Chapter 14 From Ethnocentrism to Reconciliation

From Ethnocentrism to Reconciliation

Luke 4:25-30

Jesus gives a fresh and different interpretation to two familiar OT stories---Elijah feeding a starving widow and Elisha healing a leper.  Elijah walked right by starving Hebrew widows and then ministered to a starving Gentile widow.  Elisha walked right by Hebrew lepers on his way to heal a Gentile leper.

At this time, Jews had moved from being a servant chosen people to being a superior chosen people---a touch arrogant and self-righteous.  They were ethnocentric in their attitudes and action toward the despised and unclean Gentiles.  So when Jesus told these stories in a way that showed God loved the Gentiles equally, the ethnocentric Nazareth Jews were enraged and tried to kill Jesus on the spot.  The Jews had turned God into their own private God.

These Nazareth Jews were "church going folk" who read the divine Scriptures every Sunday.  In this incident, they not only had divine revelation but also divine interpretation in the person of Jesus.  They rejected both; they preferred their own heresy instead.

Most whites in America have also rejected part of the divine revelation.  Instead, they believe that are God's chosen people---chosen to set up a Christian nation; thereby all non-whites are Canaanites, and they can be destroyed if they stand in the way of setting up a Christian nation.  This distorted and demonic logic is totally false, but if followed to its logical conclusion, we end up with this---white oppressors are the good guys and the evil and dysfunctional oppressed are the bad guys.  White superiority and privilege becomes good, normal, not sinful, evil.

Luke 9:51-56

Again, the religious folk blew it and blew it badly.  At the beginning of chapter nine, Jesus gave his disciples his power and authority to preach the kingdom, heal the sick and cast out demons.  Pretty impressive!  But before the chapter was over, his ethnocentric disciples almost committed mass murder in God's name.  They wanted to misuse God's power to maintain their superiority and punish the inferior Samaritans.  Could it be that misguided theists are more dangerous than atheists?

On his way from Galilee to Judea, Jesus and his disciples had to cross Samaria.  This meant they had to stay overnight in a Samaritan village.  This village didn't want any Jews so they refused.  This incensed Jesus' disciples so they asked Jesus permission to call fire down from heaven to destroy the village, men, women and children.  Jesus not only refused, he rebuked his disciples for making this evil ethnocentric request.  A few verses earlier, Jesus had rebuked an evil spirit.  The disciples' ethnocentric spirit was as bad as an evil spirit.

But a master teacher never ends with a rebuke.  So in the next chapter, we find the remarkable story of the Good Samaritan.  Parable or true story, I am not sure, but it sure has the ring of a true story.  One of those supposedly evil Samaritans becomes the good guy.  He compassionately tends the wounds of a beaten and battered Jew.  A Samaritan who loves neighbor, his enemy.

Acts 1:8

The Spirit-filled church is ordered to cross religious, social and cultural barriers to carry the good news of the kingdom.  Samaritans and Gentiles are included.  For several years, the church of Acts refused to obey this divine order.  Finally, it took a persecution to drive Philip into Samaria to preach the good news of the kingdom and of Jesus, the Christ.  It took a dramatic conversion to turn the rabid Jew Saul into a missionary to the Gentiles.  And it took a vision to demolish Peter's ethnocentrism and turn him into a missionary to the Gentiles.

But even so ethnocentrism often reared its ugly head in the NT church.

Ephesians chapter 2

Paul, in blunt terms, states that the cross is the basis for both personal and social reconciliation, that Jesus died to break down the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, that both were to be integrated in the church.  The American church has excelled in preaching personal reconciliation, but it has largely failed to preach and practice social reconciliation.  Far too often evil ethnocentrism has prevailed.  Who will rebuke the American church and show it the more excellent way?