“Are you tired of singing the same old song? Do you want to sing a redemption song?”
Sermon by Andre Henry & Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019.
Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the Book
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Are you tired of singing the same old song?
Do you want to sing a redemption Song?
Really, we want to hear you …
Are you tired of singing the same old song?
Do you want to sing a redemption song?
Andre, are you tired?
Exhausted
I am tired, too … maybe not as tired as you are … but, man, I see what happened this morning in Sri Lanka … an I am still so very tired of singing the same old song.
We have been singing the same old song for far too long.
It is a song that has been enslaving and killing our sisters. our brothers, our gender nonconforming siblings.
It is a song that has enslaved and killed our ancestors and it is enslaving and killing our children.
It is a song that is enslaving and killing the soul of every human being.
It is a song of the power of a status quo that casts God’s beloved into the bottomless pit before selling them to the merchant ships.
And we know it.
We feel it deep in our bones.
It is a song that is bitter on our lips.
And still we sing.
We stood here last week.
We stood by in the garden while the police came and arrested Jesus because he “fit the description.”
We stood by at the foot of the cross and cried:
“What just happened?”
“What have we done?”
We stood by while the people cried:
(Singing)
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the Book
We stood by. We joined in.
Because we didn’t see an alternative.
Or maybe we didn’t want to see an alternative.
Andre, you preached it for us on Good Friday.
The Empire demanded death … but one person couldn’t do it on his own.
You reminded us of Gene Sharp’s words. What did he say again?
“Obedience is at the heart of political power.
By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes,
enforce repressive laws and regulations,
keep trains running on time,
prepare national budgets,
direct traffic,
manage ports,
print money
repair roads,
keep markets supplied with food,
make steel, build rockets, train the police and army,
issue postage stamps and even milk a cow all at the same time.
“People provide these services to the ruler through a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule.”
So what you’re saying is: The empire demanded death, and the church said, “Okay!” We fell right in line.
“That’s right”
Why?
It’s a situation with which we are familiar in the American church. We are a religious establishment that has made such an idol of institutional preservation we couldn’t recognize God if God walked in through the front door,
a religious establishment that in trying to accommodate the empire has become complicit in its violence,
a religious establishment that benefits too much from the status quo to play any meaningful part in the revolution that God desires.
So what you’re saying is…
We are the power preserving the status quo.
We’ve made idols of institutional preservation.
It’s even more than that…
We’ve accommodated the violence of the status quo, sometimes becoming perpetuators of the violence.
And some of us have been too privileged by the status quo do anything meaningful to change it.
That really is the way it is.
That is the only way we remember.
That is the song we have been taught to sing.
It is enslaving and killing God’s black children.
It is enslaving and killing God’s brown children.
God’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer children.
God’s economically outcast children.
God’s neurodiverse children.
God’s children in the exile of incarceration
God’s children in the terror of deportation.
It is enslaving and killing all of God’s children and the very planet we have been given to live.
That’s not the song we are meant to sing!
That’s not the song we were born to sing!
That is not a song worthy of us as beloved children of God!
…and yet the crowd keeps on singing it,
…we keep on singing it because we don’t know any other song.
…or maybe it’s just we haven’t been listening.
And then this morning, something happened.
That’s right … the women came to the tomb singing their same old song.
Their song of grief.
…of pain.
…of death.
Their song of justice’s loss and Empire’s triumph.
Taken from the bottomless pit.
Sold to the merchant ships.
And then something happened.
Instead of death, they found life.
Instead of defeat, they found victory.
Instead of cynical certainty they found infinite possibility.
Instead of a body, they found the Risen Christ.
And Jesus looked at them and… what did Jesus say?:
(singing)
My hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
And what else did Jesus say?
(singing)
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Jesus looked at them and said:
It doesn’t have to be this way.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Jesus said to the powerful, courageous, melanated women at the tomb:
You were meant to sing a different song.
You were born to sing a different song.
A song that reminds us that we are forever beloved.
A song that reminds us that God longs for us, delights in us.
A song that reminds us that God does not condemn us to suffering but meets us in our suffering, strengthens us in our suffering, even dies with us in our suffering.
A song that reminds us that all of God’s children are meant not for slavery but for freedom.
We know what Jesus sang to those powerful, courageous, melanated women, right?
What did Jesus sing?
(Singing)
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have are
Redemption songs
Mmmm … that’s beautiful.
Now that’s not a new song is it?
