Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Charles F. Lomax, Jr.
Recipe for Resistance
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Let us bow in a word of prayer.
Eternal and all-wise God, we give you thanks: for this day, for your goodness, for your mercy, and for your kindness. God, we are grateful to be gathered here today for this service, and we pray that your spirit and presence abide with us. Now, as we come to this preaching moment, pray that you would move me out of the way, that I would be minimized as your cross is maximized, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart would be pleasing and acceptable in thy sight. Hide me God behind your cross and will be careful to give you all praise, all honor and all glory, and it’s in the name of Jesus that we pray and every heart said Amen. Amen.
What a privilege it is to be with you all this evening. I am so excited for the opportunity to share just for a few moments with you on this grand occasion. I promise not to hold you too long. I’ve got to go home and pack. I’ve got a flight that leaves out in the morning, and so we should be good for the next two or three hours or so.
But I want to focus on a passage of Scripture that may be slightly different than what we would expect on this occasion. But I want to focus on the Book of Second Timothy, and I’m going to be reading chapter four verses two through four, and I’m going to be reading out of the New Revised Standard Version.
And it reads, “Proclaim the message, be persistent, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. Convince, rebuke and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wonder away to myths.”
My brothers and my sisters for the time that is ours to share together on this evening, if I had to tag this text with the title, I would call it “Recipe for Resistance.” “A Recipe for Resistance.” Recipes are an interesting thing to me. Recipes are interesting because I’m fascinated by the fact that you can take the same ingredients in the same kitchen with the same cookware, insert a different chef and come up with something completely different every single time. It’s unique that you can come up with a distinct meal depending on who is in the kitchen. And what this suggests to me, my friends, is that it’s not necessarily the ingredients, but it’s what you do with the ingredients that makes the difference.
Just earlier or just last year, rather, my family gathered at my mother’s house for a Sunday meal and a feast was laid out and prepared for the multitude. And I was late in my arrival. By the time I got there, plates had already been fixed. Grace had been given. People were already chowing down. And so, I walked in the door, I got my plate, I went to the beginning of the buffet line, filled my plate with food, went to the table, and sat down. And as I began to eat, I began to try one thing after another. But then I came to the green beans. And as I put the green beans in my mouth, I discovered something while they were green beans and they looked like my mama’s. They weren’t my mama’s green beans. I could tell by the way they tasted, despite the fact that they looked the same, that my mother had not prepared this meal.
My brothers and my sisters, like food from the kitchen, resistance has a recipe, and, depending on the chef, it can look and taste significantly different. Resistance is baked into the black lived experience. Since the first feet hit British colonized soil in 1619, resistance has been a way of life for those in the Americas who have descended from slaves.
Those who were willing to throw themselves overboard on the way to this continent during the Middle passage was simply nothing more but an ingredient. The Underground Railroad was nothing more than an ingredient. Negro spirituals, nothing more than an ingredient. The civil rights movement was nothing more than an ingredient. Riots in the streets to injustice that has prevailed has been nothing more than an ingredient. Black Lives Matter has been an ingredient. And Absalom Jones and Richard Allen walking out of St George’s Methodist Church after being pulled from their knees for trying to pray is nothing more than an ingredient to a larger recipe.
In this epistle, believed to be Paul’s final correspondence, he’s instilling to Timothy lessons in leadership and how to walk in the presence of God and God’s people. Paul, penning this pericope while serving his sentence, understands and has accepted the fact that he’s got more days behind him than he does in front of him. As a matter of fact, just a few verses later he will say, “for I am ready to be poured out like a drink offering for the time of my departure is now at hand. I’ve fought the good fight, finished my course, I’ve kept the faith. Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day. And not just to me, but to all of those who have longed for God’s appearing.”
Paul is preparing Timothy to continue the work of the movement when he would no longer be able to do so himself. He predicts to Timothy that ,as he advanced in his assignment, that difficult days would develop. He says in the preceding chapter that in the last days, perilous times will come. And he gives out a litany of what these last and final days will look like. And despite devolving actions and attitudes, Paul surmises that the solution is not to kowtow to the culture, but rather to do that which is proven successful time and time again. Paul says to Timothy in this pericope, all you need to do is follow the recipe.
