Bridges: Bridges Across Cultures and Races
September 2, 2018
By Dr. Maria Dixon Hall
Exodus 1:1-20
Dr. Pace: It is my privilege today to introduce our preacher. As you know, we’ve been in a series on building bridges. Two weeks ago, we talked about bridges across opinions; bridging that red/blue divide that seems to divide us so often. Last week we talked about bridges across religions and faiths. Today we’re going to talk about race and culture.
Dr. Maria Dixon Hall is a professor on the faculty of SMU and I’m going to read to you her official title. She is the Senior Advisor to the Provost and Associate Professor of Organizational Communication, Director of Communications Studies, Adjunct Associate Professor of Homiletics at Southern Methodist University. How about that? Makes for a really big business card to carry around! She is responsible for a cutting-edge program at SMU on cultural intelligence. Her whole thesis is that the old school diversity training is past and it’s time for a different approach in cultural intelligence.
One of the things they do, for example, is have this really cool app that gives you special information. Say you were going to a funeral of a Sikh and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. How does that work? Well, you go to the app and they’ll connect you with somebody in that community who will be able to help you know and understand how to deal with that. It’s really neat. That’s just one of the things they do.
I heard her speak at Annual Conference and I was so touched and moved. She has won no less than five awards for teaching excellence and preaching. I know you’ll be really moved to hear her preach.
She told a story that was really convicting for me and since she doesn’t have it in her sermon I get to tell it. A while back a video that came out of the SAE at the University of Oklahoma singing a racist song on a bus – maybe you remember that. A number of those boys were expelled from the school. Some of the parents reached out to Dr. Dixon Hall and asked her to come and visit with the fraternity boys, all of them. She did so and has maintained an ongoing relationship with a number of them.
One of the things she said was that 70% of the boys in that fraternity were United Methodist, and that to a person, none of them had a conversation at church about race. That was so convicting for me. So, I’m so excited that you’ll have a chance to hear her share God’s word with you and for us to talk about building bridges across race.
I want to invite you now to welcome her and then when it comes to that time in the service she can just preach. Would you welcome Dr. Maria Dixon Hall?
Dr. Hall: Good morning, I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is such an honor and a privilege to be here with you today.
We’re going to start off our relationship on a rocky start. I’m changing the Scripture that’s in your bulletin. I know it’s so unseemly of me. So un-Methodist of me! I know that we plan things down to the minute. I threw everything off last service by giving back three minutes. So, I’ll tell everyone in the back – I’m going to take my three minutes and some others. We’re going to duplicate the Aretha Franklin sermon and just be here for eight hours. They’re selling concessions out front.
In all seriousness, I don’t want you to freak out, but I am going to change the Scripture. Our Scripture comes from Acts 2:1-4.
When the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them.
We continue in verse 42:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
This is the word of God for the people of God – thanks be to God.
I am so grateful to be here with Dr. Pace and this staff and I’m grateful for their wonderful invitation.
Now I’m going to be honest with you. It wasn’t that hard for me to say “yes” for two reasons. First, one of your ministers Katy Montgomery Mears and her husband Whitney are my former students and I wanted to see their beautiful baby girl with all that hair. Though now the hair is laying down I’m a little bitter that it wasn’t still all over the place. The other reason I’m glad to be here is that I have children who are six, seven, and eight years old – that speaks for itself. No, I’m serious. They’re feral.
But the good thing is that my husband now gets the joy of finding out why it does take so long to get them out of the house on Sunday morning as he is now trying to get them ready. Hopefully they’re at church - he had to preach. Not my problem! I’m sure Tom will be sending you a thank you note.
While I’m really excited about the opportunity to be here with you today. I have to tell you that this is not a sermon that I want to preach. And I’ll tell you, I tried very hard not to preach it. I wrote three other sermons, one of which was lost on the computer at the hotel. But the truth of the matter is, I’ve tried everything, and it seems like it was not fated for me to preach it. I mean, my son forgot to pack my pumps like I asked him to so I’m in sneakers today. My back is very bad; I’ve got a pinched nerve. That might help you out a little bit – getting to Luby’s early.
