Jesus and the Disinherited - January 20
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 31; PM Psalm 35; Isa. 45:18-25; Eph. 6:1-9; Mark 4:35-41
Today’s Reflection
On Thursday evenings this winter and spring, a small group of us are gathering on Zoom or discuss books by some of the great theologians and thinkers of today and the recent past. The book we are starting with in 2023 is a brief but but very important book, Jesus and the Disinherited, by theologian and mystic Howard Thurman. Civil rights movement leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was very influenced and inspired by Thurman’s theological outlook, and considered this particular book so important that he carried a copy of it with him wherever he went as traveled the United States campaigning for equal rights for people of all colors.
In our first discussion of the beginning of Jesus and the Disinherited last week, we reflected on memories Thurman shares of his grandmother. Thurman, who was born and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida (also my hometown), would spend much time with his grandmother and was assigned the special task of reading books and letters to her as she could neither read nor write as she grew up in slavery in rural, inland Florida. Thurman recalls being impressed by his grandmother’s recall of scriptures and how she always had a clear idea of what she wanted him to read—but also what she did not want him to read. She loved to hear the Psalms and the Gospels, but she expressly did not want to hear anything from Paul’s letters save occasionally wanting to hear the love passage (1 Corinthians 13).
You may wonder why Thurman’s grandmother was so against hearing her grandson read to her from Paul’s letters. Today’s passage from Ephesians 6 is one of the reasons why:
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free” (vv. 5-8).
In the plantation chapel where Thurman’s grandmother worshipped, a white minister would be sent in to preach to the enslaved people there several times a year, and this passage is one of the ones he would always give a sermon on. They were not allowed to have an African American preacher of their own choosing. Because these white preachers would always come in and selectively used these and similar verses from Paul’s letters to keep them in their places of forced servitude to their white enslavers, Thurman’s grandmother vowed that if she ever gained her freedom that she would never voluntarily hear these letters of Paul that were weaponized against her and others to keep them in slavery.
Verses 5-8 are part of a larger passage in which Paul writes about various ways in which human beings are in relationships with others: those who hold authority over us, and those over whom we have authority. In verses 1-4, Paul writes about the relationship between parents and children. Then in verses 5-9, Paul writes of enslaved people and those who enslaved them. When these preachers were brought in by the slaveholders to deliver sermons, they inevitably focused on verses 5-8 and left out verse 9, which delineates the reciprocal expectations placed on them: “And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.”
It’s crucial that we keep in mind that Paul was writing his letters, including this one to the Ephesians, in the context of the Roman Empire, a highly stratified culture of citizens and non-citizens, free people and enslaved people. Slavery was taken for granted in Paul’s time and place as part of the cultural context. Should he have questioned it and campaigned against it? Absolutely. But, unfortunately, Paul did not—rather, as in this letter, he admonishes people how to live within the cultural context within which they found themselves, rather than using his influence to change it. Paul, in not questioning slavery and not working against it, was complicit in it—as were people of faith in Thurman’s grandmother’s time who weaponized scriptures like Ephesians 6: 5-8 to keep millions of people of color enslaved for generations.
If we read on in Ephesians 6, we find other words from Paul that seem more in line with Jesus being on the side of the disinherited, the marginalized, the enslaved:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (10-13).
As Thurman argues throughout Jesus and the Disinherited, Jesus was not only on the side of the disinherited, but as a poor Jew living as a minority in the Roman Empire, Jesus was himself one of the disinherited. God, in being incarnate as the Jesus who grew up in a poor Jewish family in Nazareth, made a very deliberate choice. The very human life taken on by the Son of God was as a person on the margins of society. Jesus knew what it was like to be poor, to be meek, to be subject to the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness. And in this, anyone who has ever felt powerless and discriminated against can know, without a doubt—in spite of the ways scripture has been misused to keep people down—that God is always on their side. Thanks be to God.
Becky+
Questions for Reflection
I wonder if you have ever observed people using scriptures to keep people quiet or unfairly subject to the power of others, whether in terms of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, or sexual orientation. Reflect on the ways we can, instead, use scriptures to lift up vulnerable people and inspire equality in how we as individuals, as a church, and as a society treat one another.
Daily Challenge
If you’d like to join our Thinking & Theology on Thursdays discussion group, email becky@ssechurch.org for our reading schedule and the Zoom link.