Easter 2008
6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11 For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.[1]
61 Ministries at trinity UCC. Most churches on Sunday morning throughout America don't even see 60 people. What happens to the audacity of hope when plunged into the abyss of despair.
Just a few weeks ago the air was filled with accolades and great lauds for senator Barak Obama and now the chatter includes chants of concession. It wastwo years ago and the great hope of wall street and white collar crime was going to Albany to clean up polluted politicians with great fanfare and last week the worlds oldest profession brought down a governors ascension. The new brother comes in on Monday with loud shouts of David, David, David like he is some rock star and before the Tuesday dawn discussions of disloyalty an infidelity have to be addressed. Life for a political figure is tough. Yet life for a black figure is tougher. Being black and Christian is tough. Being Black, Christian and American is even tougher.
Walking the streets of Brooklyn, queens and LI places the person of color at
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.[2]
none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. That power is also always there with us to balance every outside circumstance and every interior thought that would bring us down. The promise is not that our troubles will pass away with time or that they only appear to be troubles or that a way out of them will eventually be found. The troubles are real and may never disappear, yet the power of God is there to bring us through them.[3]
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[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (2 Co 4:6-14). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
[2] Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail 1963
[3]Best, E. (1987). Second Corinthians. Interpretation, a Bible commentary for teaching and preaching (41). Atlanta: J. Knox Press.