Worship – There is no Justice without US.
Sermon – Glory!
Cláudio Carvalhaes
Hesed Lecture Series – Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
March 6, 2021
Amos 5:18-24
18 Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light;
19 as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
My friends, I am so happy to be here today. I feel deeply honored. I want to send my love to all of the people of the seminary, all the administration, faculty and students. Especially my precious sister Dr. Margaret Aymer Oget and my brother Dr. Gregory Cuellar. Let me mention also all who were part of the creation of this amazing conference:
The LatinX & African American/African Diaspora Student Groups of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
The advisors, Dr. Gregory Cuellar & Dr. Asante Todd
The Chairs: Aiden Diaz, Chrystal Brigham, Allen J. Roberts, Sopphey Oviedo, & Kimberly Mendoza Ramos
Faculty: Usama Malik & Rev. Sarah Gaventa, Eric Wall, David Perry
To you all THANK YOU!
PAUSE
No Justice without US! And I say Glory! The Glory of God Is the work of justice!
Who are the US in this glory be to God justice? What they have to do with each other?
So, for the closing of this beautiful conference I want us to ponder about the US by the ways of the glory of God.
Where is the glory of God in the world today? Or where are we?
Let us take a plunge into the WE of our collective history in United States.
When they first came they were lost. They came to us and said “we need to eat. We are cold and starving.” And we gave them food and taught them how to plant and harvest in these lands. After a while, they end up killing us and stealing our lands. We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! We are still here!
Then they took us away from Africa our home and made us slaves in the new world. We were sold as objects, abused and exploited. We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! Slavery ended but after that they created an apartheid society. We kept on fighting until we broke free. We are still here!
They call us illegals! But without us they simply can’t live. Nowadays they are placing our precious children in cages and separating from us mothers and fathers. They are even adopting our own children! We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! We are still here! And we want our children back!
Now they have regimented a war against women. Patriarchy as a God given gift to the women! We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! We are still here!
They have also announced a war against the poor. Government sources and funds only for the rich! Taxes only fort those who are not rich! White supremacy is about a few rich people against everybody else. We are getting poor and thousands of people are going to the streets. We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! We are still here!
They have been attacking the earth since the onset of coloniality. They have taught us that there is one way of living: by exploiting the earth and relating to it as a commodity, as resources, as profit. We rebelled, we didn’t accept. We entered in the struggled! We are still here!
This attack was so violent and vicious that we have lost some of the sense of the WE. Under the imperial code of CONQUER AND DIVIDE they have divided us in thousand pieces and we ended up going against ourselves. We were told we have to be entrepreneurs and make ourselves up. We have learned that unless we as individuals make something out of something we are a failure.
So many lies! As we ended up believing un some of these lies we were threatened to lose the real sense of the WE and thus to lose the sense of the Glory of God! For the Glory of God is US together! When we are destroyed the glory of God starts to disappear…. We have very little glories in the world today! We need more glory! More glory!
And the disappearance of the glory of God is because our people and the earth have been crucified. The lynching tree is a symbol of the ways the cross have been used to mercilessly eradicate precious people of God, species and trees!
Living under historical forms of violence and oppression for so long, our people have been crucified time and again. Everywhere. We are now under the season of Lent and the weight of the cross of Jesus with so many precious people continuing to be crucified weights on our bodies. How can we offer witness to the crucified people of our time nowadays? How can we sing the glory of God in the midst of so much violence? how can we say glory in the face of atrocity? How can we pray God to you all glory when tragedies are taking away the lives of immigrants, refugees, of poor people, of natural habits, of eco-systems?
Perhaps that is what we need: a theology of Glory. A liberation theology of glory that will sustain our heart and keep us holding on to the struggle.
A theology of Glory that breaks down the US and THEM binary and turns us all into equal beings under God’s grace.
A theology of Glory that makes us see success as holding on to somebody else’s life in fulness!
A theology of Glory that restores the sense of a village against the sense of individualism and entrepreneurship!
A theology of Glory that can help us see that we have been focusing too much on human beings and help us see that we humans are just one species amidst so many others so deeply loved by God.
As I think about the glory of God I remember the movie Selma and how there was a sound of GLORY ringing in Dr. Martin Luther King’s heart. He had the vision of the glory of God right in the midst of the impossible and that vision, that faith, is what gave him and the whole movement the strength to keep on going!
The glory of God manifested in a society of equals living under freedom was what anticipated the Kingdom of God in their midst. That was their vision and their experience!
Every time Dr. King said “One Day…” it was a prophetic call, calling God into existence. One Day and God’s glory showed up!
One day this will end.
One day we will be all we.
One day we will see the glory of God just as we now see it by faith. Oh Glory!
Let us see this video to understand this better:
Glory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFRPLM0nEA
In this movie, we learn what the meaning of glory is all about! The movie describes a short period in the civil rights movement when blacks and whites get together to fight against white supremacy and the apartheid in this country. It is so amazing to see how our brothers and sisters back then, knew how scary it was to sing to the glory of God…
In that time, to shout glory was a very risky endeavor.
Every shout of Glory was a shout for justice!
Every shout of Glory was a prophecy of a new world!
