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Thank you so much, president is Iria. Um It is my pleasure and delight to be here with you all this morning. Um I am very, very excited um and honored to be introducing um you

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all to our Thomas Wright Curry lecturer. Um She is a prolific and distinguished scholar and practitioner of womanist ethics and theology. Um The Reverend Doctor Emily Towns serves as distinguished professor of Womanist ethics and theology at

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Vanderbilt University since 2013, where she was appointed as the first African American to serve as Dean of the Divinity School, a role which she has held for 10 years now. OK. And now transitioning into

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teaching again, I could spend uh all morning really highlighting all the um extensive list of publications and her professional accomplishments, but I just want to highlight a few um because I am eager to uh learn from

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her and as, as much as you all are . So, um Doctor Townes is an ordained clergywoman with the American Baptist church. She is from Durham , North Carolina. She studied in the great city

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of Chicago, um where I hail from um where she studied her master of arts and Doctor of Ministry at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Um She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the joint

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program in religious and theological studies, um, a joint program between Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University . Um Previously, she was the Andrew W Mellon professor of African American Religion and theology at Yale Divinity

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School and the Carolyn Williams Beard Professor of Christian Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary. She was also the first African American woman elected to the Presidential line of the American Academy of Religion and served as president in

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2008. She was the first African American um and first woman to serve as Associate Dean for the Academic Affairs at Yale Divinity School. A first in many , many her publications um include um the Womanist ethics

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and cultural production of evil and um womanist ethics, womanist hope. Along with a much longer extensive list . Most recently, she co edited a volume of essays called Walking Through the Valley Womanist Explorations, In

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the Spirit of Katie Geneva Cannon, which was co edited with Stacy Floyd Thomas Alison guys Johnson and Angela Sims as the reverend Doctor Sarah Allen alluded to yesterday , I had heard much about Doctor Towns and um

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was very, very excited to meet her for the very first time in the flesh yesterday. Um And even though I had not met her before, I have very much been mentored and guided by those that

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she has nurtured and challenged with her scholarship. Um in my early years at Garrett Evangelical um Seminary, I learned from um Doctor Reggie Blunt and um Doctor Cheryl Anderson who taught um her books and that was

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the first time I was introduced to her writings um at Drew University. I learned from uh Doctor Lynn Westfield about um the hospitality of womanist ethics. Um And so I am just so excited um to uh

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to be here um presenting her this morning. Um And I uh truly um am honored and learned so much from my mentors of what it means to um to lift as you climb. And um so without

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further ado, I would like to turn it over to our speaker this morning. Um So that we may all delight in her wisdom. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um I always get nervous

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with those kinds of introductions because I can only go down from where uh we left off, but I , I hope to sustain us for a bit a bit this morning. Um The theme of my three

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lectures is premeditated, indifference, facing injustice with the power of hope. Um And the first, the , the, each one of the lectures has a , a subtitle and this one is what in the

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world? Or if you were listening and talking or listening or talking, there was a song playing while you were gathering um by Quincy Jones called stuff like that. Um And so that sets the tone for

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this lecture. The other two lectures have their own selections a little more on the traditional churchy side. Uh But with a bounce. So given that um I think it's apropos that for this first lecture first

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, I say thank you for the invitation and the introduction and the hospitality wherever Dean Amer, oh, Dean Amer. Uh I have been well cared for so it's great. So before I get into this

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, I need to say thank you. Uh I think it apropos. Uh what in the world? I would find a musical counterpart with a simple question that says in its refrain. What makes you feel

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like doing stuff like that? Indeed? What makes us feel like and then do the stuff of premeditated indifference by using the phrase premeditated indifference. I am signaling my ethicist curiosity about when we know that there

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is something amiss or even radically wrong in our world . We continue to do those things that only keep the mess of existence in place rather than turn to the radical power of the gospel of salvation that frees

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us from our miasma of hopelessness. This behavior is what I call premeditated indifference. Now, this kind of beginning may have you bracing for three lectures of Doom and gloom. I am an ethicist and I

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will claim that that's part of what I do, but it's not all um but take heart such will not be the case as an ethicist, a Christian ethicist, a womanist, Christian ethicist. I am

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bound to be candid about the troubles of our world . But I was also born and nurtured in the bone deep marrow of hope, salvation. And I deeply believe that there will be joy on this side

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of the Jordan one day. But for now, I turn to the question, what makes us feel like doing stuff like that to help orient us on a journey that I know leads to hope and that

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hope leads to joy, unspeakable. Bear with me . Then as I try to get us there over these three lectures, and I invite you to be lively participants in the road on the road with me

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. As I focus on the dangers of building maintaining and living in a polarized society, a polarized church to help ground our time together. Let's talk and explore and see what we might do to take on

