Editor’s Note from Howard Baker: Felix has been a colleague of mine for three years. In that time I have seen him live out what he has written over and over again. He is a living testament to the kind of life that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount: turning the other cheek, blessing those who curse him, forgiving as he has been forgiven, living free from anger, going the extra mile, loving those who oppose him, doing nothing just to be noticed or for his own gain, living without anxiety and judgment, and seeking first the kingdom of God. Felix is a “bridge” person in Denver between the African American community and all other communities. The problem with being a bridge is that you get walked on from both sides, and he has lovingly endured that burden as an easy yoke with Christ. Would that we all walked out the love of Jesus the way Felix does; if we did, Christ’s love might truly begin to heal our ungodly divisions.

When Jesus was Asked what the greatest commandment was, his response was simple:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37–39, NIVAll Scripture quotations marked (NIVV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™).

These two commands can be summed up with the phrase, love God, love people.

 

Henry Blackaby, in his book Experiencing God, says, “when one encounters God, what they do next dictates what they really believe about God.”Henry Blackaby, Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 1998), 102. In other words, if one truly loves God, then they live out their love for God by obeying his command to love each other. Whenever a person chooses not to love God or neighbor, they have broken God’s commandments and are guilty of sin. It is the disobedience of this basic command to love God and to love people that serves as the genesis of the majority of the racial tensions that exist among people of different ethnic backgrounds in the world.

It was late February 2012 when my wife and I returned to the United States after spending two weeks celebrating my fifty-second birthday on the beautiful Island of St. Lucia in the West Indies. Our plane landed in Miami, and we cleared customs and headed to the terminal to await our connecting flight to Denver. While sitting, enjoying the comfort of being back in the United States, we noticed large crowds gathered around the television monitors. I remember saying to my wife, “It seems we missed something important. Let’s find out what happened.”

Both my wife and I joined the crowds listening intently to the television reporter as he shared the news (February 26, 2012), “Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old African American male, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida.” The reporter continued, “Martin was returning from the local convenience store and was walking through a neighborhood previously victimized by robberies. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, spotted him and called the Sanford Police to report him. Moments later, there was an altercation between the two individuals in which Martin was fatally shot in the chest.”

I will never forget the range of emotion I experienced as my wife walked away in tears. I stood there motionless in shock. I can honestly say I felt the pain Trayvon’s mother was experiencing. At the same time, I became extremely angry as another black man died unnecessarily as a result of being racially profiled.

The event catapulted me into reflection on my own experiences with racial profiling. I relocated to Denver in 1993 as an IBM employee. Because of the car I drove and business attire I wore, whenever I drove through certain parts of town, I was guaranteed to be stopped by a white police officer, taken out of the car, questioned, and searched for drugs. The reasoning was always that I did not fit the demographical makeup of the residents of the community.

§

01.  When Racial Tensions Hit Home

In 2006, my wife and I purchased a home in Elbert County. I will never forget the incident that occurred shortly after the closing documents were signed. It began when my friend, an older African American gentleman, and I were moving furniture into my new home. As we drove the truck into the backyard and began unloading the furniture into the basement, I noticed a patrol car stopped at the top of my driveway. After several minutes passed, the police officer drove into the yard and proceeded to ask us why we were there, what we were doing, and to show him our IDs. After informing the police officer that I was moving into my home, he demanded proof that the home was actually mine. In the interim, he was reporting the alleged crime and calling for backup.

Here I was moving into a home I worked hard to purchase while the local police surrounded my home with the perception that my friend and I were robbing a house I actually owned. This was all based on the perception that we did not fit the racial demographic of the neighborhood and had to be up to no good. These two incidents and other experiences like them could potentially scar a person for life, causing them to live a life of distrust and hatred for people of other races.

