Читать книгу Is There Not a Cause - Reginald Buckley - Страница 4

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and fails to be concerned about the economic conditions that corrupt them, the social conditions that damn them, the city governments that cripple them, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.

Martin Luther King Jr.,

“The Christian Doctrine of Man,”

Sermon delivered at the Detroit Council

of Churches Noon Lenten Services

Every Sunday, preachers across America are met with the awesome task of making a holy text from the Ancient Near East practical and relevant for the modern-day Western worshipper. Week in and week out, those who attend Christian worship services come to hear what the ancient text has to say to them and to do with them and their post-modern lives. It is a monumental task. Yet when done well an amazing thing happens during the preaching moment. The hearer is lifted from a place of passive listening to active reflection and thoughtful consideration regarding his/her future actions. In that special moment, the preacher places upon the altar of the worshipper’s heart a charge to change, to act, or to move toward that high and holy calling of Christ. If neither of these is accomplished, it might be fair to say that the preacher and his preaching have both failed.

Such failure is tragic to the mission of the church, as people search for meaning pertaining to both life and faith. Congregants search for direction on how one’s life should be managed and what exactly faith prompts us to do. Here, in my opinion, begins the cause of the church.

In some ways I consider the Christian church to be an embassy of sorts, where the governance, culture, and values of the Kingdom of God are manifested and advanced on earth. When Jesus includes in His model prayer the petition, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” there is an inherent acknowledgment that the world, by itself, is void of that which best represents God’s ways and will. Therefore, as His representative body, the church is to stand for the values, the culture, and the causes of the Kingdom and should offer the world practical examples of the Kingdom’s values, culture, and causes through our missions, ministries, positions, and programs. Beyond services of weekly worship, the church is to be the city set on a hill that illustrates and promotes the highest form of human compassion and interaction through an authentic presentation of the gospel message, not only in its words, but in its deeds. A true adherence to the gospel of Christ demands all of this and deserves no less. Without such, the church does a disservice to the fullness of the gospel and its awesome power as good news.

A debate has long existed concerning the branch of preaching and theology termed as the “Social Gospel” and whether such an interpretation of scripture and a system of theology is true to the intent of the bible’s message. To this critique, esteemed theologian, Dr. James Cone writes in Black Theology and Liberation, “It is not enough for theology to proclaim freedom, it must also participate in the struggle for freedom....Because...theology today focuses on liberation, it must also be a servant theology - one arising out of a commitment to serve the poor and the oppressed. No theology is seen to be neutral; each must take sides in the struggle for freedom.” In essence, theology and the faith that results from one’s theology, then, are not simply the recognition and proclamation of biblical truths, but rather they are the intentional engagement of those truths with life, culture, and society and all that is wrong with it. When the gospel is lived out to its fullest extent, it is a gospel that mixes and meddles with our systems and sensibilities; it is a gospel that agitates our norms and elevates the oppressed; it looses those who are bound by systems of injustice, and it lifts those who are repressed by social ills and evils. It is a gospel that not only confronts man’s fallen state in sin, but that also places the proverbial mirror before all that is fallen and fragmented in our world. Let me be clear. While I do not believe that the church has been instituted primarily for social issues and causes, I do believe that a true presentation of the gospel cannot occur without addressing that which causes strife, poverty, and separation between and among mankind. That Jesus came to redeem the soul of man is certain. But one cannot ignore the social concerns, compassion and the ministry of Jesus for the widow, the fatherless, the poor, the sick, the outcast, and the prisoner.

As Jesus did, Christians are commanded to do - to love; not simply in word and speech, but in truth and in action (1 John 3:17-18). We are called to enter into the drama of people’s lives by providing assistance, compassion, and care (James 2:15-17). We are empowered to do, to speak, to think, to change, and to make right that which is unjust and unfair in the world (Micah 6:8, Ephesians 3:20). A refusal to do these diminishes the implications of the gospel and relegates the relevance of one’s faith to the spiritual world, limiting any real-world application to the natural conditions of one’s life.

In his book, Jesus and Social Redemption, John W. Shackford contends, “The religion of Jesus cannot live in a vacuum or in a cloister. There is something in its very nature that is re-creative and that turns the world upside down and eventually right side up. Those who have the vision and passion of Jesus cannot retire into their sanctuaries to enjoy religion. They cannot leave the issues of life where hope and destiny are being wrought out and history is being shaped to be forever determined by the forces of evil.” This suggests, then, that faith must have as an outcome not only the correction and re-creation of one’s self, but also of one’s society. The church must facilitate a faith that concerns itself with the salvation of lost souls and left-behind schools; the renewal of broken hearts and the restoration of broken homes; the regeneration of old natures and the renovation of old neighborhoods. As the apostle James declares, “faith without works is dead.” Faith, then, must make a difference!

This brings us back to the preacher’s responsibility in helping the believer grasp the application of the ancient text and its relevance to the world as it exists. A faith that is informed by the gospel of Jesus Christ is a faith that makes a difference in people’s lives, a difference in how the world operates, a difference in how people are treated in the workforce, a difference in how people are paid in order to stay above the poverty line, a difference in how people are hired, a difference in how children are educated, a difference in how laws are interpreted and enforced, a difference in how people are housed and whether they have access to quality healthcare, a difference in people’s ability to afford medication and childcare and not have to choose between the two, and even a difference in bank lending practices. Faith ought to have an impact upon how the world operates and how humanity relates to itself. I contend that a faith that has not produced anything, changed anything, affected anything, has not corrected, challenged, moved, improved, or made a positive difference in anything, is, then, an incomplete, insufficient, and perhaps an incapacitated faith. Dead.

The pulpit of the black church has long been a prophetic institution held in high esteem as a sacred place where skilled, scholarly men of the scriptures have endeavored to juxtapose faith against cultural and social ills. From the sacred desks of the black church, the causes that people of faith were called to engage have historically been clearly articulated by great preachers and pastors. The sermons of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Samuel Dewitt Proctor, Gardner Taylor, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jeremiah Wright stand as model examples of how to examine current social issues through the lens of the ancient scriptures, bringing both relevance and application to the preaching moment so that people will see themselves, their issues, the church’s cause and God’s truth.

This collection of sermons speaks to current social issues that African-Americans face. While some of them provide answers through a scriptural prescription of sorts, others simply raise the right questions and invite the reader to think more deeply about what faith ought to and must mean in a fallen world. Also note that these are written as Sunday morning sermons, rich with cadence, alliteration, assonance, and other literary tools and idiomatic expressions characteristic of the black church experience. They have been only lightly edited in an effort to retain the voice and remain as true to the actual sermon’s delivery as possible. As you scan the QR codes to listen to the sermon’s delivery, you will likely notice variations from the manuscript. I chose to keep the manuscript as originally written that you might compare the two. Though primarily a manuscript preacher, I am thankful that the Holy Spirit provides periodic flourishes of in the moment inspirations and edits! My prayer is that these sermons will inspire believers to embrace a full faith and help preachers to preach a full gospel that grapples with complex issues knowing that there is still a cause to which we must respond faithfully.