On Reconciliation Sunday, the leader and facilitator of a workshop at a local Midwest church introduced a discussion by showing two images of Jesus. The first was a painting by Stephen Sawyer, titled “Undefeated.”
He depicts Jesus as a boxer standing inside a boxing ring. In his corner, we find the word “Savior” printed on the protective padding of the corner post, and hanging from the ropes are the boxing gloves with the word “mercy” written upon them.
When the speaker flashed the image on the screen, he heard a gasp from Jackie, a lady sitting near the front row. She was shaking her head, and exclaiming, “No, no, that’s not my Jesus! That image is just wrong.” Later, she would talk about how the image of Jesus she holds onto is the Jesus who is the Prince of Peace. That image of Jesus dressed as a boxer was the furthest thing from a Prince of Peace. The image of Jesus as an undefeated boxer was followed by another image — this one by Nathan Greene, titled “The Good Shepherd.” This image shows Jesus holding a black lamb.
When looking at these images side by side, one has to ask, “How did we go from an image of a loving, compassionate Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep to one of Jesus standing in the corner of a boxing ring, gloves off and ready to fight?” We all have an image or two of Jesus. These conceptions tell us more about ourselves and our theology than they do about Jesus, for whom no real physical description exists. Except for Revelation:
Revelation 1:14-15New King James Version (NKJV)
14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; 15 His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;
What image of Jesus do we have?
The reading from the Gospel according to Matthew is part of what is called the 2nd Discourse, or the Missionary Discourse. Jesus is preparing to send people out. Jesus is teaching, and the interesting thing is that Jesus is not talking about people who are deciding if they want to follow Jesus but rather Jesus is talking to established believers, Jesus is talking to the church folk and letting them know that following him is not for the faint of heart.
William Goettler said "Jesus is actually addressing the faithful who seek to live into their Christian faith while facing conflict and discouragement, and even the threat to their physical well-being, because of the gospel’s calling."
Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Feasting on the Word: Year A volume) . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
Some people just want to go along to get along, don’t want any conflict and want things to be peaceful, and peaceful meaning the absence of any tension, not a peace that comes with solving problems. Those are the people who when people were protesting police brutality at NFL games, said "I watch sports to get away from politics” People think as long as they stay in their bubble everything will be alright.
I read an article about a young man named Byron Williams in Nevada arrested for cycling without a safety light. Said 17 times, that he could not breathe, and died. He was arrested in September 2019, by March 2020 the prosecutors decided not to prosecute the police involved.
I bring this up now, because news articles are being posted about it, and there are people who are more mad about the news reporting on it than the fact that a mad died because he didn’t have a safety light on his bike. Then of course comes his criminal history, he should not have resisted, he should not have run. If I stay in my bubble everything will be ok. People willfully stay in their bubble and not address the problems of the day or the problems of the text. Discipleship is costly, discipleship aims to change the culture, discipleship is uncomfortable. The Disciples have and will experience rejection from friends and family because they will talk about things that make people uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable things like the fact that this text particularly the first couple of verses would be used to continue to oppress people of color in slavery. It is a definite missinterpretaiton of the text and slavery for that matter. Back then people were in servitude to work off a debt, but the American ancestors changed into a 400 year chattel system to build this country. Talk about uncomfortable things, and why is it that if I bring up slavery, I’m told that it is in the past and get over it, but when someone wants to tear down a Confederate statue people get upset about that? Why would someone care more about property than people?
Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but a sword, and my obedience to Jesus is more important than anything else. Jesus is telling the people of God they will have to do some uncomfortable things, and they will have to do these uncomfortable things PUBLICLY, a private witness is not enough. In any struggle the silent majority is the reason oppression continues. Jesus tells us to bring light to the dark places. Be public, be transparent.
Jesus tells us not to be afraid of those who can hurt the body but not the souls. There is not a heaven or a hell another person can put me in. Jesus tells us that God cares about the sparrows and we are worth more than the sparrows. This life of discipleship is costly, you will give up some things but you will gain so much more.
19 In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai. 2 For they had departed from Rephidim, had come to the Wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the mountain.
3 And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. 6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
7 So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. 8 Then all the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.