Every shout of glory was the struggle to honor every black person in this country!
The black and some white people became the holders of a new world right there!
They were the chorus of a glorious future!
Singing glory and fighting on our behalf!
They knew that to shout glory could destroy their own families, it could put them in jail! They knew that to shout glory could get them killed! But they kept singing glory!
In the midst of the fight, God’s Glory was something unknown, since the birthing of a movement had so many unknowns. And yet the glory of God was closer to them than anything else. For God was hovering over this movement with a cloud of God’s own glory!
Their shout of glory was a proposal for a different society! It opposed the fake glorias of the white supremacists. Don’t forget that the Kuk Klux Klan used to sing glory too! A very corrupted glory, a glory that was based on a white theology of destruction.
However, the “glory glory alleluia” in the mouth of black and white folks broke loose the gates of hell. The marchers walked because they knew the glory of God! They crossed the bridge and went from Selma to Montgomery because the glory of God went ahead of them! The angels of God were singing along with the cloud of witness singing: Glory! Glory! Glory!
And they walked! In the midst of bullets and water hoses and dogs, they walked! All they had was the glory of God and signing their glory to God was the way to keep themselves alive! They knew the very consequences of singing glory!
When they got to Montgomery, the journey wasn’t finished. There were still way more glories to sing, glories to come, way many more glories to be shouted so the fight could go on!
And after fighting for years, after losing so many people along the way, they knew they had to continue to shout glory! Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X and so many others couldn’t shout glory with their people when the laws of segregation were broken.
The histories of our people have been very hard ones, histories where glories were hard to say and yet they were said all the time!
The histories of our people have been like a movement of running from the lion just to meet the bear. It has been like going into a house and resting a hand against the wall just to be bitten by a snake.
But what kept them going were the glories they shout! The glories said in the midst of pain and hurt and destruction. The glories unspoken but kept alive in their hearts. The immigrants in the desert shout glory! The immigrants in jails sing glory! And when they can’t sing glory, we will sing gory for them! So they can keep going!
And now, we have the histories of our people to live by, histories filled with glories to teach our sons and daughters what God’s glory is all about! Do you know these stories? For if you know the stories of Glory of your people, you will hold to the glory of God tightly to your heart and mind and body, and you will see the glory of God coming every day into your life!
I ask you again now what I asked you in the beginning:
Where is the glory of God in your life and the life of your people?
We must know that because the battle ain’t over!
The forces that continue to mute and kidnap the glory of God in the world are in full force.
Capitalism is breaking the glories of God in the world.
Poverty is muffling the glory of God!
Violence against women are ripping apart the glory of God!
The imprisonment of black bodies have locked the glories of God!
The caging of our children and brown bodies are muting the glories of God!
The killing of George Floyds and so many other precious black bodies are taking away the breath of the Spirit who speaks the Glory of God through us!
COVID is poisoning the glories of God!
And the church of Jesus Christ too must also wrestle with the lack and the diminishing of the Glory of God in the world today.
There is a reason the prophet would say words like these:
21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
When we speak of God but don’t live it fully, our religion is empty of the glory of God!
When we sing the glory of God but that Glory doesn’t mean caring for the poor and fighting for righteousness, our worship services don’t mean any Glory!
When we keep pastors and teachers with different salaries when some pastors and teachers will have full packages and some pastors and teachers will be scrapping by to feed their families, this is playing with God’s promises! There can’t be any Glory!
When we sing our hymns but somebody in our congregation doesn’t have health insurance and we don’t care, God is saying take your songs away from me.
When we pray our prayers but we continue to be racists and support racist politicians, God is saying I will not listen to the melody of your songs and organs.
Oh my friends, we don’t mess with the glory of God!
Because the glory of God has to do with us living the fulness of God’s life!
It was the church father Irenaeus who said: “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Don’t come to me singing God’s glory is you don’t care for the homeless, if you don’t mind about students debts, or people going unemployed, of undocumented immigrants being shamed!
And I would say more, if you don’t care about the rivers near you, the trees next to your house, the life of the oceans and the lives of the animals, you don’t care about the glory of God! I would add to Irenaeus by saying : the glory of God is about every living being, living creature living fully! The dolphins, the whales, the birds, the worms, the bees the insects.
The glory of God is what comes in the verse 24:
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
If you ask me: what is the glory of God I will recite this verse to you. The glory of God is justice rolling down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
That is what the glory of God is all about!
This is how we learn about HESED! HESED is here translated as the restitution of the glory of God in the world.
Reminding us that the liberation theology of glory starts where it hurts, where people are wounded, where life is threatened, where hearts are fallen on the ground, where hope was lost, where there is little singing. It is at those places of destitution that the glory of God can restitute our humanity and turn us back into the WE of our being with God!
Friends, WE are the glory of God for each other! WE have the glory of God within us and in each other. WE don’t go alone! We never do! We now must expand the circle of the WE and engage with other people, find movements of resistance, and never ever forget to sing glory together with our people and with other people as well!
For the glory of God is always plural! And in the glory of God, there is no THEM AND US but only WE!
If we learn together what the glory of God is about,
HESED with will our first name!
And the glory of God our last name.
May WE live the glory of God together.