Formation. Re-Formation. Slay.

Psalm 51: 1-17 and Isaiah 58:1-12

Last year for Lent, I gave up white supremacy, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and all the hegemonic idols that never had any intention of allowing me or the Others to live. This year I’m thinking about the excesses, that we might think of as loss, but have the capacity to compose/formulate meaning in the world. Formation. Clean hearts? Yes. Clean from self hatred, others hatred, doubt, and all the ways that black-femme loathing for profit/prophet manifests itself in me and in the world… I pray that prayer every single day… “Create in me a clean O God, and renew in me a right spirit.” Yes. (yaaass.) Formation and re-formation.

But the excess that goes missing in the cracks, that slip through after the sharp beat… the sharp tongue, the death that is performed by black lives, the meaning that is seemingly absent but present is demanding a witness to its testimony. The loss…the ghosted history from the dead bloated bodies, destroyed city, drained swimming pools. Excess… hot sauce, crawfish, cheddar bay biscuits, children playing, undulating excessive fleshiness-blonde weave-Afros-string stretched hair-Afro.Creole.French.Spanish.Afro.Negro-Texas Bama-chocolate of every shade. Every shade. Excess. Even if you don’t understand every lyric from Beyonce’ Knowles’ latest single that broke the Internet on Saturday, the stunning visuals and phrases throughout the video indicate meaning that are beyond the simplicity of the words themselves. The accent, the inflections tell a bigger story about New Orleans, the south, black women-ness, gender, gender identity and all the shades of blackness that all have a slippage that sometimes goes missing but is always excessive in the ways/methods they show up. In In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Fred Moten asks the question: “where do words go?[…] [there is] a difference between words and sounds; […] words are somehow constrained by their implicit reduction to the meaning they carry […] a missing accent or affect; the impossibility of a slur or crack and the excess – rather than loss – of meaning they (words) imply (p.42).” Slay. Slain.

It was no mistake that Beyoncé released this video the weekend of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland’s birthdays, Mardi Gras, the Superbowl, and for us Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent. It was also no mistake that she was paying homage to the King of Pop, the 50^th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, Afros, Malcolm X – both very black and global citizen in her half time appearance at the Superbowl. In the current movement/moment of Black Lives Matter, it is important to realize the disparate parts of blackness that her performance brings together… past, present and future. The precarity of black life is not new… it is always at risk of being stolen, ghosted, killed, oppressed, drowned and burned (shot) to the ground. Slay. Slain.

 

Bringing these insufficient words to the Lent/Ash Wednesday text, the performativity of disparate parts that slip through the cracks into excess find themselves in Isaiah. I won’t go deep into that Isaiah was concern with hypocrisy and boastful fasting (which Beyoncé directly addresses with the lyric “y’all n-words corny with that Illuminati mess.” And so does Isaiah 58:5 “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” Seriously, church people, let that go. There’s not a “there” there. Stop it.) The beauty of the video and the Isaiah text talks about fasting (go with me metaphorically here). Fasting that is absence is also excess. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58: 6-7)” Absence of oppression, injustice, and bondage. Excess of food for the hungry, a home – a sense of belonging for the homeless, clothing for the naked. These things fall through the cracks when we worry about being respectable. The yoke of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, ableism etc kill us. They slay us. Slain.

I don’t know that I agree with Bey that “the best revenge is your paper,” but I do think that the voice that protests, the light that breaks forth like the dawn (Isaiah 58: 8), is the healing for which we are seeking this Lent. The healing is the self-redemptive, restorative love for which we are looking. The healing is the hot sauce, the cheddar bay biscuits, all the colors of black, brown and beige, and even the loveliness of fleshy gloriousness. They are the food of self-affirmation, love and value in the world that we’ve been waiting to see. The shelter of beautiful people, the beautiful dance, the beautiful skins, the beautiful people slain in the spirit, the beautiful culture that make up the far-wideness of blackness that slays and is living in this excess of meaning. Formation. Re-formation. And I slay, you slay, we slay.

