
“So Much Things to Say”: Preaching by Sermon Series
Kamal Hassan
Kamal Hassan is the senior pastor at Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church in Richmond, California.

I see this as a chance to delve deeper into textual meaning and authorial intent and to use more time to consider their application to the lived experiences of the hearers.

A Preaching Story
When my preaching career began in earnest in 1994, I was a minister in training at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California. The worship experience there was not governed by chronos time, but by the kairos time of the Holy Spirit. Sunday worship services started at 11:00 a.m., but we were never sure about the time they would end. It was not unusual for worship to last two to three hours each week, but few complained. It was a lively, Pentecostal-inspired experience which allowed time for “the Spirit to have its way” among the ministers and the people. We shouted, sang, and danced. If we were hurting, we openly shared our moans, wails, and tears in God’s sacred space. There were even times when our pastor, the Reverend Ronald L. Wright, was so overcome with spiritual energy that he would leap from the pulpit, sail over the altar rail, land on his feet, and then move around the sanctuary as he continued to deliver the Word. Amazing!
Reverend Wright set a preaching model I and other members of the ministerial team at Emmanuel followed. He was a practitioner of the Black prophetic tradition in homiletics. This meant that his messages drew from Black liberation theology, offered a Black critical lens on events in the news, and interpreted the biblical text in opposition to racism and white supremacy. He preached about one of the important works of the Spirit—to inspire and empower African Americans to confront injustice in society and join the ongoing fight for Black freedom. He taught that Black bodies were the very handiwork of God, cast in the image and likeness of the Divine with inestimable value and worth. These values were reinforced and expanded by preachers who were annually invited to come and share with us each year. Some of them were legendary pulpiteers like Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, and Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
During my five years at Emmanuel, I grew accustomed to hearing and preaching sermons that were typically forty-five minutes in length. I was never told they were too long because there was a sense of so many things for the preacher to say to the community. The people came expecting to receive strength for the journey of life from the sermon as they struggled to navigate a society lethally hostile to their Black bodies. There was so much to tell those attempting to hold on to their hope despite the odds and the obstacles stacked up against them every day. So many people came to church on Sunday feeling dehumanized, burdened, and low, but they came with expectations that the preached word would help them move on up a little higher in their hearts and minds. Could they really bring their burdens to the Lord and leave them there? I learned to be keenly aware of this each time I stood at the “holy desk” to proclaim the Word of the Lord. Each time, there was so much to say.
Those who feel this is a bit much to load onto any one sermon would be right. However, the practice of Black preaching from its beginnings during slavery up to the present time has needed to be multifaceted in scope and effect, addressing both the personal and the political, the sacred and the social, the penitent life and the funk.
In this article I will discuss and demonstrate some of how I try to do this when I preach in a sermon series. Preaching a series can take two basic forms. The first is thematic, gathering several different pericopes that can be used to focus on a particular subject. For example, each year the Narrative Lectionary curated by Luther Seminary offers several series of this kind selected for use during the summertime: one from the Hebrew Bible, one from the New Testament, and one catechetical series. These are spread out over three to four weeks each until the turn of the lectionary calendar in the fall of each year. On the lectionary’s website they suggest that “preachers and worship planners are encouraged to exercise their evangelical freedom in selecting preaching series that best suit the needs of their particular community of faith.”1
I will focus on a second form of preaching a series that involves preaching several sermons from the same text over several weeks. I preach this way in my own practice, using my evangelical freedom in the context of an African American majority Presbyterian congregation. This homiletic method allows me to dive deeper in tracing and building ideas as they unfold in a particular Scripture and to make points relevant to the lives, challenges, and questions of this Black community of hearers. I see this as a chance to delve deeper into textual meaning and authorial intent and to use more time to consider their application to the lived experiences of the hearers. This gives me a chance to spread the medicine of Scripture in a thick layer from a particular section of the text, rubbing more of the balm of Gilead on our wounded and sin-sick souls. I also lift up the ways in which more time with the same text gives more opportunity for the hearers to understand and participate in the Jesus movement for the building of a new heaven and a new earth. Preaching this way also allows me to address a general goal of telling the main biblical story from the Black left tradition of resistance, achieving the sacred goals of freedom and people’s liberation. My sense of the main biblical story comes from the one expressed in The Liberating Pulpit by Justo and Catherine González:
Much of what has been preserved in Israel is the perspective of the powerless over against the viewpoint of the powerful. Included also are the repentant powerful who have learned through their own bitter experience that God is the defender of the poor and oppressed and not the supporter of the unjust, whether they be kings or nation.2
Preaching from the Black Left
Eh! But I’ll never forget, no way
They crucified Jesus Christ
I’ll never forget, no way
They sold Marcus Garvey for rice, oo-ooh
I’ll never forget, no way
They turned their backs on Paul Bogle, hey-ey
So don’t you forget (no way) no youth
Who you are and where you stand in the struggle3
The lyrics above are from the song “So Much Things to Say,” by Reggae icon and Rastafarian prophet Robert Nesta (Bob) Marley, from his 1977 album, Exodus. Here he associated Jesus Christ with two Jamaican Christian leaders of local and international movements for Black freedom.
