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number three 123 strikes and I'm out. Yeah, this last lecture is called, there is a mom , a ministry with humanity. If you know this spiritual sing sing with me, there is a balm

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in Gilead guide to make the wounded hole. There is a bomb in Gili. I'd to hear the sin sick. So there is a bomb in Gili . I'd to make the wounded. Oh there is

00:01:26.110 - 00:02:00.580

a balm in Gilead a er to hear the same sick. So those echoes from the past continue to reverberate down the acoustical corridors of this institution. Even in this last lecture In these three lectures, I

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have not attempted to give three practical tricks to straighten out the crooked stick of racialized hierarchies and in humanities . But they have been, as I've said before , a kind of wrestling intellectual and theological existential spiritual

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wrestling with God as we look toward the future here in this country and in the world. And so this last lecture, there is a bomb, a ministry with humanity. In the previous lecture, lecture

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number two, I aim to lift up how the work of the spirit could be helpful in opening up new and fresh ways to think about racial and ethnic difference and begin to put us on a constructive path

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in the church when it comes to race. Talk Pentecost is God's future present promise for the church, even though Howard thurman reminds us that the christian institution has been powerless in the presence of the Color Bar

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in society. Rather, it has reflected the presence of the Color Bar within its own institutional life and has not responded to the genius of the gospel, which it proclaims. Rather, it has been a

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tragic witness to the gospel according to thurman. This has occurred because the Church is not wide open to the spirit of the living God. Openness to the spirit as I have been suggesting, should open us

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up to new ways of being thinking, doing in the world as it relates to the history of inhumanity . So what does this, the racialized history from lecture one and this new methodological musing via Pentecost?

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From lecture to what does this all mean for christian ministry? It means that we are called to do ministry with humanity. The first lectures focus on the history of inhumanity, revealed how throughout history, people

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were against humanity, or at least non white humanity . Black humanity in particular. That lecture presented a historical actuality. The second lecture attempted to show how the spirit is for humanity and all of its beautiful

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particular charity and diversity. It presented a new methodological possibility. This third and final lecture aims to encourage pastors and others in ministry to consider in light of this understanding of the spirit in the world, a

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ministry with humanity, even in the face of racialized hierarchies and ongoing racism in the world, I will have a particular focus on preaching at times, but use that lens to gesture towards ministry more broadly because

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of course there are forms of ministry other than preaching , and I say this as a family ethics professor . So when it comes to the literature on preaching and race, one may automatically jump to discourse on

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black preaching and other racially minorities preaching traditions by racialized scholars. These scholars are illuminating preaching traditions other than white preaching traditions as a way to offer distinctions from what has been considered normative. According to Andrew Wymer

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, These scholars have dubbed these racialized scholars have tugged at the masks of white preachers and Whitehall politicians, forcing at the very least partial exposures of their faces . But he goes on to say that those efforts

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have pretty much been disregarded, at least in normative scholarship. These minorities traditions have set themselves apart and affirmed and recognized the beauty and distinctions of their home political differences. There's a long tradition in home political

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scholarship centered on black preaching through the work of such individuals as William pipes, Henry Mitchell, Cleo Larue , Teresa fry Brown and kenyatta Gilbert and many others in latin. Next settings, the work of Cousteau

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and Katherine, Gonzalez and Pablo Jimenez bear much fruit . Hm politically and then within asian context, broadly the likes of Yoon ju kim has been a Trailblazer . These scholars reveal the context traits, power and

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impact of non white preaching traditions and how these preaching traditions have supported the surviving and thriving of those in their racialized communities. They aim to highlight minorities communities in writing because otherwise they would not be written into

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human existence as valuable, meaningful, real worthwhile preaching traditions, at least in the guild these scholars and others desire to be otherwise over against what has been the white norman homily ticks. They offer otherwise possibilities

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and courageously and insightful. We do so in his book How to preach a dangerous sermon frank thomas claims that preachers don't often preach about issues of race because they are explosive and can divide. Yet, he

