We are in the midst of a revolution, and the black brothers on the street are not playing when they say that unless they get justice they will burn the system. Now the question is, Where does the Church stand in the midst of that revolution? What is the message of evangelism? What is the message of the Church? What do we have to say to 25 million people who feel shut out of American society?

Let’s begin by considering what the role of the Church is. First, in this hour of revolution it is the role of the Church to reflect the life of Jesus.

The New Testament Church also grew up in a time of revolution. It grew up in a time when the Romans were exploiting the Jews, and when the seeds of revolution were being sown by Jewish nationals who were saying that there was only one way to get that Roman honky off your back and that was to burn him out. In the midst of this there arose this radical group of disciples who had been with Jesus for 3 ½ years, who had walked with him and seen him live his life in total dependency upon his Father, had seen him crucified, resurrected, and ascended to his Father. Filled with his life they went out and impressed people that they had been with Jesus.

My black brothers in Harlem and Watts are not so sure that the Church in the twentieth century has been with Jesus. They’re not convinced that we present Jesus Christ or that we are the vehicles through which he has chosen to reflect himself.

But it is the purpose of God in this hour of revolution to take you and me as the Church and make us the vehicles through which he expresses himself. It is therefore the responsibility of the Church to be able to say to a revolution that we’re not here necessarily to take sides; we’re merely here in the midst of this revolution to say to you what the principles of the Kingdom of God are. The early disciples simply went out and said, “Yes, there’s a revolution. Yes, some of it is right. The Jewish radicals are right about what they say to the Roman Empire, but what are they going to replace the Roman Empire with?” They came forth saying that the Roman Empire and the Jewish radicals had no real answers. They said that real revolution lies in allowing the common clay of your humanity to be saturated with the deity of Christ, in going out in open display as a living testimony that it is possible for the invisible God to make himself visible in a man.

Romans 8:28 tells us that everything in our lives works together for good. Romans 8:29 tells us that we are to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. In other words, it is the intention of the living Christ to saturate us with himself and then to put us out in open display in an explosive world—not to take a political position to the right, the left, or what have you, but simply to declare that we are the vehicles through which Christ chooses to express himself and that in this hour of revolution we come to proclaim the principles of the Kingdom of God.

Article continues below

In the middle of this revolution the Church will have to go to a crippled people, a people who are crippled economically, socially, politically, and psychologically, a people who have been robbed of the opportunity that you’ve had for so many centuries to hear of the unsearchable riches of Jesus. You yourselves will have to go to the Cross to repent of your negligence and then, being filled with the Holy Spirit, go to a black population that is burdened down and cry out to them in the name of Jesus, because you are available to him: Rise up and walk.

The next role of the Church is to live oblivious to public opinion. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who really want to do the job of evangelism, are people who are oblivious to public opinion. They take their orders from God, and when they know what God wants, they go ahead.

One of the great problems we face in race relations in America is this: Great numbers of us as Christians, though we know where we ought to stand, know we should speak, know what we ought to say, and know we ought to preach against racism as sin against God, still have refused to do so. Our excuse is that it is not popular—think of what our neighbors would say, what the parishioners would say. I’ve had many pastors tell me, “Tom, I know I ought to take a stand in my church, but my board of trustees would vote me out next week.” I’ve had many church leaders tell me they would be glad to take a stand but their financial support would be cut off if they did. Others say, “Tom, I know I ought to stand in my neighborhood but my neighbors would turn against me.” Young people are saying the same thing.

What is the answer to the race question in the Church? The answer, my friend, is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, because when we are filled with the Holy Spirit we see ourselves as one in Christ. The multitude of those who believe are of one heart and one soul. We need genuine fellowship. Now don’t get me wrong. By fellowship I do not mean retiring to the basement of a church for a “time of fellowship,” namely Christian booze and cookies, tea and coffee. I don’t mean that. By fellowship I mean situations where we pour ourselves into each other, where we share with each other in an equal relationship.

Article continues below

Large numbers of us as black Christians have discovered that in the minds of some of our brethren “fellowship” usually means a paternal relationship; if we act as they expect us to act, and if we say what they want us to say, and if we believe what they want us to believe, then we can have fellowship. My friend, that is not fellowship; that is psychological slavery. What we need is fellowship, the kind of fellowship that says “I respond to you as my brother,” and, “I am prepared to lay down my life for you.”

