No Partiality, an Easter sermon

I took the opportunity at Easter to preach about Liberation Theology, the Resurrection and Jeremiah Wright.

Sermon: Easter Sunday Year A 2008
The Community Church of Wilmette
March 23, 2008

Ps. 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43
Mt. 28:1-10

Indeed, No Partiality

The theological is in the news once again. If we are going to have to see it in the news, I want you all to know a little something about what theology is behind all of the hubub. Today is Easter Sunday. Today we make the most profound theological statement available to us as Christians.

Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!
The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Once again the theological is in the news.
Jeremiah Wright, the now retired pastor of Trinity UCC in Chicago, preached a sermon following the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001 that has come back to haunt him and the presidential candidate he loves so well, Senator Obama.

Have you all heard this news?
Do you know the words from the sermon?
Take a listen.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no. God damn America – that's in the Bible – for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Wow! Holy cow. And some of you think I preach politics. I have absolutely nothing on Jeremiah Wright. He goes toe-to-toe with the government every Sunday. Every time he stands in the pulpit, he swings for the fence. He's not playing around. He's not polite. He's not interested in making anyone comfortable.

So, once again, the theological is in the news.
And this is what I think you do need to know.

Jeremiah Wright is a student of a theological movement.
That movement is called Liberation Theology,
and more specifically Black Liberation Theology.

Liberation Theology has been one of the most influential schools of theological thought in the last 100 years. Essentially, Liberation Theology states that Jesus has a preference for the poor, the oppressed, the outcast and the left behind. This is not so much a new theological idea as it is a refocusing of the Church's message in developing countries. With this language, the poor and the oppressed, those burdened within any system such as the bone crushing poverty of Central America, Africa, or the inner cities of the United States, class-ism, sexism, or racism, have found theological language. They have found language so that they as members of the Church can speak truth to power, to join with Peter's words that “truly, God shows no partiality.”

At the same time in the United States there was the development of Black Theology and the Civil Rights Movement. In the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, new theologies were expressed. They were needed! “Separate but equal” is simply not a sustainable theology for the Church. People like Jeremiah Wright were trained as ministers, as pastors, in the thick of this theological exploration, in the marriage of the two streams of thought.

Liberation Theology and Black Theology became aware of one another in a significant way in 1973 with the publishing of Gustavo Gutierrez’s work Liberation Theology and the publishing in Spanish of a defining work of Black Theology, James Cone's book, A Black Theology of Liberation. James Cone says:

“Christians can never be content as long as their sisters and brothers are enslaved. They must suffer with them, knowing that freedom for Jesus Christ is always freedom for the oppressed.”

That is the essential message of his work. And he's aggressive about these ideas, prophetic in tone. The Jesus he proclaims is a subversive. In the spirit of Christ-like solidarity, Cone will go so far as to say that Jesus is a black man. It's not an historical claim. It's a theological claim. This is how Cone challenges us. Wright is no different.

Does this scandalize us? Maybe it does. Maybe it pushes all kinds of buttons for us. But being faced with the reality of oppression is extremely difficult. And facing the reality that we are culpable is almost impossible. Being faced with the very human indignation and outrage is too much to bear for many of us…especially from the pulpit.

But James Cone and Jeremiah Wright are not alone. Not in the least.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famed theologian and member of the resistance movement against Hitler in World War II Germany said:

“We are members of a body, not only when we choose to be, but in our whole existence. Every member serves the whole body, either to its health or to its destruction. This is no mere theory; it is spiritual reality. And the Christian community has often experienced its effects with disturbing clarity, sometimes destructively, and sometimes fortunately.”

Jurgen Moltmann, a German liberation theologian says:

“If we believe the crucified Christ to be the representative of God on earth, we see the glory of God no longer in the crowns of the mighty but in the face of the man who was executed on the gallows. What the authorities intended to be the greatest humiliation – namely the cross – is thus transformed into the highest dignity. It follows that the freedom of God comes to earth not through crowns – that is to say through the struggle for power – but through love and solidarity with the powerless.”

Can we begin to see what is happening here? People, Germans, African-Americans, male, female, gay and straight, are attempting to locate the center of the Christian community. They are trying to unearth what connects us, and how we can respond within that connection…how we respond to violence, to division, to oppression…How we learn to apologize, plain and simple…and how we call one another out. Can we identify ourselves as oppressors? Can we identify ourselves as the oppressed? And how often is it that we find ourselves to be both?

We so often find ourselves in the middle…struggling with practical considerations…succeeding in systems that leave some people impoverished or ourselves stuck in the rut of keeping up with the Joneses. We give our children over to the mercy of some program. We can get so wrapped up in success and surviving that we forget the purpose of life in the first place: liberation.

This is how we can name where we all live, succeed and struggle.

And this is where we discover that the only thing that will help us find liberation and solidarity with the creation God loves so well is the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The Resurrection must liberate us. We have to allow it to liberate us. We have to make that choice. We have to make room for Resurrection in our own lives.

Resurrection does not exist outside of time. It's not some far off reality, some pie in the sky vision. Resurrection is much more than Jesus simply getting up on the third day, some medical marvel or a historical puzzle to be solved. Resurrection is liberation. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us something about God. The entire New Testament…the whole of the Bible, really, tells the story of liberation.

God wants our liberation. God wants us to be free from all that binds us; that would keep us from Christ, from God, from one another. This is the liberation that God wants for all humanity. Resurrection is not for someone else. It's for you and me. It's for everyone.

Resurrection is liberation for the oppressed.
Resurrection is the end to injustice.
Resurrection is liberation from cruel poverty.
Resurrection is liberation from cruel affluence.
Resurrection speaks truth to power.
Resurrection is in solidarity with the powerless.
Resurrection asks for mercy where we might want vengeance.
Resurrection proclaims violence to be a lie.
Resurrection is the addict making amends,
listing wrongs, and begging forgiveness.
Resurrection is impractical, impolite, and confusing.
Resurrection is admitting our mistakes,
and the role they played in the injustices we have experienced.
Resurrection is apologizing to our children, our spouses, and our friends.
Resurrection is the end to isolation…to segregation,
to all that would bind us, enslave us, imprison us,
and keep us from God's fire-y, world creating Love.
Resurrection is the liberation of the entire world.
And there is no end to Christ's Resurrection.

Resurrection shows no partiality.
Christ's Resurrection is an act of forgiveness so profound that its effects echo through the centuries even to this day.

It encompasses every act of hope, love, charity and peace.

Today we gather. We gather and profess the Truth. We gather and proclaim a mystery.

Alleluia! The Lord is Risen.
The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!