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says, if we don't choose productive options and constructively confront issues of race and whiteness, the issues do not go away. Your very own professor Caroline Helsel has been very bold and courageous in her work and

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one of her books, preaching about racism as she speaks to white audiences and churches and offer strategies for preaching about racism. Caroline writes, If we are to recognize ourselves within the history and legacy of racism

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, we have to talk about how racism has impacted all people in society. She calls for conversation and respectful listening while boldly naming the sin of racism as idolatry, another book geared to toward white churches as

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will will Emmons who lynched Willie Earl preaching to confront racism in this memoir, like book about a lynching in his native state of south Carolina and a local preachers naming of it. Willimon argues that white should

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first name their whiteness as a way to claim being indoctrinated, interracial ized hierarchies. He, like Helsel believes naming racism as sin is, um, is a means to recognizing the need for redemption. Both

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of these scholars and pastors take on this tough topic of racism and preaching along with numerous minority scholars and pastors, we might refer to these three different approaches . Actually, I just gave a short brief summary

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as preaching about racism, preaching against racism or as well says to confront racism or race based preaching, meaning the minority sized preaching traditions. But I want to offer another possibility for this conversation through this new

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methodological lens of Pentecost. I've discussed my home political approaches is more in line with preaching through and beyond racism as others have noted race and racism as concepts developed much later than the canonizing of the bible.

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Though the differences between ethnic groups in scripture due to xenophobia and other matters resulting in violence are clearly demonstrated , Toni Morrison in her Harvard Norton lectures, published as the origin of others. I highly recommend that

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book says race is the classification of a species and we are the human race period. In light of this, I want to suggest another approach to racial difference, divisions and dehumanization, and how this might

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shape christian ministry as Willimon rights as christians. We must find a way to talk about difference, including racial difference, without granting our difference sovereignty. And so this is where I turned to the reverend Howard

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thurman, who I've mentioned several times throughout these lectures as someone who offers pastoral wisdom in this conversation, I would say that out of any black thinker theologian , Pastor thurman is the one who emphasizes spirit and

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the spirit the most perhaps for this exploration. It is no surprise then that he's a resource for this conversation about rheumatology and race. Thurman grew up in an insect arrogated Daytona beach florida. He went to

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Morehouse College with Daddy King martin Luther King Junior's father . He was an ordained baptist minister and named one of the 12 most important religious leaders in the United States in 1953. By life magazine, Ebony magazine

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called him one of the 50 most important figures in african american history. He advised such civil rights leaders as martin Luther King Jr James, farmer and Pauli Murray and served as dean of the chapels at Howard

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and boston University's as one of the was one on the cutting edge of boundary crossing ministry. He even co founded with a white minister, the church for the fellowship of all peoples in san Francisco California And

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intentionally interracial congregation that they began in the 1940s based on his life and ministry, Luther smith calls thurman a mystic prophet. But more than anything else, what is compelling about him to mean is that he

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was a human being. He loved the atlantic ocean . He found companionship with oak trees. He learned lessons from storms at sea. He loved nature and especially penguins. He was human before any adjectival category

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was placed on him. He was human. He ministered through racism and beyond it because of his understanding of God and God's people. His calling was to search for common ground, as I noted in the

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first lecture, and that ground was our humanity. As I said. Also, before I turn to the spirit is a turn to the human. We get a glimpse of thurman strivings and calling when he

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offers a memoriam for Dr King. At the time of his death, he said Dr King was killed in one sense because humankind is not quite human yet . May he live? Because all of us in

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America are closer to becoming human than ever before. We are not quite human yet, but becoming human . This was true then. And this is true . Now the violence of the past and present are

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in humanities and reveal that we are not quite human yet to be human is not an escape from one's own skin or colored blindness. As thurman told one of his professors, I can't escape my black skin

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, nor is it erasure of racial ethnic particularity and context. But it is the recognition that we are more than any adjectives, any difference, any category . When thurman was growing up, there was a

