Living the Word: World's About to End?

WITH SO MANY dust-collecting pews, judgment is not the theme on most religious leaders’ lips. The audience that took seriously the “signs of the times” is typically in nursing homes and cemeteries. Millennials and Gen-Xers find the subject distasteful at best, a fairy tale at worst. I’m not sure there’s any way to shirk the theme in this season. Judgment is on the lips of God. We better find ways to take God’s word seriously. And this word of judgment is for all people, no matter your generation.

God’s judgment is always twofold: a word against those who withhold justice and equity from communities on the margins, and a word of blessing promising those on the margins that shalom is already here and yet to come.

Still, God’s judgment is never abstract or vague; it is directed to particular people and communities. We have to search for those places in our own communities where justice and equity, where God’s shalom, is held hostage for the few.

Focused on one set of the many injustices in our world, the Black Lives Matter movement has sustained a witness for justice and equity for four years now. This movement is part of a long tradition and contemporary global movement for the liberation of black and brown lives. Calling out white supremacy is a prerequisite to taking God’s word seriously. White fragility and guilt will have to be exorcised. Black and brown assimilation to whiteness will need to be lovingly named. The vision of God’s future will keep us on this path. Our work in these weeks is continuously to call forth God’s vision of shalom for all people through the flourishing of black and brown lives.

[ November 6 ]

Resisting Whiteness

Job 19: 23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

I KNOW TOO much about end-times movies. They were shown at the close of Vacation Bible School when I grew up. They were the best strategy for loading up the final altar call on the last night. I recall my terror when the dreaded Antichrist would be revealed—always a white male with slicked back hair and the meanest eyes you’ve ever seen.

My VBS days are over and I’ve grown out of rapture theology. But as far as the Antichrist or “this lawless one” in the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians (verse 3) is concerned, Jesus Christ gives better criteria than do the movies. “[The lawless one] opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God” (verse 4). I’ve learned that the white man isn’t the devil, but “whiteness” is. Theologian J. Kameron Carter writes, “The white, Western god-man is an idol that seeks to determine what is normal. It is a norm by which society governs the body politic or regulates, measures, evaluates, and indeed judges what is proper or improper, what is acceptable or suspicious citizenship.”

Those movies were still onto something. “White” folks are predisposed to the demon of white supremacy. People of every tribe, nation, and tongue are tempted by its force. That devil has sought to kill, steal, and destroy human and creaturely identity throughout history. We’d do well not to be deceived by its talk of progress, restoration, and the “post-racial.” Whiteness always claims what alone belongs to the Lord, to bring forth that day of making all things right. We must resist the religion of whiteness at all costs to ourselves and to our neighbors. Carter reminds us, “The ‘god’ of (or that is) whiteness is a god toward which we must be thoroughgoing atheists and religionless.” Whiteness won’t live in the day of the Lord. Our true Redeemer lives now and forevermore (Job 19:25-27). On that great day we’ll be seen for who we truly are, a beloved community with the equity and diversity in which our God has created us.

[ November 13 ]

Sing Your Joy

Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

THE REAL BREAD of Black Lives Matter is not the fight itself. It’s not winning campaigns or making policy changes. (Yes, these are a crucial part of the work.) The bread, the real sustenance, of the movement is joy. Joy is the hurling off what evil has to say about you. Joy is the lightness you feel knowing that the vision is true, even if it’s in the distance. No length of time is ever an indication that the Spirit of equity and righteousness has expired. “For you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2). Healing entails judgment for those who have taken on the wickedness and pride of whiteness, those of whom Jesus tells us to “beware” (Luke 21:8). In that day, whiteness will no longer be able to stand.

The real workers of liberation in this world aren’t fearful of any religious leaders or law enforcement or family that aligns with whiteness. Not even death will stop their fight for liberation. Joy gives them endurance. They stand with the One for whom judgment and joy are inseparable. But judgment is not reserved only for those aligned with whiteness. Here’s the warning for those who are content with waxing philosophical about and being benchwarmers for liberation: Joy is earned. Joy is the virtue that marks the continuity between our contemporary liberation movement for black and brown lives and those moral traditions of the past. Like our foreparents in the struggle, the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates its joy through song. In the face of death and persecution, may all of creation join its song of victory with Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics: “We gon’ be alright! Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright!”

[ November 20 ]

Cross and Noose

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

JESUS IS MURDERED by the state. He is betrayed by his own religious leaders. His crime? Extending God’s shalom for the poor and outcast, and judgment for those who put barriers in the way of that shalom. Jesus dared to put poor and outcast people first, entitled and powerful people last. Jesus claimed that only when the lives of the poor and outcast mattered would all lives matter. Jesus proclaimed #BlackLivesMatter. The result? The lynching of God.

Black Lives Matter demonstrates and proclaims that black and brown lives must be prioritized in order for our world to be truly equitable and peaceful. Black and brown bodies are being lynched by the state every day in our country: police brutality, mass incarceration, economic and health disparities, underresourced schools, redlining, grotesque deportation practices, and the list goes on.

The political establishment tells Jesus that his death is his own responsibility. The political establishment tells black and brown people that they need to pull up their “bootstraps” and clean up their own communities. The political establishment is never held accountable for murder. The religious establishment cooperates with the murder of Jesus. The religious establishment cooperates with the killing of black and brown bodies. The prophets of our time must speak forth against the works of the establishment and in support of the works of the Lord, declaring: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture” (Jeremiah 23:1). We must reflect the voices of those Jeremiahs of our time, such as James Cone, who has challenged us in saying that “until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

[ November 27 ]

Get Woke!

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

FOR DECADES, black folks across America have known and experienced the hypocrisy and injustice of U.S. law enforcement. Modern technology—in the form of smartphones and social media—has recently put police brutality upon black and brown bodies on display for the rest of the country. As actor Will Smith said recently, “Racism is not getting worse; it’s getting filmed.” Preachers and other leaders within black and brown communities have for many years been shining the light on these dark (mal)practices in our country. They have been awake (see Romans 13:11)! They have learned this restless way of life from a long tradition of black resistance in America that insists on tirelessly telling the truth about black and brown suffering. It is this same tradition that has taught many black folks to stop waiting for justice and freedom in the “sweet by and by.” Historically, that place cooperates in the war upon their bodies and communities. That is a place of darkness. The god of that place is not the One whose house shines with the light of peace. Those of us who are “awake,” as Paul says in Romans 13, have “put on the armor of light” to fight these forces of darkness in our land.

But America, especially white America, is asleep. Asleep to the blood of black and brown bodies flooding the streets. Actor Jesse Williams captured this comatose state of white America when he said, “Even with videotaped evidence of police destroying black people, many freedom-loving Americans remain unconvinced of a systemic problem.” America, don’t let this blood now on your hands sweep away your soul from the One who brings salvation. America, wake up! Awake from your great slumber of violence, greed, and subjugation. While you eat, drink, and marry, as Jesus warns in Matthew 24, you miss the Son of Man in your midst, unexpected, among those who are awake to the dark lie of war.

"Preaching the Word," Sojourners' online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.