But the truth of the matter is that I wanted to preach a different sermon than the one I have today. I wanted to preach something happy and clappy, something kind of Methodist “Kumbayaish” with a little bit of brotherhood of man and womanhood all thrown in together.
But the reality is that that’s not the sermon I’m going to preach today. The reality is this – the reality and in time I just thought about this. I’ve now preached this sermon three times without any coffee. I’m so impressed with myself. I’m sorry, that’s just for me.
The reason why this sermon is so daunting to me is because any time when we talk about race – and that’s what we’re talking about today – it’s very difficult. I know my sermon is supposed to be on building bridges between races and cultures. But usually when we say that in America, at least for the last two or three hundred years, we really are talking about building bridges between white folks and black folks. We don’t like to talk about that.
You don’t want to be shamed and I don’t want to be rejected. You don’t want to be preached at and I don’t want to be ignored. You don’t want to be misunderstood and I really want to be understood. Each of us deep in the city of our souls, if we were honest with each other, don’t want to preach and or hear a sermon on race.
So what Tom has asked me and left me to do this week is an absolute impossible task. Now you may be saying, “Wait a minute, she’s got all those fancy titles. Doesn’t she do this every day?”
Well, honestly, yes. And that’s why it’s so hard. Because I know the real deal. I know how hard this is. I know the reality that after living on this continent together for over 400 years if we don’t have a bridge it’s only because we haven’t wanted to build one. As my six-year-old daughter would say, “We don’t have a bridge to each other because we simply don’t wanta.”
Thomas Jefferson addressed this question in his only published book called The Notes on the State of Virginia. It was published in 1781 and was written to a good friend of his named François Barbé. He explained why despite all the writings in the Declaration of Independence and even basic human decency why it was just implausible for whites and blacks in the United States at this time to really live together. He said, “Even if we do make them free they cannot live here. We cannot co-habitat because deep rooted prejudice entertained by the whites, 10,000 recollections by the blacks of the injuries that they have sustained, new provocations, real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties. And produce convulsions which will never really end until there’s the extermination of one or the other race.”
Simply put, Thomas Jefferson says, “Y’all are scared – we’re mad – we’re gonna keep stepping on each other’s toes, and this story ain’t gonna end too well.”
Even if I wanted to ignore Thomas Jefferson’s words I couldn’t ignore the writings of Jared Taylor a 21st century scholar who is also the leading intellectual for the white nationalist movement. One of the things he says in the opening of his book is as follows: “We insist that diversity is a great strength but for most white Americans this is mere lip service. They rarely seek diversity in their inner personal lives. Living instead in a homogeneous island that looked nothing like the cultural mix this country has become. Anti-discrimination laws insure that integration works at school, and in public, but at a dinner party? At a poker game? At a wedding reception? Or at church? Even a barbecue in our back yard. They are rarely multi-ethnic mosaics.”
Taylor says, “If generation after generation of Americans tend to segregate themselves is it possible that the expectations for integration were unreasonable to begin with? If most people prefer the company of people like themselves what do we achieve by insisting that they deny that preference?”
Now as diametrically opposed as Taylor and I are economically, academically, spiritually, I think he has a point. Because when we really just get down to it we all like talking to people who look like us. The Pew Foundation did a survey of our social networks and found that 95% of white folks’ friends are white.
Now we’re not talking about people you know at work or people you might socialize with and say, “Hey!” to. We’re talking about the people who can come to your house when your bathroom’s not clean and you don’t have on any makeup. It’s no different for black folks. Eighty-eight percent of us only talk to other black folks and 80% of Latinos only talk to Latinos. The truth of the matter is that the people we hang out, the people around our dinner table, the people in our back yards, look like us.
