– [Dr. Stacey Floyd- Thomas] It is my custom. It is my tradition. It is my sacred privilege, because I understand being a professor as not an inherent right. I understand being a proclaimer as the Gospel, as not something that was meant for me in a legacy and a
Context that demanded I either be invisible or quiet. So every time I mount the sacred desk, I consider it God’s work. So may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be like the holy fire of God, consume your mind and your hearts of wood. And with that,
I would like to open us with a centering moment. Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it. Oh, we’ve seen forces
That would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. Amanda Gorman. Now this centering moment is a response to the call of an America in crisis.
What Maya Angelo would call these yet to be United States. And it rings kind of true, kind of heartening and familiar, as Martin Luther King, Jr., that great moral theologian of the civil rights movement, who said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards. I disagree. It’s long.
It’s an arc. But morality does not follow evolution. That arc won’t bend unless someone uses their moral muscle. That ruach that was talked about last night, that becomes flesh and dwells among us, this is the context of our time together this week. Here we come here. Here the world
Wonders, queries, questions, perhaps doubts as we get moved from church to church and go home to our partner who says, “Honey, I shrunk the church.” Because people believe in the morality, the claims and the promises of hate mongers, of gangs, of sex traffickers, of country clubs, sororities and fraternities.
People believe the rules and dictates, the proclamations and claims of any other institutional organization than the church. I’m an ethicist. And people might believe in lay terms that ethics is about right and wrong. No, no, no, no, no. People pretty much have casted their vote on that.
But it is why do people do what they do? Why do people say things and do other things? Why do people proclaim things that they cannot promise? And this week we’re wondering as you refreshen your call, will you say yes to telling the gospel truth? Because popular culture, political theology, and public witness
Is watching you. Now, when Dr. Gross introduced me last night and we were having such a wonderful time, that’s when you realize when you sit, when your executive assistant sends bios da, da, da, or what it means to be 50, you forget, I forgot, she was listing the degrees.
My most recent degree is an MBA. Received the MBA three years ago now, right before COVID. And it was because I realized that the largest mismanagers of funds in the nation is a church. And not just mismanagement by pilfering from the coffers, or stashing hundreds of thousand dollars in restroom wall.
I mean, not just for those reasons. But if you come from the context where my faith has been formed, it also comes from good community people going broke, because they’ve gone in to hawk to keep the doors of the church open. Because they care more about stained glass
Than the windows of their own home, or because people who have been called like me feel it’s such a privilege that they invest all of their lack of salary into paying back the church for seeing them worthy of a call. Those within the black church tradition know that if,
If only one person in the church is going to get paid, oh, it’s not the pastor. It’s the musician because the spirit of the Lord is there in that Hammond organ, you see, not necessarily in the pulpit. And so in the school of business, and I had asked a colleague and I,
Who was in Owen School of Business, said, you know, we should probably do something with financial literacy for the church, cause it’s a problem when people come into the house of God with the CEO mentality and want to run it like a business, right? Cause there’s a difference between financial advising and stewardship.
I have to tell our accountant that all the time when he looks at our portfolio every year and just says, you know what, you all could be just doing so much more if you stop giving 10% of what you make to that church and sending all of these people to school
When you only have one child and all of these relatives. And I said, you don’t know who made me. Those people are why I’m here. Now, I am coming to you cause you know business, but let me handle what love looks like. But there is something that business teaches us,
Especially as those of us who are theologically educated, and Tillich says what? That religion is one’s ultimate concern, not what people say, but where they put what they value, where they put their currency. Right? And so we realize in civil religion that you can burn
Crosses all day long, but you better not burn the flag. Right? We know how civil religion supplants the religion that we claim, and there’s some ways in which the pulpit has been seduced similarly. Business world has taught us, in much the same ways that the Dean of the school
Where we were at that time had said, there’s no way in the world we’re going to have a joint program, a class classes in other words, looking at financial literacy because there’s just not enough FTEs. I mean the tuition that the divinity school gets,
As opposed to the tuition that the school of visit, it just doesn’t count for much. So I said, well, what shall I do, Lord? This is just ridiculous, you know? We need financial literacy, da da, da, da. You know, I’m doing all this ethical-ness. This is just ridiculous.
That’s the problem with the institutions. Nobody really cares. Da da, blah. And I was giving a presentation at a local university. And after I got done, the Dean of the business school came up, at another institution, and said, well the president of the university at another institution said,
I didn’t realize you have an MBA. And I said, well, you didn’t realize it because I don’t. And she said, my God, you should. And I said, yeah, well, I got a PhD. So no, I don’t. And she said, well, we’re opening classes next month. And then that darn scripture.
