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Faith is born out of suffering, and suffering is faith's most powerful contradiction. This is the Christian dilemma. The only meaningful Christian response is to resist unjust suffering and to accept the painful consequence of that resistance.
As familiar as the words of that prayer were the words of “Amazing Grace.” When Sister Ora Wallace raised her melodious voice and filled Macedonia with its rich and resonant tones, the entire congregation joined with her, because “Amazing Grace” spoke to their condition. Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace hath bro't me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.
Christian theology is language about the liberating character of God's presence in Jesus Christ as he calls his people into being for freedom in the world.
The theologian is before all else an exegete, simultaneously of Scripture and of existence. To be an exegete of Scripture means that the theologian recognizes the Bible, the witness to God's Word, as a primary source of theological discourse. To be an exegete of existence means that Scripture is not an abstract word, not merely a rational idea. It is God's Word to those who are oppressed and humiliated in this world. The task of the theologian is to probe the depths of Scripture exegetically for the purpose of relating that message to human existence.
What has the gospel to do with the oppressed of the land and their struggle for liberation? Any theologian who fails to place that question at the center of his or her work has ignored the essence of the gospel.
That truth did not come from white preachers; it came from a liberating encounter with the One who is the Author of black faith and existence. As theologians, we must ask: What is the source and meaning of freedom expressed in this spiritual? Oh Freedom! Oh Freedom! Oh Freedom, I love thee! And before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free.
My point is that one's social and historical context decides not only the questions we address to God but also the mode or form of the answers given to the questions.
On the one hand, there is the theological emphasis that God will liberate the weak from the injustice of the strong: When Israel was in Egypt's land, Let my people go; Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go; Go down Moses, ’way down in Egypt's land. Tell ole Pharaoh Let my people go.
Jesus Christ is the subject of Black Theology because he is the content of the hopes and dreams of black people.
He is the Word in their lives, and thus to speak of their experience as it is manifested in the joys and sorrows of black life is to speak of the One they say is the Comforter in time of trouble, “the lily of the valley,” and “the bright and morning star.” He's King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ, the first and the last No man works like him.
Any interpretation of the gospel in any historical period that fails to see Jesus as the Liberator of the oppressed is heretical. Any view of the gospel that fails to understand the Church as that community whose work and consciousness are defined by the community of the oppressed is not Christian and is thus heretical.
Indeed it is the encounter of this truth of Scripture that enables us black theologians to know that we must Speak the Truth to the people To identify the enemy is to free the mind Free the mind of the people Speak to the mind of the people Speak Truth.39
Theology is not universal language; it is interested language and thus is always a reflection of the goals and aspirations of a particular people in a definite social setting.
Theology is subjective speech about God, a speech that tells us far more about the hopes and dreams of certain God-talkers than about the Maker and Creator of heaven and earth.
In the Exodus event, God is revealed by means of acts on behalf of a weak and defenseless people. This is the God of power and of strength, able to destroy the enslaving power of the mighty Pharaoh. The Lord is my refuge and my defence, he has shown himself my deliverer. (Exodus 15:2 NEB)
The covenant not only places upon Israel the responsibility of accepting the absolute sovereignty of Yahweh as defined in the first commandment; it also requires Israel to treat the weak in its midst as Yahweh has treated it. This is the significance of the apodictic laws in the Covenant Code: You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21; cf. 23:9 RSV)
You shall not ill-treat any widow or fatherless child. If you do, be sure that I will listen if they appeal to me; my anger will be roused and I will kill you with the sword. (Exodus 22:23–24 NEB)
I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold in bondage and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment, and I will take you for my people, and I will be your God….” (Exodus 6:5–7a RSV)
Here story is a personal hope that one day this life of suffering will be over. This hope is expressed in a song by Mahalia Jackson: One of these mornings, One of these mornings I'm gonna lay down my cross And get my crown. Just as soon as my feet strike Zion, Lay down my heavy burden, Put on my robe in glory, Lord, Sing, Lord, and tell my story. Up over hills and mountains, Lord, To the Christian fountain, All of God's sons and daughters, Lord, Drinking that old healing water.18
Whether we speak of the story of the whole people or that of the individual, one thing is certain: we are speaking of the struggle to survive and the belief that there is meaning in life that extends beyond the structures created by oppressors.
