Brown Privilege ...

These days there is a good deal made about “white privilege”, at least if you tune in to the democratic party from time to time.  Being a member of that privileged category myself, I tend to think I am immune to seeing it in my life.  What I do see, is the transference of legacy from one generation to another.  If your great grandfather, and grandfather, and father all went to Harvard – chances are much better you will be joining them in attending that institution.  But if no one did, your odds at getting in fall as far as your wallet’s emptiness will permit.  I seem to remember applying to Harvard when I was graduating high school back in the days of covered wagon travel 😊.  I don’t remember being accepted.  But even if I were, my single mother’s finances permitted food on the table, not attendance at a school that even back then cost more than two fortunes to attend.  It would have been a privilege to be admitted, it also would have been a life sentence to the debt that would have gone with it.  Me being white, seems to have little to do with it.  Unless you think that “to dream” in my younger years, was the privilege after all.

But when you think about it.  We seem to measure privilege in monetary terms.  Harvard is a steppingstone to a better job, with higher pay.  It is a steppingstone to introductions to the elite of our nation.  To having friends that serve in the white house, or the senate, etc.  Money, power, influence – mostly all boil back down to money again.  If my grandfather had been rich, he would have passed that wealth to my father.  My father would have passed it to me.  I would pass it on to my children.  That kind of legacy, where wealth is transferred from one generation to the next, I have seen up close and personal in others.  That is real.  That is a privilege I understand.  Don’t get to participate in it mind you, but I understand it.  When someone from that legacy in motion of wealth falls on hard times – they are given special attention to rectify their problems.  Think about it.  When the rich get in trouble with the law, it is an entirely different experience than when the poor do.  Lawyers like Alan Dershowitz can talk his client out of nearly anything.  The lawyer you get at the public defender’s office is a 50/50 bet at best.  When the rich get sick – they fly in experts, or to experts at hospitals all over the world to seek treatment.  When you or I get sick – we go to whatever facility is closest that takes our version of insurance (if we have it).  That is two entirely different experiences based on privilege.

If we were however to lift our eyes from the things of this world that so demand our attention for a moment.  And begin to measure true privilege in spiritual matters we might have to turn our thinking on its head.  At least from a racial basis anyway.  Jews, Arabs, and people who in the days of Jesus originated from the middle east, in that specific geography – where not white – they were brown.  Various degrees of brown.  This means Jesus was not the Lilly white bread picture painted by most renaissance artists (who came from whiter countries).  Jesus too was middle eastern.  He was brown.  His disciples, men or women, were also brown.  Those tagged from Ethiopia, or perhaps Egypt, or areas to the south of there were likely black.  White folks were entirely absent from the hero list of these times.  They may well have been present as the enemies of the day in the form of Romans.  Yikes.  Not only were white folks not privileged to share lineage with Jesus, but instead were the ones helping to wipe out that lineage.  Sound typical, at least in a historical context?  Seems it takes us white folks a long time to get on the right side of history in any age.  That is not privilege, it is the willful lack of it.

When Jesus however looks at privilege (and He does), He does not define it based along racial lines either.  In fact He sort of bucks the norms of catering to the intelligentsia of His day.  And He does not look to the lineage of kings and the dynasties they fight to maintain.  He skips right past the “smart folks” from the Harvard’s of His day; and then wizzes right by the Kings of it, and settles in on His target.  Or rather His Father’s target – the babies.  Luke talks about just this very thing in his gospel letter, in chapter ten, picking up in verse 21 saying … “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.”  Wow!  You will note Jesus does not mention that the revelations of wisdom regarding Himself and His Father were given specifically to brown people (even if that was the statistical result).  Nor did brown, or white, or black have any mention in the revelations being revealed.  But babies did.

There were Hebrew schools of the day, that prepared students by studying the Torah and the prophets every day.  But none of their attendees were gifted with these revelations.  Instead, relative babies were handed out the knowledge.  Fishermen.  Perhaps nearly illiterate.  Tradesmen.  People of the masses.  A women of former disrepute, and definitive demonic possession.  The blind, the lame, the healed, all considered blessed.  People who consistently knew they were not educated, or the smartest folks in the room.  People who knew their need where it comes to wisdom.  Babies.  The Father and the Son seem to always zero in on babies.  Babies are fully dependent.  They don’t carry out arguments about who is going to go to work today and earn the living for the family.  They don’t speak.  They don’t walk.  So none of their kind is prepared for providing anything.  They are instead blessed to be provided for.  That is supposed to be us.  Is it?

Jesus continues in verse 22 saying … “All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.”  And here is the entire Bible summed up in two sentences.  “All things”.  Not some of them.  Are already known by the Father, including the most important thing, the identity of the Son.  It is that knowledge that is shared by the Father God, with those babies standing around following Jesus, both men and women.  And as far as who the Father God is; that is a portrait only the Son Jesus Christ can truly reveal.  To know Jesus is to know the Father God.  To reject Jesus is to reject the Father who sent Him.  For most of us the picture of who the Father is, is a complete shrouded mystery.  We think of Him in terms of retribution, revenge, punishment, and judgment.  But the Father is NO DIFFERENT than the Son in “who” He is, or what He is like.  He loves.  He loves so hard, He was willing to give up His only Son for you or me.  Take Jesus out of the equation and the Father goes back to sheer mystery.  Don’t count on your intellect to reason you a definition – cause only babies truly get it.  You can forget your legacy of wealth to help you here, cause again, only the fully dependent even begin to understand.  The folks who think they “can take care of themselves” have no idea who God really is.

This kind of truth, was Truth for the ages.  Since Adam, mankind had longed to see it up close and in person.  But Adam would die before it came.  Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, David, and all the OT prophets would pass away before Jesus enters the scene.  Even Biblical heroes were not so blessed as to see Jesus for 4000+ years.  Jesus recognizes this as he continues in verse 23 saying … “And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: [verse 24] For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.”  Here Jesus lays out what real privilege is.  It has nothing to do with status.  No riches, or smarts, or even faith of the patriarchs gone by – it has to do with being babies who see their need, and cling to God to meet it.  Harvard would have netted me nothing with Jesus.  It might have even done damage to my faith in Him.  Legacy of wealth would have done nothing to recommend me to Jesus, it might have instead done damage to my ideas of self-reliance and kept me away from Jesus.  After all, why do the rich need anything from a Santa-clause God when they already have everything they want.  But Santa, is not who Jesus really is.

Babies however, are first in line at the privilege counter.  In times past brown babies had the advantage for many years, but eventually white babies were able to get in line when they finally started wanting to.  At this point in time however, we should not be thinking about this in racial terms at all.  But we should be thinking about it in the terms Jesus outlined for the favor of God the Father.  Are we self-aware enough to know our need?  Or have we determined we know everything we need to know, and have everything (even if only spiritual) we need to have.  As it turns out, I would love to be granted the privilege of knowing the identity of God the Father, and the Son.  If that means relinquishing all my acquired human wisdom for the doo-doo that it is; I am fine with that.  I understand that this wisdom is not a legacy I can pass on to my children, or have gifted to me by my parents.  It takes a one-on-one connection with Jesus – something that is just between Him and me.  My parents can point me to that, just like I hope to point my children to it.  But to grasp it, requires getting in baby mode, and submitting the core of who I am, to the One who is the source of all this Love and wisdom.  So much for Harvard, please enroll me in the cradle roll that Jesus leads.