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little girl who went over to him and stuck him with a needle because she was told that blacks couldn't feel, and when he said out, she was shocked. She didn't think he was human. And

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this is thurman's definition of what it means to be human that he lays out in his book, luminous darkness. The burden of being black and the burden of being white is so heavy that it is rare

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in our society to experience oneself as a human being . It may be, I don't know that to experience oneself as a human being, is one with experiencing one's fellows as human beings, precisely what does

00:15:18.730 - 00:15:35.390

it mean to experience oneself as a human being in the first place? It means that the individual must have a sense of kinship to life that transcends and goes beyond the immediate kinship of family or the organic

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kinship that binds him ethnically or racially or nationally, he has to feel that he belongs to his total environment. He has a sense of being an essential part of the structural relationship that exists between him and

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all other people and between him and all other people and the total external environment as a human being. Then he belongs to life and the whole kingdom of life that includes all that lives and perhaps also all

00:16:07.410 - 00:16:26.240

that has ever lived. In other words, he sees himself as a part of a continuing breathing living existence. To be a human being, then is to be essentially alive in a living world. Thurman

00:16:26.240 - 00:16:42.410

goes further to say that being white or black becomes merely incidental compared to being a human being. I mean, he could be charged with promoting a color blind philosophy, which he is not, but makes

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this point by giving an example of how people come together at times of disaster. Then he says, people are human beings and not a certain race or ethnicity or sexuality at these, at those moments perhaps

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of tragedy, people ascribe to other human beings the same intrinsic worth as ascribed to the self. When thurman was a little boy on his way to Jacksonville to go to school during segregated days, he got

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into a bind at the Daytona Beach train station by not having money to send his packed trunk to his final destination. A stranger saw him crying and eventually paid to send his trunk with him to thurman.

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This man, this human restored his broken dream. That's a quote. And that person who is never named is the person to whom he dedicates his autobiography . Yeah. In these situations of trouble, we

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are human together, not racialised categories placed in a historical hierarchy. Ashen Crawley writes. The capacity to make the distinction seems grounded in the necessity for exclusionary practice. Crowley is talking about the theological enterprise with

00:18:15.570 - 00:18:34.580

labels like black, white woman, ist, liberation , queer etcetera. Perhaps these markings dehumanize these groups and theologies perhaps. And this is why I find thurman helpful. He reaches beyond the racial ization but

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does not E. Race. E. Hyphen R A. C. E. Does not erase and moves us towards humanization beyond racial ization. Thus, he's a wise guide for considering ministry with humanity.

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So first the ministry with humanity begins with the human jesus, with thurman stress on the human and his overall intellectual and pastoral project of reclaiming black humanity for all humanity. He begins his book, Jesus and

00:19:11.950 - 00:19:30.470

the disinherited with a chapter on jesus, the human jesus. He doesn't deny the metaphysical interpretations of jesus , but his emphasis with an eye on suffering people is jesus. The human one, jesus was a

00:19:30.470 - 00:19:45.950

jew of Palestine. Jesus was poor born into poverty , thus he was the son of man, the son of human, the human one, in solidarity with the masses of poor people around the world,

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Jesus, he says, was also a part of a minority group under the roman empire. He was a brown skinned brother from Bethlehem, that was power Aries, phrase, not thurman. Yeah, this

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situates jesus within the human condition, does not situate jesus within his divinity, but within his humanity, a christian ministry with humanity should take the humanity of jesus seriously. If we consider the incarnation when God

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think about it, when God wanted to minister to the world, God became human and the incarnation was made possible through the agency of the Holy Spirit. A turn to the spirit is a turn to the

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human, to touch us, to heal us, to save us. God worked through human flesh. As john writes, the word became flesh and lived among us. The divine word became human living as

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a human being. It's barbara brown Taylor writes, God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth and in his Lyman Beecher lectures published as the Holy Spirit in preaching James Forbes states the preaching event