No … that song is as old as all creation.
The very rhythm of the land, the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of the heartbeat of all creation tells us that our natural state from the smallest microbe to the most complex system is not violence and domination but symbiosis and harmony.
That’s right … it is the natural order of beauty, justice and love that we have chosen to disrupt
…so we can choose again.
What has been is not what has to be.
We decide what song we sing.
And we are tired of singing the same old song.
We are ready to sing a redemption song.
And… here’s the thing about Redemption Song.
Bob Marley did not write it for people who look like me.
Who did Bob Marley write it for, Andre?
Bob Marley was writing to those of the African disaspora,
To give them persevere amidst the reality of global oppression.
And are there other redemption songs out there?
Absolutely
Who else is singing them?
It’s Jesca Hoop singing “Songs of Old”
Harold Melvin singing “Wake Up Everybody”
Kendrick Lamar singing “DNA”
Mavis Staples singing “We Shall Not Be Moved”
Fred Hammond singing “Show Yourself Song”
Nina Simone singing “Why?”
Stevie Wonder “Higher Ground”
Solange singing “Cranes in the Sky”
MMMM! That’s some amazing singing that’s been going on!
So, what I hear you saying is that these redemption songs are already out there, waiting for people like us to join in the chorus?
Absolutely
And have they been waiting for us for a long, long time?
Absolutely.
And what are redemption songs?
Anthems of revolution!
Whoa! Hold on there! Why do we need revolution?
Because business as usual is threatening life itself. Now, more than ever the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ring true: we must learn to live together as family or perish together as fools.
That’s right.
We need revolution.
We need revolution because as Dr. James Cone said: “The scandal is that the gospel means liberation, that this liberation comes to the poor, and that it gives them the strength and the courage to break the conditions of servitude.”
Because when we break the conditions of servitude.
When we break the conditions of misogyny.
When we break the conditions of white supremacy we are not just talking about reform.
We are not talking about nibbling around the edges.
We are talking about revolution!
So why do we need to sing an anthem of revolution?
Because nothing less than a revolution will do.
That’s what it means not to sing the same old song.
That’s what it means to sing a redemption song.
So everyone, we’re going to ask you one more time:
Are you tired of singing the same old song?
Are you ready to sing a redemption song?
We are too.
And we cannot sing a redemption song unless we are ready to sing a revolutionary anthem.
Why?
Because people are dying.
Because we are killing them.
(singing)
Because we are a little lower
A little lower than the angels.
There’s a little piece of heaven in us
The power we’ve been given
Is the power we should live in
The world is the shape that we choose
It’s time for a revolution of love.
Because nothing less than a revolution will do.
Today is the day.
This morning is the morning.
Empire thought it could make us sing its song.
The empty tomb tells us that song’s day is over.
Today the scripture can be fulfilled in our hearing.
In our doing.
In our living.
In our loving.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The only thing keeping it this way is us and the limits of our trust and imagination.
The only thing keeping it this way is the limit of our will.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Free yourself from mental slavery.
Consider the impossible possibilities.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We don’t have to be this way.
This morning, the risen Christ is right here, right here with us and he is singing to us. He is singing to us that it isn’t just him that has escaped the tomb … that it can be us, too.
And so, what we need to decide is:
Do we want to be entombed with the ideas that for thousands of years have been killing our family, or do we want to “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery?”
Do we want to keep casting God’s beloved children into the bottomless pit and selling God’s beloved children to the merchant ships?
Do we want to let empire continue to kill the prophets of freedom while we stand aside and look?
Or do we want to let our hand be made strong by the hand of the Almighty
Move forward in this generation
Triumphantly?
The unholy alliance between Church and Empire,
between Church and conscienceless capitalism,
Church and colonialism,
Church and patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity
Dismantled, destroyed and dead forever.
The songs are out there already.
The marginalized peoples of the world … who continue to be the crucified peoples of the world have been singing them for a long, long time.
Songs of joyful spiritual awakening.
Songs of radical inclusion.
Songs of deep love for one another and all creation.
Songs of courageous justice.
Are we ready to lend our voices?
Are you ready for the revolution?
Equity over privilege.
Liberation over oppression.
Hope over despair.
Courage over comfort
Love over fear.
Life over death
The tomb is empty.
Death has lost. Life has won.
The Reign of God is at hand.
And the risen Christ is right here with us and Christ is asking us
(singing)
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the Book
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
