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God calls: Who will answer?
Isaiah 6.1-13, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11, Psalm 138, Luke
5.1-11
A birthday sermon by Ralph G.
Clingan
Lord Baden-Powell of England started the scouting
movement after he lived for a few years with the Zulu
nation in East Africa. He believed urbanized British
children grew up so divorced from the natural world and
so lacking in the skills, virtues and relationships the
Zulu people so powerfully manifested and taught him. He
developed a program of activities and lessons to enable
equip and empower British boys to become as exemplary as
the Zulu scouts who had taught him so much. Lord Powell
brought the movement to the United States where it
became a strong organization housed mainly in Anglican
and Presbyterian churches. Of course Scout troops now
lodge within Synagogues, Mosques, and churches of all
denominations throughout the United States and the
world. There are also Hindu and Buddhist Boy Scouts!
Zulu culture still forms the basis for Scouting: The
Scout Oath or Promise formed the basis for the litany I
copied from the website of the Boy Scouts of America.
What is the motto? Outdoor skills like hiking and
camping, aquatics, physical fitness, cooking,
conservation and merit badges in both Girl and Boy
Scouts help boys and girls grow spiritually, personally,
morally and recreationally into physically fit adults
who are prepared for morally and spiritually healthy
hobbies and careers.
Dearly beloved!
February is Black History Month. The
focus rests on African-American history, through the
historical works and studies of such historic scholar
leaders as William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and the
NAACP. They embraced my Cherokee and other Native
American ancestors with other peoples of color,
including people of Asian and Hispanic heritage. The
Bible played a key role in the liberation struggles of
all the groups. Studies published in America’s
Women’s History Review; in the Cross Cultural
Studies Institute of Seoul National University by Dr.
Christine Sungjin Chang; and by students of women’s
history in African and south Asian nations demonstrate
the vital contribution of Bible women to the rapid
growth of Protestant Christianity in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. They read today’s
texts, heard God call them, and answered with their
lives.
African American women slaves learned
how to read while working in the homes of slave owners
like Puritan Theologian
Cotton Mather in 17th
century Boston. They insisted that
Rev. Mather help them
organize a church where they could feel comfortable
studying the Bible and praising God. African Bible women
taught fellow slaves how to read and write in secret
throughout the Southern states during the days of
slavery. God called and women were among the first to
answer with their lives. When Protestants translated the
Bible into Mayan and Incan languages and brought Spanish
translations into Central and South American nations,
women and men read the Bible without the control of
Catholic priests and both within Catholicism in the form
of Contra fraternal congregations and in separate
Protestant churches, Bible-based Christianity spread and
continues to spread. Society did not allow women slaves
to be free, but the voice of God liberated them; men did
not allow women to be free, but the voice of the God of
the Bible did liberate them because when God called
them, they answered with their lives.
God calls: Who will answer? The
familiar pattern of call and response throughout the
Bible and the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
concerns all of us. African cultural communication
patterns of call and response continue to shape the
culture, religion, and social patterns in the African
diaspora. I experience this verbalized
pattern of call and response in African American
churches and when I preached in Kenya. There, Bible
women distributed and taught the Bible in the early days
of the women missionaries the United Presbyterian Church
of Scotland sent there. Reporters in
Haiti following the
tragic earthquakes there sent back videotaped and
written reports of call and response worship events
among the Haitian survivors. I will come back to the
variety of call-and-response patterns expressed by
Haitian survivors of the recent earthquakes later on in
today’s sermon as we meditate on what the Lord God of
Jesus calls us to do and how we will answer.
Initially, today’s scripture texts
provide very different forms of the question and the
answer pattern in very different historical contexts.
The problem of ascertaining God’s call and deciding our
answer to God’s call presents complex problems for us
nowadays, depending on our contexts. Our exploration of
the mission the Lord God of Israel called
Isaiah the
Prophet to fulfill in the context of an Israeli national
crisis will yield one form of the call and response
pattern. Then, our exploration of what God’s call meant
to the
apostle Paul
and his answer will yield still
another form in another context. Of course the call of
Jesus to the first of his followers and their answer
provides yet another form of the call-and-response
pattern in the context of the exiled Jewish Christian
community of first century Syria.