 

— Cecilia Olusola Tribble is an arts and cultural educator, consultant and critic, with a M.T.S. from Vanderbilt Divinity School and a M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.

Transformed Perspectives on Choosing our Leaders

I Samuel 8

As the campaign season gets in full swing in our nation, the people of God need transformed perspectives on choosing our leaders. A flurry of Republicans and Democrats are announcing their desire to seek the office of President of the United States in the 2016 national elections. A similar campaign process is now underway in some church bodies, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) , and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (A.M.E. Zion). These denominations will elect and consecrate Episcopal leaders in their General Conferences of 2016 to govern the affairs of their respective communions.

Those who understand the crucial importance of choosing the right leadership for the swirl of complex issues that must be addressed in church and society will get informed and actively engaged in the electoral process. On the national scene, we must be concerned about the role of the media[1] and of money by anonymous donors who give huge sums of money to the candidates who will push their own agendas. We must be concerned about corporate interests who “educate” legislators on laws that they have written to benefit their businesses behind closed doors.[2] The election process must be more than a popularity contest. What are candidates’ stances on the most pressing issues that impact people’s lives? What is their vision? What do they bring to the table? How will they lead?

In I Samuel 8, one of the lectionary readings for the second Sunday in Pentecost, we see the complicated relationship between God’s will and human freedom. Israel is faced with choosing a new leader. The elders of Israel were not satisfied with the current political, religious, and moral situation. They said to Samuel, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” (I Samuel 8: 5) Samuel takes the matter to the Lord in prayer. Through prayer, he gains a transformed perspective as “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you: for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over me.'” (I Sam 8: 7) Further, God instructs Samuel to show the people the consequences of the leadership choice that they are proposing. In I Sam 8:11-18 Samuel emphasizes how much the kings will take from them six times. He ends by telling them that the people whom God has set free are now voluntarily proposing to give up their freedom to a king who will use them as he sees fit. After “they make their bed, they must lie in it” because the Lord will not rescue them from the leader that they have chosen (vv 17-18).

Of this failure to understand the wide ranging consequences of choosing leaders Song Bok Jon writes:

How often do our leaders claim to speak in the voice of the people and yet pursue those means that reinforce privilege? Whether we are in positions of leadership or stand in need of leadership, we must learn to question, “Who stands to gain or retain power by this action?” Even discerning democracies vote in self interest. Hence we may need to question also the voice of the populace. How do we discern the right path of our nation? To what ends? By what means? When and how then do we call upon God to lead us? [3]

In this season of Pentecost, let the people of God call upon the Spirit of Christ for discernment as we choose our leaders in the church as well as in society. Rather than voting for our friends and those that are popular, we must seek God for a renewed mind to discern “the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.” We must ask critical questions about who stands to gain by our choices. Will the leaders that we elect be servants whose leadership benefits church and society or leaders who are simply “takers?”

Rev. Dr. Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr.

Presiding Elder, Atlanta District, A.M.E. Zion Church

Associate Professor of Ministry, Columbia Theological Seminary

Candidate for Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 2016

[1] Fox News is one conservative media outlet which has been called out by President Obama and others as a news outlet whose function is to propagate the views of social conservatives. Media matters for America is a web-based, not for profit, 501 (c) (3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative information. See http://mediamatters.org/about (accessed June 6, 2015)

[2] I have in mind the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, exposed in this June 2, 2015 article by Brendan Keefe and Michael King, WXIA-TV, Atlanta: http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/investigations/2015/05/21/investigators-legislators-and-corporate-lobbyists-meet-in-secret-at-georgia-resort/27695105/ (accessed June 6, 2015).

