Festival of Homiletics: Wednesday Impressions

This day was so full, I'm only just sitting down on Thursday afternoon to put together my thoughts. In general, I'm just a very grateful person to have been present in spaces where I could encounter God in unexpected ways--in surprisingly beautiful lunchtime sharings, in worship, in a zombie bar, on the walk home.

A few of my classmates gathered for supper in the hotel bar and decompressed on our day. We talked about our excitements from this week--the things we are hearing that make us feel hopeful, that are shaping our understanding of the preaching task, that open us up to new ways of engaging Scripture, and of approaching the sermon. And we also discussed the things that have been difficult, that we're wrestling with, and with the things that we aren't quite sure what to do with yet. And I'm noticing our conversations are affecting the conversations of others--with Eden alums who gather with us during breaks, with clergy we share meals with, with people who overhear. We are critically engaging the experience in a way that I think a lot of people here are longing to do, but either don't have the community or tools to do. Anyway...that was my Go Eden! moment of the post.

I want to give myself a bit of space to talk here about racial diversity at the Festival. As one of my classmates put it, "There is an awful lot of salt, and not much pepper." Actually, we observed that our class alone contributes to at least a 100% increase in the number of people of color in attendance. Beyond that, a significant portion of the time spent worshiping and hearing preachers is couched in a liturgical setting that is largely WASP-y. It's interesting to see how aware of this we are because of our experiences of other traditions and practices as we engage in our studies at Eden. We are noticing the null curricula because it's not a null curricula where we study. There are a couple of things I want to use this space to begin to consider:

• While most of the preachers are acknowledging issues of racism and systematic oppression, I find it interesting that much of this engagement isn't more than a tip of the cap to it. There are some amazing people of color who are preaching and lecturing, and so part of me wonders if the unspoken assumption is that the preachers who are people of color will "deal with" that in their time or if it's a discomfort with offering a perspective when it is not one's own culture. Can a white, female preacher preach about race issues? Should she? (I think the answer is yes, with great humility and care.) And actually, I'm beginning to feel like the tip of the cap is actually a way to acknowledge without really acknowledging: "I know this is a problem, but I don't know what to say about it." Actually, there are a number of issues we've been dancing around in this same way: homosexuality, gender identification, young people in the church, the reality of pluralism. Now, I know that this isn't a Festival on Social Justice, so not every message is going to deal expertly with these things. But not dealing with them at all doesn't work either.
• I'm also noticing an approach to preaching that really gives a lot of power to the congregation--that seems to be molded around an assumption of middle-class white privilege. And looking out at the congregation, I can understand that. You are preaching to a particular people. I think it was in observing Otis Moss III's lecture that I most acutely saw this--parts of his lecture were from texts or sermons of his I had encountered before. But what was interesting is that so much of the delivery was altered, packaged in a way that seemed more palatable for those gathered. This isn't a critique of Moss, but is an issue I'm having with the conference in general. So much of the messages we are hearing are calling us to prophetic preaching in one way or another, preaching that isn't saccharine-sweet, but that sticks its hands right into the rawness of the biblical text and our lives.  
• So, then...shouldn't our form follow our content? Shouldn't our delivery be raw and authentic in a way that allows for the fullness of the preacher and the preacher's message to be preached? Or should we deliver things in a package that's easily recognizable. The answer is probably both. But the two preachers who I felt simply preached the message that God had laid on their hearts exactly as they would preach it to anyone were Yvette Flunder and Peter Rollins. Both definitely have a subversive edge, but even in their fullness of their subversive messages, they were accessible because they were speaking the truth. I think that truth transcends. I think that truth is what Yvette called speaking in tongues. I think that truth is what all of us want to do and are very afraid to. Because it requires a lot of work and a lot of honest with ourselves. But I, for one, want to do that work.

Preaching Lessons: Otis Moss III

Otis Moss III brought it. His lecture, "Preaching Prophetic Blues in a Post-Modern World," was inspirational, challenging, and a prophetic call for preachers. For Moss, the blues represent a worldview--a way of understanding the visible world from the underside. He understands blues to be a statement of existential existence that is incomplete without eschatalogical hope, and vice versa. In short, "The gospel is not the gospel without the blues."

Moss argues that a preacher cannot preach the Good News without confronting tragedy in three forms: existential blues (What is the tragedy before us?), theological blues (Calvary is nothing BUT the blues.), and biblical blues (Scripture is literature of an oppressed people. Period.). Only by preaching the blues are we able to face tragedy head on without falling into despair. Only by being open to what makes us weep do we understand what makes God weep, and then can we find the eschatological hope that God's grace makes apparent. 

