Yes, It’s Been Changed: A Very Quick Primer on How We Get Our Bibles.
Joy in the Midst of Tragedy
18 December 201220 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. 21 He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” [1]
This third Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of Joy. We have had a glimpse of the hope of the season, and the signs which encourage us toward hope. He have had a glimpse of the peace of the season, and how we ought to prepare for the coming of that peace. Today we were to be encouraged exercise our joy in the anticipation of what is coming, of who is coming. Today was to be the day in which the light that shines in darkness would begin to burn even more intently as we know that the day of the Lord’s coming swiftly approaches. Today was to be the day that our upraised voices and upturned hearts would begin to celebrate with urgency as we look toward the day of the birth of the Son of Man. This was to be our message. But life presented us with a situation that would cause many to question the appropriateness of preaching about and singing about and praying about joy, in light of recent tragic events. Life presented us with a reminder that there are many unanswerable questions, many unexplainable actions, many confusing and doubt-raising occurrences in this world in which we anticipate the coming of the Lord in glory and majesty.
The tension that exists in this day pulls at the heart and wrenches the gut in unimaginable ways, and yet, there is still a word from the Lord. There is still good news for today. The light that shines in darkness, shines brightest in the darkest dark. And it may seem to reinforce the reality that we live in darkness. But the light still shines, and it still foretells the coming of Joy even in the midst of grief and sorrow. We preach joy, even when we don’t feel it, even when we don’t believe it, even when we don’t want it, because the pains of life are so raw and so real. We preach joy.
Job’s story is not necessarily the text that comes to mind when we consider the idea of joy. Job, that giant of righteousness among men, is presented to us in the midst of an existential question: God, why? Why has this happened? Why has this happened to me? Why could this not have happened to somebody else? Why does this go on and on and on? Why does this not end? Why don’t you answer? Why don’t you explain yourself? He has no knowledge of what has happened between The Lord- Yahweh, and the sattan- Satan. He is not privy to the wager that exists between these two divine characters. All he knows is that pain and suffering have become his lot, and he can come up with no reasons for why this is so. For 39 chapters he laments, he argues, he pleads, he curses, he questions. And when he finally receives a response from the only One who can truthfully and rightfully respond to him in his situation, he gets a different response than what he anticipated.
But before he gets to that final encounter with the Lord, before he has the inadequate conversations with his friends, before he has even reached his lowest point, Job makes a declaration after having a moment with God in the only way that he knew- he worshipped. He presented himself before the sovereign God of the universe and through his act of mourning, he acknowledged God as God. And he declared, still out of his premature understanding of God, that he came into the world with nothing, that he would leave the world with nothing, that everything that he had was given to him by God, and God must have decided to take back what God had given. Whatever the case, the name of God was to be blessed.
Now it must be understood here that worship is not always a celebratory activity, not always filled with high praise and glad tidings. Worship can be marked by shouts of “Hallelujah,” and festive singing and dancing, or by lying prostrate and bare before the God of all creation, or by anything on the spectrum between. But I take advantage of the popular idea that worship is always a joy filled experience to suggest that worship in sorrow might be the beginning of joy. It may be that acknowledging the sovereignty of God in the midst of our personal struggle is the genesis of joy. It may be that the seed of joy is sometimes planted into ground that is fertilized by grief and watered with tears. But if we do not acknowledge God, if we don’t turn to God with all of our questions and our doubts and our confusion and our anger and our dismay, that we may leave the garden in which joy is cultivated untended, the soil unturned. I don’t know. I don’t have ready answers, and that is the real problem today. We want ready answers were there are none. We want to blame the overabundance of guns, the lack of prayer in schools, the poor state of mental healthcare in our communities. But the answers are not readily forthcoming, not for us, and not for Job in his day.
There is no doubt today that twenty-seven families in Newtown, Connecticut, find themselves in the seat of Job. They could not have known on Thursday night what Friday morning would bring. In their wildest imaginations, something like what happened on Friday would never have occurred to those 27 families. But even before there was Newtown, there was a mall in Oregon on Tuesday. Before that, a factory in Minneapolis in September. Before that, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August. Before that, a movie theatre in Colorado in July. Before that, there was Virginia Tech and Fort Hood and Columbine. And after Friday, there was a hospital in Birmingham. And a gas station in Tuscaloosa. And all year long, there has been any street in any neighborhood in the city of Chicago. And all of the families associated with all of those lives lost find themselves in the seat of Job. And we, too, may find ourselves in the seat of Job.
