Theology with Brown Skin
Reflections on a Mestizo Jesus
My family and I recently uprooted our life from Guatemala to the US. This has given me way to many ideas, feelings, and time to reflect. As a result, I will be posting some scattered thoughts and reflections that come to mind for through this season of transition. These reflections are my way to stay focused on my humanity amid a disorienting time. I hope they are helpful to you as they are for me to process.
Many years ago, I was sitting at a theological training with other grassroots leaders from Guatemala City. The room was at the house of a renowned Guatemalan artist who migrated to the US. The house sat empty, and we rented the gallery room to have our conversations. The walls were designed to hold art from his personal collection. The Art Deco style of the room with a glass brick wall allowed for natural light to come in giving the space beautiful prismatic reflections on the floor. This room was the stage for one of the most transformative conversations I’ve had.
The facilitator, who is a good friend of mine, started by asking a question: “How many of you have heard the stories of the grandmothers of Christmas?” nobody raised their hands. We just looked at each other a little confused by the question. It was the middle of the calendar year. Christmas was still quite far away. “They are stories you all know, but perhaps you haven’t made the connections,” he said. Then, we opened our Bibles to read the genealogy of Jesus on Matthew Chapter 1. As we went through the names of each one of the women who are named in Jesus’ genealogy, we stopped to read and discuss their stories. He made a special emphasis in the ethnic background of these women. Two of them were Canaanites (Tamar and Rahab). Ruth was a Moabite. And Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, was presumably Hittite. At the end of our conversation, my friend quoted Ray Bakke: “Jesus was the mixed-racial savior of the world.”1 I went home that night after our gathering, and those words have been pressed on my brain since then.
This information wasn’t new. I knew all the stories of the other women in Jesus’ family. I had read about them in the Old Testament survey course in Seminary. However, something made a dent in my consciousness that day. I started connecting some historical and theological dots. It felt liberating yet scary. I had just become aware that Jesus was a mestizo (mixed-race).
The mestizo blood is scandalous. It is “impure” and difficult to place within the framework and standards of whiteness. In the history of my country, mestizos have always struggled to find our identity. Many of us aspire to the whiteness sold by US and European lifestyle propaganda. We have always tried to be White, yet the color of our skin reminds us that we will never have the privilege that comes with being white. As a result, we have separated ourselves from our indigenous ancestors. Consequently, we have looked down and abused our indigenous brothers and sisters. In fact, we have taken the task to oppress and discriminate those who are browner than us or black. Mixed-race people in Guatemala have let themselves be a tool in the hands of whiteness (for a deeper explanation about the collective woundedness of my country, you can grab a copy of my book).
That is why hearing the words, “Jesus was the mixed-racial savior of the world,” created the necessary space for me to embark on a journey of acceptance, repentance, and asking for forgiveness (full story in the link below.)
The theological implications of Ray Bakke’s statement are profound. Christians have recited and preached the text of Galatians 3:28 for a long time: “There is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ.” In other words, there is no theological justification to make any distinctions regarding race, class, and gender. Yet, Christianity has made sure to keep such distinctions alive in a way that benefits a minority who still holds power in most of our contemporary institutions.
Today, I find myself in a context that feels very polarized. I am doing my best to understand it and not pass judgment nor condemnation. I want to learn. As a result, I am seeing, listening, and experience the division and segregation that I am entering into. I have heard friends and family grieve the polarization they are experiencing. They feel and mourn the political and racial tensions around them. I have listened to people lament about the current state of their city, denomination, and country. I have listened to stories about the pain and suffering caused by systems that dehumanize people based on the color of their skin, sexuality, and gender. I dare not to judge my new city, for I also participated in the collective woundedness of my own city and country for many decades before coming to repentance. I just listen and feel its pain.
The only way forward as I learn to be in this new city is through my personal and collective woundedness. It is only in accepting the wrong that I have done—my racism, classism, and discriminatory practices—that I will be able to fall in love with a new place. I cannot change the systems of oppression, but I can accept my participation in them, ask for forgiveness, and freely receive it. It may not seem like much, but it will make me more human.
As a result of this rumination, a couple questions arise: should people just move on and forget racial, cultural, political, and religious issues? Should we just forget about our collective woundendess and move beyond it? In my experience, I would have to say NO. It seems to me that the Gospel (the Gospel of Matthew specifically) and Jesus invite us to dive into the incarnational mestizaje (mixing) that unites what we have been taught to reject and separate. The incarnation invites us to dive deep into our history, the stories of our ancestors, and see them with grace and responsibility for their sins. For, it is through our mestizaje—our historical, cultural, religious, racial, and social mixing—that we will realize that nobody can claim goodness. It is in the death and resurrection of a mestizo Jesus that any sense of human superiority gets crushed by the cross. For, the cross is the place where all of humanity becomes responsible for its own violence. And, if we take responsibility for our violence, we may have a small chance to transform our present to reimagine our future.
Ray Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City