When my way grows drear, Precious Lord, linger near. When my life is almost gone, Hear my cry, hear my call, Hold my hand lest I fall. Take my hand, Precious Lord, Lead me home.
This event of transcendence enables the people to break the barriers of time and space as they walk and talk with Jesus in Palestine along with Peter, James, and John. They can hear his cry of pain and experience the suffering as he is nailed on the cross and pierced in the side. They nail my Jesus down They put on him the crown of thorns, O see my Jesus hangin’ high! He look so pale an’ bleed so free: O don't you think it was a shame, He hung three hours in dreadful pain?
They also can experience the divine victory of Jesus’ resurrection. Weep no more, Marta, Weep no more, Mary, Jesus rise from the dead, Happy Morning.
JESUS IS WHO HE WAS The dialectic of Scripture and tradition in relation to our contemporary social context forces us to affirm that there is no knowledge of Jesus Christ today that contradicts who he was yesterday, i.e., his historical appearance in first-century Palestine. Jesus’ past is the clue to his present activity in the sense that his past is the medium through which he is made accessible to us today. The historical Jesus is indispensable for a knowledge of the Risen Christ.
The humanity of Jesus was the emphasis of black slaves when they sang about his suffering and pain during the crucifixion. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh! sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble; were you there when they crucified my Lord?
JESUS IS WHO HE IS To declare that God raised Jesus from the dead is to say that our knowledge of Jesus is not limited to his life in Palestine. Jesus is not merely a historical person who once identified with the poor people of his land and subsequently was executed by the Roman authorities for disturbing the social and political status quo. The Crucified One is also the Risen Lord. Faith in the resurrection means that the historical Jesus, in his liberating words and deeds for the poor, was God's way of breaking into human history, redeeming humanity from injustice and violence, and
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Beautifully said.
On the one hand, through faith black people transcended spatial and temporal existence and affirmed Jesus’ past as disclosed in the historicity of his life and death on the cross. Those cruel people! Those cruel people! Those cruel people! Those cruel people! They crucified my Lord, They crucified my Lord, They crucified my Lord, They crucified my Lord.
JESUS IS WHO HE WILL BE The meaning of Jesus Christ for us today is not limited to his past and present existence. Jesus Christ is who he will be. He is not only the crucified and risen One but also the Lord of the future who is coming again to fully consummate the liberation already happening in our present.
Unfortunately, American white “hope” theologians have been influenced too much by German and American philosophical discourse on hope and too little by the actual bearers of hope in our social existence. And if they continue their talk about hope primarily in relation to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, Moltmann, and Pannenberg, while ignoring the hope disclosed in the songs and tales of black slaves, then we can only conclude that white theology's hope is a reason for despair on the part of the oppressed and thus alien to the gospel of Jesus. How can Christian theology
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This spiritual connects hope in Jesus with human suffering, wherein Jesus becomes the Expected One who is coming to liberate the oppressed from slavery.
Black people can struggle because they truly believe that one day they will be taken out of their misery. And they express it in song: After ’while, after ’while, Some sweet day after ’while, I'm goin’ up to see my Jesus, O some sweet day after ’while. Pray on! Pray on! Some sweet day after ’while, Prayin’ time will soon be over, O some sweet day after ’while.
JESUS IS BLACK It is only within the context of Jesus’ past, present, and future as these aspects of his person are related to Scripture, tradition, and contemporary social existence that we are required to affirm the blackness of Jesus Christ. I realize that many white critics of Black Theology question “blackness” as a christological title, because it appears to be determined exclusively by the psychological and political needs of black people to relate theology to the emergence of black power in the later 1960s. That is only partly true. The phrase “Black Christ” refers to more than the
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The Meaning of Liberation If Jesus Christ, in his past, present and future, reveals that the God of Scripture and tradition is the God whose will is disclosed in the liberation of oppressed people from bondage, what then is the meaning of liberation? In answering the question we begin by examining the theological presupposition upon which that meaning is based.
God not only fights for them but takes their humiliated condition upon the divine Person and thereby breaks open a new future for the poor, different from their past and present miseries. Here is the central meaning of the cross, dramatically revealed in the Markan account of Jesus’ cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (15:34). These words show the depth of Jesus’ agony and the pain of being abandoned by his Father.