But among the many lessons in Job’s story, there is one thing that I find remarkable- two things. The first is that with all of his desire to end his suffering, he either could not or would not take those matters into his own hands. It might be that Job still believed in the value of life even though he wished his own would come to an end. It might be that Job recognized that starting and/or ending life was not his responsibility, but the responsibility of the One to whom he complained and lamented his condition. Whatever the case, Job could not simply give up on life, roll over and die. The second remarkable thing is that through all of his ranting and shouting and shaking his fist at God, he was not undone. Job spoke to God in ways that I dare say most Christians would find blasphemous and dangerous, definitely crossing the line of acceptability and courting a swift and sure punishment from God. But Job not only survived after he pushed the envelope with God, he came out on the other side better than when he went in- not because he gained more material wealth, but because he gained a deeper and truer understanding of who God was and how God intervened in his life.
The questions that we pose to God in times like these are questions that God is well equipped to handle. We might not be well enough equipped to handle the answers, which is why there might be an overwhelming silence, and a darkening darkness. But the children who walk in darkness will see a marvelous light. Those who mourn will be comforted. The meek will inherit the earth. The merciful will receive mercy. The pure in heart will see God. The peacemakers will be called children of God. These are the assertions that we find in the Beatitudes that I believe we must affirm and hold on to. Otherwise, the light that shines in darkness shines for naught.
So today, my brothers and sisters, I want to encourage us to walk in the light. The light that shines in darkness does not illuminate everything around us, but gives us just enough light that we might see our way through. The light that shines in darkness give just enough light that we can keep on keeping on. The light that shines in darkness can help us get to the place of joy. The light that shines in darkness may not dispel the long shadows, but it helps us to know that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we can become less fearful. Preaching joy in the midst of tragedy is not a tragedy in itself, but it is the exercise of hope in the midst of darkness that God is with us, and that God will enable us to endure.
[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Job 1:20–21.
4 June 2012
Read this!!
I know it’s old news, but this was a topic I had intended to weigh in and offer my opinion.
In case you missed it, last week MSNBC host Chris Hayes’ made some comments about the word “hero” attached to the word “soldier.” I remember reading the initial story from a couple of tweets and I oddly enough agreed with him. The story got back to me initially that he was taking umbrage with the fact that “hero” was overused in the context of American soldiers. My kneejerk reaction was to agree with him. But here’s the following quote that Hayes’ said:
I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable — uncomfortable — about the word because…
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Over My Head…
15 May 2012
Over my head I hear music in the air;
Over my head I hear music in the air;
Over my head I hear music in the air;
There must be a G-d somewhere.
-Negro Spiritual
Over my head, I heard a certain sound. But it wasn’t music. It sounded a bit like wind, a bit like distant thunder. But unlike the wind, it did not cool my skin, but it gave me chills. Unlike distant thunder, it did not promise the coming of a gentle cooling rain, but something more ominous and frightful. Over my head, I heard a certain sound like a restless shuffling. I heard the sound of spectators in the sankofa section of the cosmos, the great crowd of witnesses, the ancestors shifting in their heavenly stadium seats, some standing to get a better view because they could not believe their spiritual eyes. Others craning to hear better because they could not believe their spiritual ears.
Over my head, I heard the sound of
Addie Mae Collins • Cynthia Wesley • Carole Robertson • Denise McNair • Emmett Till • Medgar Evers • James Chaney • Andrew Goodman • Michael Schwerner • Ella Baker • Fannie Lou Hamer • Septima Poinsette Clark • Daisy Bates • Rosa Parks • Ralph David Abernathy • Fred Shuttlesworth • Martin Luther King, Jr. • Coretta Scott King • Bayard Rustin • Asa Philip Randolph • Hosea Williams • Crispus Attucks • Nat Turner • Denmark Vesey • Phillis Wheatley • Benjamin Banneker • Richard Allen • Absalom Jones • Gabriel Prosser • David Walker • Dred Scot • Josiah Henson • William Lloyd Garrison • Frederick Douglass • Harriet Tubman • Sojourner Truth • Henry Highland Garnet • John Mercer Langston • Hiram Rhodes Revels • Reverdy Ransom • Octavius Catto • PBS Pinchback • Booker T. Washington • Ida B. Wells • WEB DuBois • George Washington Carver • William Wells Brown • Carter G. Woodson • James Weldon Johnson • J. Rosamond Johnson • Walter White • Whitney Young • Jack Johnson • Marcus Garvey • Langston Hughes • Countee Cullen • Arna Bontemps • Gwendolyn Brooks • Zora Neale Hurston • John Hope • Mary McLeod Bethune • Dorothy Height • Eleanor Roosevelt • Marian Anderson • Billie Holliday • Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. • Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. • Richard Wright • Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. • James Baldwin • Alex Haley • Paul Robeson • Jackie Robinson • John Hope Franklin • Ralph Bunche • Blanche Kelso Bruce • Edward Brooke • Ralph Ellison • Charles Diggs • Harold Washington • Coleman Young • Constance Baker Motley • Shirley Chisholm • H. Leon Higginbotham • Thurgood Marshall • Derrick Bell • Benjamin Hooks • Maynard Holbrooke Jackson • Mack Charles Parker • Lorraine Hansberry • Malcolm X • Jimmy Lee Jackson • Vernon Dahmer • Huey P. Newton • Barbara Jordan • Ron Brown • James Byrd, Jr. • James Anderson
… and hundreds of thousands of others whose names I will never know. I heard them stand up, inch closer, turn in their seats to see if they heard correctly, that an African-American pastor said he would stay. home. on. election. day. rather than vote for the first African-American incumbent president, or for his opponent, because the President has stated his personal belief that all persons under the Constitution of the United States of America should have the same access to marriage, regardless of whether their intended spouse is of the same or of different gender.
