 Another reading from Holy writ to coincide with the part of the liturgy that in the questioning asked of you, accept the freedom and the power that God gives you to resist evil, injustice, etc. In the Gospel of John and the first chapter beginning at the 11th verse, it reads, the light came to his own people, and his own people did not welcome him. Verse 12 begins with, but I've got a series of sermons that have been percolating my whole career. I've never preached it, but it's a series on the great buffs. That would be with one CEO, the great buffs of the Bible. But those who did welcome him, those who believed in his name, he authorized to become God's children, born not from blood, not from human desire or passion, but born of God. And then this trumpet blast, the word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. One of the most brilliant sermons that I believe has ever been preached, and fortunately for us that live in this era, and this would be true for folks that came before us in ministry, that it found its way into print, is from the hard head and hand of Paul Tillich. And I first came across it as I listened to the pastor of my wife's home church in South Philadelphia give an invitation to follow Jesus. And in the invitation, if you all still open the doors of the church so to speak, in the invitation he was walking the aisle. And as he walked the aisle, he began into a conversation with the congregation. I mean he was really talking but hoping that they would interact, saying you may not feel like you're worthy of this gospel of grace. Phrases such as you would do yourself if you were commending the gospel to people who didn't feel like they were worth it or worthy. And then he quoted Paul Tillich's sermon, You Are Accepted, just the sound. And he paraphrased it after he said, accept the fact that you have been accepted already by God. And then after a pregnant pause he said, in spite of your unacceptable. At any of you, I know this is true, ever watched a congregation on a day in which you were serving communion and people would not come in communion. And it wasn't because they were from another tradition, but it was because they didn't feel they were worthy. If I had a nickel, for every time I gussied up my courage to say to someone, you didn't come to the altar today to get the gift that was there for you. And them listening to them tell me, Rev, I just wasn't right. I wasn't worthy. And phrases such as I'm sure you've heard before. It's not understanding that the primary transaction has already taken place. I won't go off the sale and witness by an empty tune. And so I'm going to argue in your midst that we tend to be an audience full of people who are still wrestling with our own acceptance. And to the extent that we are wrestling with our own acceptance by God, and I think that extends to wondering about whether other people accept us or not, the demographics notwithstanding, we are challenged in our capacity to accept, one, all that God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. And secondly, we are challenged in accepting other people. And we buy into the lie of all that we hear and are told about why they, those people are not good people, or not worthy people, or not people that would be on the A list, not people that we should spend our time with, not people that we should hang around. And to the extent that we've not accepted ourselves and we're uncomfortable with accepting others, we never plunge the depths of relationship with people around us. And in this text, I want to say to you that whenever I hear it, read it, study it, hear somebody else preach about it. I'm stunned all over again that if I make myself available, God has already given and extended to me so much power to become who God has called me to be. Let me say it another way that I say often in the annual conference that I serve in previous annual conferences that I and you, we already have everything we need to take the next faithful step in discipleship and in ministry. And so if you're spending your time saying, you know, I just can't bring up race too frequently in my congregation because people will think I'm getting political. And particularly we who have rightly or wrongly guaranteed appointments. That's not true for everybody in the room, but it's true for enough of it. But to get over our lack of courage. It's interesting in the common English Bible that it uses the word, he authorized them to become the sons and daughters of God. That's for everybody. And those of us who have accepted the authority of the church to be in ministry in particular ways, we are called to live however difficult it is on the inside, however many butterflies there are, however much our knees may want to buckle to have the kind of courage that invites people to step into and wade into the deep waters of their own acceptance, the acceptance of other people and the moral courage to accept the authority that they've been given to do the work of ministry and to continue to resist evil and to put something better in its place. Part of our challenge of our own acceptance and the acceptance of others is that we are, and I heard the word vulnerability used earlier, it's difficult for us to tell our stories. I can't tell you as a person in the skin in which I live how many times I've just let stuff pass. And here's what I tell myself. I just don't have the psychic energy today to teach you what your mama should have taught you. So out of an alleged need to preserve my own sanity, I just let it pass. I have a pastor friend in Northern Illinois who was in a cross-racial appointment and she got to the first Christmas tea of the United Methodist Women. This is not a comment about UNW. But the crowd in that church were all folks who had discretion of time mostly by age and economics. That means they had some money and they were old. The tea in Crippitson and a woman 80-something who was in line ahead of the pastor as they were all going down the table in the church parlor looked at the bowl of nuts that was there and they were still in their shells. And she looked at a Brazil nut and she said, oh, look at that nigger tongue. I'm just going to say it, y'all. I mean, don't be mad at me. She just didn't know so much a part of her vocabulary. A pastor was a black woman or not. I'm hunching it wasn't because I don't think she knew that the pastor was behind her in line. I said, Ram, what did you do? She said, I did not have the psychic and emotional energy. We teach her. She should have learned when she was a child. A bit about the witnesses that you heard today. Day at age, I have not gone one year. I'm in year 20. When I go home tomorrow, I'll