Good morning. When I leave, when we take our break for lunch, I'll be leaving to go back to my day job down the street.

I say to my students, when I canceled classes this week that just imagine that I'm six thousand miles away.

But now we know I'm really more like six blocks. They know.

So I must return to faculty meetings and departmental meetings this afternoon. But I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to the Virginia Union alums and student body. I want to say thank you to all of you present. I was saying to Sister Janet this morning, as we were waiting for the doors to open that I wanted to tell you a story. When I was in seminary, I had to do clinical pastoral education. And all my life, I've been a bookworm, and as I said in an earlier lecture that I knew I could spell. I've been reading since I was four and I just love reading and love writing. I love my intellectual curiosity, you know, I just love it. And but when it was time to do C.P.E., they sent me to the Georgia Retardation Center.

I was devastated.

I got there and a hospital full of children.

We're banging their heads into walls, drooling and slobbering and urinating all over themselves. Crawling.

And the chaplain said to me. How are you doing? And I said, why me? And he looked at me, he said, why them?

And my whole life changed. I was at the hospital, I was at the Georgia Retardation Center three days a week. And I learned so much, how do you do ministry to people who don't want who don't talk?

And yet you have to be the I was there so often that even know when they were you and they know me, I didn't even know they were drooling on me.

And when the little girl named Leslie Springs, a little African-American girl, six years old, who couldn't walk, not talk, communicated to me that she wanted some cookies and milk. The chaplain said, you've now done your first communion. But one of the things I learned in my C.P.E. training, the chaplains said to me, katakana, we don't call you doodles until you stop acting like doodles.

I mean, do you know who this. I said, no, I don't. He said doodlers was a little boy who loved his brother. And he would walk and run behind his brother all day long, everything the older brother did, doodles would do. Doodles ran out, the older brother ran out the house one day, Doodles ran right behind him. The brother grabbed onto a van and swung soon.

The brother let go do this, grab the violence one. You just follow him all day long. Suddenly, it was a flash flood. The brother came home, the mother said, where's doodles? The brother said, I don't know. Was he with me? And they went back and they found doodles and doodles had around. The chairman said.

That I was so caught up in being a people pleaser, I couldn't evaluate my colleagues and the people I'm trying to please don't even know that I exist. And that would never be able to do ministry until I could be told I could differentiate between those who give. And those who know that I exist. So I want to thank particularly this community for your hospitality when I moved to Richmond. I've been here 14 months now. And this has been a wonderful community to slip off to every chance I get, I'm even in the library over here in the periodical room just because it reminds me of going to college. So I'm over here when you don't even know I'm over here because I'm getting my black thing on.

I needs a dose of blackness. I just hang up, hang around, show. And it's been wonderful.

I didn't know anything about Richmond, I even was a bridesmaid in a wedding here on the campus here back in the early 70s and didn't even know about Richmond. I mean, I lived in New York nine years. I lived in Boston nine years. I lived in Philadelphia nine years. I left the south. I had no intent to come back to the south before 12, 15 when I retired. But God had a different plan, even when they were told that there were ninety five, I would pay my toll and not even stop, I would take a bathroom break in Maryland and would stop on eighty five. I would even stop in Richmond. So when God called and said, you're going to Richmond, I said, God, I don't think so. I really don't I haven't lost anything in Richmond to go back and get. But is how a thermos and you never move on? Do you feel God's fist in your back? As soon as I walked on union campus, I knew it was time to come home. It was time to come south. This place has been this community has been so important to your hospitality, every faculty person, every staff person, every student, I thank you for rolling out the red carpet for me. But in order not to be doodlers, I have to name names.

So I want to thank them, Kenny.

Dean Kinney is one of the most brilliant, embodied liberation theologians that has ever existed. Even when he was a doctoral student on the elevator. He be saying profound stuff. I have never been in this company where I have not learned from him, and not only have I not learned, I have always remembered.

I've even stolen a couple of his sermons. In a polluted environment, all life forms and they are bound with in order to survive. You're messing with the wrong stuff. I'd also like to name names in terms of Dr. Borking Sanders. He keeps reminding me the revolution will not be televised.

So now he's on my Saddlebrook Road, he comes by my office, he has on his dashiki, I have on my dashiki.