I mentioned last week that I enjoyed a class in seminary called “The Church in the Social Context” Another class I enjoyed was “Moral Theology” in Moral Theology we had to read several books, one that I enjoyed and continue to read every now and again isWhere do We go From Here? Chaos or Community?by Dr. Martin Luther King Where Do We Go from Herewas Dr. King’s analysis of the state of American race relations and the movement after a decade of U.S. civil rights struggles. “With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end,” (King, 3). King believed that the next phase in the movement would bring its own challenges, as African Americans continued to make demands for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, an education equal to that of whites, and a guarantee that the rights won in theCivil Rights Act of 1964and theVoting Rights Act of 1965would be enforced by the federal government. He warned that “the persistence of racism in depth and the dawning awareness that Negro demands will necessitate structural changes in society have generated a new phase of white resistance in North and South” (King, 12). It's not just enough to be able to drink out the same water fountain, go to the same school, and sit at the front of the bus, there are economic, political, social, medical, and societal issues at hand. And notice that once MLK started talking about more than just getting to eat at a restaurant and sit at the front of the bus, he got killed. But in one of his last books, he wanted to talk about what is next.
In other words this is just the beginning and there is a tough row to how, a hard path to follow coming up. Kings words to the African Americans in 1967 echo God’s words to the Israelites in Exodus 19. The people of God are fresh out of slavery and are at the bottom of Mount Sinai. The mountain in the Bible is where heaven and earth touch. The people of God had come from Sinai from Rephidim and Moses has gotten a word from the Lord to give to the people. It was a covenant from God, the covenant is mentioned in Exodus chapter 19, spelled out in greater detail in chapters 20-23, and even more so in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This is an explanation of God’s promise to God’s people. That is why it is important to make sure that whomever you follow is talking to God. You won’t know if they are talking to God if you don’t spend some time with God yourself. You can’t tell if they heard from God if you don’t know what God says as well.
Why mention Rephidim? Beloved at Rephidim the people of God were in a place of pain, they were so mad that they were ready to stone Moses, they would have rather been back in slavery than deal with the current situation. Rephidim is also a place of rest, a station between wanderings, a pit stop if you will. That is important for our times as well, because right now is a pit stop for our country and the world at a large and one of the worst mistakes one can make is treating a pit stop like it is the end of the race. God is telling the people there is still some work to be done. That is hard to tell some people fresh out of some pain that there will still be some trouble on the way, its hard because people don’t want to hear that first of all, secondly its hard because they are stuck in the past. There was pain in Egypt, there was pain at Rephidim, there was pain in the wilderness, there was pain in slavery, there was pain in sharecropping, there was pain in segregation, there was pain in redlining, there is pain in gerrymandering, there is pain in voter suppression, there is pain in predatory lending, there is pain in the school to prison pipeline, there is pain in police brutality, there is pain in just trying to survive day to day and now you tell me there is still hardship to come? We just got out of oppression and you say there is still work to do.
In the midst of the pain, God gives provision. The people of God were thirsty at Rephidim and God gave them water from a rock. God provided before and God will provide again, while the people are stuck on their past, God lets them know that he doesn’t see them for their pasts. God sees them for their future. God has given the people of God a special status along with making a community. The text says in A kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Kingdom and nation are political terms in the Bible, priest and holy are for community. We are called to be active and be with one another. Rephidim was a place of both pain and provision. The people were called to move beyond both the memory of the pain and the security of the provision. They were to move on to new experiences, new challenges, and new revelation.
God is letting us know in the text that It will be tough, it will get worse before it gets better. No matter what Follow God and pray. God spoke to the people and the people spoke back. Remember God’s promises, let them keep you during troubled times.
God tells them he will put them on eagles wings, eagles are majestic creatures, they are also powerful and protective creatures. God is saying I know you may have been slaves before, but you are my chosen people now, I love you, I care for you and there is still work to be done. God is in charge of everything, he says that the earth is his. When you go to a restaurant, or place of business and you know the owner
We have so many moments to celebrate; Juneteeth is coming, the Emancipation proclamation, the Civil Rights act of 1964, and 1968, the voting rights act of 1965. The election of Barrack Obama the first African American president. The problem is that once we got those moments, the momentum stopped, and those who sought to do evil worked year after year to chip away what had been done, until 50-60 years later all the protections we thought we had have been gutted if not stripped away completely. I look online and I see people celebrating statements from politicians and business owners and lauding the success that public protests and in some cases rioting has brought them and then saying that people need to stop saying we need to vote to get change. In the moment, that seems right, the problem is that this line of thinking is not sustainable, next November all those people could be out of office and a new group can come into power and undo all the policy changes people protested to get go away.We can’t just have big movements and then let it die down, the civil rights act came after 10 days of national riots but the powers spent the next 50-60 years trying to undo that change, don’t stop at the big moment. That’s where staying active and voting comes in.