Here I am Lord. And it was there in that moment that I realized that God calls us to do. We find Christ wherever the crisis is. Or as the little kindergartners at my church would say the one who smelt it dealt it, or when Martin Luther king appropriated a Lima Hoover statement,
If you’re not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution. Well, in order to be part of the solution, you also have to be part of the problem. And so the first confession that we have to do is to realize that as the business world teaches us,
There is a triple bottom line to our faith. In the business world, right, it’s about people, planet and profit. The social, right? The environmental, and the financial. And for us, the social is popular culture. The environmental is political theology. What people actually believe in, so much so that they will organize the polis.
And that’s what we’re talking when we’re talking about politics, go back to philosophy, go back to Socrates and Plato, way back-a-when. When the polis, according to Plato, was based on three different spheres of where you had the philosopher Kings, and the warriors, and the savages. The privileged academics,
Those who, who pondered math, philosophy and religion. Then the warriors, the muscle, to protect the polis, the people. And then the savages. Most of us in the room, women, people of color, those who did not inherit the philosopher kingdom and the way in which that still is not just biblical antiquity that endures.
We are made up of many parts, and so this week we want to say, what does the cost, currency, and the current relevance of your call have to do with your public witness. That’s the financial health and at the middle, when all of these three spheres come into balance,
That’s when we know as the business world teaches us, that what we’re doing is sustainable. The church, Christianity, or your confession of faith is not sustainable if it cannot reckon itself with the current events, currency, and the cost of what it means, not just to be citizen,
But what it means to be Christian. And if you are going to align yourself with the philosopher kings who rule over everyone else, or if you’re just going to be the middle management muscle, that’s going to put your life on the line,
Or if you’re going to be the people that people might call, might deem savage. But if you look at the church, where the church is not shrinking, is where the supposed savages are not afraid to tell the gospel truth. Now quickly, I want to give you three years of MDiv education
In what metaethics is. And metaethics, as I told you, ethics is why do people do what they do the way in which we’re approaching this this week from history to the field of ethics, ethics, metaethics has to deal with the defining why people do what they do. And in concepts of the good,
Of the just, realizing that people use the same words, but they don’t necessarily mean the same thing. We realized that during COVID, yes? When New York times said that the Millennials said work is not a place where you go, work is something that you do. Okay. I’m Generation X.
So Generation X and everybody before us, work is where you go. And then you do work once you get there. For the millennial generation on down, no, no, no. It matters not where you are. You just work the work of the one who’s paying you while you’re getting paid. Right? So,
And we realized that during COVID that we had to change our notions of work. That’s why it’s important for us to have that accountability. How do we respond to other people? So when we talk about metaethics, that’s what we’re talking about. The meaning making of what matters
And how it matters and why it matters. Always defining concepts in light of not what the claims are but how they manifest themselves and why it matters. So we understand philosophy then as the faithful search in understanding. That’s why we come to these fine Ivy League institutions.
So we can have that sequestered time around like-minded individuals to break open every word we can get our hands on and rightly divide a word of truth. And despite what Foucault says, we understand that we are looking for our truth, and we realize, in looking for our truth, that there are,
As he says, many truths. So the first thing that we ask, which is why many of you all might have went into apoplectic shock when you took Hebrew Bible 101, and you had read the Bible for yourself many times. And on the very first day, someone has the nerve to tell you,
There are two creation stories. What? Open up the word. And you’re like, yes. You know, I’m missionary Baptist, right? Presenting my sword. I’m ready. Sure enough, daggone it, right there. Can’t believe what my lying eyes, as Rev Fox said, are telling me. Two creation stories. What? There goes our faith.
No. Then you’re listening to all the church mothers who said, you know, you going up to that cemetery, make sure you don’t lose what kept you. But we’re shook. I mean, how many will tell the truth? Were you just not stunned? I mean just ready just to fall out.
Like, this is just ridiculous. And so we are asking a metaphysical question. What is real? That that’s where philosophy starts. What is real? This is what? What is this? Well, this, this might be harder, but what is this here? What is this? It looks like a table, right?
How do we know it’s a table? It participates in table-ness. Right? That’s how we know. It’s hard on the top, four legs. That’s how we know. And how we use it tells us what? How we value it. Hmm. Axiologically. Why do we value it? Well, why do we value a table?
