The Write Reverend

“Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God–you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration–what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.” Psalm 139:13-16, The Message “

“. . . .didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 The Message

Hadn’t you noticed? I’m on a health kick, lock, stock and calorie counter! I’m hoping and praying to get as many of you as will to join me in this health kick. Far to few of us seem to understand that we are in the middle of a crisis; and you know like I know that when America has a crisis, Black America has a catastrophe. We are in the middle of a catastrophic health care meltdown. Lifestyle maladies like obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are at epidemic proportions in America in general and in the African American community in particular; and we are doing little or nothing about it! We take the medication, we go to the proliferating dialysis centers, but we will not take the preventive measures we could and should take on the front end to stop these diseases. Why? Alvin Poussaint and Amy Alexander, in their book “Lay My Burdens Down,” and Korean-American theologian Andrew Sung Park, in his book “The Wounded Heart of God,” suggest that the answer may be what Poussaint and Alexander call “post-traumatic slavery syndrome,” or what Park calls “han.” They both refer to what many people call generational curses, or, to put it more scientifically, genetically transmitted predispositions to certain illnesses caused by unresolved issues associated with and/or derived from histories of racism, oppression, abuse and violence. Think I might be going off the deep end here? You might be right; but before you jump to any conclusions, join me each Sunday morning, beginning April 23rd at 8:00 a.m., to talk about it.

Today is January, 16th. Its a national holiday, not holy day, but holiday. It is, in the ideal anyway, that day we as a nation pause to remember and celebrate the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On days like this, I am often tempted to try and figure out, given the world’s current chaos, what Martin would be doing or saying if he were here with us right now. But in reality, I have a hard enough time trying to figure out what I’m doing from day to day; what makes me think I could ever know what another person, long gone from among us, would do or say in similar straights?

I do know, however, because Martin King was a preacher, that Martin would look at our world through biblical and theological lenses, tinted by the African American experience, tempered by a communal consciousness that did not separate economic, political and social fact from the faith that formed and informed him, and speak truth to both the people and to power. I know no better way to honor him than for us to continue that tradition.

In the book of the prophet Habakkuk, chapter 2, verses 2-3, the scriptures say:

“Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end – it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

Martin’s vision of the promised land was a vision deeply rooted in the American dream, a vision of a land where people were judged not by the color of the skin, but by the content of their character; where all God’s children were free to pursue life, liberty and happiness. We are not there yet; but we dare not stop believing that we can get there.
“For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end – it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

It started about 7 p.m. last night in my neighborhood. The wind, the rain, the thunder and lightning, the power outage, the fear and the praying. This one was named Katrina. It devastated the Gulf Coast and is now moving in a northeasterly direction, leaving death and destruction in its wake.

There have been others storms, and there will certainly be more.

Are these natural disasters “acts of God,” (as the insurance companies often claim) or do they simply reflect our extremely poor stewardship of the earth and its resources; especially America’s extremely poor response to global warming.

A National Geographic News Article (August 4, 2005)recently shared that “. . . a new study in the journal Nature found that hurricanes and typhoons have become stronger and longer-lasting over the past 30 years. These upswings correlate with a rise in sea surface temperatures. The duration and strength of hurricanes have increased by about 50 percent over the last three decades, according to study author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.”

I think the burden is on us. The Scriptures say “the earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1).” All too often, we live like it belongs to us.