NBA Owner Donald Sterling and the United Methodist Church. The connection between these two things is something I never thought I would reflect on in a blog. However, the flow of the world brought these elements together in my mind this past week. Thus, I thought I would expound upon it. It’s ironic really. We just started a sermon series at Wellington on “When Christians Get it Wrong,” and in our first message we looked at hypocrites and Christians who are too judgmental in their faith. Afterwards, I challenged our people to see this trend at work in the world, so we might counteract it with Christ’s message of unconditional love. And lo and behold, the world produces Donald Sterling, the perfect example for us to learn from. For those of you not following this story (which is hard to do in this media saturated world), Donald Sterling owns the Los Angeles Clippers franchise of the National Basketball Association. Last week, he was recorded making racist comments against African-Americans, which is horrible in itself but even more so considering the majority of his players, the people who he makes money off of, are black. His words set the media world aflame and rightly so, but it was hardly news for many NBA insiders. Apparently, Mr. Sterling has made unpublicized comments like this for years and was recently sued for discriminating against the minority tenants of his housing projects. Yet, the majority of people did not know this due to how Mr. Sterling covered up his true opinions with donations to the NAACP and tickets to inner city kids. It must have been quite a shock therefore for these people to find out his true beliefs and realize how “two-faced” he really is.
Like we discussed on in the sermon,
many outsiders and young people encounter this sort of mindset in the
church. They come to worship and find Christians who claim to be holy, yet have
scary skeletons bumping around their closets. And when these skeletons come out; when people
backbite and gossip about each other; when the pastor is found to be having an
affair (which is just an example by the way); or when people say they want to
help others but ignore those in need on their doorstep, it turns these
potential believers off. It is too easy to pin this tendency on others and
ignore our role in it. Or as the Matthew 7:2-5 says, and I am paraphrasing here,
“we see the speck in other people’s eyes while ignoring the log in our own.” In
other words, we are all hypocrites from time to time. We are all blinded
by our own prideful mindsets and don’t see what we are really doing to others.
Seeing this, if we really want to
represent an open and inviting quality, we need to recognize our own hypocrisy. We need to be accepting of the fact that we are
not perfect, just like the people who we want to come into our church are not
perfect. Realizing this commonality opens doors. For if we can see people as
human beings no matter what and treat them lovingly, we will
have a wonderful base from which to build up the church.
Part of this process entails the
internal work of making others feel at home. But the other part requires
action. It will be interesting to see what Donald Sterling does in this regard.
He has done something heinously bad, but haven’t we all? So like any of us, redemption
is possible for the things Mr. Sterling has done. Granted, it will be a
very large hole to dig out from. He can’t continue to make empty gestures of
reconciliation because the money and tickets he sent in the past just
won’t work! So it is with us here at Wellington. Our passive approaches of
working in the background, sending food to the Food Bank and such, will not be
enough anymore. These are still good things mind you, and we will continue
doing them. However, if we want to show our community our changed hearts, we
need to act! We need to make a huge splash with something, some new ministry, some
new way of showing how Christ is transforming our lives.
It is likely this way with many churches out there, so what will your new thing be? Now
that our visioning process is winding down here, our Leadership Team will be
pondering this question in the near future. But it should not be restricted to
this group or this church. Instead, I want all of us to begin to look out into the world to
see its needs. Where can we be at work? It could be that something will pop up
just like this Sterling situations. We may go out and see a glaring issue right
in front of us! So let us take this month to ponder this so we might begin
showing how Christians can get it right.
I do hope that month is a good one!
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