Faith in Action

 It has become a tradition for my wife and I to volunteer at the Bea Gaddy Thanksgiving Day Dinner every year.  It is one of the most enriching modes of outreach for me and a true sign of the hope of community in Baltimore.  (even if just a fleeting one) 

At this year’s dinner there seemed to be more “notables” present than I remember in year’s past.  Newly elected state delegate, Melvin Stukes, was manning the server’s line.  Kweisi Mfume roamed the room and took time to chat with anyone who approached him.  As an alum, I was proud to see the Morgan State University basketball team show up to help out.  (They’re having a terrible season so far, but at least their heart is in the right place.)  In the picture above, I ran into Baltimore City mayoral candidate, Dr. Andrey Bundley, and spoke with him for a minute about the campaign. 

As I was directed from one task to another by the volunteer coordinators, my mind began to wander and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of “home” as I conversed with those who came to eat and serve.  I felt so at “home” cracking jokes with brothers who appeared to have just made it in the door after 40 miles of rough road.   Middle-aged sisters needed help carrying turkeys to cars and requested refills on punch; I engaged them as surrogate relatives.  They smiled and said, “Thank you, baby” with such a strong sense of familiarity that I just knew that we had to be connected somewhere down the family line. 

While I was having a good ol’ time serving others and mingling; my younger siblings weren’t enjoying the scene too much at all.  Long ago they succumbed to the damning mentality of Black surbubia.  They didn’t even want to go to the Bea Gaddy Dinner.  I couldn’t engage them out right when I learned that they didn’t want to go.  I was too heated.  After my blood pressure came down I pulled them to the side and told them the story of Bea Gaddy - Baltimore’s angel.  Bea, who died a few years back from breast cancer, was the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ to this city’s homeless, poor, and AIDS infected.  I told them that she was an activist, ordained minister, and a former city council woman.  Then I told them something that they may not have known.  I told them how Bea Gaddy helped one of our relatives who was struggling with drug addiction.  When the church wouldn’t help. Bea did.  When family was cautious to assist again after being burned; Bea assisted. 

That’s why Bea means so much to me.  She helped people who others had given up on.  When serving at Bea Gaddy’s Thanksgiving Dinner; I feel that I am repaying a debt and maybe even helping a member of someone else’s family. 

Not only do I serve at Bea Gaddy’s (and other organizations) to repay the debt that I feel I owe to the Ancestors and Elders; but I also am intentional about serving the community as a way to remain sensitized to the plight of the poor, blind, prisoners, sick, and exploited.  My grandfather, Bishop Heber Brown, Sr. often warned those under his tutelage to “never lose the common touch”.  He made sure that any preacher under his mentorship understood that staying connected to the marginalized was vitally important to any preacher that wished to remain relevant. 

I push for community outreach so hard among my young preacher peers because I know that service to others will keep us grounded and in tune with “the least” among us.  If young preachers aren’t sensitized to the plight of “the least of these” then they are less likely to preach or develop ministries that meet the needs of “the least”.  When Min. K and I served at a senior center two weeks ago, I was forced to confront the question, “What is the gospel to residentially housed and physically challenged seniors?”  If the gospel is truly the gospel then it reaches the guttermost, the uttermost, and everyone in between.  Since volunteering at the senior center I’ve been wrestling with the question of whether I am doing justice to the gospel in presentation or does “my gospel” perpetuate the royal consciousness that Walter Brueggemann outlines in his book, The Prophetic Imagination. 

If my generation of preachers aren’t intentional about service to others at early stages of ministry and develop without engaging the existential reality of the people in the margins of society; then we are subject to experience another round of highly educated, religiously supported maintainers of the status quo who do their part for the Empire by censoring the radical gospel contained in the text and substituting for it a watered down, de-fanged, politically correct, severely irrelevant message anchored by the crippling characteristic of populace control.