Trouble Don't Last Always: The Black Church and the Resurrection

Church, I need to tell you something you already know: we are a Friday people. The Black Church was born on Friday. Our ancestors were crucified — not on wooden crosses, but on auction blocks and cotton fields and Jim Crow signs that said, "Not welcome here." The whip, the rope, the locked schoolhouse door, the bullet, the knee on the neck — our people have lived Good Friday in this country for four hundred years. But here is what the slaveholders did not understand. Here is what every system of oppression since then has failed to comprehend. We are a Friday people, but we serve a Sunday God. Matthew tells us there was a violent earthquake. The stone was rolled away. The angel sat down and said, "He is not here. He has risen." And Church, when I read that, I hear more than a report about a tomb in Jerusalem. I hear a declaration about every tomb that has ever tried to hold God's people: the tomb of slavery, the tomb of segregation, the tomb of mass incarceration, the tomb of poverty, the tomb of despair. The stone has been rolled away. He is not here. He has risen. Trouble don't last always. That is not wishful thinking. That is resurrection theology. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who brought our people through the Middle Passage, through slavery, through Reconstruction, through lynching, through Birmingham, through Ferguson. And He is not done yet. The tomb is empty. The morning has come. And weeping may endure for a night, but joy — joy! — comes in the morning.

David writes: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." The Black Church has lived inside that verse for centuries. We know what the night looks like. We have buried our children. We have visited our people in prison. We have watched the news and wept. We know the night. But we also know the morning. We know what it sounds like when the choir sings "He Got Up!" and the organ catches fire and the whole church is on its feet because we know — we know in our bones, in our blood, in the songs our grandmothers taught us — that death does not get the last word. Paul says, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" And I can hear the Black Church answering back across four hundred years: "You tried. You failed. Our God is bigger than your grave." The resurrection is not an abstract doctrine for the Black Church. It is survival theology. It is the reason we are still here. It is the engine that powered the spirituals, the freedom songs, the March on Washington, and the prayer meetings in the jail cells. Every time someone told us to stay down, the resurrection said: get up. Every time the world dug a grave for Black hope, God rolled the stone away. Easter in the Black Church is not polite. It is loud. It is joyful. It is defiant. Because the tomb is empty and our God is alive and trouble don't last always!

Here is the testimony: they killed Him on Friday. They buried Him on Saturday. But early Sunday morning — early! — He got up! Got up with all power in His hands. Got up with the keys of death and Hades hanging from His belt. Got up and told death, "You have no authority here." And because He got up, we get up. We get up from poverty. We get up from addiction. We get up from despair. We get up from the grave that the world keeps trying to dig for us. The resurrection is not just what happened to Jesus. It is what happens to everyone who follows Him. Church, I don't know what tomb you are sitting in this morning. I don't know what stone is blocking your way. But I know this: the God who rolled the stone on Sunday morning can roll the stone in your life too. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And His resurrection power has not expired. So get up. Get up from that chair. Get up from that despair. Get up from that diagnosis. Get up from that divorce. Get up, because Christ got up, and because He lives, you can face tomorrow, and all your fears are gone. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! And if He is risen, then everything the enemy told you was a lie. You are not finished. You are not forgotten. You are not forsaken. You are a resurrection people. Now act like it! To God be the glory!