00:21:02.430 - 00:21:19.900

itself, and I would add ministry itself is a living breathing flesh and blood expression of the theology of the Holy Spirit. Preaching Ministry Is a human flesh and blood calling rooted in the incarnation of God and

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Jesus Christ the human one. Secondly, the incarnation also pushes us toward a ministry with humanity that takes the human body seriously. I've talked a lot about bodies. Even from that first lecture, Lynn Westfield

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writes, the incarnation of jesus is proof of the importance of the body as a means of grace. We are in fleshed creatures whose bodies are temples of the spirit. Ministry might be about words and protestant

00:21:52.870 - 00:22:11.600

preachers, the word of God tradition, our logo centric, lots of talking, but ministry is also about actions in fleshed speech lived sermon ST Augustine believed that your life and on christian doctrine, he says

00:22:11.600 - 00:22:26.680

your life could be an eloquent speech. Ministry requires our whole selves, whole lives not just our minds , but our bodies, our hearts. How could it be any other way when we serve a God

00:22:26.680 - 00:22:45.080

who became a body in jesus, the body can be a site of theological knowledge. It should be affirmed as an epistemological resource and act as resistance to a hypertext. Oh, centrism words matter, but

00:22:45.080 - 00:23:00.740

they are to be incarnate. Word's a ministry with humanity reminds us that we are more than a head on a stack of books. It's also true that many people would agree with poet Edgar Guest, who

00:23:00.740 - 00:23:21.170

wrote, I'd rather see a sermon than here one any day now for preaching in particular, Tom Trogir Who's now retired from Yale Divinity School once defined home politics in the 1990s as theology process through the body

00:23:22.740 - 00:23:33.700

as noted through the spirit. The spirit utilizes the flesh, which means preaching in the spirit does not escape the body but inhabits it more fully. And even affirms bodies that have historically been dehumanized. Preaching

00:23:33.700 - 00:23:56.380

is not just sonic, but so Matic, right ? Bodies talk, bodies move, bodies. Worship bodies fall asleep during long sermons. I still remember when I was leaving the church, the International protestant

00:23:56.380 - 00:24:10.770

church observed my last sunday and this little boy who was nine years old made a beautiful artwork for me and he gave it to me. And it was pictures, it was it said it was pictures of

00:24:11.140 - 00:24:30.020

of the congregation. I'm in the pulpit and it says luke preaching to sleeping people. Yeah, I'm still wounded from that. But our bodies are always talking genuflecting in worship, kneeling, crossing. Think

00:24:30.020 - 00:24:42.070

about the woman with the alabaster jar of ointment in luke. Seven who stood behind, jesus at his feet, weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair and

00:24:42.070 - 00:25:00.130

continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment . She never says a word in that passage she preached with her mouth shut. Teresa fry Brown notes that nonverbal body talk assists in or impedes the preacher

00:25:00.130 - 00:25:17.300

in persuading the listeners. There cannot be nobody's in preaching. Is tom long wrote many years ago. There is a scandalous flashiness to preaching. And while sermons may be pure theology all the way through saturday

00:25:17.300 - 00:25:33.880

night on sunday morning, they are inescapably embodied and thus rhetorical. Ministry with humanity is a ministry with the body. One home politician remarked about his own experience on a sunday morning and said, I believe

00:25:33.880 - 00:25:51.860

my sermon fell flat that sunday morning at a pennsylvania college because I was not sufficiently there as a body responding in the flesh to the glory of a new morning. So how does your body talk in ministry

00:25:52.640 - 00:26:10.030

? What does it say? Your body is a human word before you even speak a word in Toni Morrison's beloved. There is an explicit and implicit, embodied message about the black body. Specifically an unchurched

00:26:10.260 - 00:26:26.590

preacher. Some of the best preachers have never been to seminary. Baby Suggs was her name, Baby Suggs, Holy! She preaches to a collective black body in the clearing in the woods, despite having

00:26:26.590 - 00:26:38.130

busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb, and tongue through the grind of slavery. She declares this from her heart Morrison tells us Here, she said, in this