Over my head, I hear these ancestors saying, “WE DID NOT GIVE OUR LIVES FOR THIS.”
Transgressive Love
15 May 2012This past Sunday was Mother’s Day (13 May 2012) and my sermon was titled “The (M)otherness of G-d.” Using Exodus 2:1-10- the birth of Moses- as the scriptural impetus for my Mother’s Day message, I showed that mothers are one representation/manifestation of G-d in our lives. In the text, I indicated three maternal archetypes: the birth mother (Moses’ mother), the adoptive mother (Pharaoh’s daughter), and the mother figure (Moses’ sister). The gist of the message was this: 1) mothers will find a way or make a way to see to it that their children have the best lives that they possibly can, especially in the midst of dire circumstances; 2) mothers will take risks when it comes to the care and well-being of their children; 3) mothers bridge the divide between who we are and who we are to become, keeping us connected to our origins as we reach out into our unknown future toward our destiny. Mothers do these things for their children as maternal G-d-figures in the lives of their children. G-d makes ways when we cannot see our way ourselves; G-d takes risks with us- we may choose to reject G-d, which is a risky proposition for G-d; G-d connects the dots on our life’s path so that our origin is connected to our destiny, again, even if we cannot see how.
I mention this sermon because in the second movement of the sermon text, I was compelled to include language which had not been in the sermon before Wednesday. Wednesday, 9 May 2012, was the day on which President Barack Obama stated his belief that same-gender loving persons should be afforded the same rights to marriage as heterosexual couples. Before Wednesday, there was really no compelling reason to include the language that I included. After Wednesday, there was no way that I could not say something to the church about a matter which had become a political, theological, and ecclesial hot potato for much of the African-American community, and especially for the Black Church. Almost immediately upon hearing the president’s position, certain media-prone members of the African-American clergy community expressed their disdain for the president’s stated position, and called him to task to explain how he could have so callously betrayed those who have supported him so strongly over these last four years. Their protestations were, and are, presumptuous and more than a little frightening, considering the legacy that African-American clergy share with oppressed peoples in this country. I will not enter this portion of the fray here. Others have presented positions which parallel mine with great eloquence (see here and here and here and here.)
My concern here is with a moment of pastoral care that arose in the delivery of this sermon that I was not actively cognizant of, but that my mentor pointed out in our discussion afterward. In pointing out that mothers take risks when it comes to rearing children, just as G-d takes risks with us, I indicated that mothers sometimes transgress the acceptable norms of culture, society, and even the church when they show unconditional love and acceptance to their children who may be too big or too small, too dark or too light (still a regrettable African-American phenomenon in some places today) or who love and are in relationship with people whom some believe to be the wrong kind of people: those who are of the same gender. My budding passion in ministry is the connection between biblical text and pastoral theology, and how reframing narratives that have been used in certain traditional ways can be constructive in helping us work through contemporary issues on which the bible may be silent, contradictory, or even misapplied. The story of the birth of Moses provides an example of two women and a girl who exercise agency in a climate where they were expected to have none. They conspire to save the life of a boy child whose destiny was to be an early grave. In so doing, they participate in G-d’s plan of salvation for humanity. Many mothers have had to find agency, courage, and will to transgress the prevailing norms of society, culture, and church to love their same-gender loving children, in spite of what their neighbors, bosses, pastors, or perhaps even husbands have said about the issue. They, too, have participated in G-d’s plan of salvation for humanity. This kind of transgressive love has been slow in coming in African-American church settings with regard to same-gender loving people, for myriad reasons, not least among them is a literalist view of scripture which has tended to often do more harm than good. (How many abused women were told in years past to return to the place of their oppression and “pray through” the violence? How many children have been victimized in religious settings, but the adults who were most responsible for protecting them were, through their silence, complicit in the victimization?) I was not thinking along these lines when I included that language in my sermon text, but my mentor picked up on it, and he indicated that perhaps there was a mother in my congregation who was able to see through my illustration that she could abandon any notion of rejecting and casting out her child because what was called for in her situation was transgressive love, not strict adherence to faulty interpretation and misapplication of scripture.
