For the 3rd or 4th time I watched the great movie on the Jackie Robinson story called, “42” – his major league number. It’s both disturbing and inspiring. My two favorite lines in the movie:
“We had a victory of fascism in Germany. It’s time, time we had a victory over racism at home.” (Branch Rickey)
“Maybe tomorrow, we’ll all wear 42, so nobody could tell us apart.” (Pee Wee Reese)
Today is Juneteenth, the celebration of the freeing of the last slaves in Texas. Do you think it might be time for us to make an effort to free ourselves from our prejudices as well as liberate those about whom we white folks are prejudiced? As they say, “Pharaoh found out the hard way that ‘Hebrew Lives Matter!’”
Another said, “Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.” Many in our country in the 21st Century seem to have an affection for ignorance, as though it possesses the power to alter reality and transport them to their desired position at the top of the heap. Maybe they should inquire about what the stinking heap is made of!
Speaking of reality, Henry McNeal Turner of the Georgia Legislature, said in 1868:
“Because God saw fit to make some red, and some white, and some black, and some brown, are we to sit here in judgment upon what God has seen fit to do? As well might one play with the thunderbolts of heaven as with that creature that bears God’s image.”
Pastor Matt Chandler wrote:
“If I preach the sermon out of the book of Isaiah on justice, my inbox would fill with their glee that I would broach the subject. But if I applied it to the subject of race, then all of a sudden I was a Marxist or I’ve been watching too much of the liberal media. If I spoke on abortion, I was applauded as courageous, as a ferocious man of God, and yet when I would tackle race, I was being too political … If I quoted the great reformer Martin Luther … never did I get an email about his blatant anti-Semitism. But let me quote the great reformer Martin Luther King Jr., and watch my inbox fill with people asking me if I’m aware of his moral brokenness.”
I think we still, after all this time, have much work to do to align ourselves with the Jesus-shaped Kingdom where “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Happy Juneteenth!
barney wiget 