Paul Bogle was a Jamaican Native Baptist deacon who was a powerful preacher, a charismatic activist, and one of the leaders of the Morant Bay rebellion, a struggle against British colonialism on the island in 1865. The Jamaican poor and small farmers in the parish of St. Thomas opposed the unjust conditions colonial oppression and class warfare imposed on them. Bogle, with Bible in hand, and the suffering people of Stony Gut united and marched over one hundred miles to the capital at Spanish Town with a list of demands to address issues of land reform, unemployment, disenfranchisement, and hunger. They were disrespected by the governor, who refused to even meet with them. A rebellion ensued that lasted for several days. The colonial courthouse was burned to the ground. After the unrest was ruthlessly put down by colonial forces, Bogle and many others were arrested and executed. Today he is considered a martyr and national hero by the Jamaican people.
Marcus Moziah Garvey was a Jamaican-born Black Nationalist and Pan Africanist who relocated to the United States and eventually led one of the largest Black organizations in US history. From the Universal Negro Improvement Association headquarters in Harlem, New York, Garvey’s organization drew millions of Black people in the United States and the diaspora to support a “Back to Africa” program for the struggle to achieve Black liberation. Garvey did not believe that racial justice would ever be achieved in the United States and proposed that a critical mass of Black people make an exodus from their colonial capture in America and repatriate the African continent and help build the largest united African nation to rival the European empires which had colonized Black people on the African continent and in the diaspora. Garvey emphasized Black self-sufficiency, establishing a newspaper, businesses, social service organizations, and religious institutions. The UNIA established a Christian church with Black icons and a theology that believed in a God who was deeply involved in the worldwide struggle for Black freedom.
Garvey’s black nationalism blended with his Christian outlook rather dramatically when he claimed that African Americans should view God “through our own spectacles” . . . for African Americans needed to worship a God that understood their plight, understood their suffering, and would help them overcome their present state.4
State repression, class conflict, and internal contradictions prevented the UNIA from achieving its lofty goals, but the movement resonated so powerfully with Blacks across the globe that its numbers swelled into the millions (with its largest chapters in the United States), and it has had a lasting impact on Black radical thought and anti-colonial struggles in Jamaica, on the African continent, and throughout the diaspora in and outside of the church.
When Bob Marley associated Jesus Christ with Bogle and Garvey, he identified him as one of the same kind: the Son of God as a movement founder who was one with, and one of, the vulnerable masses yearning to breathe free and throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. This is a Jesus who is not just Lord and Savior but also a liberator who suffered an unjust and untimely death at the hands of an oppressive state because he organized his people to oppose it. This Pan African Christology resonates with Black liberation theology and the Black Prophetic tradition as they are understood and practiced among African American Christians. This view of Jesus shares important similarity with the one described by Richard Horsley, who has argued that
in fact, Jesus’ opposition to Roman imperial rule belonged to the more general Judean and Galilean opposition that took the forms of protests, strikes, movements and widespread revolts by scribal groups as well as peasants. Like those protests and movements Jesus was deeply rooted in and drew upon a long Israelite tradition of opposition to foreign imperial rule.5
I seek to preach a post-colonial Christology remembering the class and racial conflicts besetting the lives of BIPOC people who have said “yes” to Christian discipleship. Preaching from the Black left also encourages the hearers to consider how the way of Jesus could include their participation in social, economic, and political movements for social righteousness and Black self-determination, to remember who they are and where they stand in these struggles. This homiletical intention also serves the wider church because, as Justo and Catherine González have said,
the powerless have a more ready access to an authentic understanding of the gospel than the powerful. The powerful need to hear the word through voices they have rejected in their own society. Liberation theology is an understanding of the gospel arising precisely from such traditionally rejected voices.6
Sermon Series: A Life Worthy of Our Calling
What does it mean to live into an apostolic faith?
In his book How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon, the Reverend Dr. Frank Thomas offers “a brief homiletic method for preaching Moral Imagination.”7 I will use the Behavioral Purpose Statement and Five Questions for the Moral Imagination included in Thomas’s method to show my process for constructing a sermon series from a single pericope.