Wish it was just y’all but I have to think about myself. How many times do I sneak away to my side of town to get my hair cut, to catch up on the latest black folk’s gossip? To worship the way I want to worship, to talk the way I want to talk, to eat the way I want to eat. How many times during the week do I actually lament the fact that my children have more friends and more family around them that look like their father than look like me? Just in case you haven’t figured out he’s a white pasty, ginger-headed boy. It’s all right, you gonna be okay.
Friends, I don’t want to preach this sermon. Honestly, because I don’t want to live this sermon. You don’t want to live this sermon. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I tried to squeeze it in, there is just not a Jim Moore three-point process in this sermon. There’s no quick way to deal with this hard issue that has faced our country and our church for centuries.
But do you want to know why I’m preaching this? Because you and I cannot be the Body of Christ until we build the bridge between us. The kingdom of God is not going to be ushered in by a policy, a politician or even a Supreme Court justice. God’s beloved community will only happen when you and I are willing to put down our tribal identities, our fleshly identities and fall in and lean into the call of the Holy Spirit. Friends, yes, we are saved by proclaiming that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, but you and I have yet to truly be transformed. We can’t be transformed into the image of God until we are willing to open up our hearts, our minds, our wallets, our neighborhoods, our schools, our homes under the power of the Holy Spirit to everyone.
You see, friends, it’s only the power of the Holy Spirit that can move us from Babel to Pentecost. If we could have built this bridge on our own, we would have already done it. This requires the Holy Spirit, which is why in the second chapter of Acts the people do not become united until the Spirit of God falls. Peter can’t preach until the Spirit falls. The church cannot grow until the people are united. The people can’t unite until the Spirit falls.
Without the Holy Spirit the innate selfishness that is our human condition would not allow us to be able to worship together, to eat together, to serve together. To see other people as the very created image of God. To see each other as worth authentic conversation.
Friends, this kind of obedience is not easy. This kind of obedience only comes from crucifixion. This obedience only comes if we’re willing to have courage.
At the end of the last semester one of my students whom I absolutely love came up to me with tears in his eyes. I thought this was strange because he didn’t even know what his final grade was going to be. And he said, “Dr. Dixon, you know that I love you, I love this class, I love what I’m reading, I love what I’ve been taught. But I feel like God is calling me out. I’m as solid liberal as they come. I have marched with my friends for Black Lives Matter, I have marched, I have written, I have protested, but what I’m beginning to realize is that God wants a lot more from me. That to be really committed to being in the family of Christ, I’m going to have to literally re-think the decisions I’ve been taught to make. I’m going to think differently about how I select a house for me and my wife. I’m going to have to think differently about where I’m going to send my kids to school. I’m even going to have to think about the kind of church I attend.”
He went on, “Dr. Dixon, if I follow what God demands of me I’m going to have to give up being in a position of privilege that while on paper I’m willing to say I’m ready to give up. But in actuality, I don’t want to give up. I realize to have the life God is calling to me to live I don’t want to live. Even if it means I’m not fulfilling the gospel.” And with that he hugged my neck and walked out of the classroom. I haven’t heard from him since graduation.
I preach this sermon today with his tears in my eyes, knowing of the daunting reality that is calling both of us – you and I – to a level of courage that could only be emboldened by the very surrender that acknowledges that to really follow Jesus means to give up everything. To give up everything. To give up everything and become new. To tear down walls and build bridges. To unite, rather than separate. To recognize the fact that what I want for my children is the same thing you want for your grandchildren and your children. Just for them to be happy. No more, no less.
This was a sermon I didn’t really want to preach.
Dr. Pace: Join with me in prayer. Gracious God, take us to the cross and open our hearts that that which is within us that doesn’t please you, that divides us from brothers and sisters, that selfishness, crucify it within us. And then fill us with your Holy Spirit that you might transform us that we might catch a glimpse of the beloved community you call us to be. And through that Spirit give us the courage to take the steps we need to take. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.