It struck me that what Moss was saying was what Barbara Brown Taylor was saying which was what Anna Carter Florence was saying: do not ignore the shadows. Do not ignore the darkness. Do not ignore the sadness and tragedy. To do so is to fail to preach the fullness of the gospel message. Blues without gospel is despair. And gospel without blues is just happy clappy.

It seems that if this is a major undercurrent of the preaching and lectures at the Festival, that it is an undercurrent in Christian life in American today. We have an incredible ability to hide our blues, to ignore them, to pretend them away for the sake of appearances. Moss says we preachers avoid the blues because we hide in the daily tasks of 'pastoral concerns,' because lament may not be in our tradition, because we fear conflict and rejection. These are more reflections of our culture than they are of our faith.

To preach with integrity is to give space for the blues and to allow them to be understood in light of the gospel, and vice versa. And incredibly, freedom is the result. Freedom to talk about our pain, our fear, our uncertainty, our darkness. And freedom to work communally toward solutions. Moss certainly struck home with many of us when he said, "If you never preach the blues, you may be a part of the structure that creates the blues for others." Ouch.

Though his message is intensely relevant for today, I imagine it's always been intensely relevant for preachers. Praise and lament are deeply related--just look to the Psalms for a quick education there--but is it inherent in our humanity to cover our brokenness and try to sing only praise? And if so, living into the image God created us in means to expose that brokenness to allow for creative healing. 

Reading Up: Hip Hop Pastor as Postmodern Prophet

At first, I thought this reading was going to be insanely dated. When I pick up a book called titled The

Rev. Otis Moss III preaching it up.

Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation that was written in 2007, I'm automatically skeptical. Most cultural critics I've encountered consider the "hip hop generation" to be a pretty broad term for African Americans born after the Civil Rights Movement. And with hip hop's roots in the 1980s, it's a genre that's been recognized in pop culture for over 30 years. As early as 2006, cultural critics were writing that African American youth coming of age at the turn of the millennium were better understood to be a "post hip hop generation." So, in reaching Rev. Otis Moss III's chapter, "The Hip Hop Pastor as Postmodern Prophet," I was unsure what to expect. Was it going to be dated advice already? Praise God, it's not.

Moss does a good job of contrasting "soul culture"--the culture out of which artists like Rev. Al Green, Jackie Wilson, and Aretha Franklin emerged--and "hip hop culture." For Moss, hip hop culture has prophetic roots in its cultural critique, but has since been co-opted by mainstream America as just another cultural product. Moss sketches a vision of hip hop at its best--a prophetic word against forces of oppression, domination, and injustice with a voice and sound deeply rooted in African and African American experience and tradition. In fact, Moss sketches the same vision for the church, in this way articulating that the co-opting of hip hop is no different than the co-opting of church that has happened over the course of the last few decades. Rather than functioning as cultural critics, Moss sees both hip hop and the church functioning as cultural products. He calls the church to adopt the spirit of hip hop to recover its unique voice in a world that sounds like the same old stuff.

By the end of this, I realized that Moss' critique could be applied to any counter-cultural movement in any tradition, be it punk rock, indie rock, folk, Americana, etc. His critique didn't just speak to the African American church experience, but to the American church experience. 

Some favorite quotes:

• "The strength of the church--particularly the black church--when rooted in a liberation ethic is revolutionary transformation through Christ. The church is one of the only places where the people are forced to struggle together in community and come to grips with the message of a Savior who demands not personal salvation but community trasnformation" (118).
• "African American faith has always wrapped its worship experience in the existential and eschatological. In other words, we have always worshiped with one foot in the soil of our present pain and another foot in our future hope" (124).
• "...African American children and adults are bombarded with images that perpetuate ungodly, racist, and destructive stereotypes. The church should be a place where children of color see themselves in a positive light. It is critical that the church place symbols, artifacts, and photographs that show African people as a part of the ancient biblical world. Christ should never be depicted as a European in a black church but at least Afro-Asicatic! His disciples should be viewed in a variety of dark and light hues reflective of the ancient world they occupied" (126).
• "We must be clear on this: the hip hop generation sees people with passion and conviction all the time...The church, beyond all others, has someone named Christ to be passionate about, but many of our traditional churches have lost all sense of passion. Only when passion is rekindled can celebration truly take place" (127-8).
• "Music in the church context, though it has the high calling to illuminate Christ, also is trapped by the cultural memory of the congregation. When a person says, "I don't like that song," he or she is really saying, "That song invokes no memory for me."...The clash between generations is as much about new and old memories as it is about methodology." (130).
• Music done well with the ethic of inspiration demands that we use what will undergird the Word, regardless of style (130).
• Moss' Post-Soul Tests scattered throughout the chapter are really excellent ways to frame questions about one's church culture.