Thomas’s five questions are:
1. Where in the text do we find equality envisioned and represented by physical presence?
2. Where in the text do we find empathy as a catalyst or bridge to create opportunities to overcome the past and make new decisions for peace and justice?
3. Where do we find wisdom and truth in this ancient text, the wisdom of the ages?
4. Where is the language of poetry and art that lifts and elevates by touching the emotive chords of wonder, hope, and mystery?
5. To what contemporary moral concern would you apply your responses in these questions of the four qualities of the moral imagination?
The following is an example of a sermon series outline I’ve developed based upon Thomas’s method. This series explores 2 Peter 1:1—13 and includes three sermons.
2 Peter 1:1–13 (NRSVue)
Salutation
1Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith as equally honorable as ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: 2May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
The Christian’s Call and Election
3His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature. 5For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with excellence, and excellence with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. 8For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9For anyone who lacks these things is blind, suffering from eye disease, forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. 10Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. 11For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you. 12Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you. 13I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to refresh your memory,
Sermon 1: “Living into an Apostolic Faith”
2 Peter 1:1–2 (NRSVue)
Behavioral Purpose Statement for 2 Peter 1:1–2
I propose to experientially demonstrate that those considered lesser or inferior in society are equally loved and called by God, so that those who hear will challenge oppressive social norms inside and outside of themselves and contribute to the building of a new world.
Where in this text do we find equality envisioned and represented by physical presence?
Peter resists the tendency in his community to see Gentiles as lesser Christians because they are not people of the covenant. He declares that their faith is just as honorable as the Jewish Christians.
Where in this text do we notice empathy as a catalyst or bridge to create opportunities to overcome the past and make new decisions for peace and justice?
Peter uses the name Simeon to identify himself, though he is known in the Jewish community by the name of Simon, because Simeon would be a more common name among Gentiles. He also emphasizes “knowledge of God and Jesus,” a nod to Hellenistic ways of knowing that would resonate with the Gentile audience of this writing. He had to transgress cultural barriers and risk being misunderstood by people in his family and community to stand with the people God had called him to serve. We should be able to take a public stand with those who are ostracized and seen as lesser in our family, church, and community, even those who are not people of our race, gender, or faith tradition.
Where do we find wisdom and truth in this ancient text, the wisdom of the ages?
Peter identifies himself as a servant and apostle of Christ. He says the authenticity and inspiration for his ministry comes not from himself but from Jesus Christ. As his apostle he claims the authority to preach, teach, and make disciples in Jesus’ way and name. He also names false prophecies which seek to co-opt or distort the Jesus movement for selfish purposes. God is still calling people of all kinds to servant leadership and exposing heresies and false representations of the faith in church and society.
Where is the language of poetry and art that lifts and elevates by touching the emotive chords of wonder, hope, and mystery?
“May grace and peace be yours in abundance.” This is an uplifting word that touches on a need all people carry—to experience unearned, unconditional love and kindness from God.
To what contemporary moral concern would you apply your responses in these four questions of the four qualities of the moral imagination?
The rise of Christian nationalism and Christian capitalism are moral threats to the apostolic faith in the United States. This is a part of a continuing conversation that questions whether the apostolic faith in Jesus Christ can exist in white churches in Europe and North America because of their white supremacy and institutional racism. We find more evidence of the Jesus movement faith in the churches created and inhabited by oppressed BIPOC people.
Sermon 2: “Go Beyond the Basics”
2 Peter 1:3–9 (NRSVue)
Behavioral Purpose Statement for 2 Peter 1:3-9
I propose to experientially demonstrate that those who commit to the way of Jesus are expected to deepen their relationships with God and one another by seeking to live interdependent virtuous lives.
Where in this text do we find equality envisioned and represented by physical presence?
Basic faith is not enough to properly follow Jesus. One must participate in an organized effort for justice and liberation that enacts and embodies what he lived and taught as the founder of an anti-imperial movement. The Poor People’s Campaign is one expression of this effort.
Where in this text do we notice empathy as a catalyst or bridge to create opportunities to overcome the past and make new decisions for peace and justice?
Peter shows empathy for Gentile believers who were not a part of his culture. This created an opportunity for new relationships. Supporting the victims of human trafficking is an opportunity to create new relationships and form radical kinship with others.
Where do we find wisdom and truth in this ancient text, the wisdom of the ages?
A virtuous way of living will increase our moral imagination. Living into the way of Jesus saves us from the corruption of a world that promotes lust for wealth, power, and control.