Let’s just write on it. Right? It’s hard, you know? And that creates form. Following functions, following form. What? Informs our faith. We have faith in the fact that that’s a table. And do you think we just do that with tables? No. Because you’re more accustomed to seeing my body serving breakfast,
Lunch, and dinner. My body can be smiled at, in those contexts. Affirm that, you know, sure enough, you’re going to eat some good food. It’s the body that you want to see. But in front of a classroom? In front of a pulpit? In front of a classroom where you’re supposed to teach me
What to do in front of a pulpit? That’s dissonance. Why? Cause this form is not supposed to function that way. Philosophy shapes our faith in the same way that there’s something precious about that flag and not about that cross. Where we don’t tell the flag how it should wave. It tells us
How to sit in its breeze. And that takes us to the task of theology. Theology says, oh no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Faithful search of understanding. You all remember that (indistinct) debate, this is kind of just reducing that quickly. We define theology as faith seeking understanding. So yeah, what is real?
Okay. We understand that race is a social construct. That race isn’t real. But ontologically speaking, questions about existence and being, you can say all day long race isn’t real. You can tell me all day long as some of my most liberal, sweetest friends since growing up in a predominantly white context
In Corpus Christi, also known as a body of Christ, Texas. That’s what it means, where the border moved over Mexico and became Texas, which is why that’s the worst state in the United States of America to learn history, because they demand that history’s not taught. That’s why I’m married to a historian.
Cliff notes, catch up. A context where we now live, right, in the United States of America, that’s just, right, validated, approved, and now we’re celebrating as a holiday, Juneteenth, in the state of Texas where it’s outlawed to teach why Juneteenth exists. If race is a construct, racism is not.
If somebody says, you know, I’m colorblind. When I see you, I don’t see black. Well then you don’t see very well. And by saying, you don’t see it, you’re already what? Problematizing the fact that I am. So racism, that which is ontological necessarily creates race.
That is, so what is real on the one hand tells us something about what exists and is being on the other. That’s why you need both philosophy and theology, because someone can say a thing. When we’re talking about sexuality, that’s what’s happening. You can say a thing about me,
But this is my experience. This is my is-ness. Then epistemologically how do we know phenomenologically? How does a black man know when he’s driving down the street that it’s dangerous to drive while black, regardless of what your education is, what your call is, whether you have a Bible on the front seat.
And we know many of us trick out our cars, right? Especially people of color and women trick out our cars and you know, to signify as Charles Long would say, watch it. We’re different. We’re exceptional. Give us a pass. Whether we’re speeding or whether you’re about to profile.
Malcolm X said a black person with a PhD is still a N-word. So phenomenologically, something happens. Women know walking by a construction site. It doesn’t matter your age. It doesn’t matter your station. In your body, phenomenologically, you feel terror. I have done more cases of being an expert witness in court.
Well, I have to, and I have never been chosen on a jury, as soon as you say, you’re a black- as soon as they see you’re a black woman, you know that being a Navy brat, great, being from Texas, fabulous, but you have a PhD and you teach ethics, no, we’re- she’s out.
But so I’ve never been on a jury ever in my life, but I’ve been an expert witness several times. And the greatest thing I have to be an expert witness about is to prove the point that consent for a woman does not mean consent. That’s metaethics. So how you might understand a word
Doesn’t necessarily mean that. And all I need to do is to talk to those women in the jury and talk about the construction site, and say, now, imagine somebody from that construction site, who’s cat calling you. And there are no words in any language, not just the English language, in every single language,
Some of the worst expletives are reduced to vagina and woman. There’s nothing a woman can say back in defense of her body to a man who’s assaulting her with the word. The worst thing you can call a man has to do with a woman. Can you believe that?
And so when I tell them, when a predator has your body pinned down consent for most women is survival. That’s metaethics, because phenomenologically, if you don’t, if you don’t have, you know, a Jiu-Jitsu, right, training or a black belt, “yes” is your best defense. And many of you who’ve been ordained, huh?
Know about consent. Many of you, across gender, know about consent saying to the judicatories what you do not believe. And then, so we asked at what costs? Errol told us about axiological, how we value it. Yeah. How do we value it? On the theological side we asked, is it good?
Do you value what is good? Was it worth the cost? This is our approach. So this entire week, we want you to realize when we talk about Hebrews 11:1, faith is a substance of things. The evidence of things that is also the definition of a lie is also the definition of fake news.
