Tag: Black Church

Responding to Tragedy

In the wake of murderous acts in Pittsburgh, the bombing in the Philippines, the deadly terror in Christchurch, black churches set ablaze in Louisiana, the bombing in Sri Lanka — our beloved city now finds its name among the growing list of places where religious houses of worship were targeted by those who harbor hate.

As people of faith, goodwill and conscience, we must boldly speak out against these egregious and despicable acts targeting people of faith. We must boldly name these acts as evil, shameful and intolerable in our community, nation and world. And we must assure all, without regard to their religious beliefs, that no one should ever fear practicing and deepen their faith in their houses of worship. We must work in every way to advance and sustain communities of safety, inclusion, love and justice for all people.

We cannot remain silent in the face of these immoral acts.

We cannot sit still in silence and inaction.

We must resist.

We must fight, and we must pray.

Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor well-known for his resistance to anti-Semitism in the 1930s, reminds us all of how important it is to speak our truths in these perilous times. His words, etched in stone on memorials throughout the world, speak to us today. As we extend our thoughts and prayers to our sisters and brothers directly impacted by anti-Semitic hate in Poway and all who have been emotionally and spiritually wounded, let us vow to not never stay silent in the face of hatred, oppression, violence, and values that erode our liberation and recommit ourselves to advance love, shalom and justicia in every part of our world.

A reprint of this essay appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune on Sunday, May 5, 2019.

A New Hymnal!

Recently our congregation paused in worship to consecrate the new African American Ecumenical Hymnal–One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism for corporate worship. In thanking the Diaconate whose dedicated vision, energy, study and resources made the new hymnal available for use in our congregation, we also gave thanks for the wider ecumenical church–consisting of composers, poets, artists, editors, publishers and committee members whose tireless labor, under the guidance of the Spirit, brought the hymnal from conception to fruition.

While many Churches are storing away heavy hymnals in favor of popular praise and worship melodies on screens and handheld digital devices, Christian Fellowship is restoring church hymnody in our worship life with 21st century language set to traditional well-known tunes. The result of this restoration we believe will be not only a relevant “cultural memory bank” for future generations, but also a theologically rich vocabulary from which to worship, praise and speak about our God.

While it is imperative that the church not only have a rich theological vocabulary shaped in part by neatly packed, theologically robust church hymns–there is a clear recognition that the language and musical style of most standard church hymns often date an already ancient institution as less than relevant for our time. To correct this, Dr. James Abbington of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University brought together a richly diverse Core Committee who worked very hard to ensure that this new African American Ecumenical Hymnal contained diverse styles and genres, including traditional ecumenical hymns, contemporary texts written for the twenty-first-century church, praise and worship selections, music from Taizé, choral responses, responsorial psalmody, traditional and contemporary gospel music, and Negro spirituals.

While the hymnal does not adequately address the question of inclusive language, it is a beautiful refresh to the nearly 25 year African American Heritage Hymnal seen in many Black Churches today. This hymnal, featuring a golden ankh debossed on its cover, will be a welcomed aid for 21st century Black Churches who want to stir people’s hearts, instruct their minds, and strengthen their spirits in ways that 7-11 songs cannot.

Sermon: A World House of Inclusive Love

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Biblical Text: Matthew 4:1-17

There has been a great deal of scholarship and of study of the sacred texts that are before us this morning. The story of the temptation of our Lord has been embedded deep into our religious subconscious minds. Time and time again we have heard preached in pulpits all across the globe how smooth and cunning the Tormentor is in when approaching Jesus. Time and time again we have heard taught in Sunday School stories from our childhood how smart, charming and flattering the Devil is when seeking to pull Jesus away from his destiny and purpose in life. These stories surround our faith, and upon them have been built monumental theologies concerning the role and function of the demonic in our lives. Rooted and grounded in this very passage of scripture that has been read in your hearing are the religious and philosophical debates that have captivated religious minds and hearts for thousands of years.

