Author: Sara Palmer

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One New Bookfor the Preacher

Stephen R. Montgomery

Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee

Stephen R. Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Virtually all ofus are familiar with many ofthe different strategies that werc used during foe Civil Rights movement to awaken foe eonseienee of a nation and bring our eountry a step closer to the “beloved community” that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently envisioned: the sit-ins, foe demonstrations, foe boycotts, foe “Preedom Riders,” and more. We are also aware ofthe attempts to counter these efforts through fire hoses, bombings, death threats, imprisonments, and foe ever present attempts to associate leaders ofthe movement with communism. One begins to wonder if there is anything else that can be added to our understanding of that era and even shed light on our continuing work to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In his book. The Last Segregated Hour, Stephen R. Haynes helps shed light on one strategy that has received surprisingly little scholarly study. As a professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, he began hearing about “kneel-ins” and the attempts to integrate foe last bastion of segregation, foe churches. The paucity o^istorical comment about these actions was ^rticularly surprising, given the centrality of churchbased protest in foe theory and practice of nonviolent direct action during that time. In Taylor Branch’s exhaustive, nearly 3,000-page, study ofAmerica during foe “King years,” there is but one single reference to foe “kneel-ins.” Haynes fills in an important gap in understanding foe way kneel-ins could traumatize individuals and institutions, but he also takes a longitudinal perspective that examines the effect kneel-ins had on people and institutions in the 1960s and foe ways those same people and institutions have changed and at times have sought to repent of their former ways. After an overview of kneel-ins in various cities throughout the south (Albany, Atlanta, Savannah, Birmingham, andJackson are butafew), Professor Haynes focuses on specific events in Memphis, Tennessee, and foe religious roots of those events. The kneel-ins in Memphis were typical in some ways but unique in others, including their duration (fourteen Sundays over a ten-month period) and foe prominent role played by students (white students from Southwestern College, now Rhodes College, and African-American students from Memphis State and LeMoyne College, which is now LeMoyne-Owen College), but also the low profile played by foe church’s pastors during the crisis and the church schism that resulted. In foe early months of 1964, these students launched a campaign of church testings , pairing up students of different races to visit both black and white churches. The greatest resistance was found at Second ?rcsbyterian Church, which was well known as foe bastion of Presbyterian ecclesiastic conservatism. The church eventually withdrew from the Presbyterian Church (US) over this issue as well others. The students met a wide variety of responses as they visited the white churches,

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but it was at Second that they were greeted week in and week out by deacons and elders standing arm-in-arm to bloek entrance to the ehurch. The students, always neatly dressed in their “Sunday best,” would kneel, pray, and then find a church where they could worship together. There was never any overt violence, and the movement was slow in getting attention, due largely to the absence of any local press coverage. When a few reports were finally printed, often buried in the back pages, the national press, particularly the denominational magazines, began to take note. The leaders of Second ?resbyterian maintained throughout that the issue was not integration, as some nostalgically looked back on the days when there was a special section of the balcony reserved for “the dignified old darkies in their high hats” who had driven their employers to church (p. 59). As pressure mounted with no end in sight, pictures of the protesters began to appear in the mailboxes of the parents of Southwestern students. A mother ٠۴ one of the white students received a letter accompanied by a photo of her son standing in the rain alongside an unidentified young black woman. The response probably was not what the author/photographer expected. She wrote,

1 am glad that you sent me the picture of Hayden and his friend attending a chmch service. This picture will very definitely be one of the most cherished ones in the album. And, 1 expect he will show it to his children, as they come along, with a degree of justifiable pride. Certainly his father and I are proud of him. Not every young man is so courageously loyal to Christ that he is willing to undergo ridicule, abuse, and insults because of his Christian convictions, (p. 62)

