By Howard M. Romaine
Driving back from Memphis just in time to catch the first of three sermons by the fiery, eloquent, enriching Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Ray of Hope Church, just blocks off Gallatin Road to the West on Eastland,at Meridian, Dr. Hortense Spillers and I were treated to a prose poem on the poetry of the Old Testament Prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and a couple of others I hadn’t heard quoted since I memorized the books of the “Old Testament” circa 6th or 7th grade.
Referring frequently to the joint 15 year pastorate of former Vanderbilt Hebrew professor, the Rev. Dr. Renita Weems, now Vice President of American Baptist College, and her husband,the Rev. Martin Espinosa, Wright, the man whose pulpit oratory and counseling and people uplifting skills united and then kept the Obama family in a pew for years, before a final falling out during the campaign for Presidency, showed his literary versatility and his profound engagement with the poetry of the old testament prophets, attached and anchored to a dazzling sequence of African-American events, which at once shocked, re -vealed, and awakened our slumbering senses of revolt and disgust at our own culture’s willful repression of the past – Slavery, segregation, and now, ‘Tea Party’ rise in reaction, the latest wave of irrational white supremacy excitation and – to quote Hannah Arendt – numbing banality of evil – whipped into the forefront of our worship enlivened minds by the brilliance of Wright’s exegesis, emphasis, and eloquence.
REVIVAL A CELEBRATION OF 15 YEAR MINISTRY
The three days of the Rev.Wright’s appearance, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, celebrates the joint ministry of the Rev, Weems, who, Wright said, recently gave a brilliant sermon in his home town, Chicago, and whose prophetic scholarly roots were summoned as Wright spoke of the poetry of the prophetic testaments, whose authors, mostly we know little about, but whose POETRY rings down to our time with great majesty and energy.
Using the quotations he referred to, illustrated above his head on a screen for the worshipers to read, follow, recite, and generally “lift up” Wright pulled from these old texts, a literary powerhouse of powerful words, many of which we’ve heard down thru the years in the words of such 20th century prophets as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., or his disciple the Rev.Congressman John Lewis, and, arguably, in this century, the Rev’s Wright, Spinosa, Weems, and even at times, the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
But Wright’s words were anything but a pedestrian bow to the culture of empire or emperor worship, regardless of color, or culture, they were a dance with the diversity of historical moments revealed, Revealed, as he said, in the poetry of the testaments, which rolled on and skittered off his tongue, like the eloquent introductory music filling the sanctuary, as Dr. Spillers and I walked in.
Spillers, herself, seemed lifted, joyous, laughing and nodding, and being reconfirmed in the African-American prophetic biblical tradition of her childhood, and academic life after. Best revealed in one of her finest essays on the Black Sermon, which she views as central to African-American cultural identity and creation, in her transforming book, BLACK, WHITE AND IN COLOR, (Chicago, 2003) the sermon itself, met and surpassed the 19th century paragons and creators discussed in that piece. One can only wonder whether, or how, the Rev. Wright can continue his mesmerization for two more nights. Check it out!!