Is Wright ....right?

Let’s face it it’s not often a pastor makes front page news . If we do it is usually not for the right reason. Rev Jeremiah Wright sadly is not the exception to prove the rule. Wright who pastors an African American “Mega Church” in Chicago, is the spiritual mentor of leading Democrat candidate for the US Presidency, Senator Barak Obama. Sections of his sermons posted on the internet have raised grave and possibly fatal questions regarding the judgement of Senator Obama. As a pastor however I feel it raises more fundamental questions on the role of the ministry itself.

There is no doubt that the Christian ministry if served faithfully is not about making people comfortable. The old saying has a lot of truth to it: The ministry exists “To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. Rev Wright is not to be condemned because he sought to make people feel uncomfortable. The real issue is that he made the wrong people feel uncomfortable! The easy option- which I believe he took- was to be “cheer leader” for his own community rather than God’s prophet of uncomfortable truth to them.

The issue of how as Christian we respond to those from whom we are divided is a crucial one. It is one for example we here in Ireland have had to face. It is also one which is at the heart of the New Testament. Getting it right is a defining factor in establishing the essential credibility of any christian ministry.

The issue of race relations has been and continues to be such an issue in the United States. Pastors on both sides of the divide can either pander to people’s grievances make them “feel good about themselves” or challenge them to reach for the difficult and sometimes impossible goal of being radically different. The first option only takes rhetoric. The latter takes the grace of God and a willingness to be rejected by one’s own community if necessary. Which did Jesus take? Which did Paul take? Which reaches people with a power greater than themselves to make them more than they ever thought they could be? I think we know the answer.

As an outsider looking in I think the black community in America desperately needs pastors of the latter quality. The ghetto mentality needs to be questioned and abandoned. The deadly comfort of the welfare trap needs to be exposed for what it is and rejected. Above all the gospel of Jesus Christ in which there is “ now neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free male or female but in which all are one in christ Jesus” - needs to be powerfully preached. It needs to be preached with a willingness to pay the price of rejection and ridicule. The black community needs to be truly evangelised and pastored, not patronised. There are thankfully a growing number of black ministers who are quietly doing just that. You will not see them on You Tube or hear about them on CNN. But thank God for them. Soon maybe sooner than we think the Rev Wrights and Louis Farrakhans will be as marginalised in the black community as the Aryan Nation and the KKK are in the white community. It cannot be too soon.