[3][3] Song Bok Jon, “Proper 5 [10],” in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B, ed. by Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 277

Pedagogical Power of the Holy Spirit

(Acts 1: 1-11)

Last night, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing my double bass professor from college, John Chiego, play with the Nashville Symphony. After the concert – we got to catch up as much as 10 minutes would allow. I had to thank him for not only dealing with 18-year old – early 20s me (God bless all the folks who had that task!), but for being the kind of teacher who had a reputation of excellence, and a reputation for advocating for his students. Especially as a young, head strong, whirlwind of a hot 18 year old woman of color, I am incredibly blessed to have had a teacher whose presence throughout the campus literally saved me from racial and gender (and all the ways they intersect) discrimination and from sexual predators in the form of creepy grad students and other professors. It also meant that from the time I was 18 years old, I became a working artist. His name opened doors of opportunity for me. When I consider the stories of other women students and students of color from my school —  my story, my experience in college and the after life of college could have been so different. Being in the bass studio at the University of Memphis meant that I had a covering of protection, and a witness that I was excellent and a force to be reckoned with.

Looking to the scriptures in Acts, the scene opens with the outline of Jesus having been raised from the dead, continuing his work, and teaching the disciples. What should never escape us about Jesus being raised from the dead and then ascending to heaven is that the divine life and humanity are inexplicably linked. Before I go too far into the interconnectedness of humanity and divinity, I want to focus on Jesus as a mentor, a teacher. Jesus was teaching us, and teaching us how to love, care, and teach others. The verse in the passage that strikes me is Jesus’ assurance of the power from the Holy Spirit and the continued teaching presence of the Holy Spirit, even in the immanent absence of Jesus: “[…] you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” I imagine Jesus’ pedagogical relationship with the disciples as being similar to my relationship with John – which is deeply personal. Teaching in this way is an investment in their lives; it is sometimes taking the instrument out of the student’s hands and demonstrating it. Teaching in this way means arguments, penciling in finger markings, taped up fingers, bandages on wrists, tears, joy, laughter, encouragement, and pushing to a greater level. Jesus was teaching them about the kin(g)dom of heaven. I don’t mean heaven in the way that many Christians are obsessed with heaven, or rather avoidance of dying and going to hell. All we have to do is see, hear, touch, and experience hell here and now. People live in hell here and now. But what Jesus’ teaching about the kin(g)dom of heaven and ascension does is inspire us to bring the reign of God’s righteousness on earth. Jesus ascends, and the disciples… rather, we go to work here and now. The audition or concert is not too far off, but the work in the practice room happens now. The work of our hands and feet are inextricably linked to transcending to that next level.

To add onto Dr. Tribble’s last blog about mentoring youth and students as a path for transformational leadership, teaching in the way that Jesus taught his studio of disciples is the way we create transformational leaders in the now and in the future. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has life because of the power and force of young people. #BlackLivesMatter started with a simple message from online activists: “Stop killing us.” These folks know the teachings of King, Ghandi, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Carmichael, Muhammed and Jesus. Even as the some of the older generation of folks critique, it is clear to me that these young people (even as I’m not that much older – but still older), have been taught. And though they have the power of the Holy Spirit, they still need teachers who will take the instrument and show them. These young folks need us—folks older than they to wipe their tears, tape and bandage them up and advocate for them, rather than demonizing them in the media. Our witness of protecting our young folks from the hegemonic power that seeks their destruction is a poor one. Even as the youth of #BlackLivesMatter have the power of the Holy Spirit and a just, impactful, innovative and beautiful witness – our youth and younger adults need us. They need us to be the presence of love, protection, knowledge, and wisdom that shields them from predators and offers them opportunity for a hopeful future. They need us to dig in, put some hours in … because the work we put in now, makes manifest the kin(g)dom of God.

For now… I’ll leave you with one of the pieces performed before last night’s reunion — the beautiful, breath taking, forceful, playful and at times ethereal Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique played by the Chicago Symphony. 

Cecilia Olusola Tribble is an artistic and worship consultant, and cultural and arts educator with a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University Divinity School and a Master of Arts in Performance Studies from New York University.

