Preaching Black Lives (Matter). Gayle Fisher-Stewart

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       Preaching Black Lives Matter

1

       Introduction

       IS THERE A WORD FROM THE LORD?

       Gayle Fisher-Stewart

      We really “had church today!” is a familiar expression among African Americans following a Spirit-filled worship experience. The implication of this folksy phrase is that the Spirit of God had moved with such power that all social barriers were removed and worshipers were able to “have a good time in the Lord.” The passionate, celebrative style of preaching had no doubt reached the depth of worshipers’ souls and had “set them on fire!” The Word of God in sermon and song had spoken to the conditions of the gathered community, who could say emphatically that they had “heard a word from the Lord.”

—Melva Wilson Costen ¹

      If the only thing a preacher hears from a congregation week after week is how much they enjoyed the sermon, it is very likely that the preacher is not dealing with challenging content.

—Marvin McMickle ²

      “African American spirituality is a spirituality that was born and shaped in the heat of oppression and suffering.” It included a tradition of Jesus that connected the dissonant strands of grief and hope in the experience of black people who trusted in God to make a way out of no way. “Blackness is the metaphor for suffering,” [Prof. J. Alfred Smith] said. “To know blackness is to be connected to the suffering, hope, and purpose of black people.”

—Reggie L. Williams ³

      Bryan Stevenson, the genius behind the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, has said that racism can be eradicated when we become proximate or close to one another. Sometimes I wonder if that, in fact, is true. How much closer can you get to a person than to engage in the sexual act that creates new life? How much closer can you get to a person than to give your child over to the Black wet nurse and have that woman’s milk coursing through your child, nourishing your child, providing the antibodies that will keep your child healthy? How much closer can you get to someone who works in your home every single day? Who is on duty twenty-four hours a day? Who cooks every meal you eat, who shares your living space, who shares the air you breathe? How much closer do you have to be to be proximate?

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer tested proximity. When he came to New York in 1931 on fellowship at Union Theological Seminary and affiliated with the Black Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., he found a Black Jesus who suffered with Black Americans in a White supremacist society. For Bonhoeffer, the ministers of White churches of New York lacked content in their sermons. They preached everything except of the gospel of Jesus Christ—a gospel of resistance, of survival. He found in the worship of Abyssinian a style that had a different view of society than White churches. It was a style that acknowledged the suffering of Black people in a racist society that viewed African Americans as subhuman and legitimized brutality against them in so many ways.⁴ Preaching came alive and strengthened those in Abyssinian’s pews to fight against a Church and society that viewed Blacks as less than human.

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