Last night Memphis pastors and police prayed with one another and listened to each other in the aftermath of shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas. It was the largest gathering of white and black faith leaders I’d seen in Memphis. Perhaps the most senior pastor in attendance shared a story of marching down Main Street with Martin Luther King Jr. and of being beaten when, out of nowhere, two high school students stepped forward and threw themselves on him and took the blows intended for him. Memphis has a long history of racial tension. We talked about evil. We prayed about evil.
The previous night the Interstate 40 Bridge crossing the Mississippi River into Memphis was shut down by hundreds of protesters associated with Black Lives Matter. A Memphis police leader at our gathering had joined the protesters on the I-40 bridge to listen to them. He removed his body armor and stood side by side with them.
We asked him what our churches, black and white, could do to help the city of Memphis in this tense time.
“I deal with evil every day,” he said. “But there’s something you can do that no police officer can do. You can put the love of God in people’s heart. We need every church to get out of the shadows and on to the streets and do what only they can do. Only the love of God planted in each person’s heart will ultimately turn this around.”
He didn’t mean that political and legal conversations are fruitless. They have a role to play. There are clear political and legal conversations and issues which deserve attention.
But he reminded me of something I’m so often quick to forget–the church, that institution so easily dismissed by so many today as irrelevant–has a unique role to play at this pivotal moment in our country’s history.
Yes, some churches are part of the problem. Some churches are filled with the same racist perspectives or power plays that got us here in the first place. And some churches are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good. Some churches assume racial reconciliation has nothing to do with the gospel and thus miss their opportunity to contribute something truly beautiful to a national conversation.
But other churches, those who’ve grasped the kind of Good News Jesus walked and talked, offer something to our country in this time of crisis that no police force, no protest movement, no legislative package can offer. As one pastor reminded us last night, perhaps the greatest racial divide the word has ever known, that splitting Jew and Gentile, was overcome by churches living out the gospel fleshed out by Paul in places like the letter to the Romans.
Driving home, I was reminded of these words:
“[Governments] can’t change a human heart. They can’t heal a wounded soul. They can’t turn hatred into love. They can’t bring about repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace…I believe that only one power exists on this sorry planet that can do that. It’s the power of the love of Jesus Christ, the love that conquers sin and wipes out shame and heals wounds and reconciles enemies and patches broken dreams and ultimately changes the world, one life at a time. And what grips my heart every day is the knowledge that the radical message of that transforming love has been given to the church. There’s nothing like the local church when it’s working right…It comforts the grieving and heals the broken in the context of community. It builds bridges to seekers and offers truth to the confused. It provides resources for those in need and opens its arms to the forgotten, the downtrodden, the disillusioned. It breaks the chains of addictions, frees the oppressed, and offers belonging to the marginalized of this world. Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness…The local church is the hope of the world…” (Courageous Leadership Bill Hybels (Zondervan, 2002), 17-27)
It’s a hope that is realized as churches engage children in the schools. As churches serve the homeless. As churches help the formerly incarcerated. As churches help provide jobs and homes. As churches create congregations where people of different races and nationalities rub shoulders and learn to relate to each other as fellow humans made in the image of God.
I’m convinced. I’m convicted. To help lead my church and to encourage others to lead theirs. To fight evil every day in the way that only a church can. We churches have something special to offer at a critical moment in our country’s history. If we’ll allow ourselves to be embraced by and shaped by the Good News, we have a chance to truly become Good News in a fresh and transforming way that will not only contribute to a national conversation on race, but could ultimately lead to a revival from coast to coast. Because once people learn just how well Jesus can conquer this evil, they’ll want Jesus to conquer all other evils plaguing their lives as well.
