the same weight as others. I have seen public derision against ministries and white people who have tried to speak up, to address the issue, to express heartbrokenness and stand in solidarity - they have been met with remarks of, "stay in your lane," "leave this one alone," "sit this one out."
Others are pushing for public statements from everyone, "your silence is compliance," they cry. Yet in the midst of it all - I encourage all of you out there, to speak up and speak out with grace and love, be brave and don't be intimidated out of expressing your heart and raising your voice against evil, against injustice, against racial prejudice, against hatred. And don't be intimidated into saying something you aren't ready to say. God's timing is perfect. When it's His timing it's for His glory.
So I want to share a perspective worth contemplating. I feel it gets to the root of the problem and to the root of what seems like the lack of movement in a positive direction on this issue for so long.
To echo what a friend of mine said - it's not just a skin issue, but it's a sin issue that presents as a skin issue.
For us to get to the place of peace, for us to allow love to inhabit our humanity we have to clearly identify the truth that brings those realities into their proper context.
We have to divide truth from falsehood, light from dark, good from evil, humanity from divinity, the temporary from eternity.
We are divided on this issue but along the wrong kind of division. We need to find alignment on the same side - and for that a different kind of division is needed.
The Word of God divides. It establishes the place, the order, the context of everything in the spiritual universe and in the physical universe for that matter.
So too our words must divide. But we must rightly divide the Word of Truth. In other words we must speak rightly - at the right time - the right things.
When we do that, there will be a polarization of perspectives. There is no avoiding it.
Jesus said He came not to bring peace but to bring division. It sounds like a paradox but the presence of the prince of Peace divides the kingdom of light and life from the kingdom of darkness. And the only way to the kingdom of light is through Jesus. There's no other way. And that my friends is highly controversial. Highly divisive.
Jesus spoke division. He was a name caller. White washed sepulcher is name calling. When Jesus said that, He was highlighting hypocrisy. His words were inflammatory and highly insulting.
Yet these were words of love from the greatest lover of all time.
This wasn't hate speech it was love speech.
He was calling them out for where they where and calling them to come to where He was. To a higher revelation. He still does that today.
Jesus was the Living Word, the sharp sword dividing asunder soul and spirit joints and marrow.
Keep in mind Jesus was sinless. He never sinned.
But He got angry and He spoke angry words.
As leaders our public words should always establish clear division. There isn't really middle ground, or a happy medium. And angry words aren’t necessarily wrong words. And divisive words aren’t necessarily wrong words.
It isn't wrong to be angry, it's just wrong to act out sinful ways as a result of anger. And there's room from some drastic behavior as a result of anger, and you can still be in avoidance of sin.
Look at Jesus’ temple tirade - still without sin. Because his acts of violence were against the desecration of what has been set apart as holy they were still sinless violent actions.
They hit the mark of answering God’s call to call out right from wrong, light from dark.
We should all be angry and outraged and we should shout loudly in every way possible that the sacredness of human life, the dignity of human life has not been prioritized and preserved above all else.
And that the focus of our God given freedoms, the structuring of and enforcement of laws that protect and liberate our people are getting lost in the pursuit of greed and materialism, the excess of government bureaucracy and overreach as well as it's many hypocrisies.
You have to understand that when there is no clear demarkation established from our words we should start to question - what are we saying? And should we be saying it?
So we are right to clearly identify where issues fall in terms of God's Word and in light of eternal truth.
In those terms, God's Word doesn't unify, it divides, it rightly divides.
When a clear demarkation is made, it allows people to begin to grapple with the issue and it gives them a chance to see where eternal truth stands regarding the issue and where they stand regarding the issue.
Then there can come clear contexts to evaluate the events that have shaped our pasts, and the heart beliefs that define our perspectives.
Then there can be a clear measurement of rule and standard.
The call for repentance divides the repentant from the unrepentant. Repentance is a divisive call to action.
Before I go on further let me say, love is the line of demarkation. God is love and His Word is love and His command is to love.
No one gets murdered when love is the operating truth that brings a right division into perspective.
But this is key before I go on. Loving our neighbor as ourself only comes through the love of the Lord God with heart, soul, mind and strength.
Without out love of God first, there is no love of neighbor. Without the Lord, the King, and surrender to Him as such, there is no love to offer.
His kingdom of love has to come to earth through us, and assault the kingdom of darkness in this present reality.
We are to love as God loves us, with the power He gives us to love through us. Because we can't love like we are supposed to.
I don't think we should be nervous about the volume or the variety of voices that begin to cry out over any given issue.
People need to emotionally process, and get out of their mouths what their heart has truly been concerned with or centered around.
In fact when the multitudes cry out, heaven is listening and so should we be listening. It is part of the process of identifying where kingdoms are in conflict, and where prayer needs a shifted priority.
When a race, or a nation cries out in agony and pain, the Lord hears the cry. He doesn't stop to argue the technicalities, He hates injustice. All injustice. Towards anyone.
