Patriots (Not Pinheads) and the Right Side of History: Racism and Self-Justification

We are loved, we are forgiven. We are given the word of forgiveness each and every day. And with that relief, that grace, we are freed to quit examining our own belly button. We are freed to get those eyes up and focus on our neighbor. Luther wrote that God’s gift of alien righteousness produces fruit in us, and through this we are called to empty ourselves of our own privilege and power as Christ did for us (see Philippians 2:1-11). We are called not to serve ourselves anymore, but to serve our neighbor. After quoting Romans 15:1,3 (“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. …For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me,’ NIV), Luther says this:

Paul’s meaning is that when each person has forgotten himself and emptied himself of God’s gifts, he should conduct himself as if his neighbor’s weakness, sin, and foolishness were his very own. He should not boast or get puffed up. Nor should he despise or triumph over his neighbor as if he were his god or equal to God. … It is in this way, then, that one takes the form of a servant, and that command of the Apostle in Gal. 5 [:13] is fulfilled: “Through love be servants of one another.”–Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness”

It’s not about us anymore. God has us taken care of.

We are going to mess up. We are going to face our own badness each and every day. But since our righteousness is not our own but Jesus’s, we can lean into that daily recovery. We can hear the painful things our neighbors say to us. We can admit our own complicity in evil, in racism. We can be free to make it all about our neighbor instead of all about ourselves.

I am a racist. Dear God, forgive me, I am. I am a sinner, presently, not just in the past. I am focused on myself, not my neighbor. Dear Jesus, teach me to be in daily repentance, in daily recovery, and daily receiving Your grace, so that I may focus on the voice of my neighbor instead of own need to be reassured that I am good. I am a pinhead. I am not on the right side of history.

I am not good.

But Jesus is.

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