I was more than a little bit disgruntled that I had to address these issues on Mother’s Day. I did not feel I had enough time to craft a reasoned response. I contemplated not saying anything at all. But I remembered two things, 1) the promise that I made to G-d and myself upon entering seminary, that I would not simply abandon that which I had learned and earned in my theological education once I entered parish ministry, and 2) Dr. King’s statement about the true measure of a person being discernible in where they stand in times of controversy. Undoubtedly, those who maintain that homosexuality is “an abomination” and that same-gender marriage “is a threat to the very pillar of civilized society” will not be swayed by this idea of transgressive love from mother to child. I have seen too many impassioned speeches and manifestos in favor of continued legalized discrimination against same-gender loving people to believe that one or two blogs will change many minds. But as a pastor, if I can help people to find a way into the love ethic of Jesus when everything around them says that love comes with conditions, then I believe I will have done a service for G-d’s people and a good work for the Lord.
My Letter to Lowe’s
14 December 2011I first learned of the Lowe’s Corporation’s decision to pull their advertising from the TLC show, “All-American Muslim” on Monday morning, and with an expediency that I haven’t shown in quite some time, I sent off the following message to the company via their website:
I am a Christian minister and pastor, and I was appalled and dismayed when I learned recently that your company has chosen to pull advertising from the TLC show “All-American Muslim.” This action only furthers the divide between minority religious groups and the mainstream of American society, and it is unfortunate that other self-identified Christians do not realize that discrimination against other religious groups opens the door to possible discrimination against Christians. Your action regarding this television show only makes that possibility more probable. Please know that I have been a loyal Lowe’s customer for over 25 years, choosing your company over other home improvement and hardware retailers (particularly here in Atlanta, GA, the home of your largest competitor), but with this action, I cannot continue to give you my business until you correct this very egregious wrong that you have committed. Respectfully, …
I find it baffling that in spite of other very reasoned dissenters sharing this same sentiment to the company, they seem to be digging in rather than reconsidering their course. Tweeter @MichaelSkolnik pointed out the very basic business reality that there are 10 million Muslim Americans with a buying power of $170 billion. Lowe’s persists in defending its decision to pull their advertising from this show, all the while touting its commitment to diversity. Makes me wonder…
The Season of Advent: Waitin’ on a Baby
1 December 2011This year, Advent began on the day before our second daughter was due to be born – at least according to the doctor’s estimate. We found with our first child that the doctor’s estimate is about as precise as a spit-licked finger on a windy day. Anyway, because of the impending birth, I did not travel to my church, 194 miles one-way, but stayed close to home.
I was completely out of sorts, and really did not know what to do with myself, a pastor without a congregation on Sunday morning! I suppose I could have preached the message I had prepared to my family, but I realized that with no congregation and no baby yet, I could go and sit in a pew and be preached to, so that’s what I did, all the while keeping an eye on my phone for the call that I knew would come at any moment.
When the call never came, I had a revelation: it is altogether fitting and proper that we see the advent of Advent while we await the coming of our child. And this waiting is unlike any other waiting that I know of. This is a waiting for something that we know will happen, and will happen soon; something that we know will change our lives in ways that we cannot begin to imagine; something that is so miraculous, so awesomely frightening and at the same time exhilarating. I won’t speculate that this was the kind of waiting that the early fathers of the church experienced when they came up with the idea of Advent. I will say that having a tangible, or near-tangible, object of our expectation makes the waiting so much more profound, especially given what we know about our child/ren.
The expectant waiting is more profound for fathers because we have nothing more we can do but sit and watch, perhaps verbally encourage our partner as she has all of the physical responsibility of birthing our child. I’ve never felt more superfluous as when I’m tooling about the house making sure my wife has everything she needs, or in the labor and delivery room. But, as I said to one of my colleagues from seminary, there are some tensions that we must live in just because. There is nothing I can do to hasten the coming of the Christ into a world (seemingly) off-kilter. And I might be given to wondering if all of the work, labor, pain, sweat, tears, cussing, begging, pleading, breathing is worth it when the world into which this child is coming might not be better, but worse for her than it has been for her parents. But if I truly believe in the hope of Advent, and the innumerable possibilities that are attendant with new birth, whether natural or spiritual, then I must live in the tension of my superfluity as I await the arrival of this child of promise.
Sankofa Theologian 