Introduction to "Telling On Ourselves"
Black History Month was started in the United States in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, who has been called “the father of Black history.” He chose February because it was the month when both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas were born. Both men played major roles in recognizing the dignity of Black people in America. Over the following forty-plus years, Black History Month began to be celebrated by various educational institutions and community centers, but it took until the year 1970 for the United States government to officially recognize Black History Month.
If it seems that the government was slow to recognize the dignity of Black people in America, the majority white church has been even slower. In fact, not only has the majority white church not recognized the dignity of Black persons in America, they have also overtly oppressed these brothers and sisters (1). So, what should a majority white church do in the year 2021 to begin to mend what has been torn into piece after piece after piece?
What we want to do as a church is to “tell on ourselves.” When you tell on yourself in a legal sense, you turn yourself into the cops and fess up to your crime(s). When you tell on yourself as a school-aged child, you turn yourself in to the teacher and tell them, “I did it.” Christianity has a word for turning yourself in. It’s called “repentance.” One historic Christian document defines repentance as, “To be sorry for sin, and to hate and forsake it because it is displeasing to God” (2). There is no hiding from the fact that the church has sinned by failing to love all people and by promoting oppression of persons of color, specifically Black people. As a church, we, Hope Presbyterian, are sorry. We hate our sin and desire to forsake it because it is displeasing to God.
In order to express our sorrow and hatred for racism, and to take a step toward forsaking racism, we are going to tell some stories of racism in Lexington and call it, “Telling on Ourselves.” During each of the four weeks of Black History Month we will cover a specific period of our local history of racism, including slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and our current moment in history.
“But wait,“ you might say, “Isn’t Hope Presbyterian Church only five years old? How can Hope repent of sins of racism like slavery that happened long before Hope ever existed?” That’s a good question. To answer it, one has to go back to the nature of God’s people. “God’s people” includes more than just those who walk the earth at any given moment; “God’s people” includes those who believed in the past, those who believe today, and those who will believe in the future (3). We are connected across time. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to repent of the sin of those who came before us.
Here is one biblical example, but there are more (4):
“Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness.” (Psalm 106:6)
Throughout the rest of the psalm, the psalmist recounts the rebellion of God’s people in the wilderness. It seems as though the psalmist penned this psalm well after this period in Israel’s history. Nonetheless, he connects himself with those events when he lumps God’s people in the current moment with those in the desert. He sees the responsibility he has in the present to repent for Israel’s rebellion in the past. It is in this same spirit that Hope Presbyterian Church repents for the sins of the church in Lexington over the last two hundred and forty years.
This will be painful, no doubt. There will be images that will move you. It may stir up confusion, anger, and despair, because we as a majority-white church are being confronted with our complicity in the racism found in our city. We will be tempted to blameshift and point the finger at someone else. We will be tempted towards destructive anger, and continue patterns of division within society and the church. We will be tempted to be defensive and excuse our sin. At the end of the day, blameshifting, destructive anger, and defensiveness won’t move us forward, but repentance will.
Think about the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector (5). Both the Pharisee and the tax collector go up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee thanks God that he is a good person, unlike the wicked people he encounters in his everyday life. The tax collector prays a much shorter prayer - “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus ends the parable by saying, “I tell you, this man [the tax collector] went down to his house justified, rather than the other [the Pharisee].” Do you see the difference in the two men? One is focused on his righteous deeds while the other is focused on his sin, and Jesus prefers the one focused on his sin. That’s the glory of the gospel. The glory of the gospel is that God extends his righteousness to all those who see their sin and cry out for mercy. May God use this series to gather many a tax collector who tell on themselves in the days ahead.
- Jared & Marshall
(1) “For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America” by Sean Michael Lucas. This is the story of our particular denomination’s failings in regards to race.
(2) Westminster Children’s Shorter Catechism, Q/A 62
(3) Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 25, #1
(4) Nehemiah 1:5-7, Ezra 9:6-7, Luke 11:48-51
(5) Luke 18:9-14