20/20 Vision Series -- Cross Cultural Discipleship = Gospel Fruit

James chapter two verses one through 13. If you want to read out loud with me, you can. This is printed in your bulletin.

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, "you sit here in a good place," while you say to the poor man, "you stand over there or sit down at my feet," have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself," you're doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, "do not commit adultery," also said, "do not murder." If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has been shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. — James 2:1-13

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me? Father, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock, fortress, and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

The Water We're Swimming In

A young fish was enjoying a first swim on an early spring morning, trying out his new fins. And an older fish comes up beside the young fish and says, "How's the water this morning?" The young fish goes, "What? What's water?" You get that, right? The young fish is so unaware of the environment that he's swimming in, it doesn't even realize that it's swimming in water.

Today we're going to look and talk as a church about the water we're swimming in as a culture, as a church together. And the goal of today's sermon really is that we would become, like this young fish in the story, more aware of the water that we are swimming in every day as a congregation.

As you know, we're doing a winter sermon series around what is our new ten-year vision as a congregation. And here's what we're asking God to do over the next ten years: By God's grace, we seek to be a people deeply transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, who plant churches and become cross-cultural disciples and pursue biblical justice, starting in Downtown Raleigh.

Cross-Cultural Discipleship Series

Today we are looking again at that tree visual that we've had every time. And this is where the metaphor begins to break down. We have an apple tree on that drawing for you. And we've looked at the roots and we've looked at one of the fruit, which was church planting. And now we're going to look at another fruit. And of course, no apple tree you've ever seen has more than one kind of fruit on it, but just give us this one.

So here's where we're going to go. For the next five Sundays, we're going to talk about what does it mean to be cross-cultural disciples. And we're going to have a few seminars on that subject coming up as well.

Now this is not the first time I have spoken about race and the gospel in our church. In fact, in 2015, I did another sermon series that was entirely about race and the gospel, and that was sort of the 101 level. If you want to go back and listen to those, those are linked off of our website. You can find those there. They'll also be on social media. This is more of a 201 level. So if you want to go back and get the introductory courses, you can.

The Sin of Partiality

Let's look at this section in the book of James about the sin of partiality. Now, many of you have probably studied the book of James before. You know, it is a very practical book in the New Testament. James is not concerned with delving into the depths of theology. This isn't like the book of Romans or Galatians. James is speaking very much to the practices and behaviors of the local church and what he sees.

He talks about the need for good works to always accompany faith. He talks about things like the danger of the tongue, gossiping, complaining. He teaches about doubts and faith. He talks about the power of prayer and being a praying church. And so this passage about the sin of partiality is one that I think a lot of us tend to glide past.

Out of all the heavy lifting in the book of James, this one seems like a relatively minor issue, and yet this is incredibly dangerous and destructive to the work of Christ. So what is the sin of partiality? I'm going to go through this very quickly. Five things we see here about partiality.

First, it's a community sin. The sin of partiality is not just about one individual favoring another individual. It's about something that's happening when the church was gathered. James is talking about a gathering of Jesus' people and favoritism being shown to a rich person over poor people. Look again at his teaching.

He says, verse three, one person is sort of directing what's happening. Somebody comes in, very wealthy, and somebody says, you sit here. You get the best seat.

But what makes this a community sin is that no one else says, "Hey, that's not cool." This is happening in the context of a gathering and no one speaks up. So it's silently going along with partiality. It's a community sense.

Second, we see it mimics the world. What James is describing here is the soup du jour of the Roman world that they were living in—that the rich had all the benefits, the poor had none. It's a worldly system that James is saying you guys have just adopted blindly into the practice of your church. We're mimicking the world. We're imitating how the world functions. His entire letter is about how we're going to live differently from the world in the way that we use our tongue, in the way we think about loving our neighbors, about caring for the poor. There are lots of things here that are about being distinct from the world.