I said to Dr. LaRue yesterday when we were signing books, when King was assassinated, I started wearing an Afro dashiki, a strap up sandals. My mother said I was ultra black. There were no black people before me. There would be no black people after me. I was the only black person who ever lived. And I also like to call out my sister, Dr. Alison Johnson, who was my student and who's now my Lerner and my teacher, several people said was she's a miniature me with Dr. Alessandri is doing with what I gave her. I just said in all, you know, it's like she's taking it to a place because it's organic, it's alive. And I invite you to do as well. And Dr. Faith Harris is my drove me to pray to this funeral and back and we bonded in a way, and now she's one of my students. And it's just also I mean, you just got a whole lot of stuff here. So whenever you see me it around, because I'm coming to get my black stuff, I need a dose. So I thank you very much. And I'll be here next year for the complication. I've already scheduled my not to work, of course not to sit in the back. I said, I work. I don't accept invitations doing this week because I needed.

I need a place to be fed, I need a place to fill up, I need a place just to just to sit in the back.

So I thank you for all of your hospitality. And all of your love, I thought my ancestors came through the Port of Charleston.

I come here down to the docks, found out more Africans came to the dock of Richmond than anywhere in the United States. I said, Oh, I'm from Richmond. I didn't know. So I did lose some here.

I'm glad to be among you. Let us pray. God, we thank you for this day, as a preacher said so well this morning, a day we'd never live, a day would never live again.

And there's so many blessings and opportunities to stretch, to grow, to be. And we thank you. It's always a god, we pray that you show us the way, show us the way not to fortune or fame, not to win last praise for our name, but show us the way to tell the great story to live the great story, the dinosaur, the Commonwealth, the power and the glory and the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen.

In this third and final lecture as we wrap up our work together. As participants in this fifty third annual Ellyson convocation. Let us focus our attention on what it means to be God and. What do we actually mean in our heart of hearts when we enter the covenantal relationship, when we say yes, God will be our God and yes, we will be God's people? On Tuesday and election number one, we talk about the origin of the idea when it's life and. And always in our second lecture, our attention focused on the origin of the idea when its text let.

We talked about this thinking green meat. And chicken dropping salad, you know, because it has the same effect, if we take a test and try to preach a sermon to a congregation, and that's not relevant to that congregation and it's not the word of God. It's just like taking somebody else's medicine.

It may save that person, but it could kill somebody else.