The events had repercussions throughout the denomination. The national leaders of the PC(US) attempted to persuade the session of Second Church to change their policy to no avail, so the Moderator, Felix Gear, took the unprecedented act ofmoving the 1965 General Assembly meeting from Second Church to the denomination^ conference center in Montreat, North Carolina. Particularly ironic is the fact that Dr. Gear was a former pastor of Second! What makes this book so readable is the extensive research Haynes shared not only with written documents and press accounts, but the many personal interviews with a wide variety of people who were involved in one ٧١ ^٢١or another with the kneel-ins: the students themselves, church leaders who barred the doors, members of Second who were either unaware of the protests or were against the official stand of the church, students at Southwestern who were not involved, and others. He not only sheds light on their thoughts then, but how they viewed their actions now. Haynes could have stopped there, but he goes on to describe the lingering effects of the kneel-ins within the church in Memphis. Several years later, under the continued leadership of Jeb Russell, the pastor of Second, the congregation finally voted to limit the terms of active elders, thus enabling fresh voices to be heard so that the church eventually opened the doors in 1966 to all who came to worship. This led to a schism in the congregation, and those who still clung to the old policies broke off and started a new Presbyterian church, which is now part of the Presbyterian Church in America. He also documents efforts of the current leadership to repent of their past, getting to the point more recently of inviting African-Americans who had not

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been able to wo!־ship forty years ago to a serv؛ce of reconciliation, He found litile interest on toe part of those who had been discriminated against to be a part of such a service, including one who stated that she still feels ill when she drives past toe church. Several final observations are in order. First, in this day of church schisms over issues of “biblical authority” “ ٢٠toe centrality ofJesus Christ,” there was virtually no biblical or toeological justification that church leaders used to support their positions. Appeals were simply made to “keeping toe peace,” “maintaining our way oflife,” ٢٠ “preserving toe historical independence of the church.” Many stated that toe issue wasn’t race, but rather opening toe doors to toe church for all who werc “genuinely interested in worshiping,” and not “agitating.” When one says, “It’s not about race,” we can be pretty sure it’s about race. Second, I have a whole new set of spiritual heroes to be thankful for, many of whom are good friends that I had no idea werc so courageous during the kneel-ins. (I spent as much time in toe footnotes as I did on toe body of toe text!) They were not met with fire hoses and dogs; they werc not imprisoned (though that was a possibility ). They did, however, take significant risks on behalf of justice, sometimes without their parents’ support, when they very easily could have retreated into their studies at a prestigious college. Finally,whercas Second Church is to be commendedforrecentattempts to become more involved in toe racial and economic needs of toe city (most recently named toe poorest city in the nation), one cannot help but notice that toe same theology and world-view that led church leaders to bar African-Americans from worship exists today. Second does not have women in positions of pastoral ٢٠sessional leadership. One cannot be a gay person in a relationship and be a member of toe church. The issues are different, but on a deeper level, they arc toe same. It would be easy to read this excellent book with a certain condescension, shocked at how “decent church-going people” could have possibly barred anyone from worshipping toe God who loved toe world so much that toe Son was sent to save, not to condemn. But, as Robert Penn Warren once said, “The past is always a rebuke to toe present.” How do we apply toe lessons of history to toe present? How might our generation be viewed fifty years from now? Anyone interested in these questions and concerned about living out toe Gospel wito courage and conviction ought to read this book.

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One New Bookfor the Preacher

Jacob D. Myers

Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Brian K. Blount, Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection (Louisville: Westminster John Knox ?ress, 2014), 154 pages.