00:26:38.130 - 00:26:55.690

here place we flesh, flesh, that weeps, laughs flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it! Love it hard yonder! They do not love your flesh, they despise it, they

00:26:55.690 - 00:27:06.180

don't love your eyes, they just as soon pick them out no more. Do they love the skin on your back yonder? They flay it! And all my people, they do not love your hands

00:27:06.300 - 00:27:22.350

. Those they only use tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them, raise them up, kiss them, touch the others with them, put them together, stroke

00:27:22.350 - 00:27:33.840

them on your face because they don't love that either . You got to love it, you and no , they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder ! Out there, they will see it broken and

00:27:33.840 - 00:27:44.290

break it again. What you say out of it , they will not heed what you scream from it . They do not hear what you put into it to nourish your body. They will snatch away and

00:27:44.290 - 00:27:57.480

give you leave ins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. I mean this is flesh I'm talking about here, flesh that needs to be loved feet that need to

00:27:57.480 - 00:28:12.690

rest and to dance backs that needs support, shoulders that need arms. Strong arms, I'm telling you . And o my people out yonder, hear me ! They do not love your neck. A new

00:28:12.690 - 00:28:29.280

stand straight, so love your neck. Put a hand on it, grace it stroke it and hold it up and all your inside parts that they soon just as soon slop for hogs, you got to

00:28:29.280 - 00:28:44.380

love them. The dark dark liver love it, love it. And the beat and beating heart love that two more than eyes or feet more than lungs that have yet to draw free air more than your

00:28:44.380 - 00:29:03.230

life holding womb and your life giving parts. Hear me now love your heart for this is the prize saying No more Morrison continues. She stood up then and danced with her twisted hip. The rest of

00:29:03.230 - 00:29:21.460

what her heart had to say while others open their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh. I mean, Baby Suggs is

00:29:21.460 - 00:29:34.480

a woman preacher who was wounded, busted suffering. Yet she preaches. I mean, not only is her explicit Sir Monica thing to love their body to love it, love it, but she even dances

00:29:34.480 - 00:29:47.990

forth her message with her body without saying a word . Her body preaches when she danced with her twisted hip. The rest of what her heart had to say. She reveals how the black body is.

00:29:47.990 - 00:30:03.530

Somebody, despite what those out yonder might have to say implicitly, she uses her home political body to reinforce her sermon, to love the flesh. She exhorts her congregation, to love their physical body,

00:30:03.530 - 00:30:18.830

to honor it. The others may dishonor it. This very human, vulnerable ministry of the body. Actually, this scene in Morrison's book is called the liturgy of the Spirit by theologian Sean Copeland, because

00:30:18.840 - 00:30:33.740

it is a literary example of the relationship between the spirit and human flesh. In preaching the embrace of the spirits presence through an embrace of the black body is an embrace of incarnation of politics and ministry to

00:30:33.740 - 00:30:48.800

acknowledge the spirit leads one to honor the human body to love the flesh. And so this black flesh has worth has demonstrated in this harmonic message, spoken and enacted and calls for the honoring of all human

00:30:48.810 - 00:31:06.440

bodies to proclaim the gospel and word. Indeed, necessitates a whole person, spiritual and physical, the spirit and the body only a whole person can do . Holy Ministry, Holy lee Butler writes, is

00:31:06.440 - 00:31:18.740

the spirit willing and the flesh week. I do not think that is the lesson we learned from the passion of the christ child. The message that comes to us from the empty tomb is the Spirit is

00:31:18.740 - 00:31:32.110

willing and the flesh is too without embodiment. Why should we have hope in the rapture or dream of walking around heaven? If the spirit is willing, the flesh must be equally willing? What does it

00:31:32.110 - 00:31:45.950

mean to be a living soul? If not the integration of spirit and body, maintaining a hierarchical split between spirit and body, diminishes our humanity and denies the gospel of the abundant life so, by embracing

00:31:45.950 - 00:31:59.560

the body is vital for doing ministry and preaching in light of the example of Baby Suggs and even the life and body of jesus, there should also be attention to the wounded nature of human existence. This

00:31:59.560 - 00:32:15.350

brings me to my third point that the human jesus with his body, challenges the ministry with a ministry with humanity to be attuned to human suffering. At the heart of christian belief is the wounded suffering.