So today, as we conclude our work together, we will move from the penultimate goals of freedom for social change that are life led and text led to the essence of the be all end ultimate mandate of freedom for social change that God led. So this morning, I'd like to share with you an adaptation of an excerpt from one of the chapters you will read in Teaching Preaching, and I'm going to excerpted and Adapted. And amplified. The chapter, the clock talks about the critique of contemporary preaching. Clarke indicts all of us when he declares that much of preaching is either light or lying or both. Far too many of us have strung together spiritual slop either callously or carelessly. Late on Saturday night or early on Sunday morning. With the inevitable consequence of parishioners in our congregation running from church to church, hollering and knocking over benches in search of genuine food for their souls. Now, without prejudicing the case completely beforehand, let me say that we would definitely need some help boops and some dungarees whenever we engage in a serious critique of contemporary preaching. We're gonna need no suit and no tie. On need, no robe and no high heels if we're serious about evaluating today's preaching ministry. Because any time we're working in an outhouse, any time we're waiting around in piles and piles of horse manure and chicken droppings, we definitely need him boots and dungarees rather than a suit and tie a robes and high heels to do this kind of life. Latex laggardly at work. And if we who are gathered here this morning, if we are really, truly interested in helping black folks to overcome powers and principalities. To have our kinfolk and our kinfolk overcome spiritual wickedness in high places. Through preaching for social change lets us engage in some serious soul wrestling inventory work concerning the contemporary preaching situation. So let us begin this necessar critique on the content preaching situation by making this general assessment in light of clerks working definition of preaching. And once again, this is what it says. Preaching is divine activity wherein the word of God is proclaimed or announced on a contemporary issue for an ultimate response to our God. Now, if this prison definition has anything theological validity at all, and it does. If there's any virtue in it for our usage, and I believe that it has that. Then our definition should make us acutely aware of a serious indictment against much that operates around under the guise of preaching in our midst today. For many preachin imposter's, a whole lot of jack legs, both Jack legs are theologically trained and Jaclyn's, who have never set foot inside of a schoolhouse all preaching imposter's need to be arrested for impersonating genuine Proclaimers of the most high God. Much of contemporary preaching for the most part, not every part, but for the most part, for the predominant part. Much of contemporary preaching is shallow and in the shadows. No assessing how much A of Britain has been shallow, we mean that much of so-called precision today is not getting at the deep, fundamental, serious questions of life that people are concerned about in their heart of hearts. A whole lot of timber preachin is often lacking the mention of divine depth and lacking the mention of human death. No sound theology is in a whole lot about preaching and no understanding of sound psychology or sociology is under a lot of our preaching. Ethan. There's often no great divine or human import in much of today's claptrap. Far too much of contemporary preaching is shallow because it's to tell us this so well, we're hanging out on the safe suburban landscape of the gospel. Or as Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweden in Iraq puts it. Preaching the good news is not the same as promising people good times. She says she got catch hell when we step off the deep end and our preaching and in our teaching about the cause of genuine Christian discipleship. So in that sense, much of today's preaching is shallow because far too much of today's preaching is about this deep. As a single drop, a do on the desert at high noon Shalom. There's a draft due out there in the desert is high noon, we don't even know that is dropping DO is out there. Now, when we assess that much of our region is not only shallow, but in the shadows, we mean that most people today don't take it seriously. That's preaching today is no longer in the limelight, as it once was, but it's often more or less a sideshow in the shadows and a whole lot of churches today. And, you know, comedians love to mock preachers. Even the gangbangers and the hip hoppers do a critique on preachers. Like the minister who asked Dr Clarke Dark, do you think we ought to have a dramatic play instead of a sermon during the morning, worship service clerk answered, and I quote. Yes, I think we ought to have a dramatic play on Sunday evening when we're going to have some kind of program. But a dramatic play should not take the place of preaching during the morning worship service in the quote. And as a minister, as Dr. Clark, do you think we ought to have a musical cantata at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning instead of a sermon? Talkalakh responds, Hell no, if it were not for preachin, we wouldn't have a church. Some people are now going so far as to push preaching to the other side, to all on the outside, talking about instead of a sermon, let's have a song fest. So let's have a recital and let's have a concert. There's a whole lot of gospel and music, we all admit that on yesterday elected number two, we even talked about how point fifty six percent of the time we may decide to select a symbolic text in a text led sermon from Christian hymns, from African-American spirituals and from all kinds of musical genre. And we know there is gospel in a dramatic play. Nobody's denying that. All we're saying is that music and drama did not bring the church into existence. And musical cantatas and dramatic plays all by themselves would not keep the church of Jesus Christ alive and thriving in the 21st century. As preachers call by God to proclaim that serve the Lord, we should never know, never, never, ever let the devil fool us out of our place in the pulpit. There's only one time when the devil are the fullest out of the pulpit, and that's when we ain't got no message. Just sit down and let the choir take over for maybe they can sing some gospel because at least the choir rehearsed on Wednesday night. But if we got our salmon ready, like we ought to have it ready, then we tell the choir that they have their part in the worship service. And we have our part as Preachers'. Let the choir sing, Clarke says, and don't have a whole lot of common and no organ playing while we're preaching the gospel. Talk about needing some help if we ain't got our sermon ready, if we haven't finished our sermon by Wednesday evening and place it in the spiritual Holy Ghost incubator by Thursday, then we need to let the organ and the choir drown us all out because at least the choir rehearsed on Wednesday night. Let us be sure that we hear what Clarke is saying and that is this too often, far too often, genuine, powerful, prophetic preaching is becoming more and more a sideline show somewhere in the dim shadow shade of the worship service. There are people in various denominations across this country asking questions about whether they even need a preacher in the worship life of the church community. And they even Preachers' going around wondering and talking about whether or not we think we ought to have a dramatic play or musical cantata instead of a sermon. We need to be sure that we understand what it means to embrace powerful black preaching as an essential part of our culture heritage. But at the same time, we need to beware that for the most part in contemporary preaching and far too many of our churches preaching is something being done for the record only. Prejean has become an obscure off the wall making show for the sake of religious appearances, in essence, too little of today's preaching and do not embody the radicality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, preaching in contemporary society is evaluated as shallow and in the shadows. All in all, preaching in today's world is often some kind of shady affair cover with a lot of gloom and numerous clouds offering very little light to the heartache and problems that cause cause us to toss and turn and the real context of our living. Yes, when we are gathered here today, when we stop and take seriously, we stop and do a rigorous inventory, we can see that far too much of preachin is shallow and in the shadows by investigating the kind of time we preach is geared to preparing sermons to preach to our congregations. Clark says that some of us are even foolish enough to think we can get a semi together and two or three hours, and if we think this be crazy. If we decide to use clot's homiletic a method of sermon preparation, it would take the average one of us. If we really do it right, it would take us about one hour preparation for every minute that we preach. Preaching for social change requires we wrestled night and day, day and night with an angel. And then and only then the Lord blesses us. Generally speaking, preaching that is godly and is not shallow noises in the shadows, godly preaching is deep and it is enlightening. Godly preaching is an indicative mode. We don't say, I suspect God loves you. I reckon God loves you. I hope God loves you. Garland, Putin said, God loves you. Instead, with all the power and gusto in our body, we declare to women, men and children that God is a present help in times of trouble here and now. We are now. Since we've heard this serious indictment against so many preachers on the contemporary scene is now under divine obligation to prove the charges, or else he has to be sued for libel, for slander and defamation of outrageous character. The clock continues on by proving these charges in a court of law. He calls in someone unimpeachable witnesses, and because time is of the essence, let us permit Clarke to call upon his main witness at this time to verify his indicted claim that much of today's preaching is shallow and in the shadows. So let us listen now to clocks dramatized version of the spiritually hungry appetite of our local church folk who are willing to come to court this morning and bear witness to the contemporary preachin situation. Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me put this thing down on the ground so that everybody in this court can get it. So we can reach a fair verdict on this issue of whether contemporary preaching is shallow and in the shadows. For example, where I once lived, my garbage cans were turned over almost every day by hungry dogs, all because people in the neighborhood did not believe in feeding their dogs at home, Your Honor. They merely turned those dogs loose as suppertime to fend for themselves, your Honor. So every day, Your Honor, every day, every single day. It was a sound like this being heard in my backyard.

