The doors of the church are open, good morning Saints!
Beloved children of the sun, our scripture today comes from the King Jeans Version, the Book of Cardi, chapter 69, verse Bronx: “And she said unto the Lord, I used to boost jeans from Old Navy, but now this bad bitch is they whole marketing strategy. Look at gawd.”
Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor . . . Okurrrrrr!”
Saints, did Y’all hear the news this week that Cardi B is the new face of Old Navy’s denim campaign? That’s right. Old Navy chose her because she’s got enormous marketing reach, she can wear Chanel and couture one day and a pair of $30 jeans the next without lookin’ phony. Plus, she got them curves that allow many women to visualize the aesthetic possibilities for their own body.
Cardi B was shaped by what the Bible calls a “Master.” It says so in Song of Solomon 7:1–3 where scripture gets real specific about curves. It says, Sista Jenkins: “The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a master. Your navel is a rounded bowl . . . your belly is a heap of wheat.”
Now, if that don’t sound like Cardi B . . .
A woman with “jeweled thighs.” A rounded middle. Scripture didn’t praise a tiny or narrow woman with no ass and hips. This woman is praised for her abundance. For the sweep of her hips. For the fullness of her thighs. For the soft roundness of her belly.
Church, I am absolutely certain that somebody in that marketing department at Old Navy opened up their Bible to the Song of Solomon, then looked upon Cardi’s curves, and said, “Lo, surely, this here is the vessel through which our blessed denim shall be revealed to the masses.”
Amen?!!
There was a fabulous “Denim Dive” launch party held downtown Manhattan. After the party, Cardi announced this blessing on Instagram Live and told her followers that this was all a “full circle moment.” She said: “Thank you, Old Navy, for holding me down. In high school, I used to steal from you guys all the time.”
Won’t the Lord do it, Saints?
Psalm 30:11 says, “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing; Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness to the end that my glory may sing praise to Thee and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto Thee for ever.”
And **Isaiah 61:7 **talks about Cardi B’s blessing some more: “Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.”
Touch your neighbor and say, “double portion.”
Cardi used to steal the jeans but now she got the denim and the dollars. That’s what Church? Double portion.
She got the campaign and the contract. Double portion.
She returned to the scene of her crime and took the shame out of it. Double portion.
The Bible said that instead of your shame, you will receive double portion and our sista Cardi B showed up in what, Y’all? . . . Double denim!
Ohhhh Brotha Willie they ain’t ready for this word.
Give the lord a praise this morning.
Now Saints, I know that preachers always tell you that god will make a way out of no way. But I do not want Y’all leavin’ this sanctuary today and go out there stealin’ from the white man.
Noooo. I don’t wanna read about one of y’all on Fox News goin’ up in Target and putting a whole damn air fryer under your bosoms. I better not hear about somebody tellin’ Loss Prevention that Rev. Dr. Staceypants gave your ass that fitting-room ministry.
Umph. Don’t tell the po pop that you were tryin’ to plant a seed for your full-circle moment. Please know that was our sista Cardi may have gotten uncommon favor from the Lord. But you . . . you might catch a common charge and your *full-circle *might land your ass in central booking.
LOL.
Beloved children of the sun, I know we’re sittin’ here chucklin’, but there really is a sacred message to be found in Cardi’s full-circle Old Navy campaign.
How many of Y’all were taught a theology of permanent shame? A theology of permanent shame say that the worst thing you’ve ever done is gonna remain the truest thing about you. Somebody who makes a bad choice while they were poor, struggling, or desperate has to have that become their whole identity that follows them for the rest of their life. That theology says that humiliating season means you are unworthy. Unworthy of dignity. Unworthy of belonging. Unworthy of restoration. Unworthy of joy. The bad that you did is your final sentence.
Lemme ask Y’all somethin’, Saints: Do you think a true god of liberation holds on to this kind of evidence? Do you think a true god of liberation holds people hostage to their worst moments? Do you think a true god of liberation offers forgiveness without ever restoring a person’s full humanity?
No Saints! A theology of liberation says the opposite. Even an atheist like me knows that no true god of liberation is gonna keep you stuck inside the person you had to become during the hardest season of your life. A theology of liberation says you have to be like Cardi B and take accountability. She changed and she confronted what she did and she showed us that your worst chapter isn’t your whole story and that accountability doesn’t have to be a life sentence of shame and humiliation.
Amen?!!
Scripture tells us in Isaiah 43:18–19: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Touch your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, please be patient with me, god is not through with me yet!”
Folk may hold on to what you did to survive in this racist capitalist system. They will keep the receipts and the old footage and pause your life on the ugliest frame. They will preserve your worst moment. But a god of liberation will remember that you were surviving and will preserve the possibility of your becoming.
Church, lemme tell Y’all about Cardi B’s biblical sister, Rahab. Have Y’all heard of her? That’s alright if you haven’t.