be in cabinet starting on appointments. This is year 20 as an active residential issue. I have not had one year yet in which I didn't get a message from some church, send us anybody but a black. I'm quoting that because that's not how I refer to myself. Send us anybody. We send a person of color to certain communities. This is up north, y'all. To hear the rhetoric that you heard. Well, we don't have any of those in this community or in this congregation. Or we hear, did you send, I have the notes. Send them here to kill us. And we sit at the cabinet table. And we try to figure out what does it mean in that moment to accept the freedom and the power. And I want to say the authority that we've been given to resist that kind. This is the 21st century. This is the church. This is the United Methodist Church. Oh, and I say we live in a post-racial age. Watch my mouth out. Not one year in 20. So we've got to keep accepting ourselves, accepting one another and accepting the power that we have been given by God and by the institution in this case to do what is right. I'm not suggesting to you that the right thing is always to send somebody into that buzz saw. Because we've got to think about the toll that it will take on them. And on their family. But sometimes we get some willing candidates who are saying, here are my Lord, send me anyhow. And to some extent, I've sort of said that. I mean, you wouldn't think that if I got elected a bishop that I'd end up in Iowa. 2.9% black people when I went there. I recognize there are other racial-epic demographic groups. May I say to you, my testimony is one of the best experiences of my life. Partly because I was not the pioneer. It's peculiar where you expect that stuff won't go right. It goes better than you thought. I was third black bishop. When Bishop Trimble was elected, he was the fourth. There are generations of children that grew up thinking that you couldn't be the bishop and be white. Undescendingly, not surreply, I mean, it was the first time in my life where I wasn't the first in that kind of setting. So here's what I learned. This is about acceptance that when I made a mistake, it was Greg Palmer that made a mistake. It wasn't Greg Palmer, the black bishop who made a mistake. You have the power when you accept the freedom and power that God gives you to change the atmosphere, change the conversation, change the situation. And that's because the Iowa United Methodist still believes that the best bishop that ever walked the face of the earth was one, James Samuel Thomas, who at the ending of the central jurisdiction and merging into the geographic jurisdictions of the United Methodist Church, Iowa said, we will take him. And for 12 years, they accepted the freedom and power that God gave them to resist evil that says we can't have him. We can't have that woman, that Latino, that Latina, that Korean American. You hear what I'm trying to say? We've got power that we're not using. We find ways which I think are rooted in our acceptance that God has accepted us, that God is working on us to accept ourselves and to accept our neighbors. We learn things about one another that make ministry possible. Now, here's a word you should never say. Here's a phrase I hope you'll never use. I know you've used it. I told the people in West Ohio, you have not done me any favor when you believe you are complimenting me and you say, oh, bishop, when you preach and when you pray, I don't see your compliment. Now, how are you going to see a black man of my size? Watch it now. Watch this. Because if you say you don't see my color, you don't see me. How much you love me by saying it. And I know they mean no harm. I don't argue with people when they go through the line. You know, I use the public forum for that. But I say, you don't see me. That's the problem. We don't see me. Fearless dialogues and you walked in the room and a group of folks were saying to you, good morning. I see you. It's good to see you. I have a text right now from Dr. Ellison greeting all of North Texas and saying thank you for what you're doing in this work. But people who may not be the majority are not complimented. I already told you I have some prejudices. Whenever I'm in a room with people that are different than I see it, I want to see it. I want to be seen. I simply want who I am that is unchangeable. Not to be a barrier to our relationship. But I don't want to be on. And I don't want any of you. Unseen is unknown. Unknown leads to indifference. Enough accumulated indifference to otherness leads to systemic and institutionalized creating of norms that says this, let's say, whiteness is right. Or this in another culture by blackness is wrong and everything else is wrong. One story and I'm done. In the movie, 1959, imitation of life. If you've not seen it, go get it out of red box somewhere else. See it. Get you a box of Kleenex because you're going to cry at some point. Lana Turner, John Gavin, Juanita Moore. Juanita Moore is the caretaker of her own daughter, and of Lana Turner's daughter. Lana Turner is on the trajectory to become a great actress supporting the script of the movie. Juanita Moore, who is Annie in the plays, the maid, child care person, live in. And she has a daughter whose pigment allows her to pass for white. And I can't give you the whole movie. But there's a telling scene when Annie is dying. She's sitting up in this rich woman's house being treated very well and she begins to speak into her own imminent death. And she says now I want you to do this. All the arrangements have been made. I want you to have my friends to do this. Do this for my friends. You know, some instructions. You know, home families. And Lana Turner's character out of all the intimacy that they had. This woman is raising her daughter. She says, Annie, I didn't know you had any friends. And Juanita Moore Annie is laying there dying. Eyes half closed. She assumed in spite of what I know was the scripted love for Annie that the world still revolved around her and her family and her values and her relationships. And Annie as well treated as she was in very subtle ways was there to stay in her place. Can you imagine saying to somebody that you've lived with for more than 20 years I didn't know you had any friends. I'm less worried about somebody misnaming the Brazil nuts. I didn't say I wasn't worried. I'm less worried than I am about people who say I don't see your color. I didn't know you had any friends. Etc. Etc. Etc. So the hymn writer was right. The liturgy was right. Help us. Help us to accept our own acceptance. Help us to unpack the authority that we have been given to together truly become the daughters and the sons of God.