God of the Oppressed
by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. Texts: Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and Psalm 146
After several days of sheltering in place with my immediate family, I returned to my Ohio home. At once, I I was greeted by two old friends who were waiting for me at my place. They were not human beings. Instead, they were piles of dust, behind two doors.
So, as I looked at the piles of dust, trying to decide which one I would attend to first, I imagined one of them saying to the other in an enthusiastic tone, “I have decided that I am better than you. This means , I am worth more than you, and I am more important than you.” So then, I imagined the other pile of dust being startled and issuing a rather stern rebuke: “Say what? Aren’t we both just piles of dust? How are you any better than me?”
Friends, you may borrow from Motown’s Temptations and conclude melodically that this was just my imagination, running away with me. However, somehow, throughout the annals of European and United States history, some human beings, who according to the biblical creation story were formed from piles of dust and given life by the breath of a creative God, have looked over at other human beings, also composed of dust and enlivened by God, and said to them, “My white skin is better than your Black skin, and for that matter, any skin that is not white. Therefore, I am worth more than you. I am more important than you.” However, they did not stop there.
They went on to develop theories and practices, and policies and laws, and public agencies and private institutions, through which they weaponized their racist doctrines of discovery, aligned with their arrogant and incorrect convictions of superiority.
The doctrine of racial superiority, one pile of dust feeling better than the other, was even heretically woven into the fabric of religious life, where through its curriculum and images branded with white Jesus and trademarked with white biblical characters, along with white theological discourse and commentary, they implied and insisted that God conferred superiority, somebody-ness, and the right to human flourishing onto whites, while Native, Black, and Brown lives were cursed with heaven-sanctioned inferiority and nobody-ness. Native, Black, and Brown lives, and those of any other non-white group, did not matter. In fact, proponents of this fraudulent life orientation could be understood as pioneering members of the “Only White Lives Matter” movement, a movement that thrives even now.
This is what we know about racism: Those given and accepting superior racial status essentially get to make their own weather.
They craft their own laws,
print and teach their version of history,
decide what is normative,
regulate what is beautiful,
and determine what is patriotic.
These understandings of racial superiority and dominance were then taught and practiced by generation after generation, and led people – even oppressed people – to believe that somehow, doctrines of racial superiority of whites must be true and even more, must be handed down by God.
O, yes, those who feel superior claim the right to interpret their false superiority as being God’s will, and proclaim that it is then inevitable that they dominate or oppress other people, and to view and treat them as second-class and subservient biological entities who were worthy of humiliation and hardship.
The guardians of such traditions created and continue to maintain systems through which the rich become richer while the poor become poorer; the healthy stay healthy and the sick get sicker; the powerful become more powerful and the powerless even more powerless.
It must be God’s will, they say to themselves convincingly. Once more, their curriculum, bearing the standardization of whiteness, has taught People of Color and the poor to believe this, too.
All of this because one pile of dust, through grotesque self-promotion, proclaimed itself to be superior to others.
Which is interesting in comparison to the teachings from both Proverbs and Psalms. Interesting because, well, the writer of Proverbs, the wealthy yet wise King Solomon of Israel, gives ancient Israel and therefore us, this seemingly strange yet true idea that both the rich and the oppressed poor were created by God – both! O, but there is more.
He does not deny the existence of systems of superiority and therefore injustice; instead he calls those who are benefiting from such systems to embrace common humanity over uncommon superiority, and choose justice over injustice. For after all, he says, it is better to have a good name than it is to have great riches, for to have God’s favor is better than silver and gold.
The implication is clear: If you want a good name, stop investing in and benefitting from systems of humiliation and exploitation; be generous – share your bread with the poor. If you value God’s favor more than favor from political parties and leaders, stop robbing the poor with high interest payday loans, no health care, no COVID-19 vaccinations, unfair taxation, unclean water, substandard education, and inferior foods.
All of these practices are clear and present danger signs of the systemic racism that ravages People of Color and their neighborhoods.