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premeditated indifference with an anecdote of hope, sometimes fierce and abiding hope. Hope that studies our nerves and increases our will to do the work of building a truly liberating and loving society that is grounded in justice

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in our worlds. For this is the work that our souls must have. I've got to admit that the stuff we do is neither pretty or nice and most of the time it is inexcusable. Although we

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do find excuses for why we do not engage each other in creation with care, compassion, respect, and love. The list is well worn. I didn't know, I didn't think I didn't feel it

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wasn't my business. They should have known better. Why do they have to talk about it? Can't we just all learn to get along? I believe I should mind my own business. They deserve it

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. I didn't think it mattered. And the list goes on. What strikes me about this list is the profound disconnect. It has from the gospel message that many if not most of us in this gathering

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space were taught from birth. Jesus loves me. This I know or rise and shine and give God the glory, glory or Jesus loves the little Children . Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam or this little

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light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine or he's got the whole world in his hand. Yes , these children's Bible songs tend toward being rather inward looking. But if you listen closely, they are

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outward looking as well. They all with all these songs, the blessings come in community, the hope comes in looking at the world around you and opening your mind and heart and so wide because we cannot

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do justice to the notion of hope until we tell the truths of our living with one another. For there is something profoundly holy in these children's Bible messages that we too often skip over when we are captured

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by a faith place that fails to look up and out into the world. As we also do the deep inner work of reflection and pushing ourselves to tackle the ISMs within us. For this morning, I

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want to point us to the power of lament that can help us slow down if not avoid living our lives. And perhaps even our faith in unexamined and often unrecognized, premeditated, indifference for genuine limit as

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we shall see means telling the truth of what is happening, not only to us but to others as well. Now, one of my favorite books of the Bible is Psalms. The title Psalms and Salter

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, come from the Septuagint, the Pre Christian Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, where they were originally referred to strained instruments such as harp lyre and lute . Then it came to mean songs sung with the

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accompaniment of stringed instruments. The traditional title Praises, although is praises, although many of the Psalms are prayers, whatever their form, what captures me are the profound laments I read and sit with them.

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The power of lament of telling the truth as much as of as much of it as you can is a powerful act of faith lament is when we name the realities of our situations with as much accuracy and

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precision as we can. As biblical scholar, Klaus Wes Westerman notes the right of lament is the best known worship, observance of Ancient Israel for us today . Whether communal or individual lament is a powerful cry

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of distress, a rending of the heart in which we name the realities of our situation with as much accuracy and precision as we can in the Hebrew Bible , communal lament is used by and or on behalf

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of a community to express complaint, sorrow and grief over impending doom that could be physical or cultural. It could also be a tragedy or a series of calamities that have already happened. This rending of the

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heart. As Westerman goes on to note, belongs to the events of Deliverance. Now, as Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Bruggeman notes, laments are what he calls formal as they can help us see what

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is before us, that and and it can be managed if not transformed as the writer of Joel shows so well, we must do this communally and seek faithful ways to work, to engage the challenge.

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And yes, the many forms of violence in our lives and in the lives of others, communal lament can help us best get at these complexities of issues . Lament enables us and even requires of us to

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acknowledge and explore our suffering. We allow the beat and beating heart to guide us in these laments. Lament also means listening to those who are the victims of violence in our world because it may be possible

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that in listening to their voices, we can find the biblical sustenance to overcome violence and allow love to guide us into the new heaven and new earth. Today. This I believe is one way to get

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to all sorts of justice and then we just might be able to move on to that holy grail of reconciliation in reading through the book of Psalms. I am struck by the power of lament in Psalm 22

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. So if you have your Bibles with you, you can turn to Psalm 22. Um and I will not read the entire song. Fear not in reading through the book of Psalms and Psalm 22 the

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Psalmist is in trouble, big trouble. The song of praise that ends. This passage comes after the Psalmist ask why God has forsaken them. The Psalmist is a worm scorn, despise. Mock folk are

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shaking their heads. The Psalmist bones are out of joint. The heart is like wax melted in the breast, the mouth is dry, the tongue sticks to the jaws, dogs all around evildoers, encircling

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, shriveled hands and feet. People gloating folks are dividing the Psalmist clothes, casting lots and this isn't the whole list like so many of the laments in the book of Psalms. The Psalmist does not start

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out happy. They were full lament. The psalmist is being more than whiny and cranky. The psalmist is suffering the answer to the question why this suffering is painful to read because it reminds me of those

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moments of godforsaken when I cannot understand or make sense of why innocence dies so needlessly in their school rooms of why we can be so inhumane to one another . Be it anti-semitism or islamophobia or classism or hetero