Where is the language of poetry and art that lifts and elevates by touching the emotive chords of wonder, hope, and mystery?
The poetic phrase “participation in God’s divine nature” says we can join in the very being of God, and that enacting a set of practices that create social righteousness will so deepen our relationship with the Divine that we can declare with the late prophetic mystic Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman not that “God is in me, but that I am in God.”
To what contemporary moral concern would you apply your responses in these four questions of the four qualities of the moral imagination?
The self-absorption and lusts of celebrity and consumer culture created by capitalism are threats to the moral imagination. God did not create people as “brands,” but as recipients of everything needed for life and godliness. The emphasis on individual achievement and accumulation is a threat to the common good.
Sermon 3: “Confirming Our Call and Election”
2 Peter 1:10–13 (NRSVue)
Behavioral Purpose Statement for 2 Peter 1:10—13
I propose to experientially demonstrate that call and election are at the heart of the apostolic faith that began as a movement to build a new heaven and a new earth led by the person and work of Jesus Christ, that those who work for a liberated world would find sustenance and encouragement.
Where in this text do we find equality envisioned and represented by physical presence?
Peter offers Gentile believers a new identity and entry into a sacred community of resistance that intends to teach and to live a liberated way of life with opportunities to build new relationships in self, church, and society.
Where in this text do we notice empathy as a catalyst or bridge to create opportunities to overcome the past and make new decisions for peace and justice?
Empathy is found in the promise that those on a spiritual path are not alone. We all need to have “faith journey friends” and to engage with them for mutual support. Following Jesus in this new movement is not simply a solitary endeavor; it is faith in community.
Where do we find wisdom and truth in this ancient text, the wisdom of the ages?
Calling and election are the fundamental building blocks of religious life. This is when God sets someone aside for special service, and they say yes to the call. Living into this call is a daily walk. There is a need to move beyond the basics and into ever deeper levels of commitment to the movement for resistance, justice, and struggle.
Where is the language of poetry and art that lifts and elevates by touching the emotive chords of wonder, hope, and mystery?
“Entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.” What is best for us is not something for which we can work or qualify. This touches our need for belonging and freedom. This is the way to experience the kin-dom of God while we yet live.
To what contemporary moral concern would you apply your responses in these four questions of the four qualities of moral imagination?
God’s call is expressed in the question “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Election is when the called replies, “Here I am, send me.” But apostolic faith is more than assent; there must be some public action for social justice and Black liberation that changes relationships and power dynamics. Our churches are engaging in much more assent than action.
Conclusion
Once I became a Presbyterian minister of Word and Sacrament, my days of preaching forty-five-minute sermons came to an end (what a mutiny that would have caused!). But I still preach several sermons from the same reading of Scripture, which, I have found, allows the preacher and the hearers to dive deeper by tracing and building on ideas as they unfold in the biblical text, making points that are relevant to the lives, challenges, and questions of the community of hearers. It is also a chance to delve deeper into textual meanings, explore in further detail the context and purpose of the author, and to have more time to consider the text’s application to the lived experiences of the hearers. Preaching this way, I have found, can thicken the spread of the medicine of Scripture from a particular section of the text, giving more of the balm of Gilead for wounded and sin-sick souls. Ultimately, I hope this practice lifts hearers’ awareness as they understand and participate in the Jesus movement for the building of a new heaven and a new earth.
Bibliography
González, Justo L. and Catherine G. The Liberating Pulpit. Eugene, OR: Wipf and StockPublishers, 1994.
Horsley, Richard A. In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.
Marley, Bob. “So Much Things to Say,” Exodus. UMG for Island Records, 1997, LP.
Shabazz, Menelik. Catch a Fire—Paul Bogle and the Morant Bay Rebellion. Video 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vl9gmdE_lA/.
Shannon, David T. and Gayraud S. Wilmore. Black Witness to the Apostolic Faith. Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1985.
Thomas, Frank A. How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2018.
Van Leeuwen, David. “Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” National Humanities Center, 2000.
Notes
1. Narrative Lectionary Summer 2023 Readings, https://www.workingpreacher.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/narrative_lectionary_summer_2023_rev1.pdf/.
2. Justo and Catherine González, The Liberating Pulpit (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 19.
3. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Exodus, Island Music, 1977. Exodus was named the twentieth century’s most important album by Time magazine.
4. David Van Leeuwen, “Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” National Humanities Center, 2000, page 5, https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm/.
5. Richard A Horsley, In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 95.
6. González, The Liberating Pulpit, 21.
7. Frank A. Thomas, How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2018), 87.