The debates begin with the role of the Spirit in drawing Jesus into the wilderness for the very purpose of testing his faithfulness and purpose, and often end by suggesting that the struggles that you are going through
on your job,
in your home,
with your family,
among your children,
in your finances,
in your very own body

…are nothing more than the Devil Testing us and so therefore we need to put not only the test but also the tester under our foot and move on with our with our lives.

What I want to suggest this morning that while this kind of thinking is not necessarily wrong, it is deeply infantile in faith and does not represent the kind of grown up faith that Jesus expects us to have as we grow and mature in mind heart and spirit.

To reduce one’s life to a series of “the Devil made me do its” abandons every single kernel of faith and wisdom that God seeks to deposit in your life. If you are able to walk away from this text this morning, more confident in the role that Accuser plays in the destruction of the world and the breaking down of human ties of love and affection; you have not only misheard the text, but you have misheard the Spirit! “The Devil made me do it” is the product of not only infantile faith, but is abducates every once of personal responsible from your shoulders to the shoulders of a invisible force of evil that, that YES is “roaming the earth—like a lion– seeking whom he or she may devour and destroy.”

These kinds of images often put us on the defense. They keep us moving in a position defensiveness and guardedness instead of from position of power and strength. The problem with the demonic is not so much that evil that is manifested by “her” power, but it is the evil that is manifested in the minds of those who refuse to believe that God’s love has won!

So instead of playing to our offensive strategy that our Lord has already instituted, we walk in the world timid and fearful of being …
Trapped AND Tricked
Cheated AND caught
Duped AND Deluded
Fooled AND hoodwinked
Conned AND Deviled – Over

We end up spending so much time thinking about our defensive strategy that we forget, not only that the BATTLE is of cosmic and epic proportions—but we forget that the battle is not between US and Satan, but that the battle belongs to the Lord and has already been won!

This is why we sing every EASTER; proclaiming through song….:

The strife is over the battle done;
Now is the Victor’s triumph won;
Now be the song of praise begun—AL-le-lu-ia!

AND

Love’s redeeming work is done, Al-le-lu-ia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Al-le-lu-ia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Al-le-lu-ia!
Christ has open paradise, Al-le-lu-ia!

Believe it or not, but the greater message of this text is not at all about the Devil testing Jesus, or the test that you and I ought to be preparing for in our ensuring years. No, the higher message of the text is this:

“When we are truly confronted by God’s kingdom, (King calls it a World House, I call it a World of House of Inclusive Love) the temptation is always to see it through the narrow lens of our own interests and aims. Each of the tests revolves around the kingdom of heaven is welcomed for God’s sake—or for the sake of something else. In other words:

Do the people love the kingdom for itself, or the prosperity it provides?
Do the people love the kingdom for itself, or the protection it provides?
Do the people love the kingdom for itself, or the power it provides?

The Kingdom of God is realized-enfleshed, in those who, like Jesus, orient their lives toward and not simply around the things that God provides but the World House of Inclusive Love that has established. The test of our time is to not continually look to God like a gaming machine in Las Vegas—

…if I put in a dollar more of time in worship—
God will spit out a new house

…if I put in a quarter more of time in studying my Bible—
God will spit out a new car

…if I put a dime more of time in on a board or ministry group
–God will spit out bill paid in full

…if I put a penny more of time in prayer and meditation
–God will spit out a better job

God is not a slot machine.

We must not fall prey to the temptation to ask first, “What’s In It For ME.”
This is the test that Jesus passes, with flying colors and invites us to do the same.

We must not fall prey to measure God’s value by the realization of our own desire, rather than conform ourselves, and our desires, and our values, and our priorities to the Kingdom of God…

It is only after Jesus has show his ability to think less about himself and more about the other that he settles not in the home in which he grew up, but in Capernaum—in Galilee. During Jesus day, Galilee was long known as the place where Gentiles roamed. It was known as a place of spiritual darkness, a place where light had not come. It was a place where that was mixing pot of both Jewish and Gentile cultures—with Gentiles outnumbering Jews 2:1 Capernaum a place the wealthy and powerful abandoned; a place where people felt—in their bodies, the burden of imperial greed and the self-indulgence of a trumped up king (or president).