The people of God in the text have not gone into the promise land yet, matter of fact they are far off from it. There is still work to be done for them, and there is still work to be done for us. God is telling us there is still work to do and our response should be like the people of God…Yes.
In Seminary I had to take a class called “The Church in the Social Context” I enjoyed that class because of the professor, Dr. Magdellanes and the material he had us review. We watched this video where they took the Mitochondrial DNA of different people. The Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA passed down through the mothers side, it was interesting because when two white people would compare their DNA, or two black people, they thought they would have a common ancestor, but it turns out that that the people had more ancestry in common with people that did not look like them then those who did. White, black, brown, didn’t matter, the DNA was putting all kinds of people together and they had no idea. There are other services out there, Ancestry.com, 23 and Me, etc, that will trace your DNA and let you know just how far up your family tree goes. Taking a test like that will let you know that we all have common ancestors. Just like we look at our physical ancestry we look at a royal ancestry that we have and that is one of God. We are all God’s children. Today’s lectionary passage is for Trinity Sunday and covers the creation story, I only want to talk about 2 parts of it today. But the cliff notes version of my view on the other scriptures that go with the passage is that I don’t see the seven days in the story as seven 24 hour segments of time. God is powerful enough to do it but did not have to. The bible says in
2 Peter 3:8New King James Version (NKJV)
8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Faith is not against science, they are two separate disciplines, teachings, systems, whatever you want to call it, God’sv time is not our time, God’s ways are not our ways. The most important part of that whole creation story to me is the part that says in the beginning, God. God was there from the beginning and that is all that matters to me. Next part that is important to me is the ‘Let us make man” plural on purpose, you won’t find the word Trinity in your Bible only passages of scriptures that allude to it. Let us make man in Genesis, In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and was God in the gospel according to John, and others. But the text I read for you before preaching today says let us make man in our image. Man is for mankind, as some translations put it. Either way in our image, we are made in the image of God, that is the common royal ancestor we all share. The same one who breathed life into Adam and breathes life into all of us. That is why it hurts my heart to see how people are acting these days. Some of the problems we have had are because we refused to see the God in others. They can’t be my brother or sister, their skin color is different. They don’t believe that we are all made in God’s image.
I know I can yell, I especially yell when I talk about Jesus. There are times I had to go out my way to temper my tone because I didn’t want to be viewed as an “angry black man.” A few years back I went to vote, showed up with my voter registration card and ID in hand, the lady at the desk said I was not in the system and tried to give me a provisional ballot, I showed her my card, she said I still wasn’t in the system, asked me to stop yelling and put her hands up. I wasn’t raising my voice, never did, but the perception was there the moment she saw me. I have to walk around wearing a mask.
People have set images in their mind and what doesn’t fit gets dismissed. That’s why we can have people online doing the “George Floyd challenge” taking pictures kneeling on their friends necks making fun of a man killed by a police officer but people are more mad about Colin Kaepernic kneeling during the national anthem. People dismiss the claims of racism.
There are those who will try to say the issue is not race but education.
Study after study shows that Black children received harsher punishments for offenses than their white classmates
I have colleagues and former coworkers who have to deal with their children being called names like black dirt, and the student doing the name calling goes unpunished, or just gets a talking to, while the same student that just got called the names will be officially written up for talking in class. I have worked with the NAACP for students who are suspended because “they smelled like weed” the teacher somehow smelled the child on the other side of a basketball court and the school district upheld the suspension even though the boy passed 3 drug tests.
There are those who will say the issue is not race but economics.
Imani Rose, a young lady I met while working with the Drama Ministry at my home church has grown up to have several business. I saw her instagram post where she was in tears. Imani has been vocal in about the protest on her social media page. Imani was crying because someone gave her money and told her to clean up her Instagram page, and be a builder not tear people down. This customer was trying to pay Imani to shut up.
Black Wall Street, 99 years ago, because of segregation an all black area of town in Tulsa Oklahoma started to thrive, they called it Black Wall Street, Black owned Doctors offices and Real Estate Businesses all in the Greenwood area of Tulsa. On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young African American shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting a white elevator operator named Sarah Page in the elevator of a building in downtown Tulsa. The next day the Tulsa Tribune printed a story saying that Rowland had tried to rape Page, with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. That evening mobs of both African Americans and whites descended on the courthouse where Rowland was being held. When a confrontation between an armed African American man, there to protect Rowland, and a white protestor resulted in the death of the latter, the white mob was incensed, and the Tulsa riot was thus ignited.