The Easter season is upon us, and with it comes the promise of new life. As the flowers burst forth from their fledgling pods, it is easy for us to speak of resurrection . Resurrection, it seems, is all around us—swaddling us in the sun’s amber glow after a bleak winter, painting our varied landscapes with swaths of marigold, green, and vermilion, bearing witness against death. Though resurrection is central to the Christian narrative, and though this Easter, tike so many before, its melodious sounds will emerge from pulpits across the world, does resurrection sufficiently pervade our lives and preaching? Other than this day set aside as the holy day among holy days,do we preach resurrection? New Testament scholar Brian Blount dares to venture such penetrating ،questions in his ground-breaking text, Invasion ofthe Dead: Preaching Resurrection. Blount serves as the President and Professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. Those familiar with Blount’s earlier works on the Gospel of Mark and Revelation will note similar themes in this work. Emerging from his lectures given for the prestigious Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, this book challenges contemporary Christian faith and practice at its most primitive level. His argument is that many Christians share the same existential reality as the rest of the American populous: we are the living dead. We go about our quotidian tasks as if death has had the last word, as if Good Friday is the best we Christ-followers can hope from this lift. With poetic and poignant force, Blount drives a stake into the heart of such a paltry view of life. We are Easter people, and as such, we are vivified to participate in the resurrection of Christ; inasmuch as Christ is risen and in him we are raised to the fullness oflife, a half-life will not suffice. We cannot and must not be zombies. Though he is now an academic administrator and continues to serve as a professor , Blount has never stopped being a pastor. As a pastor he is privy to the realities of contemporary ministry. Blount writes, “Anxiously, desperately, even incredulously, we contemplate and reconsider resurrection. It is as much our destination as it is our destiny. But the rigors of the journey to it di vert our attention and shift our focus until what troubles us here overwhelms what promises us there” (xi). As a result, Blount argues, many of us get stuck on Good Friday, never really making it to Easter Sunday in all its socio-political vigor. As if the turgid waters of pastoral ministry were not enough, our congregants and parishioners are confronted with a cultural tidal wave that is utterly obsessed with death. Death masquerades as revelation; suffering defines our ontological state. The goal of Invasion ofthe Dead is to challenge this logic, to reverse it: death does not define us. Resurrection is the “quintessential apocalyptic moment” (xvii), and Blount seamlessly weaves key New Testament texts with tropes from popular culture to substantiate this claim.

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The bookis organized around readings from theBookofRevelation,Paul’sepistles, and the Gospel of Mark. Eaeh chapter ends with tangible adviee for preaching from these texts and includes one of Blount’s own sermons. They model his trademark biblieal seholarship, cultural acuity, and liberative pronouncements. The sermons alone are worth the price of the book. Throughout, Blount draws our attention to apocalyptic themes contained in each of these parts of Scripture in order to reorient our governing paradigm for interpreting the Christian life. Blount writes, “It is resurrection that puts the enemies down. Resurrection’s truth, resurrection’s promise, and resurrection’s historical reality must therefore be the primary proclamation of the apocalyptic preacher whom God deploys in God’s formidable wake” (2). In his chapter on the Book of Revelation, Blount teaches us all that we could ever want to know about zombies. What is more, he makes the compelling case that we Christians share in the same half-life, ،}uasi-existence as zombies when we feil to live into fee fullness of life inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection. Dead and alive are both relative terms—both in contemporary nuance and for John of Patmos. Blount calls us to preach to fee living dead much as John did, namely, to preach resurrection. Blount enumerates four levels of creaturely human existence following John’s apocalyptic vision: life, type A death, type B death, and living death. Life is the prize awaiting those who have borne witness to the resurrection of Christ, even to fee point ofbiological death (i.e. martyrdom). Type A death is death in a biological sense; it is the cessation of life in fee mundane sense of fee term. Type B death is another matter entirely; it is a permanent cessation of existence beyond biological death. Blount explains, “It is fee death that follows a guilty verdict at the final judgment” (20). The existence of the present age Blount labels living death—it is not quite death inasmuch as it mimics life, but it does not share in fee kind of life of which John writes. Blount explains that it is an “age typified by the characteristics of death” (21). If the Christian life is a battle against the powers of death, duress, and oppression , then resurrection is God’s ultimate weapon (41). Blount argues feroughout that resurrection is an invasion; it is a full-blown attack against the forces of death that presently hold fee battlefield. This argument has tremendous theological as well as homiletical implications: “Christ does not save because he died; Christ saves because, resuirected, he lives. And in living, he holds fee keys that unlock Death” (22). What this means for preachers is that we are summoned to employ and deploy God’s weapon against fee powers and principalities of this world; in short, we are called to preach resutrection. In God’s resurrection of Jesus, we are empowered “to fire resurrection into fee midst of living death” (31). Having walked us through John’s apocalypse and convinced us that we are in fact preaching to the living dead, his engagement wife Paul’s epistles and Mark’s Gospel follow the same theological and homiletical thrust, though with different exegetical apparatuses. Of the Apostie Paul, Blount writes, “There is present time and there is future time. There is this age and feere is God’s age. In this age, it is time for us to wake up to the realization that we are living dead. That, in a colloquial nutshell, is Paul’sapocalypticpoint” (49).Through no small measure of exegetical sophistication, Blount makes the case feat Paul’s apocalyptic imagination centers on God’s resurrection of Jesus. Blount argues feat even in texts like Galatians and 2 Corinthians, which are saturated wife the language of crucifixion, resurrection is still fee governing theological motif. He writes, “Everything literally and figuratively starts with

