Black Lives Matter. Do they not?
I don’t like stirring the pot--believe it or not--but I find myself doing it often. Why? More than my desire to maintain the peace, I have zeal for the church and I want to be honest, I want to speak the truth. Zeal for Christ’s church is going to eat me alive; it’s the prophet’s prayer. I’m not saying I’m a prophet but that’s the prophet’s prayer. “Zeal for your house will consume me” is the messianic affirmation as well. It was characteristic of the Christ.
In that spirit of zeal, I fired off an email to my own worship team last week. I wanted to share that email on the blog, and I feel the freedom to do so here. So this is copy/pasted from something we talked about, that we have been grappling with as an evangelical, Southern Baptist church over the past several weeks.
Hello team,
Fair warning: I'm on one, in a good way, and this email is going to be preachy. I gotta preach to somebody. So before I get into it with you, I just want to let you know that the coming weekend's plan is live on Planning Center. Byron, I hope you can join us! The success of this weekend depends on a country-bluesy electric guitar. You'll have free rein in a few places in the first and second songs! Also, I'm just starving to hear good electric tones.
Austin's message is concerning the 'Way of Intercession.' Intercession is one of the only types of prayer in the Old Testament, it means, to pray on behalf of someone and for something. Put short: Nearly every prayer in the Prophets is intercessory. "God, help."
For that reason, we're going to sing two traditional Christian prayers in the form of three songs. The Lord's Prayer is paraphrased and modernized for the contemporary English language in the first song, "Your Love is Strong." The second song is also a Lord's Prayer transfer: "Let Your Kingdom Come." As for the third song, believers have prayed, "Now And At The Hour Of Our Death" for centuries, and it's a beautiful reminder that the living God is with us even in death. Truly, by dying, he defeated death.
All songs in the key of G.
Now for the preachy part:
Firstly, I want you to know that I know I'm preaching to the choir here. You men have demonstrated incredible, incredible love for one another and for others. Tyrell, I've seen you roll up your sleeves in Appalachian Eastern Kentucky and patch roofs and mud dry-wall and lay down flooring and fix cars. And I've known you to have a mission-first heart, a character that gets involved to fix what's broken without grumbling. Jake and Byron, when I was lost in my recovery from issues with alcohol, you two together were among some of the men who came alongside me, pulled me toward the light, shared your own stories and cried with me. And Byron, you and Gretchen have led the charge in painting and giving the church a massive face-lift. Tony, you have a tender heart that breaks for people--you truly have the heart of Christ, and I see him when I look at you. So hear my heart: This is in no way a criticism. You fellas are the leaders of the church, and for good reason.
Second, I don't know the specific direction that Austin is going to take with his message, I have a feeling that topics of social justice are going to arise. Our church has welcomed people-who-don’t-look-like-us wonderfully and that blesses my heart. But we're a traditionally Southern Baptist church, and, quite frankly, the Southern Baptists have a piss-poor track record on matters of racial injustice. I'm going to speak a couple of harsh truths, here. Southern Baptists are a shame to the historical Baptist faith. Our convention was founded solely because our missionaries wanted to keep their slaves on the mission-field. The first generation of Southern Baptists is a disgrace. And our generation isn't much better; did you know that it took us until 1995 to draft a resolution and issue a formal apology concerning slavery, the very reason for which we first convened?
In private circles of white evangelicals, I hear frequent criticisms of the phrase--not only the social activist organization, but the phrase itself--"Black Lives Matter." And here's a phrase I hear far too often among evangelicals: "All Lives Matter." Yes, all lives do matter. Obviously, all lives matter. But when a population is being disproportionately affected--no, oppressed--there is no shame whatsoever in joining with a specific call to action. Make no mistake about it: If Jesus of Nazareth were here with us today, he would affirm that black lives matter. Now more than ever, Christians ought to stand with our brothers and sisters who are in pain, and affirm: Black Lives Matter. If this makes you uncomfortable, brothers, pray. Pray for yourself. If you're unable to say, "Black Lives Matter," then the Holy Spirit has more work to do in your heart.
The Bible has a theme, and you see it on every single page. If I were to cite specific verses, I'd be citing the entire Bible. This is the narrative theme of the entire Bible:
God is always on the side of the poor, needy, orphaned, widowed, anxious, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed.
Always. If this seems disagreeable to you, then there is a simple solution: Read your Bibles. On every single page, everywhere you open the book, God is on the side of the poor, needy, orphaned, widowed, anxious, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed. Always. In Genesis, God is with the foreigner, the immigrant, the orphan, the widow. In Exodus, he's with the oppressed and the enslaved. In the books of the law, God makes provisions for the foreigner and the needy and the sick. In Joshua, God is with the pagan prostitute Rahab, who would be in an ancestor to Jesus Christ. In Judges and Ruth, he is near to the distressed, the anxious. In Samuel and Kings, he's with the falsely accused and imprisoned, with David who is on the run from his own government. And he's with the little child. In Ezra and Nehemiah, he's with a people who have lost their homes and temple. In Job, God is on the side of a man afflicted in every way. In the Psalms, we read of a God of social justice on every page. In the wisdom texts, he's with the poor and the broken-hearted. Isaiah is all about justice (more on that in one sec), and in Jeremiah and Lamentations, God is with the depressed. In the minor prophets, God is with a displaced people who have no home, and he's with those who seek justice and love mercy and walk humbly.