Do you remember the weapons of mass destruction and what was said with the response to the fact that none were found? Right, that the absence of the evidence does not necessarily purport that the evidence is absent. Many people don’t go to church because they realize metaethically,
That what you call faith is just you lying every single day. Whether it’s the woman, who’s walking by a construction site, whether it’s the newly minted MDiv going up before the judicatories, whether it’s you going up for a job interview, whether it’s a cop pulling you over and you were speeding
As you reach for your clerical collar, every single day, we go through a crisis of faith. We try to figure out by what life, by what truth, by what posture can our good life be sustained? All of these questions, how do things work? What feels right? What are the costs, gains and risks?
How does power work? How should I act with others? How does this make me feel? What does a future hold? What must I do? What does this mean for me? Who do I trust? How did things get here? What variables exist? This is at the heart of our call, our existence, our embodiment,
And how we know as a church mothers within my tradition would say how we know that we know that we know that we know who we are and whose we are. This pathos, the passion, the ethos, the values, right? The logos, the reason inform our theos, what is ultimately sacred.
And what we don’t say is not necessary because the truth we proclaim is not only as a song says written all over our face. It’s inscribed on our very bodies. And that’s the first text. And sometimes the only sacred text that our congregants read. Dr. Juan. – [Dr. Juan Floyd-Thomas] Good morning
And greetings to you all. By both training, as well as tendency, I’m a historian, a religious historian, in fact. And what I mean by that is that unlike many of my colleagues, ethicists, who are trying to figure out why people do what they do, theologians who are trying to ponder and sometimes
Pontificate on what is the mind of God, and how does humanity fit into that. To preachers and proclaimers, who are trying to say thus sayeth Lord and trying to, you know, connect the people of God, to their creator and the creator to those people. As a historian, my research and my efforts
Are trying to talk about what people actually did and probably shouldn’t have done. And in my research, I’m here to bring receipts. So on that note, on that note, and in that measure, I want to talk about a song, a song that’s probably well known to each and every person in this room.
I’m talking about Amazing Grace. Now, even though one of the most cherished alerts in that song is “how sweet the sound”, what I want to talk about here, as it brings together, the kind of trifold concerns that Dr. Stacy and I are here to articulate, popular culture, political theology, and public witness.
What we have here coming from the story of one John Newton, born in the early 1700s, 1724, thereabouts, right? Even in his upbringing, right in his early life, his father is a sea captain, his mother, a churchgoing woman. Already you’re seeing a dividing line in his biography, right? The mother, a righteous woman,
Just trying to do the best she can, and to borrow the parlance of The Temptations, papa was a rolling stone, and where he laid his hat was his home. You know, he’s a rough and tumble man. Okay. So you’ve got this division, even within his upbringing,
Growing up young, white, and poor in his native England, he’s jumped by a gang and brought onto his first sailing vessel. Hmm. Okay, so gang culture permeating part of the old world, as it were. And it’s made its way into the new world and found deep roots here.
In that life, on the seas, the only way he could survive and get by is by becoming part of this system, this maritime and market driven world of his, and the greatest part of that game was the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade.
And so if he was going to make it in the world and, and make any kind of claim to fame, any kind of success or notoriety out of his life, he had to become preeminently successful at the enslavement of other human beings, particularly those of African descent. Okay.
It was the, you know, it wasn’t Bitcoin, but it was the hottest thing going as far as (laughs). Personally, I’m of a mind at all currency is crypto, but we can have that conversation at another time. But the idea that in his own struggle to survive, he had to compromise and terrorize
Hundreds, if not thousands of other human beings, right? This is a narrative that we need to take note of in our own day and time. What have we done? What do we continue to do to benefit ourselves at the bankruptcy of others? Right? He eventually works his way up
The social hierarchy of the slave ship from the lowly crew member to becoming a captain of the slave trade. And very typical in that era was this notion that after a couple of transatlantic voyages, you could actually secure the bag. You could actually stack enough money up that you could
Retire for the rest of your lives, because even though they didn’t have psychologists or or counselors or therapists at the time, it was known that the wear and tear emotionally, mentally, physically of these voyages was immense. Now, if you’re the captain and crew of the slave ship,
And you think that it’s too strenuous and arduous a voyage, how you think it was for the enslaved? Okay, we can bracket that. But you know, the, the whole notion was the typical ploy of anyone who’s doing dirty deeds for cheap. Oh, if I just put it together, enough money,
I could get out of this. If I put aside enough cash, if I get that one big score, that winning lottery ticket, I’m out. I don’t have to do this anymore. So long story short, roughly around 1779, or thereabouts as legend has it, one of the voyages that Newton and his crew
Have embarked on is hit by terrible storm at sea. Ship is tossed all about, right? About to fall apart. In his captain’s cabin, right? Instead of writing in his log, he’s now writing a prayer to God and many of the lyrics that we now know today of the song, Amazing Grace,
Are those words that, you know, he’s putting pen to paper about. Meanwhile, below deep in the belly of the ship in a place where no tears have escaped and no cries could be heard. We have the moaning and groanings of those women, men, and children taken from Africa. They’re wailing,
They’re weeping, because they already didn’t understand why they were there. They already didn’t understand or know. God, how come we here, as the quite literal transliteration of kumbaya meant. Oftentimes we use kumbaya, you know, to invoke another popular, well known song. We oftentimes ridicule and reduce any hope for
Bipartisanship in politics, or, you know, racial or cultural reconciliation as, oh, what, okay, this is our kumbaya moment? But that was actually a plea by indigenous Africans who were enslaved to try and make sense of the world. They were already engaged in a project and process of theodicy,
Of why do bad things happen to good people, right? They were already grappling with this, although, because you know, they didn’t come to find institutions like Princeton or Vanderbilt, or, you know, some of them other ones up and down the east coast, I won’t name them.
