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Let me set some things up for you. First, I have lived for significant amounts of time in both the North and the South. Even though I was only eight years old when Dr. King was assassinated, I have certain recollections of civil rights issues. I was bused across town in the seventh grade. I was in the midst of the racial tensions during high school. I remember driving past the KKK adorned in white passing out literature on the street corner, and then explaining who they were to my new South American bride seeing her begin to cry. But the North is not free from it’s own guilt. It was there that my wife was told, during the time she was struggling to learn English (in which she if quite fluent today), “go back home if you can’t learn to speak English.” It was also there that following a Sunday service in which I preached a sermon on racism that we were approached by a church member in a strange form of apology we were informed that this woman had wondered for the longest time “why Pastor Jeff had to marry someone ‘like that.’”

I mentioned that my wife is from South America. She entered this country legally. We will all the steps which immigration requires in this country (which is a very long process) and she has been a naturalized citizen for 15 years. She works legally, pays taxes, and speaks English very well. You get the idea. I also pastor a very ethnically diverse congregation–we have ten different countries represented in our church. My daughter’s boyfriend is black. So while some have attempted to charge my with racism (normally having to do with political views), it is a rather ludicrous charge.

Since today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day allow to share some of his very familiar words and make some comments about them:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves, and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”

I think these are tremendous statements about a wonderful and longed-for reality. Yet the racial scars of our history seem burned into our national psyche. When President Obama was elected it was allegedly a sign of how much progress had been made in the area of race relations and he was many times referred to as the “first post-racial president.” Yet it has not been possible to give legitimate criticism of this man because it has often been met with the charge of “racism.” I would suggest it was the one leveling the charge who was actually the “racist.” I have often asked the question: Which is more racist? Refusing to vote for a man because he is black, or voting for a man simply because he is black?

Then there is the church. I am afraid the charge is still true that Sunday morning may be the most segregated hour of the week. This is one of the reasons I love our church so much–because that charge could never stand. If there is any place that racism should have no place it is in the church. I like what Dr. tony Evans has often said: “We may have come over here on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

Paul addressed this question between two groups of people between there was an absolute divide during the period of the New Testament–Jews and Gentiles. In the second chapter of Ephesians Christ is described as “our peace” having torn down the dividing wall and bringing the two parties together and making them one. I think it is even safe to say that someone who has a problem being with someone of a different race is going to find heaven practically unbearable. In Revelation 5 we have a description of a scene around the throne of God: “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation, and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne. . .”

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