Third, the sin of partiality is about who has a voice, who has power. It's not just about a chair. It sort of sounds like that in verse three. But listen to the words—pay attention. This is what James says:

If you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place, while to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not then make distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

The partiality is not just about who gets what chair, but who gets what position of influence in the group. Who gets the microphone or who gets the gavel? Who gets to have the most influence in the group? It's about who has a voice, who has power.

Fourth, partiality smears the name of Jesus. It's really interesting—verse one and verse seven kind of bookend this section. James is really concerned with Jesus's reputation. He speaks in both cases about Jesus's name being defamed, being slurred or smeared because of the actions of the group. Jesus's reputation.

Finally, partiality is antithetical to the gospel. James goes on to say that partiality is a sin. It's breaking God's law. Verses nine through thirteen, he connects this really specifically to the Ten Commandments. He says, "Look, if you show this sin of partiality, if you break one part of the law, you're breaking all of it." And in a sense, what he's doing is saying, look, you're undoing what Jesus by his power on the cross accomplished. Ephesians two tells us that Jesus broke down the barriers of separation. He's speaking there about between Jew and Gentile, but the relationships between us. He broke down the hostility and the barrier, and you're erecting a new wall. So this is antithetical to the gospel.

Partiality in Our Context

So we need to think, what is the sin of partiality in our day and age? Of course, there are lots of ways this could be carried out. It could still be carried out, as James speaks about here, between rich and poor. But we live in the United States. And one of the ways that this has been expressed over and over in our country is around racism, is around race. Think about it. Racism in all forms is a community sin. It mimics the world. It's about who has influence, who has power. It smears the name of Jesus, and it's antithetical to the gospel.

What's more, we have reason to believe, especially in American context, that this sin is especially egregious in God's eyes. Now, there's a common misconception held up in a lot of churches that all sins are equally heinous. All sins equally require the death of Jesus Christ, his blood being paid for them. But our confessional document as a church, the Westminster Larger Confession, says there are sins that are more heinous based on these factors: the persons that are offending, the persons who are offended, the nature and quality of the offense, and the circumstances of time and place.

And so you can look back on American history and say, wow, this is particularly a heinous and destructive sin. It comes from persons—and I'm going to quote the confession here—"of greater experience of grace or from those whose example is going to be followed by others."

It's been done against fellow saints in the church, against the common good of all as well. It's been sinning on the Lord's Day and I could go on using the language of the confessions—forceful language. Now, it's old language to us, but it says things like this: Sins done deliberately, willfully, presumptuously, imprudently, boastingly, maliciously, frequently, obstinately and with delight. And that does describe the history of our country and how race has been embedded in the culture. It's in the soil. It's in the water. It's in our history.

And here's the thing. I bet most people in our congregation, even most people in our city would say, yes, racism is destructive. It's been very destructive in the history of our country. And it's a sin that I really don't want to have anything to do with. We could identify things as racist like racial jokes, racial oppression, racial insensitivity. And we probably acknowledge that racism in all those forms is destructive and wrong.

But here's the other thing. The last thing that you and I ever want to be accused of is being a racist. This is the hardest thing for anyone to admit in themselves. This is the sin nobody wants to be repenting of. That's not us—not racist, not here, right?

But here's what I want to talk about this morning. Like the two fish in the beginning, it's in the water. This is all around us. We are living in a racialized culture, a culture that is infected with the sin of partiality. It's not just part of our history, it's still part of our present. And here's my goal for today: that we would begin to see the water.

What's in the Water?

Let me give you another fish and water story. I took this from somebody else. But let's say you go for a walk this afternoon at one of the many lakes around Raleigh. We've got lots of beautiful lakes, lots of nice trails you can walk around. And as you're walking around this lake, you realize, wow, there's a dead fish on the side of the water here. Keep walking. You walk along, you see another dead fish. You walk another ten minutes—another and another. And you begin to think, I think there's a fish problem in this lake.

That's essentially what's happening in our culture now with regard to race. Yes, people say, wait, it's been fifty years since the civil rights movement. And yes, we could agree that there have been many advances. I mean, we've had an African American president. We aren't still in the Jim Crow South. And yet, there's a lot of tension around race.

