Seeing the Bigger Picture: A Guest Post by The Rev'd Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert
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Dr. Kenyatta R. Gilbert is the Professor of Homiletics at Howard University School of Divinity. He'll be speaking to The Collective+ on Thursday from his book Exodus Preaching.
"Exodus Preaching is the first of its kind. It is an exploration of the African American prophetic rhetorical traditions in a manner that makes features of these traditions relevant to a broad audience beyond the African American traditions. It provides readers a composite picture of the nature, meaning, and relevance of prophetic preaching as spoken Word of justice and hope in a society of growing pluralism and the world-shaping phenomenon of racial, economic and cultural diversity."
How you see yourself and read your Bible will dictate your politics.
If you take community empowerment and giving assistance to individuals on the margins of society seriously—assuming roles and engaging concerns often taken for granted in communities characterized as economically robust and culturally privileged—then your work as a religious leader is to criticize liturgical practices that do not prepare or prompt individuals to actively engage larger community concerns such as “racial profiling, homelessness, poverty, geographical displacement, and domestic abuse.”
This is why, on any given Sunday, one might hear preachers like the newly elected Georgia senator and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Raphael G. Warnock, choreograph messages and employ grassroots organizing skills to generate concern around particular events or issues he believes his congregation or constituents should care about.
How could Senator Warnock, a trained liberation theologian, student of James Cone, Martin King devotee, and Baptist clergyman rationalize running for a state-wide political office, while knowing that the most well-intentioned individuals are easily compromised morally and ethically? When asked if he would step down as Ebenezer’s senior pastor now that he is senator, unapologetically and without hesitation, he said, “No.”
Historically, a role does exist for the black clerico-politician if one recalls bivocational pastors and U.S. Representatives Adam Clayton Powell, Jr of Harlem; Floyd Flake of Jamaica Queens; and Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, who have represented congressional districts. Even so, no map exists for senior pastors occupying a U.S. Senate seat.
Senator Warnock, and I am paraphrasing, has gone on record remarking, “I’ve run for office not to become a Washington politician, but because I’m interested in changing policies.” Unquestionably, many variables conspired to assure his successful candidacy. But what clearly contrasted Warnock with his opponent was how he choreographed his messages to achieve a certain type of buy-in from voters.
From his congregational perch, his sermons have remained biblically and theologically consistent with what they hermeneutically broadcast. That message is that “Christians have a far greater obligation than other persons of good will to develop a social consciousness around the work of alleviating human suffering and rebuilding lives of the marginalized, and challenging systems that endorse oppressive acts.”[1] The senator could maneuver around the “radical liberal Raphael Warnock” attacks because he knew something about the Black Church that his detractors knew virtually nothing about, namely, the particular histories of struggle of persons who populate Black churches and how Black people will nearly die for their churches to protect them from outsider political insult.
Despite internal divisions within Black congregations because of their protest and piety identities, as Warnock details in his book, The Divided Mind of the Black,[2] to wage war on the Black pulpit is hardly a wise political gamble.
As you consider how to frame sermons from a justice-oriented Christian perspective when seeking to connect the speech-act to concrete praxis with scriptural and theological fidelity in mind, I want to conclude with three message crafting strategies[3] for helping you and your listeners to see the big picture exegetically and hermeneutically.
1. Paint a theologically robust picture of Jesus’s love and his compassionate orientation of justice in relation to how justice is distinctly conveyed and implemented in both the Old and New Testaments.
When preachers fail to rightly perceive the essence of divine justice, not only will Jesus be racialized as white preachers will either find themselves preaching justice too heavy-handedly absent of hope or too cheaply absent of real consequence.
2. Before yielding to the temptation of inserting one-or two-line controversial remarks into the sermon, consider addressing controversial topics with the will to enter healthy and respectful discussion about your perspective without demonizing the others’.
When naming reality to connect the speech-act with concrete praxis, the question every prophetically conscious preacher, teacher, advocacy leader has to grapple with is, how does what I preach, teach, or advocate affirm and protect the hearer’s human dignity and personhood? Too often preachers, in taking stances on religio-political controversial issues, fail to demonstrate how their biblical and theological positions align with Jesus’s inaugural vision or concretely point listeners to paths of achieving spiritual wholeness, physical survival, and psychic wellness in tandem with moral concerns and ethical prescriptions.
3. Find theologically constructive ways to decenter the progressive versus conservative battle (idolatry of perspective).
I teach and worship in spaces of intense theological debate on issues that have divided and splintered churches. So I approach my vocation as teacher-facilitator with a great deal of openness. In essence, I mostly moderate intense debates without imposing on others my theological will or views on certain subjects. I do not say this to hedge because I actually think people often must come to their work not as moderators but as apologists. Religious leaders fight for theological turf, and in our times, they should but not all leaders are theologically or homiletically responsible.
Christians often come to the texts they interpret jaded, closed, too open, or frankly, hermeneutically apathetic. Whatever the case, the preacher’s best friend is self-criticism. Idolizing texts and privileging theologies that are provisional at best often leads us down the road of self-serving behaviors and homiletical arrogance.
To hear more of Dr. Gilbert’s perspective, join us in The Collective+
and RSVP For His Guest Lecture Thursday under “Events”
Order Dr. Gilbert’s book here.
End Notes:
[1] Kenyatta R. Gilbert, The Journey and Promise of African American Preaching (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 134.
[2] See Raphael G. Warnock, The Divided Mind of the Black Church (New York: NYU, 2014).
[3] Gilbert, Exodus Preaching: Crafting Sermons about Justice and Hope (Nashville: Abingdon, 2018), 69-72.