Yet, the text informs us that those aspiring for status in God’s economy must stop crushing the aspirations and hopes of those who stand on the outside of the gates to human dignity, looking in, wondering if they will be the next people appearing on the evening news as an unarmed casualties, victims of extrajudicial execution, in the war on Black and Brown bodies.
Some may have asked King Solomon why they must do all of this, what is the rationale? Being a man of insane wealth himself, he possessed the truth-infused humanity to say, “If you want to know why you must stop your oppression, here is the reason: God pleads their case. God is on their side. The God we serve, the God in whom we say we trust, THIS GOD chooses to give dignity to the oppressed.
Now I am not sure how everyone in my often-calm mainline church tradition sees things, but I believe that when one is able to cut through generational layers of miseducation – lies – about who God is, and then and arrive at a unfiltered and untainted sense of God’s redemptive resume, God’s awesome vision of humanity, and God’s impressive values for humanity, when one does all of this, one has no real option other than to say, “Hallelujah!”, as David did in Psalm 146!
This praise comes not just from his lips but from the depths of his soul! “As long as I live, I will praise God,” David says.
Now that I am in my 60s, I have more appreciation for the testimony of David, for if I may paraphrase, I can hear David saying, “I have lived long enough to know that renewable hope will not be available through trusting prices, and no sustained help will come through investing in human beings, for when they draw their last breath, they return to the dust out of which they were created.
“Yet if you want to be happy, trust the God who delivered your ancestors out of bondage in Egypt. Trust the God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is within them.
“Trust THIS God, who reverses the human narrative of nullification against the poor and chooses to execute not people but justice, and work on behalf of the oppressed People of Color who are contending with the harshness of the co-mingled lethal pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism.
“Trust THIS God who gives food to the hungry and sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up the depressed, and who loves righteousness!
“Trust THIS God, who watches over strangers, upholds the orphans and the widows!
“Trust THIS God, because the plans of the wicked, THIS God will bring to ruin. Hallelujah!
I am always glad when my sister Theresa comes to see me. She is a proud ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It makes me feel honored that she would place on hold her rich array of activities in our hometown Cleveland and beyond, just to pay a visit on her little brother in Columbus.
Now upon her arrival and after she gets settled in, Theresa does something that I now understand to be her normal act or ritual. She takes from her luggage an outfit reserved for the Sunday morning worship service she knows we will be attending, and says to me, “I am going to leave this outfit on the living room table.” Here is the translation: I want you to iron my outfit! (Yes, I still iron clothes!) It took a while but I eventually learned what this table movement is about!
Also, I can relate to it, for I, too, have had clothes that were pressed in a tight suitcase while enduring hours of travel. On one occasion, both my sister’s clothes and mine had been folded, packed and shipped as baggage from one place to another, and as a result, they were wrinkled and needed to be laid out, so they could be ironed out.
Our society and world have been carrying around baggage from generation after generation, moving around old, tightly-packed, wrinkled systems of racism that hoisted hysterical wealth onto some while forcing horrific injustice on others; it conferred improper institutional power and polluted skin privilege onto some, and destined others to be targets of domestic terrorism and suppression of votes and aspirations.
Yet, I operate under the belief that the work of the church of Jesus Christ is to lead society in doing what Theresa does with her wrinkled clothes: Lay them out so they can be ironed out!
Systems of racism and oppression – lay them out, iron them out!
Systems of poverty and hunger – lay them out, iron them out!
Systems of discrimination and fear – lay them out, iron them out!
Systems of hate and the politics of resentment – lay them out, iron them out!
Systems of abuse and humiliation – lay them out, iron them out!
We are carrying around old, tightly-packed baggage from the past! However, when we lay them out and iron them out, you and I will be poised with enhanced credibility and positioned with verifiable authenticity that enables us to say that our best days as a nation and as a people are not behind us, as some would assert, but ahead of us!
As we make such a proclamation, we will be able to live the love we sing about in our songs, even as found in the words of the late Father Peter Scholtes:
“We will work with each other, we will work side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride, and the world will know we are Christians, not because we have stained glass windows and organs with pipes; not because we color and hide eggs on Easter; and not because we have praise bands whose melodies mimic the best sounds of today’s pop music; but they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Amen