Black History Month & the Church.

Why History Matters -

Exodus 6:2–8 ESV

2 God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 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 slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’ ”

When Moses wrote the Pentateuch by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was he thinking that these books would help the Children of Israel to understand that their deliverance by YHWH was not a random, chance event, one that the LORD could abandon on a whim, but was the necessary act of the God who chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to fulfill His divine mission of the reconciliation of all things to Himself (Ex 6:2-8)? They had to know that they were more than their recent 400 years of bondage, therefore God told Moses how and why He chose to deliver His people "out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:2).

In like manner, Carter G. Woodson, founder of “the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH),” pushed for the creation of what began as “Negro History Week” in 1926. Dr. Woodson, born in 1875 to former slaves, did not begin his formal education until he was nearly 20 years old. By 1912, he earned the distinction of being the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He believed that unless the American Descendants of Slavery understood that they were more than their struggle, they could never do more than struggle. Even more importantly, unless the Negro Church understood that it was more than the unhappy offspring of a begrudging proclamation of the Gospel by people who did not desire them to know the liberty by which Christ has made us free” (Gal 5:1), lest it lead them to believe that freedom in Christ should be manifest in freedom with their spiritual brethren who viewed them as physical inferiors because of their race and lineage.

Black History Month, rightly understood, is more than a celebration of our “Talented Tenth.” It is intended to show the contemporary generation that God created and equipped them also to be able to serve their neighbors through the gifts that He placed in them in their birth, as well as those which He gifted to them through the Holy Spirit in being born from above. In response to efforts to keep blacks in the dark concerning God’s purpose for them, Woodson sought to shine the light of who they were, so that the American Descendants of Slavery would know that they were more than the limited history to which they had been exposed.

Thus, Black History Month is not only for blacks; it is a celebration of Americans who embraced the American values of life, liberty, an the pursuit of happiness, the story of Americans who sang “Hallelujah Anyhow” though “Narrow the Road We Trod.” It invites all Americans to learn that God’s endowments of our unalienable rights are not dependent upon how you started, but on our willingness to “trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Ps 37:3.) As we celebrate in the month of the birthdays of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass, we acknowledge that God was faithful then, He is faithful now, and He will be faithful until He comes in glory.

On behalf of myself and the Campbell family, the Gary Lutheran Community of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, the Indiana District and the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, have a blessed and joyful day in the Lord.