Tending to God
Aaron Jamal
3/9/20255 min read
Scripture: Matthew 4:1-11 (CEB)
Sojourn Prayer
Wrestle until daybreak with the power of God
Setting in motion all things.
Dust is gifted meaning
Rocks and gas given direction.
Time itself becomes an ally
And space provides a medium
Through which we can become ourselves.
Creation is imbued with purpose,
The cause is the effect.
The terror is temporary.
The struggle is victorious.
The faith is freeing.
Our freedom seems fleeting
Yet we wrestle
Until daybreak
Until we emerge, from the garden.
These blessings we ask in your holy name.
Amen. (originally written for BlackUnbound)
Song: Son Shine by Sault
Meditation
Black Prophetic Christianity is my faith, spiritual, and religious tradition. My Christian faith is Black, because I am a descendent from and inheritor of an African people and African history 200,000 years long that highlights abduction, absconsion, and abolition as core realities of Blackness. My Black Christian faith is prophetic, because it is predicated on the active struggle for a fundamental transformation of the existing social order and the overturning of our material state of reality. My Black Prophetic religion is Christian because of Black women and Black ancestors who used the Christian message of salvation, the Jewish belief in a God on the side of the oppressed, and the African traditional religions emphasis on reverence and ritual in order to transform the reality of Black enslavement into a new reality of Black freedom. Tending to God does not require one be a Christian, but it does require you heed the call to embrace tenderness.
Tenderness in the face of the cataclysmic is the central principle that gives life meaning. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the Biblical narrative of the temptation of Christ. In the Gospels, we learn that Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and is revealed to be suffering yet sanctified, seemingly alone yet spiritually anointed. Jesus is tempted by Satan to renounce his self [the temptation of bread], his soul [the temptation at the temple] & all of society [the temptation on the mountain]. Jesus ultimately overcomes these temptations, and is tended to by God's angels. The temptation of Christ ends in God's eternal tenderness.
Today, the descendants of Africa and all children of God also find ourselves in the wilderness. We live in an era of unrelenting cultural disruption and unending political change. Our weather is more unpredictable, our global climate and legal institutions are unstable, social life has collapsed into social media, and our future is uncertain. So much about our social reality is unsettled. The imperialist disasters of the first two decades of the 21st century [COVID, the imperialist war on West Asia, the Great Recession and climate collapse] threaten all complex life. Yet in the face of these irrefutable realities, we must endeavor to keep alive the lessons of Christ in the wilderness. Here are two of those lessons:
The First Lesson: Give Grace & Take Responsibility
The first lesson of Christ in the wilderness is to give grace and take responsibility. Just like God sends angels to tend to Jesus after spiritual warfare, so too must we give grace to each other as we struggle against the destructive powers of this world. In this sense, giving isn't an act of charity, it is the historical vocation of all those who demand and deserve a better world. Grace is not earned, grace is unmerited favor, grace means to actively tend to each other in a way that allows us to keep going in the face of overwhelming odds, indescribable predicaments, and unbelievable circumstances. In order to be tethered in tenderness to one another, we must give grace. And just like Jesus takes on the Devil in direct spiritual warfare, so too must we take responsibility for our continued devotion to justice, liberation, and each other as we struggle against the planet's quickening march into natural and social oblivion. In this sense, the idea of responsibility is not reducible to a shrewd and narrow rugged individualism, but is an apostolic calling that all those who demand and deserve a better world must accept. Responsibility is a historical vocation, a prophetic devotion to live into and up to the principles of faith, hope, and love.
The Final Lesson: Build a Prophetic Politic
The final lesson of Christ in the wilderness is to build a prophetic politic. Jesus wrestling with Satan shows that at our best, the ultimate aim of the children of God is radical transformation. Radical transformation is the organized emergence of a fundamentally distinct reality from that which presently reigns. In the history of religion, this radical transformation is named prophetic. In the history of politics, this radical transformation is named revolutionary. The prophetic and revolutionary are expressions of transformative struggle that all of God's children must bind together; revolutionary politics devoid of prophetic religion ultimately leaves us in a nihilistic rut, and a prophetic religion devoid of revolutionary politics ultimately leaves us at an altruistic impasse.
A prophetic politic recognizes that we meet people where they are but don’t leave them there, because, like God's angels tended to Jesus, even as we meet our people where they are we also have somewhere to go. Our politic must be prophetic because all attempts at liberation and freedom must be tied to tenderness, to God, to the source, the origin, the Genesis of the ultimate concern of humanity. Our prophetic devotion must be political because colonial domination, patriarchal oppression, and capitalist exploitation are the systemization of sin.
A prophetic politic recognizes that organizing is prayer in action, that power is the potential to accept the gifts of God, that revolutions like the Haitian Revolution, the Taiping Revolution, the U.S. Reconstruction Revolution, the decolonization of Africa, the socialist revolutions in China, Vietnam and Cuba and many more are human attempts to embrace the organized emergence of God's plan. A genuine prophetic politic at its best tries to embrace faith, hope, and love [the supreme Biblical virtues] at the scale of soul, self, and society. A prophetic politic reminds us that it is not enough to simply give and receive tenderness; it also requires that we accept that tenderness accepts us.
Conclusion
Ultimately, tenderness must be the devotion of our lives because life is a devotion to God, to that which concerns us ultimately. Giving grace, taking responsibility, and building a prophetic politic are concrete ways each of us can remain tethered in tenderness. We too must wrestle with the desert that is the oblivion of our time just as Jesus did in his. Only then will we keep hope alive. Only then will we tend to God.
Reflection Questions:
Where in your life might you give more grace?
Where in your life might you take more responsibility?
How might you go about reconstructing your prophetic politic?
About the Author
Aaron Jamal is a revolutionary for Christ. A southern organizer, internationalist, educator, and author with 10 years of experience in base-building, political education, and movement strategy, he has learned & led in struggles ranging from student debt, voting rights, environmental justice, movements to end gender based oppression, multiracial political power, and decriminalization, all of which have been rooted in the Black freedom struggle. Aaron has a passion for writing eclectic essays, making melodies, and silent stargazing.
Stay connected to Aaron:
Twitter and IG: @ayoajb
Website: https://www.blackunbound.com
These Black Lent devotionals were originally curated by IG: goodneighbormovement.