Jesus’ presence in Galilee—particularly in a place where the Children of God were not only “living in darkness” but “living in the land of the shadow of death” makes us question for whom does this Good News that we possess exist for?

If it is not good, hopeful and transformative news
to those “in darkness”
to those living “in the shadow of death”
to those marginalized by powerful empires
to those held hostage by political systems
to those who are without hope
to those who are vulnerable
to the marginalized
to the oppressed
to the indigenous among us
to children in cages
to elderly
to dreamers who dream of a better world for children & children’s children?
…then for whom is this Good News?

Kings, drunk of power?
Queens, blinded by pride?
Presidents and Dictators, in isolation?
The wealthy and affluent,
The powerful and elite?
The educated and erudite?

…those who benefit daily from systems and structures of inequality and do everything in their seek to prop up the walls of hate on every leaning side?

Dr. King had a vision for our world—a vision that was deeply rooted in the southern, black, Baptist faith that shaped, colored and contoured every aspect of his life.

He stood in the shoes of Jesus, and invited us to life in a World House

To realize, way back in 1968, that “All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors.”

“All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history.

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

“Nothing could be more tragic than for men to live in these revolutionary times and fail to achieve the new attitude and the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands.”

“…our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and face the challenge of change.

“…we must learn to live as brothers (and sister) or together we will be forced to perish as fools.

“Deeply woven into the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God, and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value. [Therefore] we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized …”

King poised the question then, and it remains now, “do we have the morality and courage required to live together as brothers [and sisters] and not be afraid.”

Jesus went to Zebulun and Naphtali to establish a World House of Inclusive Love—love that brings dark places—may we do likewise.

Sermon: The Holy Spirit: Getting Out

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Biblical Text: Acts 2:5-12

John R. Sachs, a Catholic Theologian, writes that

“people are experiencing the Spirit in ways and places that often challenge traditional theologies and church structures and sometimes have little connection with traditional religious practices.”[1]

I believe that we are seeing and experiencing in the world today is a revival of the Spirit-is a renewing of the church, but it is not a renewal of the church that many of us who are in the church want it to be. Those of us who grew up in the church—those of us who were in the church before we born and baptized in the church have a real clear sense of what is means to experience the Spirit, and that experience is always fundamentally connected with the church.

Many of us we were taught to believe that you cannot have church, outside of church, which logically means that if you want to experience anything relating the work of the Spirit then you need get yourself over the church house—otherwise is it not church, and logically speaking it is not the Spirit.

Even back in the day when folks carried the church in to the world, I’m thinking of baptism in particular, it always began and ended in the church. There would be a processional that was led from the church to the river, and then there would be a processional that left the baptism waters and lead folk back to the church.

Even when the church had physicality– walls, floors and a roof and was relegated to both a particular place and a particular time. The church, and by default the Spirit, could not be caught outside of a particular physio-chronological existence. If you want the Spirit—go to the church, because that is where you get the Spirit, or reversed that is where the Spirit gets you.

Sachs suggests that “people are experiencing the Spirit in ways and places that often challenge traditional theologies and church structures and sometimes have little connection with traditional religious practices.”[2] Frank Thomas, professor of Homiletics and Director of the Academy of Preaching and Celebration at Christian Theologian Seminary writes in his newly published book on African-American Preaching that the church, and not just the Black Church exclusively, is at risk of becoming “a relic and holdover from an old worldview that refuses to face new [a] twenty-first century flattened [hierarchy]. and consensus-building, social-media reality.”[3]

He furthers,

“If the church does not move from exclusion to inclusion and diversity, from insistence on gradualism and patience to sensing, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “the fierce urgency of now,” then the church will not be pertinent to the lives of young people. If the church does not move from charismatic leadership to collaboration, from focus on appeasing conservative ideology in the church and the nation to listening and responding positively to the pain, hurt, anger and activism of the new movements, then the church will not be valued or valuable” in the future.[4]

After the Spirit has come in, we have to get out!