Racial inequality remains problematic in the United States. People of color continue to experience disproportionately high rates of police profiling and repressive incarceration. Given centuries of racial disparity in America, one can easily imagine how deep the scar is for some. Having a black president does not mean all of the problems surrounding race relations in America have been resolved. Public awareness of racial tension has resurfaced and gained substantial momentum in recent years. The perception has increased in the aftermath of the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Stanford, Florida (February 26, 2012); the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (August 9, 2014); the arrest and subsequent death of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland (April 12, 2015); and most recently, the mass shooting that took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina (June 17, 2015). These kind of events are not restricted to these cities but are symptomatic of the deep issues surrounding race relations that remain unresolved in the United States. How do we address these problems? How can we begin the process of bridging the gap between the races? And more importantly, should the follower of Christ have a voice in the solution?

§

02.  The Power of God’s Grace

All humans, though created in God’s image, have a propensity to sin. It was sin that severed the relationship between God and humans, and that same sin is the root cause of the problems our culture faces in resolving issues related to race relations. As a result, sin now affects a wide array of social relationships. This array includes relationships within the family, at work, at church, and especially between people of different races within the same community. A restored relationship with God is foundational to restoring all other relationships affected by sin. Any follower of Christ willing to engage the challenge to restore broken relationships must first be willing to address and seek forgiveness for the wrongs associated with the sin. Second, the power of God’s grace must be engaged in order to forgive others as they were forgiven. Third, a willingness must be present to initiate the conversations necessary for healing to take place.

The Bible speaks of the power of God’s grace in Romans 5:20, “where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (ESVScripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^® (ESV^®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.). When one studies the life of Old Testament Israel, it did not matter how deeply the power of sin was entrenched, nor did it matter the number of times Israel was reminded of her blatant and repeated sin, the prophets still proclaimed God’s willingness to forgive Israel for her sins. God’s grace overflows beyond the magnitude of any sin and abundantly exceeds it. His grace is sufficient and powerful enough to forgive us of any misdeed regardless of the offense against him. As a result, the only hope this culture has for deliverance from the grip of sin and beginning the process of restoring relationships lies in the power of God’s grace.

It was the gracious power of God’s love that initiated the redemptive process to afford humans the opportunity of a restored relationship with him. Repenting of sin and accepting the grace of God in the finished work of Christ on Calvary is what restores the broken relationship between God and humans. That same grace is powerful enough to restore any social relationships that remain broken as the result of sin.

An example of the power of God’s grace in relationships can be found in the book of John. In this text we see Jesus leaving Judea on his way to Galilee. John is recorded in John 4:4 as saying about Jesus, “And he had to pass through Samaria” (ESV). Anyone familiar with biblical history is aware of the racial tension that existed between the Jews and Samaritans. This hostility dates back to the time when the Assyrians took Samaria captive, causing a large number of the inhabitants of Samaria to be deported and replaced by people from all over the Assyrian empire.See 2 Kings 17:23–24. As time evolved, race relations between the two groups worsened. By New Testament times, a settled attitude of hostility had developed, causing John to write, “the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans” (John 4:9, ESV). Strict Jews sought to bypass Samaria by opting for a longer, less direct route, necessitating the crossing of the Jordan and traveling along the east side.

It is against this backdrop of deep animosity and racial tension that John writes of the power of God’s grace in restoring relationships. Once again John writes, “Jesus had to go through Samaria” (verse 3, NIV). The repeated insistence of Jesus needing to pass through a neighborhood with such history of animosity and broken race relations demonstrates that the power of God’s grace is not restricted to the broken relationship between God and humans, but extends to broken relationships between people of different races within the same community.

What is striking about Jesus’ meeting with this Samaritan woman is not that he violates cultural norms to encounter this woman on her own territory, but that he even more remarkably initiates a conversation with her. He asks the woman, “Will you give me a drink?” (verse 7, NIV). Imagine the shock the woman experienced when Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, engaged her, a Samaritan woman, in conversation (verses 9–26). To her amazement, Jesus goes the next step by applying the power of God’s grace to her life in restoring her to a right relationship with God, then continues the process by restoring the relationship between Jews and Samaritans (verses 28–30, 39–42).

