This morning felt different the moment I opened my eyes. A little more than a year ago my family moved from the state of my birth to Missouri to partner with a local congregation of Christ-followers in community and ministry. I had no idea of the journey that was before me. Honestly, though that journey began many, many years ago. It isn’t one that I’ve made great strides in. It is one that I have struggled with, not fully understanding the significance of it all. While I have much more to learn, confess, and live out, I’m feel broken today. It is time to share a bit of this journey.

Wrong or right, I woke up this morning, phone in hand, pulling up Facebook before I even rolled out of bed. One of the first posts I came across was a friend sharing a letter dated June 23, 2020, from the Mississippi Baptist Convention (MBCB) regarding the teaching of Christ to love our neighbor and how that relates to the issues at hand with the state flag of Mississippi. I read and reread the letter. I read the comments on the post. Heavy-hearted, I crawled out of bed, praying for those who boldly took a stand. Just mere hours later, I received a text from another friend irate over the stance taken by the MBCB. My heart sank again.

I am a white, middle-aged woman, an American, and a Mississippian, by birth. I was raised, what I had assumed FOR YEARS, like everyone else. My parents did not “teach” me racism. We went to church regularly. I went to public school. While I learned many, many things through the institutions of family, church, and school, everything has been filtered through privilege glasses I was unaware I was wearing. It’s time to take them off.

I have no excuse.

I became a Christ-follower at the age of ten. Always involved in predominantly white Southern Baptist churches, the picture I got of Jesus was a white man, in a spotless robe with long flowing brown hair. It wasn’t until much later in life I realized he was a Middle Eastern man. And in my mind, I pictured the terrorist that flew planes into the World Trade Center towers and I shuddered. My view of Biblical history was inaccurate because I was not taking into account ethnicity or culture aside from my own. My Jesus has olive skin. He was homeless. He was hated by the “church people” of his day. His friends were a rough and rowdy bunch. None of these things describe me. I had to wrestle with these things, and with The Lord, and choose Him over what I could see.

The flag of Mississippi displays, in one corner, the banner that flew over the Confederate army. People see this representation of slavery flying over the state of Mississippi daily, though slavery is no more. Though an American and a Mississippian by birth, I am a Christian by rebirth. The Kingdom of Heaven has my allegiance. I follow Christ, therefore I am a minister of reconciliation. A lost people will never know that we are for Christ and His Kingdom if we refuse to protect the dignity of the Imago Dei in all people, even when it comes to removing a banner that is not representative of all people.

Racism divides, and not just North and South. Adolf Hilter was racist in that he desired to annihilate the Jews. His actions spoke volumes and his banner flew over Germany on a background of red with a white disc bearing the swastika emblem. That symbol no longer flies above Germany. Today it is found in museums or with those who continue to harbor hate toward Jews. Here we are more than one hundred years post-American Civil War and another symbol of racism still waves above a state and we want to claim “history” as the reason.

Jesus never condoned slavery, racism, or hatred. He dignified those that society didn’t. His Word teaches us to give to our government what is required and still to give our allegiance to His Kingdom, which is inclusive of all ethnicities and cultures.

Church, the banner we should fly is His love. His Love is not found on a piece of fabric waving in the wind. It is not found when we chose to ignore the past with the hurt, pain, and reality that it brings. And we cannot passively dismiss current events. Our ethnically different brothers and sisters are crying out for justice. Are we crying out along with them? Will we do justly by them? Check out Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

We can agree to disagree on a flag. We must, however, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Are we doing justice when we don’t shut our mouths and listen to our ethnically different brothers and sisters? Is it loving kindness when we continue to call our ethnically different brothers and sisters hurt and pain “history”? Can we walk humbly with God when we refuse to see His children of other ethnicities without His image?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is about being ambassadors of His Kingdom. I still have work to do. Will you do the work too? Value people over pieces of cloth.