Speaking Truth, Never Silent: A Lenten Sermon
Grace and peace to you,
My sisters, brothers and siblings in Christ
“Speak Lord,
For your servant is listening.”
But we have,
As a people
Become tone deaf,
To the truth that Jesus Christ,
Our Savior and Lord
Reminds us,
And challenges us
That because we are all connected
To the One,
Who gave BIRTH
To the cosmos,
Then
We are all responsible
For one another
Because of Love.
Amen.
(pause)
I don’t know about you,
But keeping to this
Script
Of only providing
Offering
Sending
Our thoughts and prayers,
Only fuels the fire
Of continued apathy
And inaction.
We are hesitant
When the regular course of life shifts,
And threatens our livelihood,
Our comfortability.
(pause)
We spout so much rhetoric
About demanding of the poor
To adhere to this, human made “bootstrap theology”
But its only because
We,
In America
Have cosigned to this individualistic ideology
So therefore,
We don’t want to engage one another
In relationship
And
Community building work,
That is not only a part of the human experience
But also,
Immersed
In the WORD,
We don’t want to live out that truth,
That Jesus Christ
Places into our hands.
That we are so quick to spout
Galatians,
“there is neither slave nor free nor imprisoned nor undocumented
Jew nor Gentile, Muslim nor atheist
Male or female or person,
For we are all one in Christ Jesus,”
And yet,
When the plight of those surfaces,
Through unjust legislation
Or (word) misrepresentation
And clearly,
If we believe
That we are one,
That means
Just as Christ did,
We are to join our voices
Both in song, and lamentation
Both in protest and righteous anger
For those, whom society does not care for
Or see as equal.
But,
We don’t
We attempt to hush those
Who are not afraid
Of speaking truth.
“Well, Pastor a number of the people in the congregation,
I mean we’re not racist,
We just don’t think you should be talking about #BlackLivesMatter
From the pulpit.”
(pause)
“Pastor, can’t we just include this community in our prayers?
I mean, that’s what Matthew 25 says right,
To go and baptize?
Besides,
There are a lot of bad people who come over the border
Why can’t they just follow the procedures
In getting citizenship?”
(pause)
“Pastor, I don’t understand why you are publicizing that rally
Someone may see you! It’s going to be on television!
What am I going to say to my neighbors when they see you?
Can’t we just pray for them? We should since they are going to go to hell,
For praying to Allah.”
(pause)
“But turning and looking at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter and said,
“Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind
not on divine things
but on human things.”
(pause)
Remaining hidden,
Within shadows out of fear,
Making ourselves invisible
So that those who are oppressing
Will not see us,
Is a survival tactic
Long used by people,
Who have been marginalized
And systematically abused
One way or another.
It becomes a crutch,
To where
We don’t speak
We don’t say anything
Because we are afraid
Of torture
Of death.
Because we think
If we just do everything we are told,
One of these days,
We will experience
Freedom.
We will not have to experience
Hardship.
We will not have to experience
Hunger and sadness.
Even if that means
We abandon
Our family.
(pause)
Although the social commentary
In the recent movie
Black Panther,
reflected to the audience,
of the ideology of separatism
of the people of Wakanda
from their siblings of African Descent
in the outside world,
it hit home for many of us,
during this African Descent month.
We can no longer ignore,
That just as DACA affects our siblings of Latinx heritage and culture,
It also affects those,
Whom we share a common bond,
Because of the place
Where our Ancestors rose
And from where
Creation and life began on this Earth.
And sometimes,
When we of African Descent speak this truth,
We too, are shouted down
We are hushed
We are ridiculed
Because no one wants to come to grips
With this raw truth.
And there are those,
Who do not want us
As a people,
Whether our story continued in chaos on these shores,
Or whether our beginnings were a mystery
Because we were disconnected
From those shores.
To be unified
And claimed
Once more
As
One
(pause)
A couple of years ago,
During my first call,
I participated in Ashes to Go,
And brought ashes to a couple of my parishioners
Who were living in a local retirement community
I was in, full gear
Alb, stole and all.
As I walked through the halls,
Several nurses aids, CNA’s , doctors and therapists stopped me
For ashes.
As I was leaving,
there was a row of nurses and aids sitting right outside the cafeteria,
I asked them gently if they too would like ashes,
One woman piped up “Yes! I need all the help and forgiveness!”
One woman was equally vocal,
Condemning her request and my presence
Because I was putting dead things on her head
Because the cross was not where Jesus was
The Cross was about nothing but death
And that we were both going to hell,
For participating
She shouted all of this,
While I prayed for the woman before me
And blessed upon her, ashes.
(pause)
Womanist theologian Delores Williams, too
Has her theory about the cross, and Jesus’s death
She states that “Jesus was not born into the world
to die on the cross
and to save humanity
through his suffering.
This was an act of an oppressive society
upon an individual.”
She states this because,
She did not want Women of Color,
Black Women
To think that they could find freedom,
Hope
In the oppressive acts,
Of white supremacy.
Instead she sees the resistance against evil,
Through Jesus’s life,
Jesus Christ,
As Liberation.
Perhaps why,
This woman rejected
My actions
Of cementing
And reminding
The woman before me
That indeed
God
Stands
With
The
Oppressed
(pause)
And yet,
That is the complexity of the Cross,
Dr. James Cone states,
“The cross can heal and hurt
it can be empowering and liberating
but also enslaving and oppressive.
There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted”
The cross is supposed to be THAT symbol of salvation,
And yet,
Many of my Elders can share stories
About burning crosses
On lawns,
Reminding African Descent people
They too,
Would die
A horrific death,
If they crossed the line
If they dared to speak out
If they pushed back against the status quo
If they disrupted, the comfortable order of things
Just as Jesus did.
That they too,
Would die a dishonorable death
Just as the Empire had done
To Jesus
Is it no wonder then,
We look at the Cross
With fear
And
Hope.
(pause)
Maybe this is why,
Peter attempted to silence Jesus,
Because Jesus understood His role
Was to NOT BE SILENT
But to overturn those oppressive structures
That birthed a painful experience of life
For many, many people
Both then,
And now.
Peter wanted to silence Jesus,
Because the Son of Man clearly was to live forever!
Not be sacrificed and made an example
Like some common criminal.
But as Dr. Rudy Featherstone states,
Any theology,
That does not address suffering
Of a people
Is then, made void,
Because it ignores
THE POWER THAT IS INVOKED
When God,
Through Jesus Christ
OVERTURNS
The evil,
Sin
And shame
And gives us,
Yes
Through the inversion
Of a symbol of pain,
Into that symbol of HOPE.
(pause)
It is because
Of the power of the Cross
When the Creator meets us,
Transforms
And creates New things,
And floods our very being
With a LIGHT that can never be extinguished,
(pause)
No matter who we are:
Youth demanding for a Trauma Center,
Or ending police brutality,
Or intimidation by ICE
Or ending gun violence
Pastors and other faith type folk
Living out their faith
Boldly calling down the collective sin
Of oppression, subjugation and colonization
People,
Who are just sick and tired
Of seeing their neighbors harassed and maligned,
We should never be afraid,
Because God is HERE,
With us,
Through the Cross,
At the Table,
ALWAYS.
Thanks be to God.