We all enjoy reading
Isaiah 6.1-13. We
enjoy singing what has become the favorite hymn in the
denominations that use Dan Schutte’s “Here I Am, Lord,”
which he composed in 1981 for a Jesuit Deaconal
ordination in San Francisco. Teachers of liturgics, or
worship, like Professor Huh and I enjoy relying on
Isaiah 6.1-13 in seminaries and schools of theology
because it determines the parts of the order of worship
used by Jews, Christians, and Muslims all over the world.
The details of each tradition may vary, but the pattern
remains the same. There always is a special, sacred
place with sacred designs or objects, a sacred book or
books to study and preach and a conversation between
members of the community and their Allah/God. The call
of the Lord God/Allah and the community’s obedient
response makes up the order of
theophany
or encounter with God/Allah. Religious languages only
point us toward that being greater than which none
exists; they cannot define or confine the divine power.
When the power beyond all powers which we call the
Lord God calls, we answer with our lives.
A study of
Isaiah 6 in the immediate
context of the book leads to an appreciation as to why
the prophet at first refused to fulfill God’s call. The
chapter before 6,
chapter 5, contains a poem of 7 Hebrew
stanzas probably sung by the prophet. A song about how
the Lord God would destroy Israel because of the greedy
who lived to acquire more property, drank alcoholic
beverages for breakfast and celebrated nightly orgies,
dragged iniquity along as one would pull a cart along
with ropes, called good evil and evil good, put darkness
in place of light and bitter for sweet. Shrewd and wise
in their own estimation, they were a bunch of drunks who
acquitted the guilty for bribes and deprived innocent
people of their rights. The Lord God gave this song for
Isaiah to sing to the very rich and powerful people the
Lord God condemned!
Naturally, Isaiah feared the task
of singing such a dire song to people who had the wealth
and power to execute him on the spot. Such threats by
cultural forces have cost the lives of people who
responded to God’s call with their lives. Some did
survive, like
Sojourner Truth in the southern states,
Celia Ortiz, the first woman ordained Pastor in Cuba and Duk Ji Choi the first woman ordained Korean Pastor.
The Roman empire of the first century
did not differ very much from Israel and Judah just
before the Babylonian exile five or six hundred years before.
The Romans ruled their tributary states like poor little
Israel, which they lumped together with Syria, with an
iron hand. Their greed knew no boundaries, nor their
love of strong drink, wild orgies, iniquities, evil
injustices and unjust treatment of innocent people.
Local powers slavishly obeyed Rome like Herod the Great
and his son who followed him, Herod Antipas and the Herodian sect of Judaism. They went along with the Roman
culture, religion, and society.
Syria suffered under the boot heel of Roman oppression
but was safer for exiles than Palestine. The Jewish
Christian community in Antioch, Syria consisted of
refugees from Jerusalem. The Romans had destroyed all
the Jewish cities between 68 and 70 of the Common Era.
All the Jewish survivors of this mass execution fled in
all directions. Some fled to Africa where they invented
the first basic form of Christian communities and
schools. Others went to India with Thomas. Still others
fled up into Persia and Chaldea, now called Iran and
Iraq. Others fled up into Russia. Some went into Asia
Minor, which we
call Turkey. This was Paul’s home
country, too. Another West Asian Jewish Christian wrote
Luke, and Paul wrote his letters in very different
contexts. The founders of the Jewish Christian Church in
Corinth,
Greece, came from Asia Minor, modern Turkey, where a
woman named Lydia after the West Asian province trained
them and that number included another Asian Jewish woman
Priscilla, who trained Apollo the powerful African
preacher whose work was celebrated by the apostle Paul
Benjamin. When the Lord God called, Asian Jewish
Christian women Lydia and Priscilla answered with their
lives.