The Reality of Resurrection Morning

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” Acts 10:39

Hundreds of kodaks clicked all morning at the scene of the lynching. People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse dangling from the end of a rope… Picture cards photographers installed a portable printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling the postcard showing a photograph of the lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a number of the country schools the day’s routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from viewing the lynched man.[1]

The Easter text that I have chosen to reflect on, Acts 10: 34-43, contains a striking description of Jesus of Nazareth. This was the apparent defeat, failure, and end of a religious leader who changed the world through his life-giving ministry: “they put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” James H. Cone, the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary and the Father of Black Liberation Theology has written a remarkable book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Cone asserts that “[u]ntil we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”[2] Though the lynching era in America (1880-1940)[3] is past (though indelibly sketched in the memories of older African Americans like Dr. Cone), the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy continues in new forms of institutionalized racism today.

The Department of Justice investigation of the Ferguson Missouri police department (FPD) lays bare one glaring example of institutionalized racism in America. The DOJ asserts: “African Americans experience disparate impact in every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Despite making up 67% of the population, African Americans accounted for 85% of FPD’s traffic stops, 90% of FPD’s citations, and 93% of FPD’s arrests from 2012 t0 2014.” [4] It is still mindboggling to me that, even after carefully documenting patterns of unconstitutional stops, arrests, and excessive force in violation of African American constitutional rights, the DOJ still asserts that there were no civil rights violations related to the killing of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown. Despite the fact that the nation’s highest law enforcement officer is a black man appointed by the twice elected first African American president, the wave of protests across America bear witness to the sobering reality that justice is too often delayed or denied for black and brown citizens, particularly those who are poor.

What has this prologue about lynching and institutionalized forms of racism have to do with our theme of Christ centered transformation as we enter the season of Eastertide? As I began to wrestle with the challenges of liberation theologians in seminary, I asked “who are the agents of liberation?” Though there are certainly activists in social movements who are not followers of Jesus of Nazareth, I see the paradox of the crucified and resurrected Christ as the key to personal and social transformation. For me, authentic Christian discipleship develops the essential character to endure suffering and the strength to love. Only supreme love can defeat the cycle of hatred, evil, and aggression in this world. The continued challenges of leadership do not yield to easy answers or allow us to rest on “flowery beds of ease.” Those who choose to bear the cross of Christian leadership must cling to the hope of resurrection as foundation for enduring the suffering and persecution that inevitably comes with protesting state sanctioned violence in all of its forms today. Faith in the resurrection of Christ and of those who trust in Him is expressed in the conviction that evil does not have the last word and that ultimately truth crushed to the earth will not be defeated.

Faith is challenged by prolonged suffering, which gives rise to doubt. The eminent black sociologist, W.E.B. Dubois, provides an example of the paradox of faith and doubt. Dubois, usually considered an agnostic, offers this reflection on the hope of Easter:

The winter of despair has long lain upon our souls […] Now all has changed. This is the Resurrection Morning. [my bold for emphasis] […] This alone is real. These other things that fill and, alas! Must fill our pages – murder, meanness, the hurting of little children, the dishonoring of womanhood, the starving of souls – all these are but substantial smoke and shadow that hide the real things. This reality is ever there, howsoever dark the darkness that blackens and hides it.[5]

The reality of the Resurrection Morning, the foundation upon which the Christian faith rests, compels Christian leaders to willingly go through darkness of many kinds to be agents of change – participating in God’s work of transforming the world in the direction of the Kingdom of God. We must never forget that our big brother, Jesus of Nazareth, was lynched by the state (Roman Empire) for doing good in the world. In that moment, He cried out, “Father, why have you abandoned me?” Americans of all races must also never forget that black men, women, and children were executed in the public and humiliating spectacle of lynching. They too felt the pains of abandonment as they cried out to God for deliverance. The present darkness of personal suffering and social suffering through state sanctioned killing of unarmed citizens who committed the crime of simply being “a black man walking”[6] are but “smoke and shadow” to God, who is Ultimate Reality. Those who bear the cross of public leadership stand on the shoulders of ancestors who saw a transcendent light in darkness and who felt the immanence of Jesus. We can be sustained through suffering and doubt because of our hope in the reality of Resurrection Morning.

