Timothy Russell currently serves as the headmaster for Lexington Christian Academy. He’s warm, funny, winning, and one of the most compelling speakers out there. (I recently told him if he became a pastor, I’d join that church in a minute.) Tim spoke at Grace Chapel on Martin Luther King weekend. Because I realize few folks will take the time to listen to a full sermon (though it’s only 25 minutes and well worth it), I’m pulling some quotes and listing them below. He based his sermon on Isaiah 40.
Isaiah 40 is the good news. “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory.”
According to poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, the world is “bent by our creative disobedience—our dishonoring of God, of creation, and of one another.”
We have planned, plotted, and obsessed to get what we want to the detriment of our neighbors.
What is it to be prejudiced? It is the sin of all people. It is part of the bent nature that all of humanity possesses. Prejudices are those stereotypes we have about people based on race, ethnicity, how they speak, what they do. Racism is the ability to enforce our prejudices. Racism is about the power to enforce our brokenness, such as the racism in the 1787 Constitutional Convention when slaves were not thought to be fully human, but rather 3/5 of a human.
We are a victim of bent, busted, broken, bleeding relationships friends, and the church so often did not assume its prophetic place in calling the church to repentance, calling the valley of constitutional racism for what it was.
Has the church called the mountain on inequity to be made low, to be cast down? Its prophetic voice has too often been mumbling or mute…. Are our courageous acts yet unseen?
May we take the time to hear and bear the wounds of those still impacted by the heavy hand of racial indifference and disenfranchisement.
May the light of justice, renewal, and healing ring loud for Jesus’ sake, with Jesus’ blessing, on Jesus’ world. Indeed may it be that we shine forth most mightily as the children of light, exposing the deeds of division, healing by God’s grace the mistrust and being the church of the living God.
Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, “The time is always right to do what is right.”
Will you be that believing community that has the courage and the faith and the love of righteousness to mark a new course for our young people, to throw off forever the cursed shackles of racial prejudices and dream a new world that can be?
The question is and always has been, who is on the Lord’s side? Who will dream with me that God’s will shall prevail and we will put the horror of our national experience where it belongs—in hell.
People of God, all eyes are on us. How shall we respond to the pressing needs of this day? How shall we be the church of the living God? As God straightens the bent world and levels the valleys of mistrust, and fear, and wickedness, may freedom reign throughout the land as we live and serve the One who is described as having all majesty, as holy, holy, holy. May we be made new.
Jesus came to the world not to make us better people, not to make us socially acceptable people. He came into the world and died to make us new people, with a new perspective.
This will cost us. Shall we not expect that our neighbor will not like the witness that we have? “The body they may kill, but God’s truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever.” (Quoting Martin Luther’s hymn.)
Tomorrow marks the last day of my month-long series, An Invitation to Listen. I’ll do a wrap up with summaries from each writer. Thanks for stopping by.