“No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
Ephesians 2: 8-10 (The Message)

I went on the Boston Urban Plunge 2010 with Ephesians 2 in mind. God calls us to do good works—not because we need to do good to be saved, but because he has plans for us that involve doing the “right thing” and helping others. Having been on service-oriented Spring Break trips for the past two years, I envisioned that BUP would be more of the same, just with Bible study added in. I thought that I would go on BUP as a senior leader in Greek IV ready to answer questions or guide discussions from underclassmen.

I went into BUP this Spring Break underestimating God.

From day one, it was evident that I would not be in my by-now comfortable position as a leader in the group. When we were asked to buy groceries to feed all 23 of us for the week, rather than stepping up and organizing the shopping expedition, I found myself stressed out by the process and overwhelmed by the task. I withdrew from the group, knowing that despite my age, I had never actually been responsible for shopping for a week’s worth of groceries or cooking for other people before. That should have been wake-up call number one that BUP was not going to be the Spring Break I envisioned. Though I didn’t see God’s hands pointing me in a new direction quite yet, grocery shopping did make me realize that I live in a world where I am not responsible for putting food on the table or even for picking it up from the store. My sorority house even has a chef, a luxury I haven’t appreciated enough. I’ve lived a privileged life, and through BUP I entered into a community (Dorchester) where most don’t get the luxuries that my family was blessed to afford.

Potential wake-up call number two also occurred on the first day, while we played a game called “Star Power.” The game illustrates through three rounds of complicated point-trading that once a person is stuck in the cycle of poverty, it is nearly impossible to advance economically. Divided into three classes, the BUP-ers soon took on the rolls that befit their class, with the uppermost cooperating to protect their status, the middles competing against each other to advance, and the lowest coming to terms with their lot in life. Though I had played the game before, a new realization hit me this time, since I was in the lowest class from beginning to end. Even within the limits of the game, the members of the lowest class felt helpless to impact our destinies. The poor in Star Power (and it is not too much of a stretch to apply this to reality) lacked freedom to change their status. Even when given the opportunity to ask the rich to make laws for the benefit of the poor—because in this game, if not in real life, the rich make the rules—we did not think radically enough to actually affect meaningful change, and we remained poor despite handouts and other rules that drew attention to our plight.

Each successive day brought a new challenge to my vision of how my senior year Spring Break would be. We heard a talk about race on day two, and during the discussion I sat and listened to new facts in the same story I heard virtually ever year in school: racism is real, it is wrong, and white people throughout our history are to blame for many of America’s current racial problems. This was not new news to me, so while I felt bad that things are the way they are, I didn’t feel much more than that. After this discussion ended, however, things changed. A fellow BUP-er who happens to be biracial approached myself and another white girl on the trip and asked “Doesn’t that make you mad?” I replied honestly, saying that I get mad that things exist the way they do and that I wish certain ethnicities were not victims of personal or systemic racism. However, this BUP-er was not just asking another mundane question. What she meant, as she went on to explain, is that white people are always blamed for current problems during discussions of race such as the one we just sat through. This question, phrased in a way that I had never heard before, initiated my descent into what I like to call The Tension.

I have a feeling that many people live in The Tension every day. Though I cannot read their minds or share their experience with them, I cannot deny that women and men of minority ethnic status must struggle with issues of who to blame, accept, exclude, embrace, learn from, teach, and interact with every day of their lives. To a white girl who grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, which were not all-white but were mostly all-middle class, The Tension was a strange and unpleasant place to be. I wanted to leave, to go back to just feeling bad that injustices often happen to be drawn down racial lines, but I found that I was unable to. The Tension held me, and day by day at BUP I grew sicker at heart. In The Tension, my thoughts moved beyond “who caused this?” to “what can solve this?” There is already a multitude of outreach and educational programs going on in Boston alone. While each program can present success stories, the system that produces more criminals than college graduates among blacks and Latinos in Boston remains intact. What would work? Was it hopeless? Would good people continue to strive against an unmovable wall, ultimately succumbing to the knowledge that they did a little bit to make lives of a few people better, but that it was not enough? Why had I decided to do BUP at all, if in the end my efforts don’t create change?

Once again, as I later learned, I underestimated God.

