Intro: I am so blessed that I can tell the real Black History African American story! Although it is great progress to have a Black History Month where everyone can learn about the contributions of Black Americans, it is also so very limiting.
The narrative of Black people, as taught by most American schools, begins with slavery. But that’s not where our story begins; our story begins in Africa. For each Black American, our story begins in a particular part of Africa, with an ethnic history, culture, and thriving community. I would like to suggest that this sets up a false divide that we see in the Book of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah is often associated with the prophet’s concern for idolatry, the ways that Judah had forsaken Yahweh and turned to other gods.
The book of Jeremiah is primarily concerned with justice—to be exercised by rulers, to be sure, but also by all people. Importantly, then and now, survival in a time of crisis, according to the prophet, depends not on wisdom, might, and wealth, but on fighting for justice for those on the social margins.
“Justice is the protection of the weaker members of society from oppression by those more powerful”
Move 1: While the book of Jeremiah places primary responsibility for executing justice upon kings, kings are not held exclusively responsible for justice. The broader claim of the book of Jeremiah is that concern for justice is to permeate society and is a responsibility for all the people of Judah. The prophet is ordered by God to search Jerusalem for even one person “who acts justly and seeks truth” (v. 1). The prophet’s initial search is fruitless.
However, the initial search (5:1-3) was only among the poor, so God orders that the search continues among Jerusalem’s leaders, “the rich” (v. 5). The results are no better, and the conclusion is that among both poor and rich alike “they do not know the way of the LORD, the law of their God” (Vv. 4-5).
The book of Jeremiah understands that God demands all persons in Judah—rich and poor, common citizen or monarch alike—to be attentive to God’s demands for justice.
Because not a single person could be found in Jerusalem “who acts justly” (v. 1), the prophet warns that God will affect judgment in-stead of pardon (v. 6).
Move 2: In Chapter 17 The Babylonians are coming and will wreak havoc upon Judah and Jerusalem. Most readers of Jeremiah see the totality of the Babylonians’ intentions and actions as the direct result of God’s anger and vengeance toward Judah.
The text makes clear that God was most certainly involved in the coming of the Babylonians. This does not mean, however, that God created the Babylonian empire and armies and instilled therein a sense of vicious imperialism, all so it could be unleashed upon God’s people at their first misstep. It has taken some time to understand that God has not made White Supremacy or Christian Nationalism.
Instead, God makes use of the already established regional policies and practices of the Babylonian empire as an instrument of God’s own judgment and punishment against the deep and ongoing offenses of the people of Judah. Yes, the Battle is not Yours!
The people have invited the impending havoc upon themselves by their choices to turn away from the God of their ancestors, who created them, freed them from slavery, and gave them the land they inhabit.
Move 3 We are all in this History. You see if we are going to celebrate Black History, we have to celebrate the Good and the Bad. Black History Month is not meant to pit blacks and whites against each other. And it’s not meant to celebrate one race while excluding another. It’s meant to highlight some of the important people and events of our American history.
Ignoring the past and pretending it didn’t exist is not going to help us move forward with inclusion efforts.
I started this sermon by saying that the rich and the poor were guilty of not doing justice. And I want to make it clear that the text points out that the fall of Judah and Jerusalem was. The oppressed and the oppressors not doing justice. Black History Month isn’t simply about ethnic diversity in general but remembering the horrors of our shared history and celebrating the progress that has been made, in God’s common kindness, and specifically the many successes of black Americans despite such a history.
Christians honor this month, at least in part, because it helps us understand the awful plight of a people made in God’s image, many of them fellow believers, and acknowledges God’s goodness at work in remarkable achievements…in and through a people who often have been treated with utter wickedness.”
Right now, there is a lot of anger in America. People are divided down political, religious, and even racial lines. Yet God has commanded us to put aside our prejudices and look at one another with His eyes. I have heard time and time white folks say well where our White History month. I think this is the very issue Jeremiah was getting at when he condemns the rich and the poor.
Move 4: Let me see if I can modernize Jeremiah’s point. We must abandon the notion that White people lose when Black people succeed. After decades of work in policy and economics, Heather McGhee, JD, says she eventually had a major realization: So many of this country’s problems, from a decaying infrastructure to inadequate health care, stem from the false notion that success for people of color comes at the expense of White people.
Like Judah “Our progress [as a nation] is being held back by a lie,” called "The Hidden Costs of Racism" McGhee said,
In truth, we all rise or fall together, citing research that the Black/White economic divide has cost the U.S. economy $16 trillion over the last 20 years.
Describing a phenomenon captured in her bestselling book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, McGhee detailed how, during desegregation, communities often opted to close public pools rather than open them to Black people.
I don’t think you heard that they closed public swimming pools in the south places like Kingstree South Carolina because the law changed that said they had to allow everyone to swim.
McGhee highlighted parallels in other aspects of American life, including a failure to support paid family leave, affordable housing, and access to a free or low-cost college education. Too often, efforts to advance such public goods stalled when many White people came to believe they primarily helped non-White people.
My Grandmother used to say it another way you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.
McGhee began to understand the economic issues that had always interested her as a kid—like why there were people asking for money on the street? —were at their heart about race. In a white classmate’s boast of being “socially liberal but fiscally conservative,” she detected inherent stereotypes about whether Black people were deserving of the things white Americans had received for years.
Failing to acknowledge God as the source of good harvests, the people of Judah soon lost any sense of accountability to the Lord for how they worked. This led them to oppress and deceive the weak and defenseless:
What ought to have been done for the good of all in God’s land was done solely for individuals’ own profit and without fear of their God for whom they were called to work. So, God withheld rain, and they soon learned that they were not the source of their own success.
God calls people to a higher purpose than economic self-interest. Our highest-end is our relationship with God, within which provision and material well-being are important, but limited, matters.
Jeremiah looked around and found that greed — the unbridled pursuit of economic gain — had displaced the love of God, as the people’s chief concern.
As Walter Brueggemann states, “All persons, but especially the religious leaders, are indicted for their unprincipled economics….The people’s hearts were inclined toward getting rich rather than fearing God and loving others.
Move 5: Since its inception, Black History Month has never been just a celebration of black America’s achievements and stories — it’s part of a deliberate political strategy to be recognized as equal citizens. To Show Equality by providing equity.
Yet lost amid today’s facile depictions of Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad or George Washington Carver’s peanuts is black America’s claim as co-authors of U.S. history, a petition the nation has never accepted.
This was the aim of Carter G. Woodson, historian, and originator of Negro History Week in 1926. Like Jeremiah believed that appreciating a people’s history was a prerequisite to equality. He wrote of the commemoration, “If a race has no history if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world.” That is, no amount of legislation can grant you equality if a nation doesn’t value you.
Yes, Church I tell you the Battel is still one we need valued action and policy.
But we must remember that Black History Month exists to deliver what federal policy has not — the eradication of systemic racism.
Yes, the policy is important, but the state of black America today proves it is wholly insufficient on this score.
• We have Brown v. Board, and yet the racial segregation of public schools remains the norm.
• We have the Fair Housing Act, and racial segregation in housing has barely changed in nearly four decades.
• We have the Fifteenth Amendment and a Supreme Court-weakened Voting Rights Act, and yet state laws still implement measures that disproportionately affect black voters.
• Black unemployment remains at twice the rate of white Americans.
• Black median wealth is nearly ten times less than white wealth.
• Black Americans are incarcerated at a rate five times that of their white countrymen.
• And black health continues to be worse on nearly every front — heart disease, asthma, infant mortality, diabetes — and the racial gap cancer deaths is widening.
The Time Now America is to fight for both the Rich and The Poor to See and Trust God.