This was the kind of relationship the disciples had. There is no possible way for us to penetrate the black communities and the black ghettoes of America until we can again begin to announce through a demonstration of love and responsibility and fellowship that the body of Jesus Christ is one. Those of us who preach from the streets of the black communities are increasingly embarrassed by questions about why churches are segregated in America. Why is it that we preach the same Gospel but there are certain churches we can’t fellowship in? Why is it that we preach the same Gospel but there are certain pulpits we are not welcomed in? Why is it that we preach the same Gospel but there are certain Christian institutions in this society that actually have written in their constitutions that no black person can attend those schools? We are continually embarrassed by the lack of genuine fellowship on the part of those who name the name of Jesus—lack of the fellowship that would mean that if you attended my church and you were slighted that morning or were not allowed to enter, that church, my church, would not hear from me tomorrow or next week; they would hear from me that morning in that service, because my brother had been turned away.

If the revolution develops to the point where you happened to be present in my community when a volatile situation develops and there is a call by the black radicals to eliminate all white people present in that community, and you and I are together, the kind of fellowship I am speaking about says that I will take upon myself the responsibility of standing between you as my brother and the radicals as the foe because you are my brother in Christ. Never mind your political point of view or your social position. My Master, my Christ demands if I’m available to him that I be willing to lay down my life for you. But the issue is this: Will you reciprocate?

Article continues below

When I move to your community and buy a home and I’m given a rough time, will you take a stand? If my daughter falls in love with your son and they decide to be married, will you allow them to marry in peace? Will you reciprocate by accepting me as a brother? This is what black Christian brethren are crying out for, a genuine relationship.

But what does Jesus Christ have to say to the revolution? I suggest to you that if Jesus Christ is going to penetrate this revolution, and if he is going to be exalted as the risen Christ and draw men to himself, then we must be careful as to the kind of Christ we possess. One of the things that turned me off about the Christian Church was that the image they gave me of Jesus was that he was a softy, a nice little patsy. In the pictures I saw of him he came out with nice smooth hands as if they’d just been washed in Dove. I got the impression that Jesus was some sort of soft, effeminate man, and I said, “I can’t respond to him. He looks as if we could beat him up on any street corner at any hour.”

Then I discovered that the Christ who leaps out of the pages of the New Testament was no softy. He was a very gutsy, contemporary man with hair on his chest and dirt under his fingernails. He could look the establishment in the face when he knew they were wrong and say, “You generation of vipers, you hypocrites, you filthy separatists. You’re like dead men’s bones.” But that same Christ could be moved with compassion to weep over a city. That same Christ was radical enough to go where the house of his Father was being desecrated, and wrap cords around his hands, and knock over the money-counters and drive the money-changers out, and with a holy fervor stand there and say, “My Father’s house shall be a house of prayer.”

The same Christ could look at an adulteress and tell her to sin no more. That Christ is the Christ who must be the common clay of our humanity. We must be willing to make ourselves available to him. We must not present Christ as the maintainer of the status quo. Jesus Christ is not the head of the Pentagon. He is not the president of the New York Stock Exchange. He is not the defender of the capitalist system—he is not capitalist any more than he’s communist; he is no more Republican than he’s Democrat; he’s no more militaristic than pacifist, no more leftist than rightist or conservative. He is the Lord from heaven. He must be worshipped as Lord and preached as Lord, and we must respond to him as Lord.

Article continues below

The time of Jesus Christ had much in common with ours. There was a revolution going on. The Romans had exploited the Jews, and there rose in the hills of Jerusalem a young radical by the name of Barabbas. Barabbas looked out among his people and he said, “Brothers, there is only one way to get that Roman honky off our back and that is to burn him out.” And Barabbas gathered around him a group of radicals who began to throw fire bombs and Molotov cocktails into those nice Roman suburban homes and burned them down. Barabbas was arrested as an insurrectionist.

But in those same hills was another radical, another revolutionary. His name was Jesus. He had no guns, no ammunition, no tanks. He knew nothing about guerrilla warfare. But he came preaching a thing called the Kingdom of God, and in essence Jesus would have agreed with Barabbas. He would have said, “Barabbas, you are right. The Roman system stinks. It’s racist, it’s prejudiced, it’s bigoted, it’s militaristic, it’s materialistic, it’s polytheistic, it’s godless. You’re right, Barabbas, the system is no good. But, Barabbas, what are you going to change it with? When you burn it down, what are you going to replace it with? Don’t you understand, Barabbas, that you’re going to replace that stinking Roman system with your own messed-up kind of system and that there is no difference between a corrupt white man and a corrupt black man? I have come, therefore, to create a new kingdom. I’ve come to start a new race and, it’s going to be built upon me, Barabbas. It’s going to be built upon the fact that I’m the Christ, the Son of the living God. It’s going to be built upon me as the second man, as the leader of a new creation.”

Jesus went around preaching that, and before long lame people started walking and blind people started seeing. A tax-collector left his job and went after him. A fisherman dropped his net. A doctor went after him to pay his allegiance, and great throngs of people came from miles to behold the man who was decreed to be the Christ.

