“AHMAUD, BREONNA, GEORGE & JESUS: OVERCOMING RACISM”

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“AHMAUD, BREONNA, GEORGE & JESUS: OVERCOMING RACISM”
Prayer: Oh Heavenly Father, our hearts are heavy. Broken. Please give us eyes to see and ears to hear where our Spirit is working. Help us to see every person the way that You see them. Break our hearts for what breaks Yours, God. Let us not merely say that we love each other. Give us strength to mourn with those who mourn, weep with those who weep. Let Your justice roll like waters. Let your righteousness and love flow from us like rivers of living water. Purify our hearts, Lord, and fill us with genuine hunger for justice, for mercy, and for true peace. Heavenly Father, let justice and mercy start with us.
Focal Text John 4:4-9 NIV
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.``)
Introduction
Humanity has been in a state of fallenness since Genesis 3:1-7.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
WHEN you burn a CD, you take the music or the movie and you pass it on so that on the other disc being burned. The copy is precisely the content of the original.
Satan does the same thing when he burns his thoughts into our thinking so that we think his thoughts after him. His goal is to get us to do this until those thoughts are burned so deeply they become our thoughts. His thinking, which starts as a suggestion, turns into a way of operating. The incorrect thinking ends up creating the actions that result from the thoughts.
The world lost unity at The Tower of Babel.Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. ➢ The first form of “servanthood” started in Genesis 9:18-25.
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded[a] to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” ➢ Nations have been against Nations since the Old Testament.The Hebrews/Israelites/Jews were enslaved for 430 years in Egypt.
Jesus was a dark-skinned Palestinian Jew.
I. JESUS HAD TO INTERFACE WITH OTHER CULTURES
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
To go from the territory of Judea to Galilee meant passing through a central territory called Samaria.Most Jews did everything they could to avoid traveling through Samaria. The reason goes way back into their history.
After the northern kingdom, with its capital at Samaria, fell to the Assyrians, many Jews were deported to Assyria, and foreigners were brought into settle the land and help keep the peace. The intermarriage between those foreigners and the remaining Jews resulted in a mixed race, impure in the opinion of Jews who lived in the southern kingdom. Thus the pure Jews hated this mixed race, called Samaritans, because they felt that their fellow Jews who had intermarried had betrayed their people and nation. The Samaritans had set up an alternate center for worship on Mount Gerizim to parallel the temple at Jerusalem, but it had been destroyed 150 years earlier. While there was long-standing prejudice between Jews and Samaritans, Jesus did not live by such restrictions. The route through Samaria was shorter, and that was the route he took.
A. Jesus had 2 significant encounters with women of other cultures.
B. Jesus set a great example for also overcoming patriarchy.
C. Jesus’ interactions with a Syrophoenician woman & a Samaritan woman are great paradigms for race relations.
I. JESUS HAD TO INTERFACE WITH OTHER CULTURES
II. JEWISH CUSTOMS IN THE BIBLE DIDN’T ALWAYS LEAD TO CONNECTIONS
6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
Jacob’s well was on the property originally owned by Jacob. It was not a spring-fed well, but a well into which water seeped from rain and dew, collecting at the bottom. Wells were almost always located outside the city along the main road. Twice each day, morning and evening, women came to draw water. This woman came at noon, however, probably to avoid meeting people who knew her reputation.
A. The Jewish culture, like other biblical cultures, had rules & insular protocols.
B. Often, people didn’t connect over cultural differences.
C.Customs & cultural differences aren’t always based on divine imperatives or commands.
I. JESUS HAD TO INTERFACE WITH OTHER CULTURES
II. JEWISH CUSTOMS IN THE BIBLE DIDN’T ALWAYS LEAD TO CONNECTIONS
III. JESUS’ MINISTRY OFTEN PROPELLED HIM TO MOVE BEYOND BIASES & COMFORTABILITY
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
Jesus gave this woman an extraordinary message about fresh and pure water that would quench her spiritual thirst forever. This woman was a Samaritan, a member of the hated mixed race, was known to be living in sin, and was in a public place. No respectable Jewish man would talk to a woman under such circumstances. But Jesus did.
A. Jesus took risks in order to connect with people who were different.
B. Jesus went against cultural norms for the purposes of engagement.
C. Jesus was willing to take risks in order to fulfill his assignment.
I. JESUS HAD TO INTERFACE WITH OTHER CULTURES
II. JEWISH CUSTOMS IN THE BIBLE DIDN’T ALWAYS LEAD TO CONNECTIONS
III. JESUS’ MINISTRY OFTEN PROPELLED HIM TO MOVE BEYOND BIASES & COMFORTABILITY
IV. JESUS SHOWS US HOW TO TRANSCEND RACISM & CHAOS
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
The gospel is for every person, no matter what his or her race, social position, or past sins. We must be prepared to share this gospel at anytime and in any place. Jesus crossed all barriers to share the gospel, and we who follow him must do no less.
A. Jesus reached outside of what was normal.
B. Jesus shows us how the privileged should respond.
C. Jesus was willing to listen to the marginalized & disenfranchised.
D. The underserved could not fix problems of racism & unbalanced power dynamics.
E. The underserved must be resilient in the face of bias, prejudice & oppression.
How To Apply This
In conclusion:
I. JESUS HAD TO INTERFACE WITH OTHER CULTURES
II. JEWISH CUSTOMS IN THE BIBLE DIDN’T ALWAYS LEAD TO CONNECTIONS
III. JESUS’ MINISTRY OFTEN PROPELLED HIM TO MOVE BEYOND BIASES & COMFORTABILITY
IV. JESUS SHOWS US HOW TO TRANSCEND RACISM & CHAOS
REMEMBER the Nike commercial? “I wanna be like Mike.” They sold a lot of tennis shoes with folk wanting to be like Mike. They sold a lot of #23 jerseys because folk wanted to be like Mike.
The problem is that it takes a lot more than tennis shoes to be like Mike! You got to be able to fly to be like Mike, because Mike is in a class by himself. He is unique among professional basketball players, so desiring to be like Mike and wearing the paraphernalia that gives the impression you’re like Mike, because he is too unique.
When Satan offered the possibility of being like God to Adam and Eve, he was offering an impossibility. He told them that the reason why God set up boundary is that He didn’t want them to be like Him. However, the truth is that boundary or no boundary, they could never be like Him. We can never be like Him. He is in a class by Himself.
What is your role in race relations?
How can we improve race relations?
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