This may really bug some of you. And you may think, why does everything have to be about race? Why is this always coming up? Isn't this focus on race actually dividing us and making things worse?

So real talk this morning. You're watching the news, and there's a story about a domestic violence situation in a non-white community. Or you're with another group of parents and they're complaining about how there's just a couple of kids in your kid's elementary school class who are disruptive and they keep delaying everything, and they also happen to be children of color. Or you read an online story of someone who is working the system with regard to welfare—a person of color. And what happens? We start to talk about fish problems. What's wrong with those fish? Why do we have underperforming fish in this lake? Why can't they thrive on this lake like I'm thriving in this lake? My family's thriving. This isn't the lake it was fifty years ago. We've done a lot of good to clean up this lake in the last fifty years. We've had so much progress in lake life.

And so you go to things like, well, we need to start maybe an after-fish school program. Or we need to come up with a ministry that's going to pull a few of these fish up before they end up dying on the beach. We love problem solving. That's just who Americans are. We go overseas, especially in missions contexts, and the Americans are always the ones to fix the problems.

But what happens after you start that program or that ministry? You go out again walking around the lake one day and you look around and there's more dead fish. Another one. And another one. And here's the problem. Here's what we don't often ask: What if the problem is not the fish? What if there's a lake problem? What if there's something in the water?

Listen to what sociologists keep telling us about what's happening in America: the incredible gaps between races. The wage gap, the performance gap, the income gap, the education gap, the rates of incarceration of black men, for example, versus other demographics. I have a ton of these. I'm going to give you a few. For example, there was a study done between 2002 and 2015 in the city of Charleston. And they looked at infant mortality and poverty levels, fifteen-year high school dropout rates, and so on.

And what they found across the board over this fifteen year period is that there's not a single indicator in the city of Charleston during that time in which African Americans' well-being was anywhere near on par with that of white Charlestonians. In fact, the disparities were profound.

In our own state, in North Carolina, there have been numerous studies with measures about child welfare, health, education, criminal justice, and economic well-being. The indicators show that blacks are two to five times more likely to have bad outcomes across systems in North Carolina than whites.

This is looking at things like health—rates of death from diabetes, infant mortality rates. It's looking at education—reading levels in third grade, long-term suspensions from school. It's looking at criminal justice—incarceration rates, vehicle searches at routine traffic stops. It's looking at child protective services—the number of kids in foster care. It's looking at economics—children below 200% of the poverty line, unemployment.

In each case, there's a graph that looks exactly the same: whites with the best outcomes, blacks with the worst outcomes, and then Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans in every category. And this isn't just done in North Carolina. This study has been done over and over in California, in Texas, Ohio, Utah, Massachusetts—nationally.

According to Human Rights Watch, although whites are more likely to violate drug laws and use illegal substances than people of color, in some states black men have been sent to prison on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than white men. African Americans constitute fifteen percent of drug users in this country, yet ninety percent of those incarcerated for drug charges.

In fact, I saw this in the News and Observer in November. In 1950, black men in the US earned 51¢ on average for every dollar earned by white men. Today, let me ask you this question: How much do black men earn on average for every $1 that a white man earns? Do you know? The correct answer is 51¢. It hasn't changed in seventy years.

The wages of black men rose more rapidly than those of white men in the nineteen fifties and sixties, but ever since have risen more slowly. And one important cause of that is mass incarceration, which disproportionately affects black communities with often lifelong economic penalties.

In addition, the average black household has 60% of the average household income compared to a white household, and yet has only 10% of the average household wealth. Now why would that matter? Well, average household wealth is what helps send kids to college and start small businesses, helps people survive crises in families like divorce or some kind of health issue.

What's amazing about that statistic to me is the number of extremely wealthy African Americans that we know of in our culture. There are pop stars and movie stars. I mean, 75% of the NBA is African American. 80% of the NFL is African American. Think of Oprah or Tyler Perry. And, of course, there are lots of poor white people. Think of rural America or Appalachia. But still, that the average black family still only has one tenth of the wealth of the average white family?