What is true of white mainline churches is this: milliennials have left the church. Scholars and sociologists gave warning signs to the church nearly two decades ago, in the same way the warning sign are now being passed out to the Black Church. What was said then was that young white millennials were abandoning the church but not discarding their faith but were discovering it places outside the church. I began exploring this trend among urban youth in New York City at the Riverside Church, young intelligent college students who were eager to head down to New Orleans to put their faith in action, but were unexcited about gathering in the church for the standard functions of the church. But if we gathered at a local bar with a beer (it’s called Theology on Tap now), we could talk about faith all day and all night long over a few cold frosties. It was not a question of whether or not they felt a sense of connection to the Jesus who preached Good News to the poor, or the Jesus who liberated persons who were oppressed and marginalized, or the Jesus who lifted the clouds of shame from women who caught in a lovers quarrel or forgiving and giving fresh starts to young tax collectors like Zacchaeus. What they said was we need a church that get out. What they said was we need a church that doesn’t just gather once a week. What they said was we need a church that doesn’t just sign hymns once a week. What they said was we need a church that doesn’t just listen to sermon, but is out in the world being a walking, running, living, breathing sermon.

Every morning when I look in the mirror and see yet another wiry grey hair on my head, or discover yet another patch of gray growing in my goatee and consider the expense cost of slathering on another coat of “Just For Men”—I am reminded that time is filled with swift tradition. Covering the gray day by day–is an expensive exercise in biological futility—time is filled with swift tradition.

George Benson in 1977 sang it best, “…Everything must change…nothing stays the same.”

What is true of every age is that Spirit comes along, and breathes life into a particular place, upon a particular generation, in a particular place and new life emerges. Life that is filled with all of the signs and characteristics of the Holy Spirit: Accepting, Challenging, Creative, Compelling, Dynamic, Embracing, Energetic, Enterprising, Fluid, Inclusive, Influential, Joyful, Lively, Loving Magnetic, Open, Progressive, Revitalizing, Welcoming and Youthful.

Catholic Theologian Jon Sachs writes that “people are experiencing the Spirit in ways and places that often challenge traditional theologies and church structures” and we saw it happening in the early days of the Civil Rights movement.[5] There were young reformers on one side and old standpatters on the others. The young reformers, Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Gardner Calvin Taylor, Ralph David Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker who embodied the movement of the Spirit in their time. They caught the Spirit and got outside of the church—to do the work of justice, repairing the broken, bridging the divide, and making right what had long been wrong and broken in the American south.

In this weekend’s New York Times the Rev. Dr. William Barber talks about the Spirit like this:

“Rosa Parks didn’t just decided to sit down one day…We can’t choose the moment that the flame bursts out, but we can be the kindling” to spark for the flame of God’s Spirit in our world.

We saw the Spirit moving then, and the Spirit is moving anew—now:

within the Black Lives Matter Movement demanding accountability and justice; within renewed energy on the Sanctuary Movement demanding safe, hospitable and fair treatment of stranger among us; within the Climate Justice Movement demanding that we both individually and collective do all that we can to care for and protect what God created and called good; within the LGBT Movement demanding the fair and equal treatment of all of God’s Rainbow children; within the Interfaith Movement that we respect and seeking religious understanding of the other; within the Poor People’s Campaign, re-aligning our moral compass to the real concerns of American poor—a work that King, Abernathy and the SCLC began in 1968.

And the call to the Church is to embody the Spirit of God and “Get Out!” in the world.

Get out in the name of the Jesus Christ.

Get out and proclaim with our lips that our faith is real!

Get out and proclaim with our lives that the Spirit is alive and free!

Jesus loved his synagogue—is was the place that he returned again and again to be in the community, to learn, and grow and stretch his faith. But the place where Jesus’ ministry happened most was outside of the synagogue. It was in the streets. It was along the highways and byways! It was along a mountainside. It was at a funeral procession! It was upon the sandy shores! It was in unlikely people’s homes! It was at a community well! It was in a cemetery! It was on the rough seas. It was, most often, not inside the church—and when it was in the church they ripped up the roof to get the church out of the church.