Bam, bam, bam, bam.

Lemme lemme ring, ring, ring. One hundred hungry dogs turn off my garbage cans looking for something to eat. Your Honor, every day there were those hungry dogs looking for meal. And they would spread the garbage all out all over the yard every day. Your Honor, you could hear of Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, boom, boom, ring, ring in my backyard and garbage is spread out all over the yard. That's the way it was every day where I once live, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of this jury. But however, where I now live, where I now live, is an entirely different story. There are about 20 dogs in the community where I now live, your Honor. So it ain't just about dogs we're talking about. Up until last year, up until last year, when the economic recession started, up until then, I did not have more than five or six incidents of overturned garbage cans in the past 10 years in my present neighborhood. Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of this jury, only six to seven overturned trash cans and 10 years, but every day, every single day before in my own neighborhood. Why are you on? Why overturned garbage cans every day before and why not the same story now? The explanation should be obvious to this court, your Honor. It is because people in my present neighborhood feed their dogs at home. They give their dog something to eat at home. And those garbage cans in my present neighborhood stay erect. And the garbage man, the garbage man in the communities would gladly come to this court to verify this fact, Your Honor, the garbage man in my own neighborhood would tell you that the garbage cans are all over the yard. And the garbage men in my present neighborhood would tell you that very seldom, if ever, you will see garbage cans turned over in my present neighborhood. And if you don't believe me, I'll bring them to court if you need them to testify. So, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it does not that illustration suggests a plausible explanation of what is really happening in many of our local churches. Far too many local pastors are frequently, frequently turning hungry, craving families, starving people lose Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to turn over some mighty spiritual garbage cans. Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury and like these hungry dogs in my own neighborhood, these church folk will head for anybody's spiritual garbage can. Church folk who are running to hear their every which way turn in looking for spiritual mail. Also, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of this jury, because like those hungry dogs in my old neighborhood, a whole lot of church folk in today's church are being pinched with hunger. They know that there's nothing on that table. In fact, there's nothing even being cooked in the pulpit in the local parish. So you're on it and it is every person scrambling for him or herself and God for us all. And those hungry souls have all kind of televangelists. They scurrying around all kind of a Promise Keepers and promise Reba's convention. They attend every kind of Jacklin crusade and every rabble-rousing healing service, sirtuins, honeys crowding around any and everybody else spiritual garbage can to turn it over, searching desperately for some food for their starving souls. And to tell you the truth, here on our local church, members have turned both Billy Graham and T.D. Jakes into multimillionaires, appearing that good, hard earned, hard earned cash to buy T.D. Jakes and Billy Graham's paraphernalia. To 10, their crusades, whenever they come to town, come to town. And we don't have to get a big name on the marquee like Billy Graham or T.D. Jakes. Other lesser likes, other people don't even come close to multimillionaires like Cliff low half dollar, they have let the cat out of the bag about the spirit of malnutrition, about the Christian anemia, about the decline in general, Christian discipleship in most of our local churches. For instance, just let any kind of Jacklin hummingbird come to town. Or we can even get hold of a rather drunken quartet down in the alley, a bunch of bars with Nicole, Neverov, Holland, mother, mother, mother. Sometimes we just haul off a 10 year old kid, then we have to be a grown up, a 10 year old kid is all we need. Just get a 10 year old kid imitating a Jack Jackley. And all these lesser lights will outdo the average local preacher who is holding forth in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday. A vast majority of one hundred church folk, our elders and our deacons, our trustees and our choir members, our ushers in our Sunday school teachers are out there. Those services are turning over one garbage can after another, desperately seeking a spiritual meal. Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of this jury and let me tell you something else, even after the church leaves lip service on Sunday morning, in fact, even before most of them get to church, they turn on the radio. Too many far too many church folk know if they're going to get anything at all, they're going get any more any teeny tiny bit of food, any kind of food for them. So they better turn on the radio and listen to the black gospel radio programs or you check out what's been aired on Betti or Seven Hundred Club, hoping against our hope that they would get a morsel from a grain, a smidgen of spirit of food for the day. And when they leave church, what a church, women and church men, both for youth and adults going to do. All afternoon and late into the night operations as all around town where such and such preachin. When people are hungry, when we are urgent, in urgent need of basic nutrients for our soul so we can keep on keeping on, we become desperate people who do desperate things.