So said another way, and I know I'm picking on whites and blacks because they are actually the ends of the spectrum: whites have only 25% or 60% as much of a chance of having a bad outcome in any of these areas than blacks, Latinos, Asians, or Native peoples in The United States. And this is a scenario which people call white advantage. It means simply that there is an advantage to being white in The United States. There's partiality in our system.

Now I know some people really struggle with that phrase. White advantage doesn't mean that if you're a white person, your life isn't hard. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean you haven't had real trauma or suffering or hardship in your life. It only means that if you are a person of color, on average, your life is likely harder.

Ken Weitzema puts it this way: It means that even if you're the unluckiest white person born in The United States, you're still born into the fortunate race.

How White Advantage Operates

Historically, this has been systematized and formalized in systems like redlining—a bank practice—or things like neighborhood covenants that have kept neighborhoods segregated. But it's also informal. It comes out in ways that are actually really small and may be hard for, particularly white people, to even notice.

Things like cosmetics. Going to the store and having a hard time finding more than one kind of shampoo option for your kind of hair. Or buying skin tone bandages or makeup that can match your skin color.

It comes out in things like representation. Seeing people who look like you in favorable categories in media. Implicit trust. Being given the benefit of the doubt in sort of neutral situations.

Like you're at the airport, you accidentally pick up the wrong bag that belongs to someone else, and being given the benefit of doubt or not in that situation. Safety and trust in institutions. Not needing to educate your kids on how to interact with authority figures in the same way.

See, at some point, it's appropriate for the church to ask the question: What if there's something wrong with the lake? What if these aren't fish problems, but lake problems?

Much of the talk about racial disparities or performance comes back to things like the welfare state or the decline of the black family or a culture of laziness. But all of those are fish solutions to fish problems. What's the problem with that kind of a fish? Why can't those fish get it together? Certain kinds of fish get it together. Why can't other kinds of fish? I mean, I'm a fish and I'm okay. But what if there's a water problem?

Let me tell you another story. I love to hike at Umstead Park. It's the local state park in the middle of the triangle, and it's a beautiful place. You can go hike and feel like you are way outside of the city. All of Umstead Park is teeming with life. There's a creek that flows through the middle of Umstead. Anybody know what that creek is? Crabtree Creek.

Crabtree Creek looks good. There's not tires in it. There's not trash floating in it, especially at Umstead. They clean it up regularly. And yet there's a sign. Every time you go to Umstead, I see the same sign. It shows a picture of all the fish that are in there, and it gives this warning: "The human body can metabolize one fish per month out of this water." In other words, there's so many toxins in the fish at Crabtree Creek that you can eat one a month and it won't hurt you, but you can't eat more than that. Which makes me go, I'm good. I'm not going to eat a thing out of Crabtree Creek. It looks healthy, but there's something wrong.

And here's the thing: it's not just the dead ones on the bank. All the fish in Crabtree Creek are infected. The reality is that we live in this water, and all the water is sick. We live in a partialized society, a racialized society. And I would love to escape that. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you love for that just to wave a magic wand and go away?

But can I remind you that we don't have a hard time saying this about other sins? For example, in the eighties, when it was all about the me-first culture—it's all about how many toys can I get before I die? We didn't, as a church, have a hard time saying we live in a materialistic culture. We don't have a hard time in many other cases defining cultural sins that infect the water. And I think that is also true with this sin: partiality.

Again, my thesis is this: our culture is infected with the sin of partiality and it affects all of us. Not just some of us. Yes, it's disproportionately hurting people of color, but all the fish are affected by what's in the water.

Two Applications

First is that this includes white people. How are white people hurt by swimming in this lake? How does living in a racialized culture hurt white people? Well, several things.