We do not know the name of the
author
of Luke. Most scholars believe Luke was the last of our
four gospels, written between 80 and 90 of the Common
Era. Most scholars now believe Jesus of Nazareth became
a Rabbi at about 19 or 20 years of age and enjoyed a
ministry at the Capernaum synagogue of about 10 years.
The fishing community together with all the other Jews
of Capernaum knew Rabbi Jesus well enough to know when
he was at home in his house there and when he was away.
From among the fourteen or so versions of the life of Jesus in
existence by 80-90 CE, the anonymous author of Luke
depicted the life of Jesus to appeal to sympathetic
Romans as well as fellow West Asian, Syrian Jewish
Christians and exiled Jewish Christians who had fled to
Syria after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
This makes
Luke the most multicultural of the gospels, which may
have been one reason John Ross in Korea and many other
Bible scholars on the other continents also translated
and distributed and sent Luke out among the first of the
Bible books. Luke mentions women more often and more
favorably than all the other gospels combined. Women
heard God call them through Luke. Women of color in
Africa, Latin America, Asia and the United States could
understand, distribute, teach and risk their very lives
because of Luke’s Jesus because [He] loved, healed, forgave
and empowered women!
Corinth was a Roman city on a peninsula in the province
of Achaia less than 50 miles from Athens to the east;
another ocean side city to which Jewish refugees fled.
Paul’s version of the gospel of Jesus which he preached
to them represents a very different content from that of
any of the four canonical gospels. Why?
First, probably because Jesus never
knew Jesus of Nazareth personally; the risen Jesus
confronted the man formerly known as Saul Benjamin.
Neither Lydia nor Priscilla nor Apollo ever knew Jesus
personally either, but Jesus called them anyway and they
responded with their lives. Just like Sojourner Truth,
Celia Ortiz and Duk Ji Choi among so many others.
Second, Saul Benjamin probably learned
about Jesus second hand from the very reluctant Ananias
a Christian Rabbi of the church in Damascus, Syria. The
early Scottish and North American missionaries thought
of African slaves, Latin American Maya and Inca what
they thought of Koreans. Kim Eunjoo Mary reported that
missionaries said Koreans were “poor as church mice,
lazy as dogs, dirty as pigs, ravenous as wolves and
proud as hypocrites.” (121)
Third, of course, he probably learned
another version of the Christian faith from the apostle
Peter, an eyewitness to the risen Jesus. He listed
hundreds of others to whom the risen Jesus appeared and
a few notables like James, but the fact is that the
letters of Paul do not speak of the experience of Jesus
after his death as an experience derived from facts but
as a belief, a faith. In other words, the Apostle Paul’s
letters develop an early Christian theology and set of
beliefs to distinguish from and relate to their native
Jewish religion and the Roman religion. What did the
Asian refugees of Corinth believe in spite of all Roman
attempts to destroy them?
The same thing African, Native
American, Asian and Latin American recipients of God’s
call through the Bible believed no less than such Gay
theologians as Chris Glaser and such Lesbian theologians
as Letty Russell. According to Kim Eunjoo Mary who
teaches at the Iliff Seminary in Denver:
The fantastic news of the gospel for
Koreans was the emphasis on total equality between men
and women, old and young, masters and slaves, literate
and illiterate, haves and have nots. This radically
differed from traditional Confucianism, which is based
on hierarchism, classism and sexism and had been the
foundation of personal and social norms in Korean
culture for centuries. (121) The powers that keep on
subjugating people of color and other groups they wish
to oppress and suppress have reached the end of their
ropes. Max Scheler wrote their epitaph in his
phenomenological prediction made before WW1, that world
civilization would change from reason toward emotion,
side with children against adults, with women against
men, with the masses against the elites, with peoples of
color against white people of privilege, and rest on
psychology, the subconscious reality and overthrow
powers based on conscious reality (Powell by Clingan,
45).
