Editor’s Note: As part of our mission to equip the local church and Asian American Christians, we are posting sermon excerpts, devotions, and prayers from our SOLA Council members concerning racism and injustice. We hope that these words would be challenging and encouraging to believers as we fight against the sin of racism.
This video is a compilation of excerpts from two pastoral statements given by Rev. Hanley Liu, the English Lead Pastor at First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut on May 31 and June 4. You can find the videos on their YouTube channel here.
Below is an edited transcript of the video. Please note that some changes have been made for readability and clarity.
Racism has always existed. So what’s different about this? It’s the abuse of power and abuse of authority that bothers people. They are people who are supposed to be protecting and upholding justice, but then they’re abusing their power and authority, and you can’t do anything.
But I think before we respond, we need to take the time to listen, learn, and empathize. I’m a Chinese American. That makes me a minority but I’m not a Black American and I’m not an African American. I have no idea the depths of pain that some of my Christian brothers and sisters in Christ have gone through.
So I need to listen and learn and hear their hearts, hear their stories, empathize with them. But we also need to listen and learn from police officers. There’s a lot of pressure. Imagine that every day you go to work and your life is on the line. You hear of officers who are outraged by what they saw on the video that happened in Minneapolis. They don’t agree with that they feel it’s murder. But they have to go out to work. If you were their family members, how would you feel?
And I think for many of you who are listening to this, you do sympathize and empathize, but take the time to listen to their side of the story and what they go through. See, because if we’re going to be peacemakers and if we’re going to be agents of reconciliation, we need to listen to both parties, rather than to contribute to the voice of anger and outrage, contribute to the voice of peace.
Racism exists because sin exists. But the gospel frees us, right? The Gospel frees us because the Gospel forces us to begin to look within ourselves. It exposes any injustice and prejudice that we hold as human beings towards anyone. Then we can begin to see how the Gospel bridges and the Gospel frees us to then love others and reconcile with others.
If you have Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. You have this presence of God living in you. This means where there’s an absence of God and an absence of godliness, the believer can enter. The believer, ideally, ought to bring the presence of God — the presence of God’s peace, the presence of reason, the presence of the Gospel — through our words and our deeds.
The Gospel frees you in a sense where the gospel empowers you to forgive, but the Gospel also helps you understand why that evil exists. The Gospel becomes that hope from all of these evils, not in the sense where these evils will disappear, but it frees us in the sense where we can still love and not become angry,
Again, how do you learn? You can’t learn without first listening. Listen — listen to all sides. Learn — hear their story, understand them. Learn to empathize, and when you empathize, then the Lord will place on your heart what it means for you specifically to do good.
What we need to do as Christians is to listen, learn, and empathize. Then pray to the Lord and say, “God, how can I do good? How can I seek justice? How can I fight for the helpless and hopeless in our society?”