First, it's a barrier for white people for community. If we live in neighborhoods and work in institutions that are stratified, where we're separated on purpose—sometimes even unconsciously—it prevents us from forming real relationships. It's a barrier to that.

Intellectually, we lose the opportunity to develop a full range of knowledge about ourselves, about others, about the world we live in. We're separated.

There are psychological costs: loss of mental health, a loss of an authentic sense of self. We're socialized in a world where supremacy presumes that white people are better in every context. And in doing so, it damages us. It damages who we are. The culture that is steeped in partiality makes some people more fully human than other people. It skews our sense of reality. It damages our humanity. It is poisoning us.

See, white people are also affected by this. And of course, people of color are affected by this. Those stats that I gave you are not just stats. Those are people's lives. Those are real outcomes in people's lives.

But we have to be honest about this too. The church is also in the lake. We got fish churches in the lake filled with fish. And the church has likewise been subject to the same water and has been poisoned in many of the same ways. Just like the culture, we are separate. Martin Luther King, almost sixty years ago, made the observation that Sunday is the most segregated day of the week. It still is.

Over 90% of the churches in The United States are made up of 90% the same race. The exceptions to that are very exceptional and very few. We're stuck. And we're stuck in a cycle of fear.

Can I remind you how this works? This is what I see. This is the little circle we're all playing in. So the fears of white people leads them to often ignore or downplay racial issues. And that effort to dismiss racial issues feeds the fears of people of color, that racism will not be taken seriously. The fears of people of color deepen through the misguided efforts of majority group members. And as a result, people of color begin to play what white people call playing the race card. But at least it's upholding, hey, there's a reality to racial injustice in this country. And playing the race card increases the fears of white people. They're afraid they're gonna be labeled as racist for what they say or do. And as white people's fears deepen, they redouble the efforts to push for color blind philosophy. And this vicious cycle of dysfunction is being played out over and over in just about every institution and especially in the church.

Now, what is so sad to me about that is we are the people who have the truth and we have the spirit. God has poured out his gifts on the church. And yet we can't even have a conversation about this in the church. That is tragic. And it tells me we are infected by the same water.

Here's the good news. I'm not going to let you leave without some good news this morning: we have real gospel hope. There is real gospel hope. We do not need to despair. God has given us tools in his gospel to be able to handle this and process this. He's given us theological categories. He's given us worship practices. He has given us community experiences, which I believe will help us to see the water, help us to understand the water, help us to have hope even in this water.

But there are a couple of exits on the road to hope and let me just warn you about it. Two of them. There's unhelpful and naive and even unbiblical things that happen in the church. Can I name a couple of those for us?

Unhelpful Exits on the Road to Hope

First is denial. I hear this often: "Hey, we're so divided. We shouldn't focus on the things that are hard. We should focus on what unites us." Now, that sounds really good. Talking about painful things, it scares us. That's the last thing we want to do. So let's just focus on what unites us, right? Wrong. That's pretend and the gospel never lets us play pretend.

Did Jesus ever say, "Hey, don't worry about it. Don't focus on the bad things. Just focus on the good things," or "Don't worry about the past. Just look ahead to the future"? No. Jesus invites us to honesty and truth about self so we can come to the cross and find cleansing and healing and hope in our confession, in our restoration, in our repentance. That's the way to hope. So we don't want a shortcut on that. It actually robs us of joy and freedom.

Second, you hear this in the church: "We should just fellowship it away." It's suggested that all the racial tension in our country could be resolved if we would just start having dinner together. People of different races eating meals together and talking about our experiences and things will just go away. But that's also naive and unbiblical. It's sometimes coupled with this statement: "Oh, it's not a skin issue. It's a sin issue."

Yeah. But as we read in James, sin has names. The 10 Commandments, which he points us to, are not just a general thing. They're specific. And so calling out racism in all of its forms is really important to the body of Christ. We can't just fellowship that away. Racism is, yes, a sin problem and a skin problem in the church. The church of Jesus Christ is never called to just be okay with coexisting with deep sin issues and just letting them sit while we eat dinner together. That may make for more friendly fish, but it's not fixing the lake.