What is this recipe? As we look at the passage, I believe that Paul gives us a few different ingredients that will help us to have this recipe for resistance. The first thing he says is proclaim the message. First ingredient is proclamation. Proclamation is and always has been a form of resistance. As you look throughout the black church tradition, it has been the church that has led the community through all of its most difficult days. Even while in slavery, gathering around the brush arbors, those who were enslaved would sing and rejoice unto God, knowing that sooner or later that they themselves would have their own exodus moment. They knew that God was a God of deliverance. They knew that God was a God of love. And that one day, even if they did not recognize it or when it would happen, that God would show up and provide for them a way of escape.
Proclamation is and always has been a form of resistance. And my brothers and my sisters, resistance in and of itself is an act of faith. When you are willing to step out on faith and on the Word of God and proclaim God’s Word, then you begin to understand that the Word of God is powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. Sadly, then and still today, the Word is often weaponized against those who might grate on the margins. The Word is weaponized.
When the Word is weaponized, it’s not surprising to hear slaves obey your masters as a form to keep people in line or in check with what you want them to do. When the Word is weaponized, it’s not surprising to hear women stay silent in the church. When the Word is weaponized it’s not surprising that those who are widowed or orphaned don’t feel welcomed in the house of God when the Bible commands us that we are to take care of and provide for the least of these. When the Word is weaponized, we shun those that we should be welcoming. In those moments, we have to remember that in proclamation there is power: Power to unite, power to uplift, power to bind together. In that power of proclamation, we see the very thing that can change the world. It can change the world because it can change hearts. And in those moments where we feel divided, it is the proclamation of the message that will help bring us together.
Well, what is the message? It’s all throughout the pages of the Holy Writ. As a matter of fact, Jesus, when he gives his first public sermon, he says “the spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to proclaim.” And in doing so gives liberty to those who are captive, gives healing to those that are ailing. And it enables us to follow and to walk after God in our own way. It says proclaim the message.
But beyond proclamation of the message, he says, be persistent. That’s the second ingredient, proclamation, but then you need persistence. With persistence, we need to recognize that there will be days where you simply won’t desire to go on. I don’t pretend or purport to speak for all people of color, but Black people are tired. But nevertheless we persist because we have no other options.
Racism continues to regenerate itself over and over so that it doesn’t look like what it used to. It has shifted. It has changed. It has morphed. And now it looks as jobs that cannot be obtained. It looks as neighborhoods that cannot be lived in. It looks like those things that seemingly should be easy, such as one’s history being taught that now we’re being told that we can’t even teach certain things that happened because it’s too closely of a resemblance to something called Critical Race Theory.
When the Word is weaponized and when there is no persistence, ultimately, we will fall short of what God desires for us and where God wants us to be. God desires so much for us that we often take for granted, and we have to persist even when we don’t feel like going on. You cannot convince me that there were days that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr woke up and said, I really don’t feel like doing this today. You can’t convince me that there weren’t days that those who were Freedom Riders did not get on the bus and said, I really don’t feel like being beaten today. But nevertheless, they persisted because they had no other option, because they recognized that something greater was in store, even if not for them, for those that would come behind them.
As Absalom Jones and Richard Allen walked out of the cathedral, they themselves recognized that there was something greater at store. The very principle of being able to worship God and to kneel and to pray with other like-minded believers in the faith should be a simple thing. But yet, because of minute differences, they were asked, not asked, told to leave, escorted out, carried out for trying to worship. Proclamation. Persistence.
He says, you got to be persistent when the time is favorable, when the time is not favorable. We can’t pick and choose when we will decide to stand up and to speak truth to power and say what is right. We cannot pick and choose when it’s convenient for us, when it won’t get us in trouble, when it won’t get us fired, when it won’t have our friends or family to look at us with crossed eyes. We always have to stand up and do what is right in the moment. He says, when it’s favorable, when it’s unfavorable, when it’s convenient, and when it’s not, you have to convince, rebuke and encourage. Sometimes it means telling people that they are wrong in what they are doing or what they are saying. Sometimes it means giving them a pat on the back when they say the right thing or do the right thing. We have to learn how to rebuke and encourage.
