Epiphany 5B, 2018: Our ghetto gospel

Lectionary: Epiphany 5B: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

Note: We may be snowed out today, but thanks to technology, the Word can still be proclaimed!



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En el nombre del Dios, Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

As some you know from our Parish Tour conversations, I spent a year as a hospital chaplain on the oncology-hematology unit of a regional hospital deep in the heart of the Bible belt in south GA. All of my cancer patients died and many of the hematology patients either died or, as in the case of the sickle cell patients, returned regularly with terribly painful recurrences of their disease.

The people I served needed God to be bigger and more powerful than the diseases destroying their bodies. They needed the God described in Isaiah who is “great in strength [and] mighty in power.”

They also needed this magnificent, powerful Holy One to care about them as insignificant and undeserving as they often said they felt. They needed the compassionate God whom Isaiah proclaimed “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless” so that no matter how depleted or defeated they felt by their disease, they could hope to run and not be weary, and imagine themselves mounting up and soaring with the powerful freedom of an eagle.

Julian of Norwich once said that prayer “unites the soul to God” (Source: Robert Backhouse, A Feast of Anglican Spirituality (The Canterbury Press, Norwich, 1998), 74) and that has been my experience. Yet with so much diversity in belief (and non-belief) among the people I served as chaplain, prayer was a complicated thing.

During a typical visit, I would spend a great deal of time listening. There were times that I knew I should only listen and pray quietly, within the secrecy of my own heart. Other times I was compelled to speak and to act – inviting them to pray and engage the God they feared. I say they feared God because many confessed that they felt angry at God for “punishing” them with their disease or they felt betrayed by God for not caring about them enough to cure them.

As their chaplain, I had to trust God to use my prayer to unite us all to God, to connect them with the magnificent, compassionate God described in Isaiah. It also meant putting aside my way of being a child of God and entering their way. For example, when family or friends were present, I would listen as they talked or prayed together. I made note of the words and phrases they used – especially the ones they repeated.

I would listen for the song of their prayers, that is, the way they used their voices. I learned the cadence and language of their prayers so that I when I spoke the good news to them they could hear and understand it.

For the Pentecostals, I learned to pray as a Pentecostal: “Thank you, Jesus. We just thank you Jesus that we can come to you right now and give you praise. We call upon you, Lord, in the name of Jesus to lift the burdens of our hearts. Here is your child, Father God. Take him home now – home to glory-land. Thank you, Jesus. Glory halleluiah!”

For the Jews, I prayed like a Jew: “Hear, O Adonai, and answer the prayers of your faithful servants.
Look upon the suffering of this your righteous one and be merciful to her. Protect her with the strength of your right arm, for you are steadfast in love and mighty in power, and to you we give thanks and sing our praise forever.”

To the wounded Christian, I prayed as one also wounded: “Holy God, you are gracious and full of compassion. Hear our prayers for this beloved child of yours. Hold him close in the warm embrace of your healing love. Smile upon him and comfort him in body, mind, and spirit.”

Praying like this didn’t feel the least bit hypocritical to me. Was it hypocritical of God to become Incarnate – to become like us – so that we could understand and believe? By seeking to serve in this way, I came to realize that there is within me the free and open heart of a Pentecostal, the deep and faithful heart of a Jew, and the willing and hopeful heart of the wounded ones.

My purpose, as a witness of Christ’s love, was to let God’s presence be the priority, not to analyze their theology or teach them mine. All I had to do was let God show me the connection between them and me,then be willing to be connected. Religious laws and theological perspectives become so unimportant in the face of the Love that connects us.

When Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, he violated religious law. Jewish men never touched women who were not their family, and worse yet, he did it on the Sabbath. But for Jesus, compassion overruled the law – and it was the first of many times he would model such behavior.

Mark tells us that Jesus created quite a buzz when he healed the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue (the story we heard last week). And the next day the whole city showed up at Peter’s house, and Jesus cured many of them.

Giving freely of his divine compassion and comfort, Jesus released those who came to him from whatever sin held them bound. Jesus was also generous with his proclamation, preaching beyond the limits of acceptability. He came out, as he said, to proclaim the good news to all regardless of the divisions imposed by culture – divisions like class or race or gender or nationality.

We who carry on the ministry of proclaiming the good news must be willing, as Jesus was, to go to the people who need to hear the message of salvation, and like St. Paul teaches, give it to them in ways they can understand so that they can receive it.

For example, Elizabethan English, which is found in the King James Bible and in the Rite I services in our Prayer Book, is the language of a past world, and it isn’t very useful in ‘the hood’ or with 20-somethings. It is, however, the deep spiritual language of many over the age of 50, so it continues to have value. Then there is the “The Hip Hop Prayer Book” a translation of our Prayer Book into rap by my good friend and colleague The Rev. Timothy Holder, or “Poppa T” as he is known.

So how many fans of rap and hip hop do we have here? I admit it - for years I hated rap and hip hop. I had lots of good reasons for putting up a barrier against it (I thought): the language, the misogynistic and violent messages, but that was my sin. God had a connection to make and I was refusing to be connected.

Now, one of my favorite music artists is Tupac Shakur, a rapper who died at the young age of 25. I commend to you his video, Ghetto Gospel. Here’s a bit of Tupac’s message:

there's no need for you to fear me
if you take the time to hear me,
maybe you can learn to cheer me
it aint about black or white, cuz we're human
I hope we see the light before its ruined
my ghetto gospel (Source: Tupac Shakur, Ghetto Gospel)

The beauty of our Episcopal/Anglican tradition is that we can pray in Elizabethan English, preach about a rapper, pray from the Hip Hop Prayer Book, and chant our Eucharistic prayers – all in the same service. We are and we can be, as St. Paul says, all things to all people, reflecting the character and purpose of God.

The greater challenge we face is found at the end of our Gospel. Jesus said, “Let us go on to the neighboring town, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” And out he went, Jesus and his small church community, to proclaim the good news.

We cannot let the beauty of our worship or our sanctuary trap us inside it. We come here to be fed and strengthened by Word and Sacrament so that we can follow Jesus’ example and go out there to share the good news we know: that good news that the everlasting God, who is creator of the ends of the earth is also a compassionate God who renews our strength and enables us to soar with the freedom of an eagle. We come together at church so that we can go out there and unite ourselves and those we meet to God in prayer, trusting God to show us how to do that.

Like Tupac, “I hope we see the light… [our] ghetto gospel” and speak it out there to all who need to hear it. Amen.