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 2nd
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.