00:32:15.350 - 00:32:28.800

Human body of christ, as the christ team of Philippians tells us when God became incarnate in jesus and took on human form, it was in the form of a slave. The body of christ is wounded

00:32:28.910 - 00:32:44.050

and scarred. It is a blues body. James Cohn calls it a lynched black body, a tortured body hanging from a tree calls us to the suffering ones of the world. Were you there when they

00:32:44.050 - 00:33:00.990

crucified my Lord? A ministry with humanity can't ignore . To use the words of thurman, Those whose backs are against the wall to have a ministry with humanity calls us to be proximate to pain regardless of

00:33:00.990 - 00:33:17.340

race. So what is your proximity to pain in your ministry? As Caroline Helsel writes about racism. If we do not talk about it, it feels as if we are ignoring others pain. As people

00:33:17.340 - 00:33:30.680

of faith, we are called to attend to the suffering of one another. In order to attend to this suffering, we need to first acknowledge that it exists. Racism continues to exist and refusing to name

00:33:30.680 - 00:33:45.210

it will not make it go away. In the case of beloved wounded bodies due to slavery is torture included in the preaching moment, Baby Suggs herself had busted her legs or back her head, her eyes

00:33:45.210 - 00:33:57.360

, her hands, her kidneys, her womb and tongue, and possessed even a twisted hit. She was wounded due to slavery, just like the millions of black ancestors throughout history. Yet she performed her

00:33:57.370 - 00:34:10.070

wounded nous and her broken body. The others in the clearing have also been wounded and scarred due to hatred of their bodies, which is why Baby Suggs exhorts them to love their flesh. And so even

00:34:10.070 - 00:34:24.160

if we remember the human jesus, we will remember not only the cross of calvary, but that he also had no place to lay his head. We will remember in this ministry with humanity, those on

00:34:24.160 - 00:34:39.400

the borderlands of human existence, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the prisoners, the enslaved , those unemployed, those without health care, those in public schools with inadequate resources. A ministry with

00:34:39.400 - 00:34:57.260

humanity for all. People, might declare these words from that poem, New colossus, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming

00:34:57.270 - 00:35:16.260

shore. Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me . This attunement to suffering is not only an attunement to other human beings, but an attunement to God . And so this suffering body is not also not

00:35:16.260 - 00:35:32.580

solely individual, but it includes the broader community, the collective body that is also often hurting and so forth. Leah. Ministry with humanity has done for and with the human community, for and with others

00:35:32.590 - 00:35:51.520

. With humanity also has this meaning. In the Baby Suggs harmonic scene right at the very end, you have the harmonization of community that's presented as the collective body completes the sermon when Baby Suggs speaks with

00:35:51.520 - 00:36:02.350

her hip, what was on her heart Morrison tells us others open their mouths and gave her the music long notes held until the four part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh. And so the

00:36:02.350 - 00:36:20.700

collective body harmonizes as a path towards healing in the midst of their Brokenness, the collective body finishes the sermon. But isn't that always true in any preaching tradition? The sermon is never finished, It's always

00:36:20.710 - 00:36:35.160

finished and continues on in the lives of the people . It's the people where the sermon is just finished , their harmony in that scene is a resounding way to beat back the powers that attempt to destroy them

00:36:35.160 - 00:36:50.390

. This sermon is communal And No one is left out. Everybody is incorporated in that scene. The spirit is not just poured out on Baby Suggs, but on all flesh. All beaten bodies, democratizing

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the preaching moment and wounded bodies are made visible, not as objects but as persons made in God's image . The four part harmony represents what evidence Crawford would call the hum in black preaching, the musical call

