Tag: Black Theology

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.

Earlier this year, on a six-acre site overlooking the State Capitol in Alabama, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened to the public. The country’s only memorial dedicated to remember the thousands of black lives that were cut short by state supported terrorism–lynching.

That very same day, the Reverend Traci Blackmon, Executive Minister of the United Church of Christ for Justice and Witness, described to a nearly all white crowd gathered at the International House on the campus of the University of San Diego her recent pre-opening visit to the memorial as a powerful witness to a horrific history.
The holograms, the 800 steel monuments carrying the names of more than 4,400 people killed between 1877 and 1950, and the life-like statues recall America’s greatest sin against Black America–black blood crying out from the ground. The terror of lynching in this country is a sin that the

The Rev. Dr. James Hal Cone called the country to reckon with injustice whenever he spoke from pulpits and platforms, or wrote from his professorial desk at Union Theological Seminary in the City New York. He named lynching as modern crucifixion and further connected lynching with mass incarceration–and called upon white Christians in particular to see their complicity in the state-sanctioned murder of their black siblings.

On the opening weekend of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in the small hours of the morning, Dr. Cone, the author of the ground-breaking theological masterpiece, The Cross and the Lynching Tree and more than 11 other books (including a posthumous memoir entitled, Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody) and 150 articles, went home to be with the Lord.

Dr. Cone was a distinguished professor of systematic theology and prophetic voice who boldly declared, in a field dominated by white men who were advancing the thinking of other dead white men–that God is not only the side of the oppressed, but that “God is Black [and] Jesus is Black.” Cone’s uniquely pitched voice, rising and falling like a masterful preacher, was the first to critique the dominating presence of whiteness in the theological academy, and in so doing forced the academy to accept what Black folk had been saying, singing and praying on slave plantations over 400 years ago and in Black Church across the country–“Yes God is real, for I can feel, him in my soul!”

In 1969 Cone wrote his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, in a makeshift office space in his brother’s AME church. Cecil Cone, like his brother was a theologian and AME preacher who by the age of 16 had been appointed by the bishop to his own church. It was in that safe safe that Dr James Cone wrote with righteous rage about need to celebrate blackness and faith in Jesus. In a lecture given at Union Theological Seminary, where he spent nearly 50 years teaching, he recalled writing Black Theology and Black Power from 7AM to Midnight every day except on Sunday, and how the spirituals and the blues keeping him company throughout his writing journey.

In God of the Oppressed Cone argued, as forcefully as he did in his previous work, that American has developed a insensitivity to Black suffering, and rendered white theology bankrupt in its refusal to see how the structures of systemic violence and racism embedded in the very fabric of this country consistently pushed Black folks to the margins of society. Cone not only pushed the black church–but he challenged the white church to join God in the struggle for black liberation in this country. He consistently questioned “Why didn’t we hear from the so-called nonviolent Christians when black people were violently enslaved, violently lynched, and violently ghettoized in the name of freedom and democracy?”, demanding a response that would side with a God who always stands on the side of freedom and liberation and against oppressors and oppression. Critiquing the Black Church Cone said, “You go to almost any black church today, and you don’t hear spirituals anymore. What you hear is this happy, ‘I’m prosperous’ kind of stuff. I’m not for that. You don’t come to church to be entertained. You come to wrestle with your spirit.”

Cone wrestled throughout his life and developed the case for Black Liberation Theology. It was “the voices of black blood crying out” from the ground that compelled him to never forget their fight for freedom, even amid the whip and the lash, and make it his own. Cone’s Black Liberation Theology was most visibly articulated in the preaching and teaching of the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Wright who led largest church in the United Church of Christ for over 36 years encouraged congregants like Common, Barack and Michelle Obama, to exercise their faith as people who are “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” In breaking with traditional theology, Cone made the Black experience the backbone of his Christian thinking– using slave narratives, the spirituals, the blues, and the empowering prophetic witness of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. As Cone’s thinking matured he began to push his writing and teaching to wrestle with the religio-cultural experiences of marginalized voices like James Baldwin–remarking in a Huffington Post interview with former student Paul Raushenbush in 2015: “God is red. God is brown. God is yellow…I don’t use blackness as a way to exclude anyone.”

Cone, born in Fordyce, Ark, was a devoted son of the Black Church–and it was to the Black Church that he committed his full life. Raised in the New Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bearden, Cone’s preachers during his formative years preached about a God who was fundamentally on the side of the oppressed; a God who deeply cared about the conditions of the poor and marginalized people–especially black people whose backs were broken from having picked cotton all day, and whose fingers bled from having woven reed basket under southern suns, and whose children, barefooted and often barely clothed, were indeed the powerful hope and dream of the enslaved.

Cone embodied the hope of the slave, and in 1958 and 1961 respectively, earned a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Divinity from Philander Smith and Garrett Theological Seminary. He then went on to earn the Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from Northwestern University in 1963 and 1965. In My Soul Looks Back, Cone asks, “What is the relationship between my training as a theologian and the black struggle for freedom? For what reason has God allowed a poor black boy from Bearden to become a professional systematic theologian?” He concluded, “As I struggled with these questions…I could not escape the overwhelming conviction that God’s Spirit was calling me to do what I could for the enhancement of justice in the world, especially on behalf of my people.”

Cone lived a passionate, spirit-filled life, and yet his most enduring legacy is not to be found in the intellectual library he left behind, but the lived experience of freedom and hope by Christians of every color and hue. Cone contended that “any talk about God that fails to make God’s liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian [and] Any message that is not related to the liberation of the poor in a society is not Christ’s message.” Although Cone definitatively functioned within an African American Christian context, his message of love, liberation and justice for all is one that continues to resonates across countless cultural, ideological and even religious boundaries.

Bro. Rev. Dr. Cone, thank you for allowing the fire of God’s Spirit to burn so freely and ferociously within you. By your witness you have taught us to live not only unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian, but you have taught us that liberation is not only freedom from evil, but freedom to love. Well done, thy good and faithful servant. Rest in peace, and Rise in POWER!

Webcast of the Funeral Service for Dr. Cone

Sermon: A World House of Inclusive Love

JAMES H. CONE #JamesConeWasRight

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