Then we get to the New Testament and we see the profound and very clear call of Jesus Christ to love our neighbors. As we saw this morning, Austin preached that God is on the side of even the sinner, caught in her sin. In Acts, the very mission of the disciples was to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and tend to the widows among them. Truly, the founding of church governance (called ecclesiology) was in a moment in Acts 6 when the disciples were trying to figure out the logistics of feeding the hungry. In Paul's letters, he called us to make every effort to do good works for the poor. In John's letters, he told us that if we have no love for our brother then we are not true Christians. I'll skip over Peter's letters and circle back there in one sec, but, in the lesser epistles we are commanded to do what is just and merciful. James says that 'true religion' is care for widows and orphans and those in distress! Is your religion true? We will all know it by your treatment of the poor. In Revelation, all races, colors, and creeds come together to finally bow before a triumphant Lord, who fills his new creation with every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Peter quotes Isaiah and that's where I want to direct your attention. 1 Peter 2 and Isaiah 28:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Peter quotes Isaiah 28:16, a messianic prophecy which all young Hebrew boys would have memorized. It's about the Christ, about Jesus. Go to Isaiah 28 and read the very next verse:
"And I will make justice the measuring line
and righteousness the mason’s level.
Hail will sweep away the false refuge,
and water will flood your hiding place."
Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. That means that, as the kingdom of God is being built, all stones are set in reference to Jesus Christ. He is the first and the greatest, and he sets the moral 'tone' for all stones to come. We are each stones in the great walls of God's kingdom. Now, how will us stones be set? You've heard the phrase, 'building the kingdom.' Ever asked how the kingdom is being built from us? It's being built upward in acts of justice and outward in acts of righteousness. We're blessed to be a blessing. The kingdom is only as tall as our efforts to seek justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, for example, and it's only as wide as our efforts to feed and clothe the homeless. If we aren't crying out for justice, we aren't building a kingdom upward, and if we aren't doing acts of mercy, we aren't growing the kingdom at all.
Isaiah gives a clear warning to all 'kingdoms' of men which are not built in this way. They will be swept away. They are false shelters for us. As hiding places go, they will not protect us like the kingdom's walls can, because they have cracks and gaps and leaks which let in floodwaters. And be sure: God is testing our shelters with his roaring waters of wrath. If we have no justice and no mercy, our own God will sweep us away and we will be utterly ruined.
The Southern Baptist Convention is a great, big kingdom of men with a dangerous track record of no justice and no mercy, and as we're seeing in headlines month-in and month-out, the S.B.C. is starting to spring leaks. God alone is Lord, and he gives and he takes away, and in all things his name is to be praised. Should he sweep our denomination off the face of the earth, it won't be because of a 'culture war,' or because of a lack of prayer in schools, or because of a generation of wickedness outside of our walls. No, it will come from within.
If this message makes you uncomfortable, good. That means you have work to do. I know that I have work to do, myself. And I suggest we start with prayer. Austin is going to call us to make intercession on behalf of the poor, needy, orphaned, widowed, anxious, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed. I encourage you this week to pray for your enemies, especially those activists and protestors who are crying out for badly needed justice reform. Praying for someone sincerely is the quickest way to begin to love them, and true prayers will change the heart of the person praying.
I'll leave you with a final thought: If Christ is all, and is in all, and is the all-in-all; if we are his body and we have his mind about us; if in our suffering we are making up for what is lacking in Christ's own suffering; if, as we see some 400 times in the New Testament, we are found in Christ; and if, whatsoever you do for the least among these (clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, give water to the thirsty) you've done for Christ himself, then we have no choice but to affirm the lives and importance of our black brothers and sisters. Why? Because Stew and I are One in Christ. If his life doesn't matter, then my life doesn't matter, and Christ's life didn't matter. When we fail to affirm specifically, in the face of violent oppression, that the life of our black brothers and sisters matter, what we are saying was that the Cross was a waste. With our cruelty toward the oppressed, we are saying that our very gospel is a joke and that our Christ died in vain.
Again, I'm preaching to the choir. But you fellas are the only people who will read what I write. These are serious words designed to provoke serious thought about your own treatment of the least among us: The poor, needy, orphaned, widowed, anxious, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed. If you are not on their side, building a kingdom out of justice (yes, even social justice) and mercy, then you are not on the winning team. Hope you like it hot.
Black Lives Matter.
In Christ,
Joshua T.