Right. You know, they didn’t get fair hearing or credence. They weren’t given their full credibility or merit, but the power of a song and it’s strength to endure, right. Even though disconnected, even though they’re in the same ship, aboard the same vessel, the realities of Newton at the top of the ship
And the enslaved black folk at the bottom of this ship, they’re connected, but they’re not unified. Right? So as he’s writing the lyrics of this much known and well beloved song, right, to the moaning and groanings of the folks in the belly of the ship, right. Once that ship did survive the storm,
Cause God is still God, God is still good. Once that ship survived, made it to shore, Newton comes out and he’s like, I’m a changed man. I found the light. Now he didn’t give up slave trading. He kept on going on a few more voyages. Cause as I said before,
He had to set up his retirement package. But once he did accrue enough money, once he did stack enough chips, he did finally leave slave trading behind, even became a Methodist minister, a writer, an abolitionist. Now this is where we move from the popular culture piece to the political theology piece. Abolition, right?
The desire and intention to end the transatlantic slave trade. You know, think about it as the 18th and 19th century version of human trafficking. Okay. Because that’s what human trafficking is. Okay. But the idea that for Newton and the many folks, especially within the ranks of the Methodist church,
Who then took up the cause of trying to end enslavement in all its manifest forms, the idea that they still didn’t fully encompass or appreciate human equality as part of that bargain, they stopped short, right? Yeah. They didn’t want to enslave anymore Africans, but they didn’t also think that Africans and ultimately
Their new world descendant were fully, freely human. Okay. So even when you’re doing the good work, you always, we always need to know that there’s more work to be done. Okay. Last, but certainly not least in the public witness frame, what to do with a song like Amazing Grace.
I, for me in mind, I, you know, I renounce and reject the song. I refuse to sing it. I refuse to embrace it, knowing it’s history. I can no longer hold it in as high esteem. And think about this, when I talk about the popularity of the song, right?
Even to the point where many folks, especially if they’ve ever gone to or by the church, right, will invoke Amazing Grace as their favorite hymn, as their favorite song, right? In fact, presidents of the United States , as different in their political and personal outlook as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, most famously,
Have grappled with or gravitated towards this song in many ways, right. For their own political and personal ends. But I grapple with, I wrestle with can we separate the cultural product? The thing that is made from the person who has made it? Am I free and fit to enjoy the art or creativity
Of someone like a Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey or R Kelly or Bill Cosby, knowing the kind of person and pursuits that they indulged in while creating these works. I, for one can’t, plus I think Blessed Assurance is a better song all around,
But okay, but you know, that’s just me, that’s just me. But what we also have to grapple with here, if you will, and I find this most fitting from one Dietrich Bonhoeffer, right, in The Cost of Discipleship, he offers up the statement, and I’m quoting here,
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus living and incarnate.” If you want the goods, but don’t care about the cost,
Once again, to emphasize what we’ve been talking about, my question, our question, not just today, but throughout much of the week, what are you, what are any of us willing to sacrifice, to be who we claim to be in the name of Christ Jesus, right?