See, outside the church, we get other solutions. Like this one that's very common: many people who are promoting racial equity think education will get rid of this. If we give people all the education, then this will suddenly fix things. Now don't get me wrong, education on race, on inequities—to stay with my analogy, studying the lake—that'll help. That will help. That's why we promote, as a church, REI training. It's not Christian based. Their outcomes, their suggestions for how we fix the lake are off. But their observations and understanding of the lake we're in are really helpful.

See, education that doesn't deal with the complexities of the human heart that we know of in scripture doesn't fix things. After all, scripture tells us the demons have their theology straight. Adam and Eve, it wasn't a lack of knowledge that led them to eat the forbidden fruit.

Education doesn't fix things. Now, here's the real hope, and this is what I want to give us as we look forward. It's only found in Jesus. It's only found with a community of people, the church, armed with the tools of the gospel and with a remarkable courage to be able to take a hard look at the water.

Only in Jesus, with a community of people, the church, armed with the tools of the gospel and a remarkable courage—here's where we're going over the next four weeks. We're going to unpack the gospel toolbox. Danny Yancey is going to preach for us and talk about why we would look at our worship and look at our preferences and think about cross cultural worship. I'm going to talk about how do we think in biblical categories about some of the language that we're hearing. We're going to talk about facing our history. We're going to have two seminars on our history—both throughout broad strokes of church history and also our history as a denomination. We're having two superstars that we're bringing in for that. Those are online. And finally, we're gonna end on hope. But we are going to have to be willing to take this journey. And we can do so together without fear because of Jesus.

I really believe that if Jesus Christ can come to this planet, take on human flesh, and in his death on a cross and resurrection can undo the barriers between you and God, he can handle this. I believe that he can give us healing and language and steps. It's not going to be easy. It's going to require—just like coming to Christ requires—incredible humility, a lot of looking at self, a lot of courage and honesty. And the church hasn't always been so great at that, but I have hope.

I have hope too because we're not the only ones on this journey. For example, Ligon Duncan, a very prominent pastor in our denomination has said this: "Anti racism is not the gospel, but the gospel is anti racism. And racism is anti gospel. Hence, the heresy of deepest dye."

We're seeing lots of churches who are willing to begin to take steps. We're not alone in this. We need cross cultural discipleship—and not just in a few sermons this year, but in an ongoing way. We're going to continue to do that as a church. This is deep in our culture. It's deep in the water. And it's going to take a lot to change that.

But again, why? Why would we do this? Can I use another fish story? It's because Jesus has called us to fish. Remember, when Jesus started his earthly ministry, he's walking by a lake and he comes upon two fishermen, Simon Peter and his brother. He says, "Come follow me and I will make you..." Remember what he says? Fishers of men. So this is the calling of the church—that we want to be a church that has integrity, that is about fulfilling the Great Commission. This work of cross cultural discipleship is essential business for us. It is essential business, particularly in the South, particularly in the state capital, and particularly if we want to plant churches and see people come to Christ.

If we're going to be fishers of men, we have to see the water. And so here's my request of all of you: Would you stick around? I know some of you are already upset and you're afraid. And I understand. There's a lot of ways that this is a hard conversation to have, and it's scary. But don't cancel culture this conversation. Stay with us. Hang in. Here's the real hope: Only in Jesus, with the community of God's people, with the tools of the gospel and a remarkable courage to take a hard look at the water together.

Let's go to the word in prayer. Father, this is beyond us. Word, this has been an overwhelming topic to take on for many people. For others, this is where we live every day. And what I pray is that our church would have courage to face the sin of partiality in ourselves and in our church, in our community, and in our country. And that by doing so, Father, you might bring hope and healing. Lord, we don't want to be those who just look at the word and walk away. We want to be profoundly changed. Lord, give us hope and courage. Help us to encourage one another in these things. Lord, bring us to a new place. Lord, we long to see how your redemption is going to be worked out among your people. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.