Saint James UCC of Hamburg, NY

Galatians 3:23-29

Preached by Rev. Robert Matlack
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This weekend, in United Church of Christ pulpits all across the nation, pastors will be preaching on race in the ope of inaugurating a sacred conversation that is urgently needed in our churches. When the request went out, my first thought was, no, that's Confirmation Sunday. But, then I stopped to think about it, and I thought, Bob you might live with the consequences as to how this issue is addressed or not for another 20 or 30 or maybe even 40 years, but these young people being confirmed today will live with those consequences for the next 60 or 70 or 80 years. When I thought about it in those terms, I realized that few things could be more important on their Confirmation Sunday than to challenge us to start thinking about an issue that is important to both our present and our future.

Our conversations will be sacred if we trust in the Spirit of the living God to do a new thing in our midst, so that as Dr. Martin Luther King envisioned descendants of former slaves and descendants of former slave owners sit down together with Native peoples and immigrant peoples and their descendants to share our lives, our fears, and our dreams. Our conversations will be sacred if we pray for the grace and courage to speak the truth in love and to hear one another all the way through even when it's not comfortable or easy. Sound bites and simple answers aren't sufficient.

In our text from Galatians, the Apostle Paul envisioned a unity, a oneness that comes from our faith. He envisioned us being blind to differences in ethnic background or class or color or gender so that we are freed to all live and be one in Jesus Christ.

Part of the danger is that we think that the job is already done. After all we taken some major steps on this journey. Slavery's been abolished. Segregation is no longer legal. Everyone has the right to vote and a variety of other rights that are well established. On the one hand we can look back and see that we have come a long way.

But the journey isn't over. Whatever your political stance, it's noteworthy that this year for the first time in our history we will have either a woman or a black man as the presidential nominee from one of our major parties. While that seems like a step forward, it also stands as a reminder that the job isn't done. If we really were able to see ourselves as one, without those divisions, then it wouldn't be noteworthy at all, and the only issue on the table would be who is the best qualified person for the job.

If the journey was already over, we wouldn't go up to the poorer sections of Buffalo and find a much higher proportion of people of color living there than in the Greater Buffalo area as a whole. The reality is that average unemployment levels are much higher, and average income levels are much lower when you grow up as a black person or a Hispanic person in our society. Despite the rise of a Black middle class over the past 40 years, the average net worth of White families in 2008 remains 10 times greater than the average net worth of Black families.

There is also a glaring disparity between the races in how racism in our society is perceived. Those of us who are White tend to think that it's either non-existent or not a big problem. For People of Color in our nation, it's an ever present reality, a reality that colors how they view everything that happens around them. In other words, in our society, a person's race effects how they experience life.

Many many years ago, when Jesus called His Disciples to come and follow Him, they were challenged to leave their homes, their families, their jobs - to leave all that was familiar to come and follow Him on a journey to a new way of believing and living. He never promised them that it would be an easy task, and it wasn't. Along the way there were many times when the disciples were confused or just plain didn't want to believe what Jesus was saying. He challenged them to break out of their pre-conceptions, and to find a new way of living, loving and serving.

In many ways, that's still the challenge for us as well. Whether we're young people who have just been confirmed or whether we're 90 years old, God is calling us to a different way of living. We are called to live as a community of God's people, a community that looks beyond the petty things that so often divide us, a community that consistently finds ways to affirm that we are all one in Jesus Christ.

Amen.