The Rev. Otis Moss III delivers his sermon “The Blue Note Gospel” Sunday in the Amphitheater.
Luke 13: 14 reads: “But the leader of the synagogue … kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done, come on these days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ ”
In the OM3 translation, it reads: “But the head of the church committee on the constitution and bylaws, said there are six days to work but not on the sabbath. The people on the committee were upset, but everyone else in the village was excited.”
The Rev. Otis Moss III, the translator of many Biblical texts, preached at the 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Living Between Church Hurt and God’s Promise,” and the scripture reading was Luke 13: 10-17.
Moss asked the congregation to turn to a neighbor and say, “Neighbor, O Neighbor, it’s time to stand up.”
“There is no hurt like church hurt and no trauma like church trauma,” Moss said. “Hurt is an injury that we can navigate. Trauma is a soul wound that takes years to heal.”
There was a woman with a tale of repeated injuries suffered in one of the congregations where Moss was pastor. When her mother was dying, no one came to visit. A church member castigated the woman for embracing her gay son and told her she was doing wrong. Then she told Moss that things had not been the same in the church since he arrived.
“She encountered human error and brokenness but nothing could change for her,” Moss said. “It was most tragic. She was struggling with her faith and human error had placed a shield over God’s sovereignty.”
As a Black woman, injured in church, a deep wound was created; as a result, she was bent over. Her vision was focused on the ground. Human encounters obscured holy vision.
Moss told the congregation, “It won’t work to try to argue someone back to faith or preach them back to the pew. We have to live — not quote — the gospel. Our position must be holy listening. The humanity of our ministry taints the holiness of our call. We are broken and blessed, we have horns and halos, and if you catch someone at the wrong time, you get the horns. But at another time, you get the halo.”
Jesus brings hope from trauma. In the synagogue, or the church, on the sabbath there was a woman who had been injured for 18 years. She carried her trauma with her.
In the book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk wrote that unresolved trauma gets trapped in the body. Studies have shown that the weight of carrying this trauma affects how people see the world. Stress can show up in the back, the stomach, in irritation. Even the skin can break out.
Author Ralph Ellison wrote: “I am invisible because you refuse to see me.”
Moss said, “The church people accepted the woman’s injury as normal, as the way the world should be and the way she was supposed to be. People were blinded by toxic theology. They thought it was just the woman who was bent over, but they didn’t know they were using a toxic theology.”
The church or synagogue knew her only by her condition. What was her name, Moss asked the congregation. She was just the “bent-over woman.”
When the Rev. Gina M. Stewart was elected the first woman president of the Lott Carey Baptist Convention, an historic Black Baptist mission society, a group of male pastors decided not to show up to hear her preach. In her inaugural sermon as president, she said, “Stop using your theology as a smoke screen. If you are racist, sexist or homophobic, don’t use God’s word to cover it up.”
Moss told the congregation: “Jesus was on the cross for all of us. Toxic theology takes the oxygen given by trees like Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer. Toxic theology refuses to pronounce the name of our vice president correctly. Toxic theology wants to block, not elevate. Maya Angelou is the most banned author in the United States, and I want my children to know ‘And Still I Rise.’ ”
He continued, “I don’t want the United States to be a Christian nation because I don’t trust the people who want that. They are capitalist, Confederate, White Nationalists. I want a circle of people at the table, no one in front and no one in back, with God in the center.”
Toxic theology tells people just to bear up to spousal abuse, or that one gender cannot preach. It puts people at the margins.
The woman who was bent had limited vision of what God was up to, but “that bad sister still showed up in church for the possibility and hope. We need her resilience. She (by her presence) says, ‘I was injured by you, not by God. Even though you injured me, I know God and I am still a child of God. Healing might not come, but I have learned to carry the weight.’ ”
The woman came to church and Jesus was there, too. “If I was in Chicago, I would get an ‘amen,’ ” said Moss. He repeated the line and the congregation said, “Amen.”
Moss told the congregation: “Jesus sees her. The committee did not see her. He sees her fully and something is about to happen. Jesus sees her fully as a child of God Most High and she has been told she was not good enough. God sees us when others don’t.”
Jesus invited the woman to come to him and get hooked up to God, but she had to accept the invitation. If we want to be healed, said Moss, we have to be co-laborers with God. “Healing is a process and we accept the call of healing when we are ready.”
When Jesus laid his hands on the woman, she went from limited vision to looking into the eyes of Jesus. She could walk and see the sky.
But when someone is healed, someone on the committee says “that is not in the bylaws.” Moss said, “Jesus throws shade smoothly at them. He said you let your donkey out on the sabbath. This woman is your best member who still shows up even in spite of you. You are hypocritical.”
He continued, “And there was no co-pay. Jesus gave free access for this service. The committee was upset and embarrassed.”
It is time, Moss said, for the church to straighten up. “It is time to be free from small thinking, from conservative, White evangelical dysfunction. It is time to step up and heal this nation. It is time to straighten up. It is time to straighten up. It is time to straighten up.”
The congregation stood and gave him a standing ovation.
Melissa Spas, vice president for religion at Chautauqua, presided. Alison Marthinsen, longtime Chautauquan, read the scripture. The prelude was “Priére,” by Jacque-Nicolas Lemmens, played on the Massey Memorial Organ by Owen Reyda, 2024 organ scholar. The Motet Choir sang “Healer of our every ill,” music by Ken Medema and text by Marty Haugen. The choir sang under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and Reyda accompanied on the Massey Organ. The postlude was “Toccata,” by Théodore Dubois, played by Stafford on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s services and chaplaincy is provided by the Gladys R. Brasted and Adair Brasted Gould Memorial Chaplaincy and the Holden-Daney Chaplaincy Fund.
