Day two of the Festival brought rain. A light drizzly rain that didn't really soak you, yet dripped and dropped on you every time you went out. A little messy, a little humid, a little inconvenience, but in the end it didn't dampen the spirit. And today was full of the Spirit. Maybe it was because all the sessions I attended were held at Metropolitan AME Church near the corner of 15th and M Street, a few blocks north of the Washington Monument.
A historic building and community of faith. The pastor who welcomed us said it was the oldest property and business continually held by African Americans in our capital city. Frederick Douglass was a member there. Many famous African Americans and other notables preached there, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. The Rose Window at the front of the building, or the back of the sanctuary, depicted many significant events in Black Church history, not just the AME tradition. But Richard Allen who walked out of St George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia when we wasn't allowed to preach and free black slaves were not allowed to receive communion with their white brothers and sisters, is depicted in that window as the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. But the oldest date in the window references a different event that helped shape the consciousness of the AME style of worship and preaching.
You can't make it out in this picture, but it is 1739, when John Wesley on Aldersgate Street in London felt his heart strangely warmed and realized that salvation was not just a head thing, but a heart thing too. Today was heady, to say the least, but heart warming at the same time.
We began with Walter Brueggemann, the 85 year old professor of Hebrew Scriptures and irascible prophet of the whole church. I guess at 85 you can be as irascible as you want. And he came, as his introducer said, to trouble the waters of complacency in the church. His sermon was titled "Meat, Anxiety, Injustice" and he took as his text the story in I Kings about Solomon and his excesses when it came to feeding his entourage. The numbers of animals it took to feed the royal party was staggering. And it was also clear that this largess didn't trickle down to the hungry ones underneath, or even the workers who slaughtered the herds of oxen and hunted the flocks of sheep and game birds. And then Brueggemann flipped the script on us and told us about Jesus' depiction of this story in a little parable about building bigger barns and the fool who only wanted his own happiness. He was going to share, perhaps, he was going to do good, possibly, as soon as he had enough, as soon as got more. But then he died. The quest for more is bringing this country to a ruin, he said, even as it brings each citizen the anxiety of wanting. Get out of the anxiety game, Brueggemann warned, it will kill you. And, when we are anxious and greedy, we can't do justice.
His words rang in the rafters of that old church. And echoed in the souls of all the hearers. We were unsettled, to say the least. To pick up the refrain and sing the next verse, Walter was followed by Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale, founding pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia, a church built on the foundation of social justice, working with the marginalized in housing and healthcare and education. Hale brought us a familiar word delivered with passion and power and more unsettling: "What Does the Lord Require of Us?" based on Micah 6. The answer wasn't a surprise, to us or to Micah's initial hearers. Yet we still want to ask. Maybe we're hoping for a different answer. Something easier. Something simpler. But Hale, after cataloging a nation off the rails in so many ways, she held that answer before us. And even reminded us of Micah's exasperation in presenting it. He has told you, o Mortal. Human person, He has told you, and told you and told you. Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. Yet we prize the self-centered and arrogant. We cast aside the hurting as being too uncomfortable for us. And we wait for a better time to talk about justice. What does the Lord require?
I know what the Lord requires, but what we required after such an intense morning, is a last word before lunch that was a word of grace. Grace Imathiu to be precise. Grace is originally from Kenya, and yet has been a United Methodist Pastor in the States for many years. There is a sense of wonder and humor about Grace that is infectious. And more than that, it is transforming. In her way Grace was as insistent on doing justice as both Walter and Cynthia. But she did it while making us laugh and telling us stories. Stories, she says, can redefine, can marginalize, can reduce people to animals. Or stories can include and redefine and transform. But only when we tell the whole story. Who's story is left out was the question she asked us. As we tell our own stories, as we tell the stories of the nation, who is left out of the telling. What stories, she asked us, have we forgotten in order to perpetuate the lie that fits our broken story and our broken history? What stories of pain are ignored, what stories of suffering are overlooked, what stories would make us rethink who we are if they were told? And how can we hear and then tell those stories?
There was much more to this day. Walter was back with more after lunch. The Rev Otis Moss III came too, to challenge us to make gumbo in our preaching, to bring from other traditions, other stories to enrich the broth and feed the people. We had visitors from the Hill. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren came to encourage us to not give up on the call to justice, to not give up on the brokenhearted, and to not give up on them, those who want to represent the best of us, the highest aspirations of God's people and to call us to continue to preach justice for all.
It was a long day, an intense but spirit-filled day. And I am now sitting here in my room listening to the thunder roll across this city. And I wonder if we are getting an Amen from above.
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Amen and amen.
#Homiletics2018
#Homiletics2018
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