The Faithful Remnant

By Rev. Dr. John Jackson, Sr. Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary

We have been graced with a New Year. A New Year is like a new day, it is pregnant with new possibilities and opportunities. Many people will make New Year’s resolutions and many more will break those resolutions by March.

Regardless of whether one stays true to their resolutions or not it still does not erase the grace of being able to imagine a fresh start.

We also bring into each new year left over problems, left over issues and left over mindsets from the previous year. We do not get the chance to have a completely new slate, but we are granted the gift of vision and seeing things differently from how we previously perceived them.

One thing that I want to address for this new year and the political, social, cultural, economic and relational challenges that all of us will face in this new year is to have a sober evaluation and grounded expectations of what unity actually looks like in the fight for justice and equity.

We have heard over the years from frustrated voices that Black people need to stick together and move in unison to advance our cause for justice and equity in resource distribution. The expectation is noble, but it is not realistic. Now before someone stops reading this article because you believe that Black people must unite to survive, I believe the same thing. In fact, I know that what is good for Black people in this country is good for everyone in this country. I know that when Black people achieve some form of equity that everyone else is the better for it. However, I also know that it has never been the majority that rules the day. It has always been what is referred to in the Judeo-Christian scriptures a “faithful remnant,” that moved the needle of fairness and justice.

We find in the book of Ezra 1:5-6 that the Persian King Cyrus gave a decree that the Jews could go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and especially the Temple. The Persian empire had conquered the Babylonian empire that held the Jews in Exile for seventy years. However, the text tells us that only a remnant actually returned. Why? There are many reasons as to why only a remnant returned but one of the reasons is that many of the Jews got used to living in Babylon. Many of them lost track of what it meant to self-govern themselves and many no longer spoke Hebrew or Aramaic and settled themselves in exile, thus only a remnant returned.

When we re-examine our history of struggle in this nation people like Araminta Ross otherwise known as Harriet “44 pistol packing” Tubman never had a majority of Black people brave enough to “steal away to freedom.” She most of the time only had a remnant of people supporting her and people courageous enough to escape with her. Yet because of her faithfulness and the faithfulness of others like her they ignited a civil war that had everything to do with Black people in this nation being free.

Beloved many people do not realize that at the height of the civil rights revolution in this nation that Dr. King and SCLC could only count on about fifteen hundred churches to support them. A remnant.

Many pastors know that in most churches it is usually around eight to ten percent of the people who actually do the work of ministry and who hold up the church financially. The rest give and serve inconsistently for whatever reason. A Remnant.

Finally, when Jesus chose his disciples, he chose only twelve and one of them betrayed him. Yet that twelve grew slowly at first and over the years, decades and millennia that remnant changed a great part of the world and even the centuries came to be measured by the Lord of that faithful remnant as in A.D. and B.C.

My point is that while many will spend time hoping and lamenting that Black people need to unite, they would make more progress doing what my childhood Pastor Bishop Jacob Haywood used to say and that was “take what you got and make do.” History has taught us that the majority hardly ever make real progress, but the committed and faithful remnants are the ones that have fanned the flames of true progress that others benefitted from and came to support later.

By the way that same Dr. King who was the most hated man in America at the time of his death is now the most celebrated “drum major for justice,” because despite not ever having a majority of black or white people support the causes, he and the rest of the remnant labored, suffered and bled for he still “took what he had and made do,” and we are the beneficiaries of the faithful remnants that came before us.  

Beloved “don’t get weary in well doing,” because there is a “do season,” that awaits the faithful remnant.

Be well, Be authentic and Stay Woke. Uhuru Sassa!

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