The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
Sermon Resources:
- Howard Thurman: Jesus and the Disinherited
- Brian McLaren: The Great Spiritual Migration
Service Art:
Image 1: Photographer Deborah Foster
Image 2: Youngsung Kim