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and response, the togetherness of a people. But I would say, even beyond the dynamics of preaching and community, there's a deeper sense of human community that is critical to life and ministry. I mean

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, dr King and that often quoted phrase says, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Howard Thurman. In the 1963 Sermon at Marsh Chapel at Boston University

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, he named it the same thing as a profound ground of unity, and he encouraged the listeners to keep open the doors of thy heart. It matters not how many doors close against the ministry entails human

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vulnerability and openness to the other, even if the other may do you harm further, thurman says, the thing that the human beings need in order to realize themselves in order that that which is potential in

00:38:10.830 - 00:38:30.210

them might be actualized, is other human beings. We must have each other. We come to ourselves . He says in the human encounter, community is the goal, or what he calls whole making is

00:38:30.210 - 00:38:43.090

the goal to ba whole means to be in community with others with those who are different. If a person isolates themselves, they diminish themselves. And if a person shuts another person away, that is their

00:38:43.100 - 00:39:04.450

own destruction. To do ministry with humanity involves seeking to nourish each other beyond the walls that divide and block mutuality and love by engaging with the other. Our little lives become larger. That is because the

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spirit nudges us ultimately toward communion with God and each other across all the divides of difference. There is a spirit abroad in life according to thurman, a spirit that makes for a wholeness and community, A

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ministry with humanity aims for wholeness. And that can only happen if we recognize our human need for each other and that we belong to each other because we belong to God. God's body, even broken and

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even in our Brokenness and splinters, we can experience a sense of gratitude, which Professor Helsel talks about so wonderfully fresh approach. A sense of gratitude for life for each other's lives, knowing that we were

00:39:50.600 - 00:40:14.750

made for togetherness, and when we are not together , we are subhuman for our full humanity flourishes in human community Now, this isn't about race, it is about being human, although the community is made

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up of different races. Yet to constantly talk about race only re if eyes the colonial social construction of dehumanization. And so I want to defang as Morrison would say colonial racism in the power of the spirit

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. All right, the common denominator for us is that we all have come from God and to God , we will all return as thurman teaches all humans spawned from the womb of the earth. Which confirms

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actually that we are all humans. That word humus meaning from the earth. All humans, regardless of race or ethnicity, are from the earth are from dust. Our dust. Humans are from dust and

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to dust. We will return. We don't need ash Wednesday to tell us this. We should know this when helicopters crash. When cancer takes another life . When mysterious viruses take route across the globe.

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Human life, human beings, humans are fragile. Our dust blown around the earth's surface. But this is the common ground that we've been searching for the ground of the earth, feet on the ground,

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bodies from the ground and to the ground. Dust and ashes, human from the earth. If we would live with what I call the ethics of dust in mind remembering that we are all dust and this

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should shape our interactions with one another. Then perhaps we might actually find the time and place for a joyous communion with brothers and sisters of all races and all tongues and all nations and tribes. Remembering that

00:42:44.010 - 00:43:01.700

we are dust might help us discover new directions that the Spirit might be moving. In relation to the race conversation in the church. Perhaps dust and breath will propel us to have a human conversation in the

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church. Because the Spirit of Pentecost humanizes rather than dehumanizes. A ministry with humanity is a ministry with dust to dust and stresses our mortality rather than feigned morality. 16 year old girl at the 1997 World

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Summit of Children wrote and spoke these words. He prayed. It wasn't my religion. He ate, it wasn't my food, he spoke. It wasn't my language, he dressed, it wasn't what I

00:43:52.900 - 00:44:16.180

wore. He took my hand. It wasn't the color of mine, but when he laughed, it was how I laughed and when he cried, it was how I cried Human. A turn to the

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spirit is a turn to the human. This girl wanted to close the distance, wanted to remember the distance between us earthly creatures on the earth from the earth. And Toni Morrison asks, why should we