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the resurrection [for P al]. Resurrection is the a^calyptic revelation that ﻣﺤاله first uncovers and then uses to transform the way the apostle understands everything in his world” (59). In our preaehing, Blount urges us to challenge the hubris that we are aetually alive (51). Life, for Paul, is nothing less than direct eschatological r^ationship with God. This requires us to see beyond death—even Jesus’ death—to catch a vision of the fullness of life awaiting those who embody resurrection amidst the powers of death. The present age—ours as well as Paul’s—is infected with death, to which God’s resurrection of Christ is the vaccine. Blount contends, “Our task is to preach about the siege mentality in a secular world that believes all evils have human causes and can therefore be rectified through human progress and reason” (66). But God calls us to more than merely describing this infected, occupied domain: “The apocalyptic preacher’s goal, then, is not only to preach an invasion, but also to trigger an invaSion ” (68). Chapter five draws on Blount’s earlier hermeneutical work on the Gospel ofMark as “a story of apocalyptic incursion, [in which] God’s future invades through Jesus’ present” (84). This chapter provides a Markan twist on a consistent theological and homiletical message that Blount has been preaching all along: in Jesus, God invades the land of the living dead with genuine life. Thus, preachers are called to participate in Mark’s apocalyptic vision by focusing not on Jesus’ death, but on his life (88). He argues convincingly that in Mark’s apocalyptic, invasive schema, Jesus crucifixion is tire result of the invasion rather than the invasion itself. He contends that Christ’s cross is but one component for Mark—albeit an important component—of the invasive ministry and should be interpreted in light of the ministry and not the other way around. What this means for preachers, Blount argues, is that we too must preach of God’s invasion. The metrics of our preaching ministries will thus be measured according to apocalyptic invasion leading to the empty tomb (97). This must be more than a spiritualized and futurized orientation, but a social and political focus on that future reality invading this present age (99). This Baster most of us will recite seven sacred words to one another: Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed! Blount has convinced me that the power ofthat indeed cannot be a one day affair. The indeed of Christ’s literal and figurative resureection from the power of death gives us the freedom—nay, the mandate—to live lives worthy of the resurrection. Such lives have received the power to challenge the powers and principalities that seek to shroud this present age with a pall of death and misery. By raising Christ from the dead, God has charged us to participate in the power of Christ’s resurrection. We are empowered to live as agents of resurrection, bringing new life to those living lives not much better than death.

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One New Bookfor the Preacher

William V. Arnold

Myer Creek, Virginia

James s. Lowry, The Long Road Home: ﻣﺤﺲOther Short Storiesfrom the Silences in the Gospel ofMark (Eugene, Oregon: Caseade Books, 2013), 104 pages.