Now, **Joshua 2 **says that Rahab was scandalous because of what she did for a living. The Bible says that she was a sex worker. What she did to survive was considered shameful by respectable society. Her home was the scene of shame. The Bible doesn’t really tell us much about her personality, intelligence, her backstory, nothin’ much really. All we get is a shameful label because that’s how women, especially poor women, get treated.
But then some shit is about to go down, church. The Israelites were about to enter the so-called Promised Land, but Jericho is standing in the way. Jericho was a fortified city. It had high walls and locked gates. The people had been talking about how the Israelites were coming. So Joshua sent a couple of spies into the city to scope it out and gather some intelligence about their defenses, to get some sense of the political climate. He wanted to know if Jericho could be taken.
Now Saints, just where do you think these two holy intelligence agents ended up taking cover? Why are y’all giving me the side eye?
Yes! Those men ended up right at Rahab’s house! Lissen . . . don’t ask me why the scripture says a sex worker’s house was chosen for this moment! I read and re-read those scriptures and they don’t explain why. But let us use our sanctified imaginations, shall we? Let’s just say that even men who are sent on assignment by god know which house won’t ask too many questions.
Turn to your neighbor and say, “Okurrrrrr!”
Rahab was a politically astute woman who recognized that history was shifting and she discerned the movement of god. And so, she hid those intelligence agents inside her house. Did they have a l’il fun? Maybe. But that’s beside the point. At the end of the day, Rahab outsmarted the king’s men. She didn’t have a seminary degree, military rank, or a respectable reputation, but she had the strategy to negotiate protection for her family, and she engineered the spies’ escape.
And saints, Jericho fell. And when the city fell, guess whose house was spared? Rahab’s house, Y’all. The house where the nasty woman lived. The house of shame and where society put on the ho stroll. The house that had been the scene of Rahab’s shame became the safest address in the city and the site of deliverance.
Touch your neighbor and say, “Look at gawd.”
And don’t miss this . . . there were a lot of so-called respectable people in Jericho. But those same people in this story lacked courage, compassion, and discernment. But it was the socially condemned woman who recognized what god was doing. She showed more courage than the folk with the clean reputation. Those people didn’t do the holy work. Rahab did. She was the one who risked herself to save others.
Lissen, the Bible is not a collection of stories about pure and spotless people. Just because you are respectable don’t make you righteous. The Bible is a whole record of the powerful things the Lord did by moving through complicated people with messy pasts.
Saints millions of people out here moving through life believing they have to conceal the desperate, messy, or humiliating parts of their past before they are worthy of dignity, redemption, and a future. But Rahab’s story and Cardi’s story shows us that the grace of the god of liberation does not require a perfect protagonist. Both of these women could have remained imprisoned by respectable society’s narratives about them. But both turned scandal into deliverance.
Cardi B was once a poor girl from the Bronx who boosted jeans from Old Navy. The theology of respectability politics and the theology of permanent shame will have folks sittin’ here judging her. And that’s because folks who are comfortable love to judge the choices they have never been desperate enough to face themselves.
But Cardi’s story reminds us that sometimes the place that remembers your desperation will have to witness your transformation and your becoming. And what I love most about her full-circle moment, Saints, is that she told the story herself. Nobody exposed and dragged her. She didn’t treat what she did like a secret or let shame hold power over her and hold her hostage. The scene of her shame became the stage for her vindication, growth, reinvention, and joy.
And at the end of the day, Cardi B is still Cardi B. She’s still loud. Still sexual and vulgar. Still funny AF. Still ambitious and winning. Like her biblical sister Rahab, she is evidence of possibility.
Beloved children of the sun, your dignity does not have to depend upon respectability. Both Rahab and Cardi effectively demonstrate for us that you can do some messy shit and still change, repair harm, and grow. And in the process, you ain’t got to erase your authentic self, conceal your survival, or become respectable before your life can carry sacred meaning for yourself and millions of other people.
And once last thing before I let Y’all go . . . Saints, the theology of permanent shame often has us spiritualizing deliverance. Deliverance is supposed to mean that we feel better but we stay poor and powerless and long-suffering and materially impoverished. But our sista Card didn’t just come back to Old Navy with inner peace in her soul. She returned to that scene of shame with bargaining power, a contract, and an invoice.
Look at god.
Let us pray.
God of Rahab and Cardi B. God of true liberation.
Release us from all the shame that keeps that keeps us frozen by what we did to survive in our worst season.
Unchain, us o lord. Give us the courage to control our own narrative and tell the truth about our past without surrendering our future to it.
Remind us to tell honest stories of desperation. Thank you for using Rahab and Cardi B so that others may have permission to believe that their worst moment is not their whole identity, that their present circumstances are not their final destination, and that their hardest chapter is not the end of their story.
And dear lord, turn the scenes of all our shame into sites of healing, growth, reinvention, purpose, and joy.
Let the church say Amen, Amen, and Okurrrrrr!
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THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.