The relational character of human liberation as grounded in the human struggle to be free is emphasized in the black spirituals. Black people sang that Jesus Came down here and talked to me, Went away and left me free. They also sang: You say the Lord has set you free,… Why don't you let yo’ neighbor be!
Liberation then cannot be separated from the historical struggle of freedom in this world. To be liberated is not simply “a status one has but an action one undertakes as a self-conscious subject.”17 Liberation means: Mammy, don't you cook no more, You are free, you are free! Rooster, don't you crow no more, You are free, you are free! Old hen, don't you lay no more eggs, You are free, you are free.
Highland Garnet, he nonetheless represented the spirit of the black religious tradition when he identified obedience to God with the struggle against slavery. In an address to slaves, he said: Your condition does not absolve you from your moral obligation. The diabolical injustice by which your liberties are cloven down, neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore, it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promises success.19
The identification of divine justice with civil justice became the central theme of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. This identification was consistent with black religious tradition and with the Bible. To justify his fight against injustice, Martin Luther King, Jr., referred not only to the Exodus and Jesus Christ but especially to the prophets of the Old Testament. He quoted Amos often: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24 RSV).
This theme is expressed with poetic imagination by the contemporary black poet Mari Evans: I take my freedom lest I die for pride runs through my veins…. For I am he who dares to say I shall be Free, or dead today….20
Liberation is self-determination in history and laying claim to that which rightfully belongs to humanity. As Mari Evans puts it: I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible Look on me and be renewed.22
And lest this struggle seem only grim and austere, the same poet sings of its present joy. Who can be born black and not sing the wonder of it the joy the challenge Who can be born black and not exult!23
LIBERATION AS THE PROJECT OF FREEDOM IN HOPE While the meaning of liberation includes the historical determination of freedom in this world, it is not limited to what is possible in history. There is a transcendent element in the definition of liberation which affirms that the “realm of freedom is al...
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This sermon makes clear that liberation is also beyond history and not limited to the realities and limitations of this world. God is the sovereign ruler and nothing can thwart God's will to liberate the oppressed.
Death was not an abstract idea, to be debated in a philosophy seminar. Death was a personal experience of loss who appeared in the black situation of pain as “a little ole man,” “tippin’ in the room.” Sometimes death was pictured as “a chariot swingin’ low” and “a train a-blowin’ at de station.” That is why blacks sing Before this time another year, I may be gone; Out in some lonely graveyard, O Lord, how long.
But because black slaves believed that death had been conquered in Jesus’ resurrection, they transcended death and interpreted freedom from death as a heavenly, eschatological reality. You needn't mind my dying, Jesus’ goin’ to make up my dying bed. In my room I know, Somebody is going to cry, All I ask you to do for me, Just close my dying eyes.
They could transcend death because they knew about Jesus’ past, had encountered his presence, and thus were assured of his future coming. Jesus’ future coming was the foundation of their faith, enabling them to express this truth in song: “Where shall I be when the first trumpet soun’; soun’ so loud till it woke up de dead?” “One day, one day ’bout twelve o’ clock, O this ol’ earth goin’ to reel an’ rock.” “O My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall!” “When the sun refuse to shine, when the moon goes down in blood!” “In dat great getting up morning,” “de world will be on fire,”
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Divine Liberation and Black Suffering The reality of suffering and evil challenges the affirmation that God is liberating the oppressed from human captivity. If God is unlimited both in power and in goodness, as the Christian faith claims, why does God not destroy the powers of evil through the establishment of divine righteousness? If God is the One who liberated Israel from Egyptian slavery, who appeared in Jesus as the healer of the sick and the helper of the poor, and who is present today as the Holy Spirit of liberation, then why are black people still living in wretched conditions
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The more they believed that God “heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds” (Ps. 147:3 RSV), the more the suffering and the pain of the poor emerged as a problem in their religious consciousness.
Since this is who the people know God to be, why then did God not always intervene to liberate these faithful servants? Why did the God of the oppressed permit the innocent to suffer?
O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult? (Psalm 94:3 RSV)