Storytelling has many genres: cautionary tales, moral tales, dilemma tales. The list could go on and .٥٠What good stories share in common is their ability to pull the listener ( ,٢٠in this case, the reader) “across the threshold” into a way ٠؛thinking, of perceiving, of looking at things from a different angle. Take the most common expression of “telling a story”-ajoke. The ultimate aim of a joke is to take the listener by surprise, to turn the tables, to intrigue and delight. So also is the case with many other types of stories. Now, 1 confess at the outset that part of my fascination with stories is their seductive invitation to look at things in a new light. And, 1 further confess that frequently, when looking at a very familiar selection of scripture, my mind wanders a bit, and 1 yearn for something to draw me back into the text from a different angle, to see something new, to engage it in another way. Jim Lowry does just that for us in The Long Road Home. ؛Je invites us to take a fresh look at selections from the Gospel of Mark, selections which invite us to move beyond sticking with first appearances and to speculate “ ٥٠the rest of the story.” Jim is eminently qualified to take us ٥٠this journey. He is well educated, an experienced pastor, an excellent preacher, and a lover of scripture. He also possesses a distinctive qualification for writing this book-he is a good old southern boy from South Carolina, and he is a fine storyteller! “Cricket” Lowry, as he is known by his friends, has been immersed in stories since childhood. He grew up ؛٥the midst of them. He has honed and sharpened a talent for listening well and telling well. Now, out ofthat wealth of background and experience, we are invited into a discipline known as “midrash”-an ancient practice engaged in by rabbis to “spin tales” as a method of digging more deeply into scripture. The aim is not so much to give a final explanation as it is to lure ٢٠seduce a devotee of scripture into more examination and exploration, thereby resulting in morc profound appreciation for the richness that is there. Out of admiration for that tradition, Lowry has dug in and immersed himself in what he calls the “silences” in the Gospel ofMark. He has been intrigued at the way the gospel writer leaves us hanging with many of the stories. For example, when Mark reports that Jesus was led out into tire wilderness and tempted by Satan for forty days, we aren’t told in that gospel what foe temptations were! And, since Mark predates Matthew and Luke, both of whom do describe those temptations, Mark’s first readers werc left, as Lowry puts it, “to squirm, wondering what foe temptations might have been (p. 2).” One implication (mine, not necessarily Lowry’s) of Mark’s lack of detail is foat Matthew and Luke couldn’t stand it! So they filled in more description in order to put themselves (and perhaps us) at ease. In like manner, to raise other questions, our author wonders how foe unclean spirits in Mark 4 and 5 knew who Jesus was. And, who was foe young man who

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ran away naked because his linen eloth was grabbed in Mark 14. And, what became of him? Those are just a few examples of the silences that Jim Lowry invites us to wonder about in Mark’s gospel. And then, he proceeds to speculate, to spin a yam, about what might have hap^ned. “This book,” Lowry writes, “is based on the hypothesis that Mark deliberately left strategically placed silences so his readers would have to wonder what was in them. In the act of wondering, we just might discover ultimate trnth, especially if our wondering about what is left unsaid is based on what is said (p. xv).” He then takes up six silences in Mark that may leave us wondering, as they do him. He engages in midrash ofhis own by offering two possibleendings,or continuations,for eachofthose passages. He then goes on to offer two tales from his own life in South Carolina that are “in sync” with the story. There is the “cake lady” and Miss Mary Jane Creighton, each bringing indirect illumination to our love of the gospel. Are those tales “true,” or are they midrash on his experiences there? In true storytelling fashion, we are left to wonder about drat as well. In the final analysis, Jim Lowry tantalizes us with the possibilities that lie before us when approaching scripture. He is quick to say that he does not öfter this book as a commentary on Mark, at least not in the technical sense. Indeed, it is not a “typical” biblical commentary. But, Lowry knows his Bible ! He offers some commentary at the start of each passage, demonstrating that he has done his theological and exegetieal homework. But, to critique this book as if it were a traditional commentary would be to miss the point. This book is an invitation to enter into a spirit of intrigue, enjoy-

not ask us to use his stories so much as he invites us to find our own, looking to both scripture and our own lives as resources for plumbing the richness of the Word. Jim Lowry’s book is a resource for both preaching and teaching, and for lively discussion as a study book for groups.

Joumalfor Preachers

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One New Bookfor the Preacher

Joshua Rice

Mount Paran North Church of God, Marietta, Georgia

Peter Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Pan¿[؟ Letter at Ground Level (Minneapolis : Fortress, 2013)