In the midst of The Tension, Caroline, one of the Greek IV staff, led Bible study. After reading and discussing Luke 13: 10-17, Caroline led us to this concluding challenge and question: Look through God’s eyes as we serve people this week. Is there something stopping you from healing or seeking God’s children? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there was something stopping me from seeking God’s children in those that we served this week. I was stuck in The Tension! When I went to the Cambridge Community Center to help with the After School Program on the next four days of BUP, I couldn’t help but feel judged—did the employees at CCC think that I was just another white person of privilege descending to help the poor for kicks during Spring Break? Did the kids that I interacted with think that I looked strange, or that I was mean just because of my skin color? Would I be able to befriend anyone here, or would people hold back from getting to know me because my people, “white” people, are the reason that black people have suffered so much racial prejudice and economic injustice in America?

I had a lot of questions when I was in The Tension, and these questions just kept coming, with no answer in sight. Caroline could see that this was distracting me from getting to the heart of her challenge to us. After Bible study, she sat and talked and prayed with me, and she told me something that jolted me awake out of my fog of questions: There is an answer to the “who is to blame” and “what is the solution” questions that had started my spin into confusion. Humanity is to blame; starting with the fall from grace in Eden, we continue to hurt each other and we remain ultimately a broken people. Jesus is the solution; God tried for many generations to create laws or institutions that would bring his broken people back into relationship with him, and ultimately He had to send His own son to die for us as a sacrifice. Through Jesus we are set free of the history of our personal sins—so why would we dare think Him incapable of setting us free from the corporate, institutional sins that led us to the way things are today? As we prayed, I felt a release from the weight that burdened me since we started discussing racial injustice. Of course! Why didn’t that occur to me in the first place? Jesus sought out people who were different than the majority population to be a part of his ministry, often bringing up issues of race and ability. Why should I have tried to take up the burden of fixing a system that had been broken since the dawn of history, when Jesus already did that for us? The relief that this last question brought was soon met by my own stubborn memory, which brought to mind Ephesians 2 again. Just because Jesus is the solution does not mean that I don’t have a role to play in God’s plan. There is work for me to do, and I had better be doing it. I am not called to merely follow laws set before me and stand as an example for others. Jesus calls us to do more.

Later in BUP, Aaron, the other Greek IV staff worker, reaffirmed what my mind had told me. There is not an easy way to achieve racial reconciliation. Though we are already forgiven for our faults and failures through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to be more than believers. Just as Jesus sought to fish all men, we are meant to intentionally love those who are different than ourselves. This love is intentional in that it is not easy, nor is it passive. Jesus did not merely tell people he loved them—had he done that, I doubt his ministry would have gotten beyond Nazareth. Instead, Jesus acted out of love for all those that he considered his sheep. He healed the blind and he made clean the impure. His love was not just a statement or a feeling, it was also an action. Likewise we are meant to act out our love for others.

This active love is a difficult thing for me to do, because while I feel bad that others are less blessed than I am and I serve them through various volunteer opportunities, I have missed God’s call to combine the feeling and the action into love rather than pity. Being pitied will not get the children of CCC to college. But, dedicating my time to them and being a consistent, active person on their life journey will show them love that words would not adequately express. Through that love, barriers of race, economics, and education will break down. Knowing that this breaking down of inequalities is possible, that through the love Jesus shows us we find the ability to enact change in the world, is life altering. Since I was raised by parents who emphasized integrity of mind and deed, and as an MIT-trained engineer, I cannot go back to a broken system when the solution is before me. I cannot go back to merely feeling bad in discussions of race. Regardless of who started the world’s problems, I know that Jesus will finish them, and until He comes again, I can and will actively love those around me and seek out those different than me. To adapt a well known Robert Frost verse, I choose the love less traveled by, and that will make all the difference.

God woke me up during BUP, and I do not plan to fall back asleep for a long, long time.

To make a long story short (at least for now), Jimmy came to Greek IV that very night and joyfully shared his new commitment of faith in Christ with other Greeks… and we celebrated with him.

It is much more fun hearing him tell it … read his side of the story:  http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/11/invite-week-accepted/

And if you want to read about Jimmy and I got started on this journey read an earlier story:  http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/10/a-seeking-sigma-chi/