COMMENTARY: Parades, race and Jesus

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) DURHAM, N.C. _ Even though the Northerner in me is surprised by 70-degree days in December, I don’t complain as we stand along Main Street in short sleeves and watch […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

DURHAM, N.C. _ Even though the Northerner in me is surprised by 70-degree days in December, I don’t complain as we stand along Main Street in short sleeves and watch a Christmas parade.


It is an urban medley. High-stepping school bands whose dancers sway to intricate drum rhythms, ROTC and Young Marine color guards, television personalities, dune buggies, clowns, the mayor, sanitation workers, church floats _ one church’s military-uniformed guard chanting the spelling of”J-E-S-U-S”_ Chinese followers of Falun Gong holding delicate poses, enormous city vehicles showing our tax dollars at work, and Shriners driving”ragtops”and”Bugs.” Our 8-year-old son works his way to the front, where he can scoop up candy thrown by passing paraders. I watch him share his candy with a younger child who isn’t as quick on the scoop. I watch him start talking with a boy of his age but not of his race.”He knows no color, does he?”I say to my wife.

If you wanted to make race an issue, you could notice the racial composition of the crowd. You could notice how the predominantly white high school bands are different from the predominantly black, how the TV personalities tend to be one race and the sanitation workers another, how the VW-driving Shriners are old, male and white while the motorcycle troupe is young, female and black.

You could notice those things, and you could draw conclusions from them.

But on the front line, as it were, children are sharing candy.

Maybe, as time goes on, they will learn to count and to notice, maybe to fear and to hate. I hope not. The day has got to come _ maybe with this generation of children _ when race stops writing the script for urban life.

The day has got to come when this one thing that we can notice about each other stops getting in our way.

When John the Baptist heralded the coming of Messiah, he spoke to a world that was sharply divided. John didn’t wax sentimental and speak of a child’s birth, angels singing, or happy families exchanging gifts.

Midstream, as it were, in his own ministry of challenging religious leaders to stand down from their self-righteousness, John warned that if they found his baptism in water to be aggravating, the Messiah would go even further and”baptize with the Holy Spirit.” When Jesus did exactly that, he offended the religious by creating a community where oneness mattered more than division, where being human mattered more than being male or female, gentile or Jew, where all were welcomed to the feast.

As long as Jesus led their parade, the disciples knew none of the normal divisions. His teachings weren’t all that different, but the way his people lived was a radical departure from a world of boundaries and hatreds.


But after Jesus left, they fell apart. They began to quarrel, to joust for position, to notice their differences. Soon one branch was pushing gentiles out the door, while another pushed Jews aside. Women were forced out of the inner circle. Bishops whose constituencies were based on tribe and political divisions were competing for primacy.

In time _ it took less than a generation! _ the Christian movement became fragmented and hierarchical, indistinguishable from the world around it. In a perfect expression of that fragmentation, Christians began to argue about which baptism was better, spirit or water, and in the case of water, how much water was required.

Issues of style and ethnicity divided the Christian movement in two, then in 20, and now into hundreds of sub-sects who view other Christians as, at best, competing franchises, and often as heathen.

The very thing that Jesus gave his life to resisting was now incarnated as normative, as if the highest desire of God were one sub-sect’s supremacy over another.

The day has got to come _ maybe in this new millennium! _ when we repent of our pride. The day has got to come when we see person as person. For it is only in person _ not in race, not in gender, not in sect, not in quantity of baptismal water _ that we will see the reflection of God.

IR END EHRICH

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