Do you remember the story of the Princess and the Pea? The princess, despite being on top of twenty mattresses, couldn’t fall asleep because something kept jabbing her, poking her, and disrupting her slumber. The tiny pea under all of those mattresses was something she tried to ignore. But that pea kept poking at her, disrupting her sleep, and telling her to “Wake up!”
That story describes my feelings about the subject of race relations. For a long time, I have tried to ignore the issue of race in my life and in my ministry. It is much easier that way. It is easy for me to ignore, and much more comfortable to deny that there is something poking at me. But that “pea” keeps poking, telling me that there is something very broken in God’s world, and I need to pay attention to it. Despite my best efforts to deny that race relations is something I need to worry about, it continues to poke at me, disrupt my comfort, and insist that I wake up.
Why should I, or anyone like me, worry about race? Isn’t that someone else’s problem? I’m white, why do I have to worry about race? But here’s the thing - the pea under the mattress that keeps me from being comfortable and content - Jesus commanded in Matthew 22:39 to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus was very clear about the two most important commandments (loving God is the other one), so we’d better believe that loving others is pretty important to God. We are called to love everyone, each and every person that God has created on this great earth, including the people who don’t look like us.
Loving others is hard work. But it is important work, especially when it comes to race relations. I have recently been “waking up” to the fact that our black and brown skinned brothers and sisters suffer from a very deep wound that we need to pay attention to. This is a wound that is easy for us white folks to ignore. But if we start asking questions and really listening, we will begin to hear stories of pain, of being oppressed by a system that overwhelmingly favors white people.
We need to take this pain very seriously. It’s part of being disciples of Jesus. We need to start listening, start learning, and start being curious about what is hurting our brothers and sisters of color in the United States. We need to start believing them when they tell us about their pain and struggle.
Thank you for participating in this study of Waking Up White, by Debby Irving. I
believe that you will find that this book is a great first step
toward understanding why, in 2020 we are still talking about race. As you
enter the conversation, perhaps you will be moved to continue to
examine the role race has played in shaping your life and the lives of our
brothers and sisters in Christ. Perhaps you will feel moved to further engage
in the important work of undoing racism in the United States.
In his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It,
Robert Fulgham speaks with great
disdain about the “gunk
in the sink.” We all know what he’s talking
about - the bits of food and yuck that gather around the drain. He then talks
about the bravery of his mother:
“One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.”
Cleaning out the “gunk in the sink” is part of being an adult. It’s an unpleasant but necessary job, and Robert Fulgham’s mother, was brave enough to handle the mess.
Racism is like the “gunk in the sink” for our communities and our nation. Cleaning out the gunk, and being brave enough to face it, is simply part of being a grown-up.
