Dr. Seuss Sermon Series
August 2, 2020
James 2:1-4
“The Sneetches” and Race
As we’ve been moving through our Dr. Seuss series this
summer, the theme that is emerging for me is one of getting unstuck. The guy in
“Green Eggs and Ham” was stuck in his refusal to try something different. The
Zax were stuck in their tracks and never did budge. Gertrude McFuzz was stuck
when she sprouted way more feathers than her body could carry. Last week, the
narrator in “What Was I Scared Of?” got stuck in his fear of the green pants. For
everyone but the Zax, each character had help getting unstuck and was able to
move on, having learned their lesson. This morning, the person who helps the
Sneetches get unstuck isn’t actually trying to help them get unstuck. He is
just after their money. At the end, Sylvester McMonkey McBean doesn’t think
that the Sneetches learned anything, because he drives off with all their
money. However, the narrator is “quite happy to say” that “McBean was quite
wrong.” The Sneetches learned that “Sneetches are Sneetches and no kind of
Sneetch is the best on the beaches.” They learned the value in following the
advice we read from James to not show favoritism. They learned what my New
Testament professor called the heart of Paul’s gospel, Galatians 3:28, “There
is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and
female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Thirty years ago a huge undertaking began, called the
Human Genome Project. Its goal was to identify and map all the genes on the
human genome. While it was declared complete in 2003, occasionally more
information comes out as results are re-checked and gaps are filled in. The
most interesting fact to come out of the project was the determination that all
people are 99.9% identical in their genetic make-up.[1]
We, all of us here, all of us listening, are 99.9% the same. Is that not
amazing? We’re only 0.1% different.
We’re not just more alike than different; we are vastly more alike than different. And that goes for everyone across
the whole earth, no matter their race or tribe or birth place or legal status.
The only feature separating the Sneetches were those little green stars. While
I know it’s possible, I do not have the tools to determine just how much of
their make-up is that little green star. For humanity, the things that are
different about us only make up 0.1% of us.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
On the 6th day of creation, God’s last day of creating before
resting, God created humanity. God created us in God’s own image; in the divine
image, God created us. God blessed us and gave us instructions to take care of
creation. God saw everything he had made and it was very good. Each of us is
created in God’s image; each of us is created very good. Each of us is good and
beautiful and whole and holy, no matter our situation and no matter that 0.1%
of us that’s different. That’s what God sees when he looks at each of us: that
he made us, that we are beautiful, that we belong to each other as part of the
human race, that that 0.1% difference is also part of what makes us beautiful. This
is how God wants us to see each other: to look at another person, and see the
image of God in them; to look at another person and have your spirit well up,
thinking, hello beautiful; to look at another person and recognize that they
are God’s beloved, too.
The problem, of course, is sin, that corrupted God’s
good, beautiful creation. In the 15th century, that 0.1% difference
began to be a big deal. Slave trade has been around just about as long as
humanity. We know from the Bible, still in the book of Genesis, about how God’s
people were enslaved in ancient Egypt under Pharaoh. The Roman Empire, ancient
Greece, Mesopotamia, and other ancient civilizations had slavery. Back then, it
was usually after a war or conquest and the losers became enslaved to the
winners. In the 15th century, Portugal changed that. Prince Henry
wanted to circumvent the Islamic slave trades, who covered from Europe, across
the Mediterranean into Africa and the Middle East on to points farther east.
So, instead of going that way, he had the Portuguese slave traders go straight
south from Portugal, staying in the Atlantic Ocean, and down around the Western
Sahara and trade exclusively in African persons. Prince Henry did feel bad
about this, like he was “picking on” Africa, and so he looked for a way to
rationalize and justify it. The royal chronicler, Gomes de Zurara, helped him
out, and the modern concept of “race” was born. Zurara claimed that it was okay
to enslave Africans because they were an inferior group of people, lost, living
like beasts, and suited for hard work. This is still the legacy that we are
living with today. Because people over 500 years ago made a big deal about that
0.1%, using it to justify and excuse their sin, we have been taught,
consciously and subconsciously, that it’s an important distinction.
Some of us, especially those of us who are white, have
been taught to be color-blind, that it’s not supposed to matter whether there’s
a green star on someone’s belly or not. Ask someone without a star whether that
star makes a difference or not, and they will tell you that it does. It means
access to better housing and schools and healthcare. It means not being
followed around in a store. It means that others are less likely to question or
worse, outright dismiss what you say. I have my master’s degree in education,
in a program called Intercultural Communication. I was taught then to take off
my blinders, because if you claim to be color-blind, to not see a person’s
race, then you are not seeing the whole person. Their skin color, eye color,
hair texture, and the experiences they have as a result, are a part of them and
you can’t dismiss it.
I recognize I’m touching some nerves. I’m stepping on
some toes. I’m making some of you feel uncomfortable. I prayed and stress-ate
my way through writing this sermon. I expect some of you are thinking about
other struggles you’ve had to overcome, ones related to classism, sexism,
ableism, being looked down on for living in a rural area, and I am not
discounting or dismissing any of those struggles. I know about some of them
myself. What white privilege means is that you haven’t had struggles because of
your skin color, and our brothers and sisters who are persons of color have. Why am I spending a whole sermon
on this? Multiple reasons, one being that this is what the story of the
Sneetches is all about. Those with stars think they’re better. Those without
stars also think that those who have stars are better. They’ve internalized
what the star-bellies have told them and believe they’re inferior. Another
reason is that the church should be a safe place to have hard conversations. I’m
not here to make you feel comfortable and pat you on the back all the time. I’m
here to affirm what’s good and healthy and life-giving and to challenge you to
grow in other areas. So much of what we hear on the news and social media and
our circles of friends have become an echo chamber, which reinforces what we
already think rather than challenges us to examine what we think and compare it
in light of the Gospel, in the light of Jesus.
Jesus says, take care of your neighbor. In the parable of
the Good Samaritan, the neighbor is the one who showed mercy, the one who took
care of the injured man, even though they were a different religion and
ethnicity and their laws prevented them from interacting. He saw a person who
needed help and he helped. Jesus says, don’t show favoritism and discriminate
among yourselves. Jesus says, help those who need help, because we are all one
and you cannot separate your love for me from your love for your neighbor.
Jesus invites us to follow him in the way of love, not the way of fear, not the
way of justifying our wrongdoing, but seeing our whole neighbor, their body and
their spirit, and love them just as Jesus loves you, fully, wholly,
unconditionally, to the point of laying down his life.
When we get to heaven, there are going to be people there
of many skin tones and colors and God’s good creation will be restored again.
The vision of heaven I love is from Revelation 7:9-10, where there is a great
multitude of people from every nation, tribe, people, and language, and they’re
all praising God together with one voice. Now, part of our job is bringing
God’s kingdom here on earth; it is to not be satisfied to live in our divisions
and our brokenness but to work with God in redeeming and renewing all things.
One of the places where that needs doing is in the church. If the church could
learn that “Sneetches are Sneetches and no kind of Sneetch is the best on the
beaches,” if we could dismantle the racism in our systems, in our communities,
in our society, then what a wonderful world it would be!
Let us pray…
God, You are the source of
human dignity, and it is in your image that we are created. Pour out on us the
spirit of love and compassion. Enable us to reverence each person, to reach out
to anyone in need, to value and appreciate those who differ from us, to share
the resources of our nation, to receive the gifts offered to us by people from other
cultures. Grant that we may always promote the justice and acceptance that
ensures lasting peace and racial harmony. Help us to remember that we are one
world and one family. Amen.[2]