— Rev. Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr., Ph.D. is the Associate Professor of Ministry at Columbia Theological Seminary and Presiding Elder in the Atlanta District for the A.M.E. Zion Church.

[1] The Crisis 10, no. 2, June 1915, on the lynching of Thomas Brooks in Fayette County, Tennessee

[2] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011), xv.

[3] Ibid., 3.

[4] United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, March 4, 2015, 62

[5] W.E.B. Dubois, “Easter,” Crisis 3 no. 6 (1912): p. 244

[6] It boggles my mind that black men are considered dangerous simply walking down the street or standing still in an elevator. The story of the lynching of Sam Hose, a black Georgian, contains the so-called justification that he was “a monster in human form” who killed his employer and raped his wife. This racist stereotype is internalized by blacks and whites alike. [For the story of the lynching of Same Hoses, see James Allen, Hilton Als, Congressman John Lewis, Leon F. Litwack. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. (Twin Palms Publishers, 2004). 8-10. ]

God is Present in God’s Ways

Psalm 25:1-10

I lift up my soul, I follow your ways, I love, I forgive, I serve, I treat my neighbor right, I suffer, and I wait. However, sometimes I feel like you are okay with me being embarrassed. God, I am walking in your ways, but my enemies leave me to suffer illness with no resources to seek a cure and receive treatment. God, I am trying to learn about your path, but sometimes I can’t see the path because my lights were cut off after Congress voted to not extend my unemployment benefits. I was praying for my son and I told him to take that train in San Francisco instead of driving, but the police officer’s bullet even found him there. God, I am trying to preach your word, but my enemies got up in my face again and told me that you don’t call no woman to preach! I’m looking for you Lord, where are you? I lift up my soul…I’m trying to walk in your ways.

Yes, I’ve made some wrong turns; I cussed, I hated, I schemed, I played, I lied, I preyed, I stole, I stepped on folk, messed over folk, cut up folk, cut folk out. I was impressed with my title, but not with you. But my enemies did these things to me too…Where are you, Lord? Yes, I got off of your path, but I know that you will cast my sins into the “sea of forgetfulness.” I lift up my soul!

In today’s world, there is tension between our faith, our experiences, and the political climate that impacts both. How can we survive when the political system seems to be against us, and it sometimes even seems like God has forgotten about us? Pastoral theologian Homer Ashby seems to feel that part of the problem with African Americans is that the interest in liberation comes at the expense and exclusion of survival. Furthermore, Ed Wimberly says, “without a clear sense of identity and destiny it is impossible to act with the necessary internal fortitude to engage in resistance and transformation.”[1] We have been unable to navigate seemingly hopeless situations in life because we have forgotten our identity and how to trust that which we cannot see.

I believe that the psalmist is seeking transformation from a spirit of frustration and hopelessness to a spirit of confidence and trust in God. Leaders in the church have to help people seek God’s ways, even when God seems distant in order to help them survive. The psalmist says that we can experience God’s truth and mercy if we walk in God’s way and keep God’s covenant. We pray for God to be present as we experience the struggles of life, but we have to move to a point in our faith where we know that God is already-always present. We cannot survive and thrive, while hoping and praying that God will show us the way to go. We must know that our identity is in God and our true destiny will be realized by walking in God’s ways.

Rev. Cherlyn W. Tribble is a preacher, pastor, poet, author, music minister and an environmental engineer. She is a recent Master of Divinity graduate of Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and is currently taking doctoral classes at Columbia Theological Seminary.

[1] Edward P. Wimberly, African American Pastoral Care and Counseling: The Politics of Oppression and Empowerment, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, OH: 2006).