Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: The Cross and the Lynching Tree

We all have prejudice. Prejudice is when you make a judgement about someone's value based on their physical appearance/attributes. This could include their ethnicity, gender expression, weight, height, clothing style, monetary value of their clothing or vehicles, etc. Confronting our prejudices is important work and all people must do this work. Racism, however, is when power is mixed with prejudice and one group of people who have special access to power can dehumanize those they have prejudice against. Racism is about power and the Cross is God's divine confrontation with Power. This episode is a take 2 b/c of a sermon recording tech glitch. I read directly from my notes and re-recorded in my living room with a train and a puppy in the background. 

 

At Lent we talk about the agony of the crucifixion and the suffering of Christ and so this sermon felt like an important PART of a bigger story about the role of suffering in our world and in the Church and this sermon is not a systematic theology but rather a message from our pastor for a particular community asking particular questions in this particular place called Bowness. We focus on Isaiah 53 and the notion that Christ is a man familiar with pain and suffering and the ways his suffering leads to healing for all. 

 

Please don't just take MY word for it! Check out:

 

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing and Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Soong Chun Rah and Mark Charles

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

Reading while Black by Esau Mccaully

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone

Who Will be a Witness by Drew G.I. Hart

and African American Readings of Paul by Lisa M. Bowens

 

For a full bibliography of commentaries on books of the bible by Biblical Scholars and Theologians of color email us!