But the key is you have to do it in love.
Then he says, but you have to do so with this final ingredient, which is with patience, patience and teaching. He says, you’ve got to have proclamation, you’ve got to have persistence, you’ve got to have patience.
I made a phone call. I was in the kitchen one day and I was whipping together a meal and I wanted it to taste a certain way. And so I called and I asked my mother what the ingredients were, and she began to tell me the ingredients that was in the recipe. And I said, “Well, I get all of that, but you’re not telling me how much I need to put in.” And she said, “Well, I don’t measure it out. I do it according to taste.” And so here I am in the kitchen mixing and mashing and a dash of this and a splash of that, trying to get it to taste just like what she makes. And so I’ve come to understand that when you have a recipe that all ingredients are not in equal parts. Sometimes there needs to be a little more proclamation. Sometimes there needs to be a little bit more perseverance. Sometimes there needs to be a dash more patience.
We cannot expect change to happen overnight. We cannot expect things to right themselves overnight. But I will stand today and say that I’m a little tired of waiting. Another lesson I learned in the kitchen is that a watched pot never boils. Too often we’re waiting and we’re watching. And we’re looking and we’re waiting. And we’re watching. And we’re looking and waiting and watching and looking. And nothing changes. And it gets to the point where we become frustrated. We become aggravated. But I’m reminded of the Word that says “and let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
The Word is weaponized, yes, but there has to be proclamation, a right dividing of the Word. I believe that resistance in and of itself is an act of faith. And we are called upon to resist things that are not as they should be as we move together toward the beloved community. We are called to speak to those things that are not and speak them as though they were.
My brothers and my sisters, I’ve come to understand that even in the kitchen, if all of the ingredients are done just right, if the temperature is as it should be, even if you have the best quality of materials that you’re working with, it still does not taste the same if it’s not made with love. We have to walk and operate in love. We have to learn how to love one another in spite of the differences that are there, in spite of the cultural differences that are there, in spite of the ecclesiological differences that are there.
I’m not going to lie to you all because I’m in church. Some of the songs that we sang, I did not know the words to. I said, “That is not in my Baptist hymnal!” But I’m excited to learn and to do so in love. And that makes all the difference. And as we begin to put all of the ingredients together, the proclamation of the Word—and let me just say that you don’t have to stand in the pulpit to proclaim the message; that falls on each and every one of us—as we proclaim, as we persist, persevere, as we exercise some patience, and as we do so in love, we’ll begin to see a melting pot of God’s people coming together.
And I’m reminded of the old song that said, When all of God’s children get together, what a time, what a time, what a time. We’ll sit down on the banks of the river, what a time, what a time, what a time.
God bless you.
About The Rev. Dr. Charles Lomax, Jr.
Charles F. Lomax Jr. is President & CEO of the Knoxville Area Urban League. As the Chief Executive, Charles leads the organization’s aim of “Empowering Communities. Changing Lives.” by providing opportunities in the areas of Education, Entrepreneurship, Health, Housing, Jobs and Justice.
Prior to joining the Urban League in December of 2022, Charles was the Director of Community Empowerment for the City of Knoxville where he oversaw the Office of Neighborhood Empowerment, the Police Advisory and Review Committee, the Empower Knox Initiative, the African American Equity Restoration Taskforce, and the city’s Title VI Office. He has also previously been employed by the Knoxville Leadership Foundation and the Knox County Election Commission. Additionally, he serves as the Senior Pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church located in Alcoa, Tennessee, and has partnered with congregation and community since February of 2012.
A proponent of education, Lomax received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 2018, a Master of Divinity Degree from the Morehouse School of Religion at Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia in 2010, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee in 2006.
Dr. Lomax sits on the boards of the American Heart Association, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Blount Mansion, Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, and Leadership Knoxville. He has the distinction of being recognized in Knoxville’s 2020 grouping of 40 Under 40, Leadership Knoxville Class of 2021, and was the 2022 Diversity Champion Award Winner from the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission. He is a former Commissioner on the Knoxville/Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission, a Life Member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, and a member of the NAACP.