The Holy Spirit is filling the church and empowering sanctified and fire-baptized disciples, but not so we can barricade ourselves off the rest of the world. The Spirt is filling the church so we can get out and be the church in the midst of the world. We must be open to the broad movement of the Spirit—and the rich diversity of approaches to the experiences of the Spirit. Jurgen Moltmann, in his seminal theological work on the Holy Spirit simply titled, The Spirit of Life, writes that life in the Spirit is nothing less than the sanctified disciple of Jesus discovering and rediscovering how to integrate his or her life completely “into the web of life …[which involves] defending God’s creation against human aggression, exploitation and destruction…[it involves a] reverence for life…[and a constant] search for the harmonies and accords of life.”[6]

After we’ve invited the Spirit in, we must get out!

In other words we have to “Get Out!” to the places in our world where life is happening and proclaim this liberating Good News that give us meaning to our lives. We must live the word that compels us to do good when all other indications tell us that we shouldn’t. We must live the word that demands while others are sitting at a safe distance watching injustice-that we “Get Out!” and do something and say something. We must get “Get Out!” and live in the web of the world the Good News of God’s love that gives us joy in exchange for sorrows, that makes us love enemies; that gives us an upward lift when life all around is draggin us down.

…and when those who were filled with the Holy Spirit finished speaking, they asked “What this mean?

What it meant then, and what it means now is that God is in midst of the world; that God has not abandoned us but is alive and with us. God is reconciling the world—yea even the entire cosmos to Godself.

Now, ain’t a that Good News!

[1] John R. Sachs, “Do No Stifle the Spirit: Karl Rahner, the Legacy of Vatican II, and Its Urgency For Theology Today,” in Catholic Theological Society Proceeding, ed. E. Dreyer, 51 (1996): 15.

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] Frank Thomas, Introduction to the Practice of African American Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2016), 137.

[4] Ibid., 137.

[5] John R. Sachs, “Do No Stifle the Spirit: Karl Rahner, the Legacy of Vatican II, and Its Urgency For Theology Today,” in Catholic Theological Society Proceeding, ed. E. Dreyer, 51 (1996): 15.

[6] Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 172-3.

Sermon: The Holy Spirit: Going In

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Biblical Text: Galatians 3:1-9, 23-25

I saw Trina again today. I had just left Starbucks with a fresh hot cup of coffee sitting in my cup holder as I turned the corner on Market Street at the Malcolm X Library. She was shaking out her shirt on the corner. I pulled to the corner and reached for the cash I wanted to give to her yesterday, as I saw her dash for the bus on Kelton Road.

“Trina,” I called. And a bright smiled appeared on her face as I fumbled in my wallet deciding if I wanted to part with Jackson or Hamilton. I placed the cash on her hands—and whispered a hope-filled prayer that she would have a good day. I watched in my rearview mirror as she walked on….

Today was the third time I saw this woman this week. We met on Wednesday afternoon, as we sat on the bench outside the Fellowship Hall and talked for a good thirty minutes. She shared with me her story. A story that has become all too familiar these days.

Her family’s betrayal.

Her struggle with addiction.

Her struggle with depression.

Her fight through abuse.

Her current status as jobless and homeless

Her current health crisis.

Her struggle with faith.

Her struggle to pray—her struggle with church.

What drew Sister Trina to the church was the banner at the entrance–I banner that we’ve kept outside for nearly 5 years: “Jesus didn’t reject people. Neither do we.” The language is not owned by our church, but is the denominational language of the United Church of Christ–language that speaks to the theological underpinnings which guard and shape the kind of inclusive welcome of all persons that is at core what it means to be United Church of Christ congregation.

Trina and I sat on the bench and rested together, before I returned to my office to prepare for bible study. We watched the wind move the palm trees back and forth. We saw the birds glide carelessly through air. I shared the Good News of God’s awesome love, and invited her to join us for the Wednesday evening meal and bible study.

The Spirit was at work. IN ME. IN HER. IN US.

For the next few weeks we are going to be talking about the Holy Spirit. In this sermon series to spend some time demystifying the Holy Spirit. I want to spend some talking answering some questions about the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? Do you have the Holy Spirit? When did you get the Holy Spirit? How do you know you have the Spirit? How does the Spirit manifest itself in our lives.