Article continues below

But they had to arrest him, too. And they arrested him for insurrection. So then Pilate had two radicals on his hands. Around festivity time Pilate stood up and said, “Look, I’ve got two revolutionaries and I have the disposition at this time to let one go. Whom should I release unto you? Should I let this man here go, Barabbas, the insurrectionist, the anarchist, the murderer? Or should I release unto you this man Jesus? I don’t find anything wrong with him. I’ve examined him. You’ve accused him of committing blasphemy, but I find nothing wrong with him. Whom should I release to you?” And with one voice they cried out, “Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas! We will not have this man Jesus to rule over us.”

Why in the world did they want Barabbas? Why would they want him released? He was the insurrectionist, the anarchist. It’s very simple. If you let Barabbas go and Barabbas goes in the hills and gets some more guerrillas and starts some more warfare, you can always put down his riot. All you have to do is to call in the federal troops or the National Guard and put some helmets on the police and they can put down Barabbas’s conflict. They can bring it in to him. They can just roll the tanks into the middle of the city and can bring it into those rebels. But how do you stop a man who’s got no guns, no ammunition, no guerrillas? How do you stop a man who just tells a blind man to see and he sees? How do you stop a man who tells a dead man “Come out of the grave!” and he lives? How do you stop a man who takes a few loaves and a few fishes and feeds 5,000 people? How do you stop a man who’s got no army but has thousands of people going after him? So they said, “We’ve got to crucify him.”

Don’t you understand, my friend, that every time you turn your television on and see a riot and shake your head and say, “Those dirty no-good people; why don’t they learn to have respect for law and order?” and then you turn your television off—don’t you understand that when you do this you have said, “Give us Barabbas?” Every time your community starts changing to another color and you pack up and move out and then sell your building to a liberal church even though all the time you’ve been preaching against them—when you give the church away to liberals to get away from black people you have said, “Give us Barabbas.” Every time you say, “We refuse to support black men of God who are communicating the Gospel to their people,” you are saying, “Give us Barabbas.” And every time you refuse to join hands with those of us who as black Christians love the Saviour and genuinely want fellowship, you are saying, “Give us Barabbas.”

Article continues below

And so they nailed that radical Jesus to a cross, little realizing that they were playing into the hands of God. The Bible says that when he was nailed to that cross, my sin was nailed there with him. He shed his blood on that cross to forgive us of every sin and then rose again from the dead to live again. They thought they had gotten rid of him. They nailed him and they buried him and they washed their hands and said, “That’s one radical off our hands.” And then three days later Jesus Christ pulled one of the greatest political coups of all time. He got up out of the grave. The Bible calls that risen Christ “the second man,” the leader of a new creation.

It was that Christ that I heard about one night while I was mapping out strategy for a gang fight on the streets of Harlem. I was a gang leader with twenty-two notches on the handle of my knife, which meant that my blade had gone into the bodies of twenty-two different people. But I responded to that Christ. I gave him my life, and ever since that moment he has saturated my humanity with his life so that I no longer have an identity crisis. I know who I am. I’m God’s son, a member of the royal family of God, which puts me in the best family stock there is in all the world. The Word of God tells me I’m a joint heir with Jesus Christ, which means that I’m connected to him to inherit everything that God has, and I’m seated together with Jesus Christ in heavenly places, which puts me in the highest social level in all the world.

I did not always think of Christ as that. When I was first confronted with Christ, I said he was nothing. When I was told about him I examined who he was and I said he was nothing. I heard that he was just a simple carpenter who sawed wood and planed and sanded it out and built cabinets and installed doors in people’s houses and I felt that he was nothing. He had no status. He was nobody real, nothing.

I was told that he had never been to any institution of learning and had no degrees behind his name. I said he was nothing. I wrote him off as the bastard child of some woman who sacked out in the hayloft with another man and tried to blame it on God, and I said he was nothing. When they told me about Christ I wrote him off as a white man’s God who could do nothing for me—until one night I met him. I encountered him. He revolutionized my life, and now I’m not a spokesman or a representative for the black community; rather, I’m a representative of the Kingdom of God who happens to be black.

Article continues below

There are 25 million people out there waiting to decide what we’re going to do, waiting to decide whether the Gospel of Jesus Christ is really for all people, waiting to decide whether you are prepared and I am prepared to enter into genuine fellowship so that if the revolution ever comes to the place where we have to lay down our lives for each other we will be willing to do it. There are people who are crying out for us to prove that it is possible for the common clay of a man’s humanity to be saturated with the life of Christ and for us to prove that the invisible God can make himself visible in a man.

I pray that we will not fail in this hour of crisis.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.

Our digital archives are a work in progress. Let us know if corrections need to be made.

Tags:
Issue: