Bridging the Gap (Race)

 Bridging the Gap (Race)

Isaac Asimov, Howard Thurman and Cornel West

(As an aside I did not teach this lesson this last time around, because Cornel West is running for president, and the Church ought never be a partisan place. If we become the Democratic/Republican/Green/Libertarian Party at prayer, we’ve lost our way.)

 

Scriptures: 2 Kings 17:24-28 and Luke 10:25-37

          The lesson from second Kings is a description of the formation of the group we now call the Samaritans. The Assyrians, who were the big empire of the time, controlled captured populations by transplanting them from one end of the empire to another, thus eliminating any home field advantage or cohesion among the oppressed. In 2^nd Kings we see the 10 northern tribes displaced and replaced by this group of non-Israelites. They end up converting to the religion of the land (remember this is an origin story told from the outside) not because they were faithful, but because they were afraid of the local fauna, the lions.

          So, you have these outsiders who convert out of necessity instead of tradition, who grow up parallel to Judaism, who claim the same identity, perhaps even a truer identity (The Samaritan telling of their origin story is that they’re the faithful remnant that didn’t go to Babylon and kept as scripture only the books of Moses, not the paganized additions compiled by the exilic community). At best they are the “black sheep” of the family, the cousin group that isn’t invited to family gatherings. At worst they embody a pre-modern version of the Uncanny Valley—the experience of robots and really good graphics becoming so human-like that their subtle differences freak us out.

          You have these outsiders who were brought to Israel in 722BC, who live among the other Judaisms of the time through the exile in 586BC, through Alexander the Great’s reign in 323BC, through the Maccabean revolt in 160BC, all the way to Jesus’ day, roughly 33AD. So, 755 years of living beside and among mainstream Judaisms, and yet there is still great division and hatred of these outsiders, these others. Progress is not inevitable, changed hearts and reconciliation doesn’t just happen.

In John’s Gospel Jesus is called a Samaritan as an insult, and in Luke’s Gospel and its sequel, Acts, the pivot point that moves the Gospel from Jerusalem out into all the world is the inclusion of the Samaritans. Once the Church is able to take the gospel to Samaria, spreading out into the gentile world seems possible. All the world becomes a neighborhood where the love of God might be shared.

          And Jesus’ most famous stories about who our neighbor is centers the Samaritans. Those you would traditionally expect to act in a neighborly manner, miss the mark, and only the one who is seen as the evil other, the one whose very essence is missing the mark, gets a bull’s eye. The one who acts as neighbor to the man in grave need is a Samaritan.

 

Asimov:

          The famed science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, once penned a very different sort of book, a commentary on the Bible! In his section on the Samaritans, he makes a startling point, if you want to understand how Samaritans were treated in Jesus’ day, just look to how America was treating African Americans in Asimov’s day!

The Samaritans are a people taken from their native land, who adopt the religion of their surroundings for the sake of their safety, and hundreds of years later they are still treated as second-class citizens. If you want to know what that might look like existentially, just look to how America treats African Americans.

After all, their ancestors were taken from their native land, they adopted the Christian faith under the duress of white folk and then took it and made it their own; it is a faith of freedom, hidden away in the hush harbors noting that Moses was a liberator of slaves and Jesus came that we might be free indeed. And despite centuries of being neighbors, black folk are still treated as second class citizens, there are still instances where, “Guess who your neighbor is, him!” would make people feel uncomfortable.

 

Howard Thurman

          Howard Thurman starts his short and powerful book Jesus and the Disinherited with an experience he had in India. In the midst of a conversation with his host there, he was asked, “What are you doing here?” And the host wasn’t meaning, “why are you on a good will tour,” but instead, “why would an educated Black man be Christian, and show up in a non-white country as a representative of the faith.” Surely he knows white Christians lynch their black coreligionists, surely he knows white Christians upheld slavery in the name of the Faith, surely he knows the Christianity is used to justify empires of oppression! To which Thurman responds with his defense of the Faith.

He names Jesus’ life situation as one of a minority in an empire and he insists the Gospel is a tool to resist oppression. For example, embracing humility means the dominant culture can never humiliate you and being rooted in your identity as a Child of God can buffer you from the dehumanizing weight of domination. In a segregated society the church can be one of the few places where culture and race can be crossed in a natural way, and those kind of connections force people to see each other as just that, people, unique individual persons.

And please do not read Thurman as a Pollyanna, he readily acknowledges the oppressions his host points to. For example, his own grandmother, when she learned to read, insists that she would not once read the Apostle Paul, because his letters were the only place in the bible from which the white preacher would preach, “Slaves be obedient to your masters as unto God.”

 

Cornel West

          Cornel West follows in the reading of scripture that Thurman uplifts; Jesus’ place as a minority in an empire has unique resonance for African Americans, and that insight can be expanded out to all of scripture. If the bible is read from that perspective, it is better for everyone. Such a reading keeps oppressive tendencies at bay and encourages everyone to work for a better world. It is a sure defense for all people who are discriminated against, be it based on race, class, gender or sexual orientation.

          A mistake that gets made, West says, is that these insights get translated into economic programs to uplift and protect the least, last, and lost. That’s a start, but not enough. Instead, there ought to be a truly democratic culture.

People’s voice shouldn’t only be heard because they have enough money to shake up the marketplace. No! Society should be shaped in such a way that makes every voice matter, because they matter, not simply because they are an economic unit. The way such a reality might come into existence is a sort of fusion politics—the least, last, and lost banding together across racial and economic, gender and orientation lines to make sure everyone is cared for and heard and treated as a person.

 

A Note about Post-modernity and Race

          One speculation that I’ve heard from a professor I respect very deeply, is that the claims of post-modernity came about as a refusal to fit Black experience into the Grand Narrative of modernity. In other words, rather than integrate the history of the oppressed into the story of modernity, it seemed preferable to sacrifice the grand narrative in total. Naming black suffering as objective fact, measuring the pile of bodies brought about by slavery and segregation, was just too much.

An alternative reading is that post-modernity is that very integration. A critique from the underside, a recognition that what seemed objectively good to enslavers was objectively bad to the enslaved, suggesting an extreme subjectivity to the observer. So many so-called scientific truths, be they measuring skulls or sociologically analyzing temperature zones or tying linguistics to racial superiority, were all fraudulent and done in service of power, not by the power of systematic observation.

 

Conclusion

          Jesus’ parable about a good Samaritan was shocking because Jesus’ society would consider no such thing; the gap between Samaritan and the Mainstream Judaisms of the time was unthinkably deep and wide. Asimov was able to notice a parallel to that gap within his own society.

Thurman didn’t just notice that gap, but lived in that gap and recognized Jesus’ genius to be the free offering of tools to survive the implications of that gap for the oppressed. More than that, he offered personal connection as a way to bridge that gap. West too offers a bridge, a reflection that another gap exists, one between the economic well to do and those of whatever race who are on the other side. Additionally, West’s method of crossing the gap is a society that invites everyone to actively participate in our collective life, flattened non-hierarchical democracy as a method of filling in that gap for good.