We need to understand that after thousands of years of injustice from the heart of sinful man against one another, the earth is groaning under the agony of injustice. Not only that, the seeds of injustice that have been sown have left us with harvest fields full of crops heaping up judgment against the perpetrators. We are drowning in the judgment of God on the earth that can't be restrained. It can only be redeemed through the blood of Jesus. Still . . .
We can't be silent about that. We can't not weep and pray over that. We are involved and we are guilty of letting it persist, instead of bringing redemptive purpose to the front lines to stand against it, instead of living and acting proactively to preempt it from happening in the first place.
The fact that all this injustice is ongoing and there doesn't seem to be a global movement by the Body of Christ to keep it in the spotlight, to keep it from recurring, should weigh heavy on our hearts.
The fact that these events of human depravity that get caught on film are the ones that insight uprisings and multiply the presence and outworking of the darkest part of human hearts only adds insult to injury. And so we are just as guilty of the ripple effects as we are of the first cause.
That there isn't a burning passion by God’s people to consistently infiltrate the darkness on a regular basis with light, hope and help in every area of society is more than frustrating.
We must do more than hold worship services. How can we worship a God of love who isn’t lived out on the streets?
Who is in the homes? Who is in the precincts? Who is on the streets? Who are the ones closest to every lack of love at every level that have the words of life and counsel to bring?
Who was helping the angry officer deal with his deepest pain in a way that doesn't get to the point where he is a chronic violent abuser. To prevent this repeated tragedy?
Who was in his life at the moment he needed love, encouragement? Who was there to be a different voice than the one that led him down the murderous path he ended up taking?
I know who wasn’t there. We weren’t. And so many other places we should have been.
Public movements, the outcries, they cause a shift, they highlight the pain, they point to love and justice. We get a chance to grieve and get a chance to mourn the fallen. We get a renewed sense of conviction and perhaps a chance to grasp in a deeper way that racism is a problem in all of us and for all of us to deal with. But when the fires are done burning in Minneapolis and in our nation - when the heat of the story fades away from the top of the feed who is in it for the long haul?
You would be right to ask, “if God sees this injustice why doesn't He seem to move against it?”
People ask where God is. Why does He let it happen? The short answer and only a partial answer, is that He allows to happen - what we - His people - allow to happen.
And He isn’t silent. His answer is in us. He answers, He responds when we, His people behave and carry ourselves as representatives of His answer. And His answer is always love. Love at every level.
Confrontational, unconditional, Long-suffering, compassionate, truth telling, Agape love is His answer to every outcry to every injustice, to every inequity.
His answer as Jesus Christ the sacrificial Savior shines against the backdrop of evil and darkness only if we carry that light, only when we carry that torch.
The darkness in human hearts has been addressed eternally. God doesn't need to answer that question again.
He didn't respond to original sin - He preempted it from being permanent - by coming in the form of man and paying the price for original sin for all eternity. That's how much He loves creation. That’s His answer, the perfect answer to the problem of sin.
And his short stint as a man on earth gave us the roadmap on how to live, act, pray and minister as long as we have breath.
I think it is unfair to act like because this issue is fresh and that it has once again boiled over - that it's new. It isn't new. I think it's wrong to say these times are unprecedented - they absolutely are precedented. Hitler wasn’t a person - He is the ever present demonic spirit of human hierarchy and supremacy over our brothers and sisters. It’s a murdering evil heart that started with Cain and can be present in any of us at any time.
And when we even in the slightest way in ignorance or with subtle intention behave in cooperation with that spirit we have committed murder in our hearts against our brothers and sisters.
Yet if we only address this as a racism issue -
If we compartmentalize it we have not recognized the underlying problem.
We can't say we are a healthy vibrant church that is relevant in the world, and be caught so flat footed by the repeated and recent highlighting of this long standing issue, the skin issue caused by the sin issue.
This tumultuous season I believe should stand as a call to repentance and a call to shift back to preaching and living on mission the heart of the gospel message to all of creation.
That we would move with urgency and with strategic planning as a body of believers to penetrate all of society with an all out assault of love - Love of God and love of neighbor against the enemy's territory marked by hatred, discrimination and persecution.
Let's live the love of Jesus, pray in love and respond in love. Let's rightly divide light from dark, truth from falsehood.
It's time for the church to pivot from growth strategies to love strategies. From creating tribes and cultures to living “as one” transcendently as the family of God interconnecting every nation tribe and tongue.
This isn't a "their issue" or this isn't a "that" issue, this is "the" issue.
If we haven't gotten this right we don't have anything else right.
God forgive us for getting the main thing wrong. The sin thing wrong. The love thing wrong.
God help us make it right and to keep the main thing the main thing.
Regardless of the cost.
Lead us to the cross of Jesus.
Keep us covered in His blood and united through His redeeming love until He returns ushering us into the ultimate restoration of all things.
Amen.