What is this infatuation with the thousands of years old dead men of Bible? I am beginning to question the source of HOW the church, WHY the Church has literally become a ‘dead space’. When we talk “2024 Black Church Reformation” there must be a ‘Living Word’! So every time I hear, and this is now more often than not, but every time I hear a preacher, a pastor, a churchman ramble on about the OLD Testament men who not only lived thousands upon thousands of years ago, I am troubled. Perplexed, in the pew, where I am forced to listen to the generation after generation attempts to make all these dead men —LIVE. Now that I am sitting in the empty pews where these same preachers and pastors and churchmen who would have me to believe that the church belongs to them; that all decisions about everything resides in them, I am disturbed and even cast down as one who understands that the Church is in “Dying” mode …no KNOWLEDGE, no VISION —destroyed AND perishing; motivated by “mammon”. Again, the “Church’s Losses”. Returning to the most difficult of all: the “Loss of… The Children!”
The “Christmas Programs”. The Speeches learned for recitation before the congregation; the Pageants. The teaching and telling of the birth of Jesus. Never without the story of “Three Wise Men” who in scripture remain unnamed, just 3 Wise men who in NEW Testament, give one of the most important imperatives concerning the children IN the birth of a baby who would change the course of life as was known. King Herrod “sent them to Bethlehem saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” (Matthew 2:8)
This word ‘ereunao/search’ is used to identify the investigative instinct as in finding a robber. It is a very close look into houses and into possession. It’s used first of the animal instinct ‘to sniff out’. This ‘search’ is further developed in ‘to test’, to examine, to question, to use all senses in finding what is ‘the matter’. Philo uses it in terms of scripture and as a technical term for the work of the Scribe when he searches the depth of the will of God; while God searches the hearts of men. This ‘akribos and spoude/diligent’ qualifies this search with a haste, where speed is required in this search… as though life is endangered. It has a zeal, zealousness is needed, a godliness in the execution of the search. It is emphatic in it’s action. Do not stop short nor take nothing less. Combined together it makes the search academic, scientific, philological and philosophical in investigations. To the Wise Men: ‘by any and every means necessary, go and find the child’! Not just to ‘find the child’, but seek to know all there is to know about the child.
I am reminded of the exercise that the late great Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman gave us as we began our “seven day intensive study of the grounds and meaning of the religious experience.” He gathered ten black seminarians from throughout the country (one of the two reasons given in our scholarship letter is that “we are black”) and sat us around him as he was seated in a long leather lounge chaise. He had us to close our eyes as he walked us into a deep still silent place inside ourselves. Once there he read the entire book of Mark from the Moffet translation. Then he told us to open our eyes and to write the first thing that comes to our mind when he said the next word. “JESUS”. After listening to our individual associations he sat up from his chair and said to us, “Young people, don’t spend your lives putting so much on Jesus. Jesus is his own man. It just may be that God is calling you to be a Christ.”
Although Herrod gave the Wise Men the task, it is the ‘warning’ given to them in a Dream— to “go back another way.” Change— the word of the century. The need to change the way we handle ‘the child’… Another Way!
One thing that puzzles me greatly is how easily we have succumbed to the plot to put 5 year olds on ‘drugs’ as they enter the school systems???? What kind of rehabilitation can be given in this life as it grows into adulthood? Better question— is there life after (this forced drug addiction) death (of an innocent child)? I’m asking the Black Church: “Where are these children NOW? Go and seek diligently for them!
It occurs to me that the way in which the Black Church has handled this generation of children is more akin to Herrod! The ‘Warning’ is one that must be heeded— when it comes to ‘the Way’ that The Black Church MUST take to ‘SEEK DILIGENTLY the child’? “Going FORWARD… ANOTHER WAY!”
All inquiries By email: talk2therev@icloud.com
“Words of Life Study” Wednesdays on Zoom. 12:00 Noon & 6:30 pm CST Join the Dialogue at my “Swellcast”. At all times: https://SWELLCAST.com/therev.
