Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism

by Drew G. I. Hart

Jesus himself has been distorted and then employed to do work in oppressive systems. Of course, the true living and resurrected one is not the manipulated Jesus, who has endorsed violence and oppression for centuries. God, who is reconciling the world back to God’s self, was revealed in a particular Form and in a particular Way. The Form and Way are that of Jesus of Nazareth, who invited people to repent from the old social order and to turn toward God’s kingdom by following after him. Jesus emptied himself and took on human form. And yet it was not a universal form, according to Paul; it was the embodiment of a slave. Jesus aligned himself with and called to himself a people among “the least of these.” The “called–out ones” of Jesus (ekklesia) were gathered from the margins of society, from which a new community could be fashioned. Of course, Jesus invited the rich and the powerful to repent as well, and to join what God was doing, but for them this meant a radical reorientation of life. This new community would be distinct because, according to Jesus, it embodied a different kind of life from that of the Roman oppressors. The Romans “lord over” others, but “it must not be this way” for Jesus’ followers (Matthew 20:25–26). To follow Jesus meant to renounce domination and alignment with the worldly powers. Instead, people who followed Jesus exemplified justice, mercy, and faithfulness in their lives, the weightier matters in the Scriptures that are often neglected (Matthew...