¥ ٧٠may be wondering what a book of critical scholarship on the archaeology of ancient Pompeii has to do with our preaching ministry during the season ofPentecost. It might be exciting had remnants of some early Christian presence been suddenly discovered in the ruins, but this is not the case. And indeed, the first half of Peter Oakes’s book is about as technical as they come, full of guild-specific vocabulary and seemingly endless lists of the precise weights and measurements of the hundreds of tools, furniture, and other household items painstakingly catalogued by the excavators of the town. There are some pictures, yes, but even these are drab. ¥et for those preachers willing and able to endure the statistical analyses, Oakes has provided much low-hanging fruit for our taking. The book is, in the end, a surprise exercise in historical imagination. It strikes me that this is exactly what we preachers do each Pentecost There are two unexpected turns that comprise the action of this book. After a thorough survey of various houses in Pompeii, Oakes compares them with socioeconomic models to correlate the square footage of a family’s living space with their social status in the city. In this first turn, Oakes estimates for example, that the 78% of the city’s population who lived near and below the subsistence level resided in rooms sized less than 199 square feet. In contrast, the 2.5% that comprised the regional and municipal elites are naturally paired with the larger homes of Pompeii typically totaling above 1,000 square feet. The result is a vivid picture of the ancient family, business, and city. However, it is the second turn of the book that bears the payoff for the preacher. Based on data from New Testament scholarship on the size and ‘ breakdown of house churches, Oakes emerges a “model house church” from the ruins of Pompeii and then recalculates some of his formulas to extrapolate that congregation to a much larger scale, the ancient city of Rome. My pulse quickened as I was introduced to this ancient congregation of my believing ancestors. They meet in the home/workshop of the craftworker, Holconius, who serves as the group’s patron, 30 members cram m ing into 300 square feet. The space is “spartan; dark if the doors were closed, open to the street if they were open; in a very noisy environment; heavily encumbered with materials, tools and work in progress; lacking in cooking facilities and latrine.”1 There are a few other householders present, but the great majority of the group consists of slaves, freedmen, migrant workers, and the homeless. We meet some of these members in Oakes’s vivid reconstruction. There is Primus, the gentile slave. There is Sabina, a freed slave, scrapping for survival in the wake of being released by the master who had formerly provided for at least her basic physical needs. There is Iris, the bar maid, rented out for sex. And there is Holconius, the householder, a cabinet-maker thrust into a sense of responsibility for whatever this ekklësia was and whatever it was to become.

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What ensues is a reading صRomans that thoroughly divests the letter’s themes from the shadow of Martin Luther’s individualistic interpretation, returning the letter to its home: the local house-church. We experience the great themes of Romans through the lives of its true addressees. The promise of divine justice is no longer relegated to theories of atonement, but is now cast in the light of ?rimus’s hope that one day his oppressors will be punished. The promise of eternal life, “astonishingly underplayed by scholars,” is proof for members like Sabina that “the gospel validates their suffering and encourages them in their day-by-day endurance.”2 Iris is promised that her abused body can be a “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (Rom 12:1). And Holconius grapples with the staggering reality and responsibility that all these, even these, are the “many brothers and sisters” of Jesus, the firstborn (Rom 8:29).

If someone such as Holconius had been asked to picture a group of people answering to the description that ?aul gives in Romans, the picture would not look like that group in the workshop, including his own slaves and children, the pair of stoneworkers who were scrabbling for subsistence, and the rather dubious serving girl from the bar down the street. Surely the Spirit-filled children of God ought to be a carefully selected group living a contemplative life in a temple on an island somewhere? ?aul said that the Christians were indeed carefully chosen- but they turned out to be this lot!2

The book leads us not just into the raw data, but into the/ﺀﺀ/،<أو of shock as this ragamuffin group of the redeemed stare at one another, their mouths open, at the first hearing of Romans 8:16. In that context, “We are all God’s sons and daughters” didn’t sound sentimental. It sounded like a bomb exploding. And so perhaps the gift of this book in the here and now is to offer us preachers a corrective to the high-mindedness ٠۴ ?entecost. After all, it is easy to get caught up in the fireworks: the tongue-talking, the fire-splitting, the fiery sermon by one who had been friends with the resurrected Jesus that launched the (capital C) Church into existence and on toward global influence. It is easy to speak of Acts 2 as the birthday ٠۴ a new religious institution that has led to the very pulpit and pews before us. The on-the-ground reality ٠۴ the Day of Pentecost was all that it meant for (little c) house-churehes: small groups of Christians crammed into dark rooms, discovering what it meant to un-remember everything that the wider culture said had value and to dismember every dividing wall between them. “Even on my slaves, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.”

Notes 1 Oakes, 94-95. 2Ibid., 140-141. 3 Ibid., 165

Journalfor Preachers