§

03.  Love God; Love Your Neighbor

Applying the power of God’s grace to any broken relationship causes individuals to (1) acknowledge the issue and repent of the sin; (2) take the initiative to forgive others of their sin; and (3) whenever possible, avoid the long route by going through Samaria and begin the difficult conversations to heal those broken relationships that still exist. When the follower of Christ begins to live out the great commandment to love God and love people, the power of God’s grace will take effect in a wide array of relationships, including those between people of different races.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., once said that 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in this nation.”https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/02/archives/11-a-m-sunday-is-our-most-segregated-hour-in-the-light-of-the.html (accessed 8 March 2023). If there is going to be any hope of changing that statement in this nation, like Jesus, it is time for his followers to see the need to go through the Samaria of their life and initiate a process of healing by applying the grace of God to their broken relationships.

Followers of Christ, as recipients of God’s grace, have a higher responsibility to incarnate Christ in their relationships with other image bearers regardless of the color of their skin. It is when the follower of Christ begins to live out the great command to love God and love people that the power of God’s grace will take effect in relationships. Applying God’s grace to our relationships means, like Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, that the follower of Christ must be willing to acknowledge the issue and repent of the sin; take the initiative to forgive others of their sin as they have been forgiven; and, whenever possible, begin the difficult conversations to heal those broken relationships that still exist.

§

04.  Forgive One Another

I accepted Christ in my life as Lord and Savior at the age of twelve. During my early years, I was discipled to forgive others as Christ first forgave me.See Ephesians 4:32. Forgiveness, however, seemed easier when the infraction was experienced from a person of the same race. The problem of forgiveness intensified for me when discrimination was involved and experienced from a person or persons from a culture other than my own. This was especially true given the racial inequalities that existed then and still exist today in the United States. Forgiveness, in such instances, required that I began with a right relationship with Christ and called for me to reflect theologically on the power of God’s grace to both forgive and heal the broken relationship. As a follower of Christ, it became obvious that sin was at the core of the problem, that the offender (the person discriminating against me) was an image bearer just like me, and that we both were in need of the grace of God. I had to realize I was in no position to withhold the grace of God from any, even those who I believe offended me. My ability to forgive resulted in a proper theological understanding of the truth that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. It was only then that I was able to forgive and release the anger, animosity, and hostility that had built up in my heart as a result of sin.

In spite of all of the anger I experienced in life from being discriminated against, all the prejudices and racial profiling I have encountered, as a believer in Christ, I realized I was obligated not to my anger but to the grace of God. I must apply the power of God’s grace in all my relationships regardless of race or ethnicity. It was the power of God’s grace operating in my life that rescued me from harboring the anger I felt toward people who were different racially from me when I saw the news of Trayvon Martin’s death. It was the power of God’s grace at work in me to release bitterness, even though I was severely displeased with the outcomes of the process of the judicial decisions in Ferguson and the riots in Baltimore. It took the grace of God at work in my life to minister to my community, even though I was hurting just as much as they were, when the shootings occurred at the Emmanuel AME church in South Carolina. God’s grace obligates me as an image bearer and a believer in Christ, even though I might disagree with the actions of others, to be willing to forgive sin as Christ forgave mine. I am obligated to engage others lovingly, while incarnating Christ in all my relationships. Paul’s challenge to every believer is clear:

 

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:30–32 ESV).

 

If Trayvon Martin’s parents can go on national television and publicly forgive the man who took the life of their son, then recipients of God’s grace, followers of Christ, are challenged to apply the power of God’s grace to all their relationships. It is only when we learn what it means to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and we begin the process of loving our neighbor as ourself, that we will (1) acknowledge the issue and repent of sin; (2) take the initiative to forgive others of their sin as we have been forgiven; and (3) whenever possible, avoid the culturally comfortable route and travel through the Samaria of our lives to have those difficult conversations to begin the process of healing broken relationships that still exist. That is when we will truly live in a world where we sincerely love God and love people.