True Colors Film Screening

Our friends at the True Colors Ministry of Highland Baptist Church are screening the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin this Sunday, February 5th.  If the Super Bowl just isn't your cup of tea, or you're simply looking for an interesting and stimulating activity on Sunday, this is definitely the place to be!  For more information, contact Maurice Bojangles-Blanchard at truecolorsministry@gmail.com. 

Sermon Podcast: "The Trouble with Forgiveness" (Matthew 18:21–35)

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11/01, Rev. Penwell preaches a gospel of forgiveness.

There are no easy answers.

Maybe that's the good news.



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"The Trouble with Forgiveness" by Rev. Derek Penwell

Talking the Talk

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:6-10).

I admit that this passage from Isaiah sounds a bit fanciful given the current state of our world. We’re much more apt more apt to take sides as the wolf and the lamb face off. We’re more comfortable with policy decisions that help us avoid the terrible truth that the leopard and the kid lie down together only when one feasts on the bones of the other. Our world is situated such that only dewy-eyed romantics and ungrounded idealists ever really believe that a little child will actually lead this unlikely menagerie—especially when we see the cold, hard facts.

And the fact of the matter is, when it comes to the wolf and the lamb actually living together, we main-line Protestants are often the least likely to share the same space in peace. Speaking about the relative lack of mixed-race congregations, Nancy T. Ammerman said, “Mainline folks, for all their talk about diversity, lag significantly behind.” The charge, of course, is that we who are the putative gatekeepers of the “true faith” are much better at talking the talk, than walking the walk.

Implied in that indictment against main-liners, however, is the notion that somehow talking the talk isn’t that important. But I would like to suggest that it is impossible finally to walk the walk, if nobody has told us where to go. Somebody has to hold forth a bold vision of what we believe life will look like under the reign of God when it is fully revealed. Somebody has to talk bigger than we are, or we’ll have nowhere to reach. Somebody has to dream about wolves and lambs and leopards and kids, or the world will begin to think that its animosity is normal, natural. Somebody has to talk about how God doesn’t think that the hostility that exists between the strong and the weak, between the haves and have-nots, between the powerful and powerless is either normal or natural.

And just because we haven’t gotten it right yet, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stand up and talk about what right is. Just because it sounds simple or naive to announce a rapprochement with between the lion and the ox, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold that in front of us as God’s view of reality. Just because bears still kill cows when they inhabit the same space, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t press on toward a vision in which they graze the same fields in peace.

We can, of course, never be excused from trying to get it right. Living with a vision requires no less. What we can be excused from is thinking that it’s somehow our responsibility to get it right. Because when the reign of God is finally realized, it won’t be because we made it happen. It will be because we left ourselves open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and to a vision of what God believes life is really like. Lord knows, somebody better keep talking that talk.

“On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the people; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious” (Isa. 11:10).

Where Is Our Allegiance Pledged?

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15b).

“I, the undersigned, by my signature do certify, swear, and affirm: That I am a native born, or fully and legally naturalized citizen of the United States of America. That I owe no allegance [sic] to any other country or ruler other than the United States of America. . . . That I will pledge my allegance to the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan . . .” (Application for membership: American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan).

We’ve just come through the July 4^th weekend, and it got me thinking. The United States is a nice enough place. There are a number of opportunities made available to us due to the simple reason that we happened to have been born on this soil, and for which we ought rightfully to give thanks. We take for granted many things that people in other parts of the world would die to have. But this great experiment in the ordering of public life we call “the United States” is not without its flaws; and these are significant. In fact some of these defects are so perplexing that, regardless of the political party in power, we have been unsuccessful in addressing them. There are some things that, despite our best efforts to date, defy our most capacious political efforts to remedy them. We live in a country, for example, that still commits violence in the name of peace and sees some children go to bed hungry, while others sleep with full bellies. We make our homes in a country in which healthcare is a commodity available not as a right but as a privilege, in which anyone who doesn’t claim to be heterosexual has to take a back seat on the cultural bus. We reside in a culture that accounts worth as principally tied to what one possesses, and love as an emotion of the heart, rather than a commitment of the will. In fact, regardless of the great work that has gone into addressing the problem of racism, there are still benighted individuals who believe that “separate” and “superior” are modifiers that ought rightfully be attached to human beings and their social arrangements.

Christians, on the other hand, are a people who envision another kingdom where our loyalties to another ruler compel us to tear down the walls that divide us from each other. We realize that short of the hand of God, some things are beyond our capacity to heal them on our own. If the church, the followers of the one who finally gave himself over to the hands of hate, cannot stand united against the many masks of hatred, there is no hope. If we cannot offer up to God our brokenness, including those who would seek to undo us, we are doomed already. Because—bad spelling, poor grammar and a complete misreading of what it means to be a child of God notwithstanding—the people who make up hate groups are also people for whom Jesus died; we must be in prayer even—perhaps most especially—for them.

We refuse to submit to the servants of the night. We pledge our allegiance to another ruler. “The kingdom of the world” belongs to him anyway—even though, apparently, some have failed to realize it.