Free Indeed
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This past Sunday I visited Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in
The pastor, Edward Bailey, preached a great sermon on Christ's answer to self-righteousness from John 8:31-38. The truth of Christ sets us free, free even from our own selves. He didn't quote Luther on the sin of incurvitas, but it sounded like Luther to me. The seventy-year old (I'm guessing) pianist was pretty good, too.
Before I went, I reread the chapter on nineteenth-century AME Bishop Daniel
A. Payne from Thabiti's wonderful book, The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering
African-American Pastors. If you haven't
picked up that book yet, what are you waiting for? And, if you're white--or as Bono once said "almost
pink"--like I am and you never visited a predominantly African American church,
what are you waiting for?