I say to my students all the time, we will fill the hole in our soul either constructively or destructively, because the human condition demands that we fill the hole in our soul. But we will feel it one way or the other.

Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of this jury, the prosecutor respectfully request your forgiveness and your indulgence for bringing the dead into this nasty, preachin situation. But I'm sure that the critical nature of this case warrants desperate efforts to get to the bottom of the problem. So please forgive the prosecutor's seeming disrespect for bringing the dead in at this juncture. But it is a known fact that a dead corpse at a funeral can outrun most local preachers, more people come out to town with garbage cans at funerals and come out to you. Some of us preach on the Lord's day. Many of our local parishioners hope that even the dead will offer more than what they can get from the pastor on that preaching stage. That's your truth, Your Honor. That's the whole truth. Even the dead have more power, more than all for hungry folk. To some of our sisters who are preaching in the pulpit, some of our brothers who preach every Sunday in the pulpit. So this court to see why the prosecutors are necessary to bring the dead into this nasty affair. Please forgive me for bringing the dead. So when I look into such unseemly places at funerals for spiritual morsels, for a divine manner from on high, you can be sure there's a lot of spiritual fasting going on in our local churches all the time. Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there's definitely a Lenten season, a spiritual fasting.

Going on 365 days, not every other day, but three and six to five days and most local churches where there's no spirit of food on this side of Jordan for so many, far too many hungry people. Does your honor, ladies and gentlemen of this jury.

This court should now be clear that I'm not lying when I say that the sound that is heard all over this land on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, is Baumel Lamela, my family and my family and my Lamba ring, ring, ring. The sound can be heard all over creation. Church folk want to hear their every which way. Looking for soul food, Bamma Lamb, Alabama.

Birmingham, Alabama. Mama, mama.

Ring, ring, ring.

Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of this jury, the prosecutor respectfully asked this court for recess. We now rest in our case, not by a long shot. But we're merely calling for a recess in the trial because we want to give each and every one here time to decide yay or nay regarding all the challenges for transformation. That have been placed before us in this Elhassan convocation. We request a recess, your Honor, because we want to give each and everyone time to decide yes or no regarding life, latex aid, preaching for social change. Requesting a recess, your Honor, because we have some homework to do. Each and every one of us need to go from this convocation.

Go back home, but eye, ear to the ground. And see if we hear Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, mama. And bring our homework answers back. At next year's convocation.

Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of this jury, can I get a recess?

Recess, granted, thank you.