Race and Grace

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. . .”

Again in his Great Talk Jesus deals with specific situations in Kingdom living with the “You have it heard it/but I say” form. Jesus is showing how different the Kingdom looks like in our behaviors compared to the Old Law which is often now the Generally Regarded Practice Remember, Jesus isn’t giving us a list of rules. He is describing how a citizen of the Kingdom will live in particular situations. So, when you have an enemy, what do you do?

The Situation Old Righteousness/GRP Kingdom Response

Have an Enemy Hate Your Enemy Love Your Enemy;
Pray for Them;
Welcome the Stranger



The Old Righteousness says the situation is simple. Hate your enemy. They hate you. It’s only right to reciprocate in kind. Likewise, reserve your love only for your family and your kind and perhaps others who treat you right. This is the morality of the Mafia. This is the moral system of terrorists. And on a less extreme scale, more subtly, this is how most people live. Like the people who like you.

There is the story of Jonah which is a insightful tale into the prejudices of this prophet of God. It’s not just a story about a whale. It’s the story of a man confronted with his prejudices. Jonah is a prophet in Israel during Jeroboam’s reign. Jeroboam spent his reign trying to expand Israel’s borders, which he did. The prophets Amos and Hosea, who were contemporaries with Jonah, denounced corruption in Jeroboam’s administration. But Jonah seemed willing to overlook all that and encouraged Jeroboam’s expansion agenda.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah 1.1-2

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the most powerful empire in the world at that time. Assyria stood firmly in the way of any further plans of expansion for Israel. And here God is telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach against it. Now that sounds like it fits in with Jonah’s pro-Israel stance, but Jonah saw something else. He knew that if God told him to go call Nineveh to repent, there was a chance that Nineveh actually would repent. So when God told him go, Jonah went – only in the opposite direction. He booked a boat for Tarshish. If he had said, Timbuktu, he couldn’t have made it any plainer that he didn’t want to do what God told him to do.
Why was Jonah resistant? A couple reasons: he was afraid of failure for one. The people of Nineveh were notoriously wicked and irreligious. They would certainly mock him and maybe do violence to him, he thought. Jonah had the very common idols of success and need for influence. He wanted preach in the Bible Belt and God was sending him to Las Vegas. But perhaps the more compelling reason that Jonah resisted God’s command was that he was afraid of success. What if he preached to Nineveh and they did repent? Well, in Jonah’s world that was a bad thing – because God would show mercy on a people and tribe that Jonah didn’t like and didn’t have any respect for. They were the enemy. God’s mercy would interfere with his hating. In addition to the idols of power and success, Jonah was worshipping the idols of moral self-righteousness and national and racial bigotry. Jonah thought he was too good for them.

Clip from To Kill a Mockingbird.

I grew up in a not very large town, but one large enough to possess some racial and religious diversity. I am thankful for that. I am also thankful that I was never taught to hate anyone just because they were different than me. But despite these advantages I know that I subtly accumulated certain prejudices that I have had to wrestle with from time to time. I looked at people of different races and faiths, to some extent, as the Other. It was rarely obvious to me or others, but it was there, in the back of my mind and recesses of my heart.

Timothy Keller says that if you want to know if there are rats in your basement, down walk down the steps slowly making a lot of noise. Then you will look around and see nothing. If you want to know what is really down there, you have to surprise it in a rush. Then you will see tails scurrying away.

“And so,” Keller says, “it is under stress, in real life experience, that the true nature of our hearts is revealed.”

I remember being at a Promise Keepers Rally years ago and hearing a message on the need for racial reconciliation and true grace in the church. I knew I wasn’t a racist and so I was perplexed by not only how passionate the speaker was about the topic but how central he said it was to the Gospel. And then not long after that I was in a church in back home and I wondered aloud why the church wasn’t more reflective of the diversity of the community – the church was all white. And someone told me about a time when their son brought their African-American friend with them to worship and one of the so-called pillars of the church told these friends that their church didn’t want their kind there.

We all have our own tribes of which we can be duly proud. But when that pride is taken to the degree of condescension and fear of the Other tribes, then our own racial and national identity becomes a powerful idol in our lives. Racial pride and narrowness cannot coexist with the Gospel of grace. They are mutually exclusive. Jonah knew this.
He knew if Nineveh responded to his preaching with repentance then his idol of racial and national pride would be affronted. And that’s exactly what happened. Jonah’s preaching was a success. And boy, did this make him angry!

“He prayed to the Lord and said, “Didn’t I tell you? That’s why I ran. I knew that you are gracious and merciful. I knew that you would probably change your mind and end up loving those people.” Jonah 4.2

Jonah knew that God couldn’t be trusted to leave his idols alone. God was too gracious. God looked on the city and saw people “who didn’t know their right hand from their left.” And He felt compassion for them. Jonah saw a city of strange people. And he wanted them all dead.

There will be people and tribes that we simply at first, don’t get. But here’s the thing – we are called to “get them.” We’re sent out to live and to love and invite. If we’ve been saved by grace then by God we ought to offer grace. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 is a command to go and make disciples of all ethne, peoples, every kind of people. This is what it means to be the Church. We are the Here Comes Everybody organization. And we ought to look like it and act like it.

“If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the worst sinners do that much? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, your family, what more are you doing than anyone else in the world?

“Be perfect, just like our Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5.46-48