00:44:39.810 - 00:44:59.200

want to close the distance when we can close the gate? Archbishop Desmond tutu would answer because we were made for togetherness. And if we are trying to be self sufficient, we are subhuman. In other

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words. To be human is to be together on the day of Pentecost. They were all together as the text emphasizes in their diversity of humanity and something powerful blew their way and through their lives for the

00:45:15.990 - 00:45:30.540

life of the world. And there's a saying, if you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far, go together. Jimmy Durante was one of the great entertainers, if

00:45:30.540 - 00:45:42.910

you remember him in the 20th century and he was asked to be a part of a show for World War Two veterans. And he told them that he had a very busy schedule and that he could only

00:45:42.910 - 00:45:55.560

attend for a few minutes and do one short monologue and then immediately leave for his next appointment. And the show's director agreed to this. He was just happy that jimmy was going to find some time to

00:45:55.560 - 00:46:15.440

come. And so when jimmy got on stage, something interesting happened, he performed his short monologue, but then he stayed, the applause grew louder And louder and he kept staying 1520 and then 30 minutes

00:46:15.440 - 00:46:29.720

went by. Finally he took his last bow and he left the stage and someone backstage stopped him and said, I thought you had to go after a few minutes what happened and jimmy answered, I did

00:46:30.580 - 00:46:40.170

have to go, but I can show you the reason I stayed, he said, you can see for yourself if you look down on the front row . And so he pulled back the curtain in the

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back and he pointed to the front row and in the front row where two men, each of whom had lost an arm in the war one had lost his right arm and the other had lost his left

00:46:54.570 - 00:47:16.860

. But together they were able to clap and that's exactly what they were doing loudly and cheerfully left and right together, they were able to clap together. They didn't focus on what they lost, but they

00:47:16.860 - 00:47:37.180

focused on what they had together. I mean this is why the spiritual says walk together Children and don't get weary. I mean together we will be able to do a reconciling work that we could never do

00:47:37.190 - 00:48:02.400

apart. I mean left and right together, liberal and conservative. Together the search for common ground is grounded in a god who has a conjunctivitis imagination from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages

00:48:02.980 - 00:48:21.400

together. Party ins means ella mites, residents of Mesopotamia judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and asia frigia and pamphlet to Egypt in the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene. And visitors from Rome. Both jews and

00:48:21.400 - 00:48:37.960

process. Elites, Creighton's and Arabs Baptists and Episcopalians , presbyterians and lutherans, Methodists and Catholics and Nazarene Church of God Anderson and Church of God, Cleveland and Church of God in christ holy rollers and the

00:48:37.960 - 00:48:58.540

frozen chosen from east and west, north and south . Meeting for fellowship at the wedding supper of the lamb of God, jesus, christ drinking wine and eating bread from every nation and every language and every

00:48:58.540 - 00:49:20.250

gender and every race and every class and every ethnicity and every political persuasion and every family history and every educational background all flesh the world house together, no human being exists outside of the porous borders of God's

00:49:20.250 - 00:49:37.450

love. So when it comes to the history of inhumanity, God or jesus, it's not the problem . We often have been when Howard thurman? Asked Gandhi, what is the greatest handicap that Jesus has

00:49:37.450 - 00:50:01.370

in India? Gandhi replied Christianity. My hope is that through these three lectures through my own exploratory wrestling , you will walk away with a blessing filled with honesty and hope because the winds of the spirit are

00:50:01.370 - 00:50:29.130

still breathing otherwise possibilities into us and the world, may we commit our bodies to this common ground, human to human earth, to earth, ashes, to ashes, dust to dust. And as we

00:50:29.130 - 00:50:45.460

do so, may we remember these holy, haunting words of Howard thurman? It is the intent of life that we that we shall all be one people for better or for worse. We are tied together

00:50:45.460 - 00:51:01.570

in one bundle and I can never be what I must be until you are what you must be. For better or for worse. This is the only option, and to reject it is to reject life

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and to reject life is to make God repent that God ever gave us a chance to live. Thank