Preaching wisely and living justly in unsettling times

Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert, Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, builds on his July 9 presentation at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

Photo by Aaron Burden via Unsplash

LOUISVILLE — Building on what he told an online audience on July 9, Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert, Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity and the McClenton Scholar in Residence for the summer at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., spoke Saturday at the church and online on “Preaching Wisely and Living Justly in Unsettling Times.” View Gilbert’s 83-minute presentation and a question-and-answer session here. Gilbert begins his talk at the 10:50 mark.

One thing’s for certain, Gilbert said: “Despite our very real concerns about human survival in the face of suffering and collective grief, we can trust personally that a covenant-keeping God will supply hope and love in exilic situations.”

Everyone present at the church Saturday received a copy of Gilbert’s book, “Just Living: Meditations for Engaging Our Life and Times,” a book he was inspired to write after having used Howard Thurman’s “Meditations of the Heart” for more than two decades of teaching. Gilbert called “Just Living” “an exploration of the Bible and the intersection of contemporary culture and religious faith.”

The shifting political landscape over the past two weeks, including the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive candidate to face former President Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election, led Gilbert to present Saturday on an unpublished meditation he wrote, “Daughters Too?” That meditation turned into a sermon he preached at Howard University on the heels of the 2020 election. “I’ll make every effort not to preach it,” Gilbert said with a smile, “but Baptists don’t keep their word when a text is given to them.”

Gilbert used several passages from the prophet Joel, including 1:19-20, 2:3, 2:22-27, and 2:28-32, during his presentation.

“We’ve been living in a time of ruptured imagination, a moment of theological insecurity and political insensibility,” Gilbert said. The media’s contribution “to this state of rupture is by providing an enormous quantity of bad news on which no action can be taken, problems most people can do little or nothing about.”

“It’s increasingly difficult,” Gilbert said, “to preach a hope-filled gospel to believers.”

But “meet the prophet Joel,” whose name means “Yahweh is God,” Gilbert noted. In the Book of Joel, God is portrayed “as an erratic and attitudinally inconsistent God. On the one hand, God is a punitive judge, forcing Israel to suffer through a despairing circumstance. On another hand, God is a ruthless warrior, promising to open up a can of whipped aspartame on Israel’s enemies. On another hand, God shows up as benevolent and gracious,” as in Joel 2:23-32.

“The people are in the throes of an ecological crisis at the book’s opening,” Gilbert said. Ecological disasters put people both in physical and spiritual peril, he said. “In the ancient mindset, such occurrences are casually tied to some wrong, some sin in the camp … some ethical failure or some negligent action that spurns God’s love,” Gilbert said. “Yet in the end, God remains faithful to the unfaithful.”

“Periods of ecological distress should awaken our survival instincts as a species,” Gilbert said. With all the scientific innovation that’s occurred over the past two decades, “It is increasingly evident that religion need not and I daresay should not be in contentious relationship with science. We need science. We also need robust faith.”

In Joel, God is “ultimately named merciful savior,” Gilbert said. God promises repayment for devastation and the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” God tells the people. Even on male and female slaves, God promises the Spirit will be poured out.

“This promise seems pretty unambiguous to me,” Gilbert said.

Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert

Here’s the good news from Joel, Gilbert said: “The authority God gives has nothing to do with human proprietorship … The only rightful authority is the One who sends and the One who calls.”

Jesus himself articulates “all flesh” as a promise to the apostles just before his ascension, Gilbert noted. Then Gilbert asked rhetorically, “Daughters too? Yes,” he said, “daughters too.”

“If we’re going to be dogmatic, let’s at least be biblically responsible and intellectually honest,” he said. “Daughters too? Yes. Both sons and daughters shall prophesy.”

There are many biblical examples, including Hagar’s response to injustice. Judge and Prophetess Deborah “did not shrink back when called to command armies,” Gilbert said.

“What if Anna, as she held Jesus in her arms, stayed tight-lipped instead of prophesying and speaking blessing over the Christ child in the temple?” he said. “What if Deacon Phoebe, whom Paul commends to the Roman church, didn’t aid in bankrolling Paul’s ministry? Or if Lydia, the respected businesswoman of great acumen and congregational authority, decided to pack it up? Have you considered Prisca, the tentmaking pastor of the early church, whom Paul commissioned to explain the way of God?”

“Don’t preach because you can. Don’t even preach because someone says you can’t or shouldn’t. Preach because you must. Preach because lives are at stake,” Gilbert said. “Preach and prophesy because your silence or withheld testimony will dishonor the daring of our spiritual ancestors and witnesses of the early church.”

“At a time when life on the planet is in peril, preach before and after the meteorologist, the geologist and the biologist have submitted their dooming reports,” he said. “Preach better than ‘get right, get saved.’ You don’t need theological education to do that.”

“But preach about the expansive, radical love of God that will take you a lifetime to perfect. Preach the promises while standing on them. Preach soberly, sons and daughters. God’s preachers must be able to say with convictional authority that even if the worst should come — even if the sun should turn to darkness and the moon to blood — hope remains in reach, because God promises to save.”

“Say what you see,” Gilbert suggested. “Speak about what you see God doing in the world you inhabit. Say what you hear and see God doing in the text you’ve been authorized to study and interpret.”

“If you dare to prophesy — and I hope you will — bring the Bible forward and press it into service for the living of our terrible days,” Gilbert said. “Not one of you here can honor your God-given gifts and at the same time be silent, or silenced, in these unsettling, death-dealing times.”

Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert will preach at 10 a.m. Eastern Time Sunday at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Watch online here or here.