Over the next two days, mobs of white people looted and set fire to African American businesses and homes throughout the city. Many of the mob members were recently returned World War I veterans trained in the use of firearms and are said to have shot African Americans on sight. Some survivors even said they saw people in airplanes dropped incendiary bombs.
The narrative tries to get changed but Lebron James gets his own house spray painted with the N word, and when he starts trying to speak on racial inequality, they say he hasn’t experienced racism because he is rich. Then they tell him to “shut up and dribble.” But when Drew Brees is asked in the height of the country protesting, about those who kneeled or will kneel during the national anthem and he says something to fit the conservative narrative, the same people who told Lebron James to “shut up and dribble” say that Drew Brees "is allowed to have an opinion”
When people protest police brutality people make it about the flag, say that they have "relatives that served” I have relatives that served too, and when they came home from the military, they were not treated as good as yours were guaranteed. I have members of this church who served and got called names when they came back home from war. I have members of this church that were beaten by police during the Texas Southern University riots, police shot up the campus and arrested all the black men on campus because they thought one of them had shot a policeman, turned out that policeman was shot by another police officer.
I could go on, Micheal Taylor in Indianapolis, when I was in elementary school he was 15 years old, handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car, the police said he shot himself in the head, twice. Took close to 20 years for justice, Robbie Tolan whose mother my wife and I worked with in the media ministry at our home church, accused of stealing his own car, is handcuffed face down in his momma driveway while his mother is getting slammed up against the garage door is shot and has his professional baseball career ruined by the Bellaire Police department.
57 officers in Buffalo resigned from their unit after two of their colleagues were suspended for pushing down a 75 year old man, another officer tried to help him up and the officers pushed him aside.
Don’t tell people how to protest. Stop bringing up Martin Luther King Jr. in some sort of condescending tone. I’m watching people try to tell MLK’s children about him like they knew him better than his kid did. People love Martin Luther King Jr. now, but according to Gallup in 1966 more than 60 percent of people had an unfavorable opinion of him, and even more had an unfavorable opinion of the peaceful march on Washington.
The problem is that we are all made in the image of God but some people refuse to see it.
If all lives mattered we wouldn’t be here. But we see the image of God others, and we prop them up.
Give me liberty or give me death. Manifest destiny, from sea to shining sea, even though there were already people on this land. We speak ill of looters, but then go to Museums full of artifacts. People are chastising the destruction of property but when a boat at a dock had some tea on it, that tea ended up in the water. England loyalists tarred and feathered during the revolutionary war. We have slave owners on our money, streets named after them. The same people that penned the words “all men are created equal", and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” owned other human beings. There are confederate soldiers statues that people fight to keep erected. The daughters of the confederacy rebranded the civil war as the war of northern aggression.
Gaslighting to call you racist for pointing out racism, I’ve walked in my own neighborhood had people trying to take pictures of me, and when I posted the issue online. I got called racist, along with stupid, a crybaby, race baiter, then my mailbox got filled with firecrackers. I have called the police and still had a gun pointed my direction, I have had conversations with people about a video shoot, and a police walk up in the conversation because she heard me say the word shoot. The effect of repeatedly being treated as less than weighs on you. You’ve never experienced it so it’s crazy to you.
Black lives matter, blue lives matter, all lives matter if you have problem with the first one but not the other two, you problem is with the black part of it. That’s why people can tear gas and shoot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters to clear the way to a church for a Bible photo op. Because you don’t see the God in others. The same breath breathed into Adam by God was breathed into me, I am made in Gods image.
The phrase made in our image is a call back to the Kings of the time of the writing. When the kings ruled the land they would make sure to have statues of themselves put all over the land they ruled so you can see whose land this was and who was in charge. These images were literal representations of the ruler. When you wanted to know who the king was you looked at the image, when you wanted to know what the king looked like you looked at the image. If you want to know who our King is, look at the image, if you want to know who our king loves, look at the image. God made me, God, loves me, God cares for me even if you don’t.
That breath of life is in me and I am made in the image of God. But we need others to see that we are made in the image of God too, it is not enough, to just not be racist, you must help confront the oppression as well. It is not enough to “not see color” which has problems in itself, God made me black, if you don’t see color you overlook me, I need you to see me and recognize the uniqueness and appreciate it. Speak out against racism, speak out against oppression. Truly act like you see God in others and not just in those who look like you or act the way you want them to act.
Genesis can’t be just words on a page, we truly have to believe that we are all made in God’s image, that we all carry the breath of God in us. He loved us so much he made us in his image and he loved us so much that even when we failed, he sent his son to save us.