God still calls through Bible texts
like the lessons we read today, and the people most
unlikely to answer with their lives still do so. Our
mission rests on our courageous overthrow of all the
powers that oppress and suppress women, children,
peoples of color. We must make room at God’s Table for
people who live with the challenges of hearing, eyesight
and mobility, too. God calls: Will we answer with our
lives?
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Bibliography:
Chang, Christine Sungjin, “Hidden but
Real: The Vital Contribution of Bible Women to the Rapid
Growth of Korean Protestantism, 1892-1945,” Routledge:
Women’s History Review, 2008
Clingan, Ralph Garlin Against
Cheap Grace in a World Come of Age, an intellectual
biography of Clayton Powell, 1865-1953 (New
York: Peter Lang, 2002)
Glaser, Chris Coming Out as
Sacrament and Uncommon Calling,
1988 Sermons on line at the Virginia-Highlands
Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, where he serves as
Interim Pastor.
Ortiz Suarez, Ofelia, retired President
of the Evangelical Theological Seminary, Matanzas, Cuba.
Many articles and books on liberation theology themes in
Spanish.
Kim, Eunjoo Mary Women Preaching,
Theology and Practice Through the Ages
(Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2004)
Russell, Letty, many books and articles
on liberation theology themes.
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The
Rev. Ralph Garlin Clingan, PhD, H.R., moderates the
Public Policy Advocacy Network and represents the Board
of Directors of the Presbyterian Health, Education, and
Welfare Association to the Synod of the Northeast of the
Presbyterian Church (USA). His books include
Against Cheap Grace in a World Come of Age, an
intellectual biography of Clayton Powell, 1865–1953,
Vol. 9, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Studies in
Religion, Culture, and Social Development, edited by
Mozella Mitchell (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group,
2002), and An Action Preaching Manual, available
in Korean and English from Seoul, Korea’s Preaching
Academy, 2005. Another book on how to prepare a sermon
quickly, which will contain three years of Clingan’s
sermons, will be available from the same publisher later
in 2007. Dr. Clingan taught homiletics and liturgics in
The Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta,
1980–1988.
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Forged: Writing in the Name of God
Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
By Bart D. Ehrman
The evocative title tells it all and hints at the tone of sensationalism that pervades this book. Those familiar with the earlier work of Ehrman, a distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of more than 20 books including Misquoting Jesus, will not be surprised at the content of this one. Written in a manner accessible to nonspecialists, Ehrman argues that many books of the New Testament are not simply written by people other than the ones to whom they are attributed, but that they are deliberate forgeries. The word itself connotes scandal and crime, and it appears on nearly every page. Indeed, this book takes on an idea widely accepted by biblical scholars: that writing in someone else's name was common practice and perfectly okay in ancient times. Ehrman argues that it was not even then considered acceptable—hence, a forgery. While many readers may wish for more evidence of the charge, Ehrman's introduction to the arguments and debates among different religious communities during the first few centuries and among the early Christians themselves, though not the book's main point, is especially valuable.—Publishers Weekly /
Forged Bart Ehrman’s New Salvo ( Witherington)
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Santeria:
The Beliefs and Rituals
of a Growing Religion in America
By Miguel A. De La Torre This book by Miguel De la Torre offers a
fascinating guide to the history, beliefs, rituals, and culture
of Santeria -- a religious tradition that, despite persecution,
suppression, and its own secretive nature, has close to a
million adherents in the United States alone. Santeria is a religion with Afro-Cuban roots,
rising out of the cultural clash between the Yoruba people of
West Africa and the Spanish Catholics who brought them to the
Americas as slaves. As a faith of the marginalized and
persecuted, it gave oppressed men and women strength and the
will to survive. With the exile of thousands of Cubans in the
wake of Castro's revolution in 1959, Santeria came to the United
States, where it is gradually coming to be recognized as a
legitimate faith tradition. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 20 February 2010
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