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sexism or racism or sexism or trans, trans and all the ISMs we've got running around all around us . God forsaken us when we live in a society that produces misery and suffering in relentlessly systematic and structured

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ways because we have become too comfortable with the rhetoric of polarization that creates endless numbers of them versus us . And the US must win always God forsaken us as we face the challenge of mending, the tears

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, tears in our relationships with one another and the ways in which our personal faith is being tested with war upon war and the deaths and sufferings they always bring. And we are facing the ever increasing poli

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possibility of our next world war. Senseless gun violence . Denver, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, Houston, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh , Nashville. And far too many more policing that

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does not always protect and serve Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Brianna Taylor , Atiana Jefferson. And far too many more. God forsaken us when we battle our personal sorrows and

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sufferings when we look around us and cannot find an outstretched stretched hand of hope or solace. When we look into our innards and r realize that we are living in the Hollows of loneliness or an unrelenting hatred

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. And we cannot see a way out when our days seem filled with persecution. And God's absence is the only friend we have. We are in trouble because as we live into the Them versus us.

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Polarization. We are leaning our lives into a status quo built on despair, built on despair that we sometimes rationalize as being realistic about the ways in which the worlds and the people of it work. We

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can suffer from a kind of least common denominator sense of fairness and compassion that does not call us to live beyond our comfort zones or what we believe or have been taught to believe into a world that is

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vast as God continues to spin out creation in our lives, the kind of vast aloneness and despair that begins the verses from Psalm 22. My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Why

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are you so far from helping me from the words of my groaning, oh my God, I cry by day but you do not answer and by night but find no rest. This is so pure and

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precise in its anguish that I wince when I read it. But that's what biblical events do they name with as much precision as possible. What is wrong ? They tell the truth of the power of suffering

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that is smothering a person's or a people's hope, faith, their sense of tomorrow, their ability to dream and yes, to even see the lament as worthy of God's love and grace. However, this

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psalm and it covers a lot of ground. This psalm ends with praise you who fear the Lord, praise God, all you offspring of Jacob glorify God stand in awe of yahweh. All you offspring of

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Israel for God does not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted, did not hide their face from me. But heard when I cried to their creator from you comes my praise in the great congregation.

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My vows I will pay before those who fear God the poor shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek God shall praise the creator. May our hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth shall

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remember and turn to God and all the families of the nations shall worship before the holy one. This praise only comes after the psalmist has gotten real and has admitted that the suffering that is going on in

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the psalmist soul cannot be fixed by human made panacea or potions of, don't worry, be happy. Daines. This song of praise comes from someone who has let out a full tilt, lament of sorrow

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and suffering and turns to God in gratitude, not for the suffering but for God's salvation. This is not cheap trick salvation, friends for it's important to remember that Jesus recite psalm 22 for shortly before his

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death on the cross. It reminds us that even in the midst of agony and abandonment, God remains with us, God can and will deliver us. And it's a good thing to name the suffering and

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the salvation overcoming our polarization calls for a faith. It is far more than a checklist of I got it or I want it or I should have it . Faith is more than rubber stamping, getting what

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we want or being content with what we have. But I have to admit the Deliverance we read here and feel in this psalm is abrupt. If not jarring. If one is reading or reciting the whole

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Psalm, it goes from lament and threat from enemy circling to the psalmist, turning to the great congregation , the great Assembly, the worshiping community where the fear of affliction becomes the fear of God and lament

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then turns into praise. It ends with joy and blessing, not only for the Psalmist but for the wider community. And the blessings are just a flowing , the poor are satisfied. Those who seek God

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will praise God and this is God's doing because God listens in response to the pleas for help. God comes to the stigmatized and cast off the despised and rejected. The writer Ann Lamont has said, hope

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begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work. You don't give up the Psalmist

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waits, watches works and perseveres. And as we enter the Psalm this morning, we can hear the praise that comes from transformation. We hear the thanksgiving that often comes with salvation and we should hold fast

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to knowing that this Psalm is not only about one person. The Psalmist draws in the community and beyond and all the nations, all the families of nations worship before God and the circle of praise keeps spreading

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beyond time itself. For those who are dead, are praising God as well. And those who are yet to be born are joining in with the psalmist saying God has done it. God has done it

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. The psalmist teaches us about hope in our chaotic and often deadly times by crying out to God in the midst of our woes with petitions for relief in the form of the honesty of genuine lament with robust

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lament. We can find joy, confidence and praise despite a them versus us mentality that keeps us from seeing the fullness of our various humanities and enables us to cherish the holiness of our lives, even the

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ones we disagree with or have been taught to fear . But this hope is not a guarantee and it certainly isn't some dubious promise of fire insurance or a misdirected glory train for. We are living in the