As we move to celebrate Pentecost–the day the church given life in the Spirit we are going to focus on the Spirit. The Holy Spirit one of the most controversial, difficult, divisive and often misunderstood doctrines of the Church–especially between Mainline Protestants on the one hand and Pentecostals on the other. So often the experiences of the Holy Spirit and talk within the Church about the Spirit—especially within old school Black worshipping communities induce more fearful following than faithful following. That is because so often in our circles we talk less about the Holy Spirit and more about the Holy Ghost. It is utterly amazing what a simply shift in language is able to do widen the reach–and broaden the wide expanse of the Gospel in our lives.

Many of us on the mainline side–are a little Holy Spirit resistant. In the way that many from the Pentecostal church tradition run to the Holy Spirit–spend time in worship tarrying with and for the Spirit’s presence there–while those on the mainline side of the church –those who are Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, often run from the Holy Spirit. The problem, as I’ve come to explore and identify it, it not so much that there is lack of the Spirit’s presence–but there is lack of understanding in the workings of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Too much of our knowledge has been shaped and contoured by what we have been taught to name as the manifestations of the Spirit, those outward signs of Pentecostalism: talking in tongues–that can’t nobody understand, worship services that are filled with charismatic chaos, folks dancing in the aisle, mothers jerking and quickening in the pew, people passing out after having been prayed over, nurses of the church scurrying around to find white sheets to cover skirts that have risen above the knee, and worship services that move well beyond the noon-time hour. And what we say of those persons who find themselves caught up by these spirited expressions is, “That’s good for them types…but that’s not for me. We don’t carry on like that.”

Too much of our thinking about the Holy Spirit, and its manifestation within the life of the church revolves around the Pentecostal charismatic expression that has been impressed upon our memory–and what we hear of those spirited experiences is that “they had church” in an effort to diminish, downgrade and altogether lessen the manifestation of the Spirit in other settings of the church.

The Pentecostal Church does not own the Holy Spirit.

The Church of God, Assemblies of God, nor the Church of God in Christ have a copyright claim on the Spirit. The Spirit belongs to all who claim its power and presence in their communnal and individual lives.

You cannot judge the presence of the Holy Spirit by what you see in worship, but judge the presence of the Spirit by how ones life is lived and what one does with the life they are have been given. Jurgen Moltmann writes,

“People do not only experience the Holy Spirit outwardly in the community of their church. They experience it to a much greater degree inwardly, in self-encounter–as the experience that “God’s love has poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

I hope I see Trina again this week—cause I want to feel the Spirit alive in me, challenging and provoking me to love somebody other than myself, in Jesus name.

In preparation for this extended series on the Holy Spirit, I’ve been doing a great of study of church history–and I’ve especially been paying attention to the way in which the early church fought together in the faith. We experienced, in our Narrative Lectionary last week, a church fight that Paul had about whether or not he, as Jew by birth, should sit down eat with Gentiles because if violated the religious law. Paul vigorously argued in last weeks readings that the unity of the community–the idea of bring the entire body of Christ at one single table–was more important than separating people in an effort to maintain a lawful tradition. The Spirit was at work in Paul, because Paul had spent time at work with the Spirit.

These kinds of church fights happened–fights that crystalized the doctrinal beliefs of the church. Paul argued, not simply that Gentiles ought to be able to sit at the table–but that because Christ consistently modeled a way of welcome and inclusivitiy, because Christ consistently modeled a way of love and grace–even when it meant standing in contradiction to the letter of the religious law, Christ consistently choose people over the promulgation of the law.

Lord, I hope we see Trina this week!

Lord, please send Trina to each of us this week!

Responding to Tragedy

A New Hymnal!

Sermon: A World House of Inclusive Love

Sermon: The Holy Spirit: Getting Out

Sermon: The Holy Spirit: Going In

Breeze Church Offering:

Breeze QR Code

Follow Us On…

Contact Us

Our Global Visitors