Preaching Black Lives (Matter). Gayle Fisher-Stewart

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One of the issues facing the Church today is how to attract and keep young people. While providing insight into African American millennials, Frank Thomas,³⁵ the creator of the first and only PhD program in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric in the country, offers that the Church must be relevant to this group to keep their attention. Young people are concerned with the “emergence of mass social movements. If the church does not address race . . . or is not thoughtful or skilled in addressing [this] issue, Millennials will consider church not relevant to their needs and struggles.”³⁶ For all too many African Americans, the ability to survive a police encounter is top on their list of priorities. Black Millennials, in particular, go to church with the expectation that they will hear a word that encourages them to believe in the ideals of this country that lift up life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.³⁷ If Church does not engage the issues that affect young people’s lives, we will continue to see them disconnect. Further, while people of color comprise only one-third of US millennials, the fact is that they comprise over one-half of Christians who are millennials and while they love the Jesus of the oppressed, rarely do they hear from the pulpit anything close to becoming active in the fight for justice.³⁸

To preach boldly requires that one break from what is the norm of preaching in many churches: preaching sermons that are laced with a condemnation of homosexuality, that lift up heteronormative male leadership, and focus on Jesus as a “life coach who will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise.”³⁹ Katie Cannon counsels that too much of contemporary preaching is shallow when it comes to dealing with the issues that vex American society and does little to help people deal with those issues that affect their daily lives.⁴⁰ Preaching the truth of the gospel story is difficult; however, it must be done. If the Church is not a leader, if not the leader, in transforming society into what it can be, then who or what organization can be called to the challenge? Preaching that challenges the status quo and provides the hearer with concrete ways of changing the world encourages resistance to the forces that negate the mission of Jesus and the imago Dei in God’s people. Preaching boldly recognizes that preaching is not about the preacher, rather it is about God and being used by God for something greater than ourselves.⁴¹

Preaching resistance helps to free those who wittingly and unwittingly collude with the dominant powers and helps them to repent—to change their hearts and minds and go in another direction toward freedom. Resistance preaching provides a way toward liberation from oppressive powers and enables the hearer to walk in the shoes of the oppressed.⁴² Still, one of the issues that must be considered when preaching dangerous sermons is fear. People in our pews fear change. They fear the unknown. They fear conflict. They fear loss of control, power, and/or privilege. Church is where many come to escape the problems of the world and it is not unusual to hear, “I don’t want to hear that stuff. I come to be comforted.” The preacher cannot be swayed by those fears. There is a need to be pastoral, but ignoring what is going on in the world will not make racial injustice go away.

There is also fear on the part of the preacher. Fear of causing conflict or dividing the congregation. There is also fear that if enough people are upset, the preacher could lose the position and be without the means to care for self and family. There is also the fear that the preacher, who has spent time building up good will in the congregation, might be faced with being disliked. There is also the fear that the preacher, even after giving one’s best, will not make a difference.⁴³ But, preach we must.

On the pages that follow are sermons that are borne out of what Walter Bruggemann calls the theology of anger that “cries out in God’s name that things cannot continue as they are.”⁴⁴ Preaching liberty and freedom is not for the faint of heart; however, those who do are being faithful to the gospel of Jesus, with all its risks, with all its headaches, with all its vulnerability. Preaching resistance shows that Christ’s love is stronger than any force and all the princes and principalities that seem to have a toehold in today’s society. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, preaching the gospel of Jesus has the power to change lives and the world as we know it. The preachers on the following pages, both lay and ordained, call us to a prophetic imagination that goes beyond the status quo and enables us to see new and yet undiscovered options for God’s people.⁴⁵ Prophetic preaching borne of moral imagination propels the preacher to reveal to those with ears to hear to “public expressions of those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply.”⁴⁶ The moral imagination that explodes on these pages has “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”⁴⁷

      Racial justice will not occur on its own. We cannot close our eyes and wish racism away. We cannot even pray it away. We can pray for strength to eradicate it. We can pray that White people have a change of heart and we can pray that Black people will love themselves as God has created them to be. Prayer must be coupled with action. Human beings have created this system of dehumanization and injustice and it will take human beings to dismantle it and create a world that reflects what God wants for all of God’s people. Let us continue the work of others who came before us, and preach a word that disturbs, disrupts the status quo, yet heals. These words have been preached; these words are to be preached and the hope is that the words are heard and that action has been or will be taken on the words that have been spoken; that shema will rule the day, a kind of hearing that results in action. Will preachers preach a prophetic and troubling word and will preaching stir the hearts of those who hear?

1. Melva Wilson Costen, African American Christian Worship (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 65.

2. Marvin A. McMickle, The Making of a Preacher: 5 Essentials for Ministers Today (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2018), 162.

3. Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), ix.

4. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, 1, 21–23.

5. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, 25.

6. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, 25, 54, 58–62.

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