We all live in a world of comfort and convenience. We all live in this world thinking that, oh, well, nobody will know. Or it won’t go against our credibility if I just hold my tongue, if I just, you know, keep it moving, so to speak. But what I want to suggest,
And I invoke the late, great Gayraud Wilmore in his classic Black Religion and Black Radicalism. He makes this statement about what we would nowadays refer to as racial diversity or pluralism and quote unquote inclusion. And he makes the statement and I quote, “From 1750 to 1861,”
So from the years predating the American Revolution to the years just at the breaking point of the US Civil War, “there were more black and white Christians worshiping in the same congregations, proportionate to their numbers as baptized Christians, than there are today. This should not however, be taken to imply that
Prior to the Civil War, American churches were racially integrated. Blacks enjoyed no real freedom or equality of ecclesiastical status in either the north or in the south. It never occurred to white Christians that the equality that was denied to their brothers and sisters in civil society
Should at least be made available to them within the church. There was interracial worship before the Civil War, but it was never intended to suggest equality.” If the church is the house of God, rather than the orphanage of God, let’s put it that way, right? Not just the place where you show up,
Cause you have nowhere else to go, but the place that you are because you belong and you are blessed to be there, right? How do you wrestle, how do any of us, all of us, right? Because one thing that, you know, by osmosis I pick up on with this metaethical approach is
We can’t just constantly point the fingers one direction, but we’re also pulling ourselves into question and accountability in what we do and how we do it. What have we done to make it possible that more people can share in all the benefits and blessings of God’s community, of God’s beloved community,
To evoke Dr. King once again. So as a final note, before we open up for questions, I want to offer up a statement taken from the pages of W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic work, which we’ll discuss more on tomorrow, Souls of Black Folks. In that volume, Du Bois offers up this statement.
“This then is the end of our striving to be a coworker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his/her best talent, powers, and latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten.
The shadow of a mighty Negro pass flits through the tale of Ethiopia, the shadowy, and of Egypt, the sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men, women, and children flash here and there like falling stars and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
Here in America, in the few days since it’s emancipation, the black people’s turning hither and thither and hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his or her strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power like weakness. And yet it is not weakness. It is the contradiction of double aims.
The double aim struggle of the black artisan, on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mirror, humors of wood, and draws of water and on the other to plow and nail and dig for a poverty stricken hoard could only result in making him or her a poor craftsman
For she or he had but half a heart in either cause.” So much of the sense of spinning our wheels. So much of the sense, many of you, many of us encounter in the church today wondering, okay, what is this all for? What am I doing? The levels of retirement, resignations, resentment,
That many folks, especially in the ordained and anointed and appointed clergy have towards their calling, right? Not just your coming to the pulpit or coming to the ministry. But if you do truly know and acknowledge that you were called to this thing, you know, as, as the old folks and I,
I nearly and dearly miss the presence and existence of Albert Raboteau, who’s y’all’s good neighbor down just across the street here, talking about a fire shot up in my bones, right? If this is a thing that you could not resist doing, then no matter how you try to fight it,
It just wouldn’t let you go. If that is truly what we’re called to do, right? How can we be coworkers, right? No, I’m not trying to be better than anybody. I just want to be considered equal to everybody. How can we achieve that great goal? All right.
– [Dr. Stacey Floyd- Thomas] So as a benediction before we open up with questions, we want to ask that you would tend to, and I understand that when we’re talking about the work that we’re doing, it is very difficult to want to enter that fray of talking about politics,
Of talking about popular culture. We want to protect the pulpit from those things, but that’s what people, that’s where we meet the world in salvation. Who do we want to save? Do we want to save minds, I mean, souls and lose minds and bodies in the process? Right? This is the zombie culture
That our youth are so enticed by because they feel like the walking dead. And so how does our work, our worth, and our witness meet people where they are. Is there a word from the Lord? And does it reside in us? So we’ll ask Ronnie, Beth, and Lillian to give a scripture
To help frame how we understand popular culture, political theology, and public witness. So we might tell the gospel truth. – Micah 6:8 God has told you, oh, mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.
– Matthew 22:37 through 40 Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. – Reading from the third gospel chapter 4 verses 18 through 19 The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and
Recovery of sight to the blind. To set free those who are oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. – [Dr. Stacey Floyd- Thomas] To be the carrier of the gospel is to bring good news to a bad situation. It is to know what the Lord requires of you.
It is a way to understand how do you synthesize what all the laws and the prophets command about how you love. And it’s to wonder as you proclaim is the anointing on you. Not for years gone by, not for the world as it should be,
But is there anointing on you to proclaim that good news and to make this time in which we all find ourselves calling us to proclaim it as the year of the Lord’s favor. Blessings. – Blessings.
source