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tough times of an increasingly polarized world of our making and our consent and we must fight hard against the ways in which the overwhelming events of our day breeds indifference in us because frankly, it is too much

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, often times. But the psalmist reminds us that we must face the myriad challenges before us and refuse to give up or give in to settle or shrug our weary shoulders and pray to God that somebody,

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someone will save us. We must face the tough times with fresh energy and urgency with a vigor that reminds us that we must stand on the front lines of hope. A hope that is determined to face

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into the challenges of justice. A hope that is neither sentimental or vapid. A hope that is paired with love and faith. A hope that does not give up on God hope that does not give up

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on ourselves. A hope that refuses to leave us with a refuse of evil and suffering and sorrow and hatred and indifference and ignorance. As God's final words to us in our polarized world, a hope that

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says there is another way, a hope that believes that we can be healed. A hope that brings others along with it on the highway to salvation. A hope that it is always, always showing up

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the hope that may get weary, may get disgusted , may get impatient, may call folk out of their names. Sometimes I would never do that. But it is a hope that is forged out of

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the biblical call to dig deep into our innards and call ourselves out of ourselves as we name the mess . And then allows us to turn the praise genuine praise because we know just how bad it is and

00:29:33.500 - 00:29:52.340

can be when we try to do this world all by our human designs based on dehumanizing others and realize that we need the Holy standing with us as we go as the old black women who raised me used

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to say mm mm mm Got you. Some of y'all had versions of those old black women. So what makes us feel like doing stuff like that when we practice premeditated indifference by consistently turning from God and

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the tough work of breaking down the polarizing rhetoric and actions, rhetoric and actions that help us rationalize our failures with one another as normal. When we build up our fears into fortress walls to guard against the

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changes we see happening or not happening around us, you see premeditated, indifference does not require an elaborate game plan. Actually, all it needs to do its work in our lives and in our beliefs and

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actions is a baseline that thumps out the rhythm that bringing in a bit of God's kingdom is more than we can do. It depends on our inability to see ourselves in community and working in that community to

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make difference in, in to make a difference in the world. And sometimes that community is our religious households, the very place where we are taught to know better. Jesus wants me for a sun being

00:31:22.210 - 00:31:37.100

hope of the world for all the saints, holy , holy Holy Spirit. I have heard you calling . It is lament time, my friends, it is time to own up to the fact that we

00:31:37.110 - 00:31:52.380

can do something that we must do something however small and act or large an act that can help bring in a bit more compassion. A major portion of love, a bucket full of justice, not in

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a one time guest star appearance, but in the everydayness of our lives as faith filled individuals and in communities of right righteousness. We live in a time in which the bone deep hope I am urging us

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to take on for ourselves means that we must be theologically fabulous and get that up doing a standing ovation in creation by refusing to accept what is as the best there can be by shaping our worlds into models

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of praise and invitation. We are not being called to be the to poster Children of the status quo of despair. The psalmist is not urging us into declarations of an over RG solipsistic Matter horn. We

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are not encouraged to chant inept Kumbaya and Sashaying hallelujahs . We are not comforted by a weary drama of an outdated carousel of momentary ecstasies. Oh yes. Hope encourages us to step out in faith rather than

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reason and statistics to back up our steps and hope can disappoint but hope can also enable us to press onward. When we feel like giving up, it enables us to draw strength from the future to live

00:33:20.520 - 00:33:35.650

in a sometimes discouraging present. It reminds us that we will live into a radical ho hope by fits and starts, we will stumble and we will get it right and in turning and in getting it right

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, we continue to build on it rather than rest on our laurels. For the road to dismantling indifference is a journey, not an event or a destination . And the hope for moving beyond our polarization provides

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us the vision for a new future, a better future. As we continue on the journey, hope gives us the ability to recognize that no event in our lives, excuse me, whatever its character is

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, the final word in our living and we refuse to scale down our aspiration to someone else's definition of wholeness, particularly if they're the only ones benefiting from it. Hope gives us the wisdom to know that

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God has a divine hand in this. And with God's hand guiding our way, we tell the truth of what we have done and what we must do to build the household of God in our midst with

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hope we do not give up and we live our lives with praise notes, praise notes that recognize that in the midst of the darkest of our nights, there is new light in the dawn praise notes that

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sound out even when we feel like running away praise notes, when we are not sure if we can keep standing praise notes in the midst of joy and laughter, praise notes, using our hearts and souls

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, our mind and intellect. Praise notes, no matter how young you are or how old you are . Praise notes because you've got an inner downbeat that hits the first beat of every measure of our living

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. Only a hope that's grounded in a faith that rests within God can see us through this mess and end living as if indifference is our best move in response to the polarization that are tearing us apart,

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body, soul spirit, the dawn will come. We wait and watch and work and praise. We