Red, White, Black and Blue

This week’s post was written after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille (and with them in mind), but before the deaths of DART Police Officer Brent Thompson and Dallas Police Officers Patrick Zamarripa, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol and Michael Smith. For a long time now, we have been clinging to a fragile calm while a simmering anger boiled beneath us. Not all of it, but more of that anger than many of us want to admit, is justified. I have friends and relatives (because my extended family is not all the same color) who fear for themselves and their children, especially their sons. I also have friends who work in law enforcement. They, too, are afraid. Fear and anger are both black and blue.

Thursday night, anger erupted into rage and rage ran red in the streets of Dallas, Texas. Government, though ordained of God, cannot reconcile our differences. It can pass and enforce laws, but laws do not change hearts. There is one, however, who can. In the fourth gospel, two people more different from one another than we can imagine, met him. And he changed them.

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In John 3, a religious leader, a Pharisee, slinks through Jerusalem’s dark and narrow streets, crossing now and then from one side to the other to avoid walking through a brace of moonlight. At this hour, his colleagues are almost certainly settled in for the night, but he dares not risk being seen. This sneakiness feels silly, but the questions he means to ask of Jesus are anything but.

In John 4, a woman shambles along a dust-dry path under a blistering sun, shaded only by the empty bucket she balances on her head. No sensible person comes to Jacob’s well in the heat of the day, which is precisely the point. A woman with a grubby reputation prefers privacy over comfort. Better to draw water by the sweat of her brow than to bear the hot whisperings of the local gossips.

They could not be more different, the Pharisee and the woman. He is a Jewish man. She is a Samaritan woman. As far as he is concerned, Jerusalem is the center of the universe. To her, Jerusalem is a novelty, the invention of an arrogant Jewish king, and a poor substitute for Mt. Gerizim, the true location where God’s name is known and praised. He is morally scrupulous. She bears the stigma of moral ruin. He is deeply invested in his community. She is isolated from hers. He is influential. She is a cypher. They are as unlike one another as any two people could possibly be.

Even so, they have much in common. The Pharisee is ashamed to be identified with Jesus. The woman is just ashamed. Neither wants to be seen, but both will be exposed; he for what he does not know, she for what is known about her. Each hides secrets; his a fledgling faith, hers a feculent past. He comes seeking answers, but returns with nothing but questions. She comes only to slack her thirst, but leaves with surprising answers. Jesus riddles each of them with enigmatic words about water, Spirit and truth, leaving both of them confused but intrigued. After they encounter Jesus, both are permanently changed. The Pharisee loses a lost community and gains one redeemed. The woman loses her isolation and leads her community to redemption.

And in the middle of all of it, between the Pharisee’s night time visit and the woman’s well-side encounter, linking not only the stories John tells, but these two polar opposite characters themselves, is Jesus.

The things that divide and separate us are ascendant these days. Religion, race and politics. Economic, immigration and social status. Gender, sex and sexual orientation. Dr. King’s dream of a colorblind nation, it seems, has slipped away. We are divided and our division is color coded – red, white, black and blue. Technology, once touted as a savior able to span distances, erase borders and connect people, has served only to spin us deeper into cocoons of self-selected isolation or more efficient ways of spreading hate.

John’s stories, though, remind us that division is not a recent invention. Even before Gutenberg inked letter forms arranged on a press to mass produce the printed page, or Marconi created the first commercial wireless radio system, people excelled at estrangement. As far back as Genesis, we knew how to rage at one another. All you needed was misdirected anger and a rock.

In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus alluded to the answer to our alienation. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” A few verses later, John the Baptist, attempting to resolve a dispute between his disciples and a Jewish critic, said of Jesus, “He must become greater; I must become less.” And in John 12, Jesus comes right out and says it – “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

We serve a God who was willing to die to restore our relationship to Him. That story teaches us at least two important truths. Reconciliation is stratospherically expensive. And reconciliation is worth it. If we will tell that story often enough, and well enough, and embody it in our lives, perhaps others – even people who are nothing like us at all – will find it as compelling, as transforming as we do. Then, how we are connected will be more important than how we are colored.