The doors of the church are open. Good morning, Saints.
Beloved children of the sun, lemme ask Y’all somethin’ . . .
How many of Y’all in this sanctuary love dogs? Lemme see your hand. Hmm-hmm. How many of Y’all got a dog livin’ up in your house right now? * Hmm-hmm.*
That fur baby ain’t payin’ no mortgage or vet bills or taxes. Ain’t buyin’ no groceries. Ain’t got no credit score or discernible skillset.
Can’t take out the trash, can’t wash a dish, and can’t help you fold the laundry but is always ready to give unsolicited supervision around the house. Dog parents know what I’m talkin’ about. Can’t read a clock but will give you a whole attitude if their dinner ain’t ready by precisely 6:03 pm.
Can’t read the word “treat” but somehow still knows the word when you say it out loud and now you gotta walk around spellin’ things and speakin’ in code inside the house *you *pay for. And what gets me, is that most of these fur babies out here have never worked a day in their life but they wake up exhausted as hell.
Why?!
Now Saints, I don’t know why these fur babies be so tired. But Y’all know I love me a dog. Especially one that’s beautiful in the face. Got them old soulful almost human eyes that look right through you. Smells like Bergamot, vanilla, and some berries. Is bougie as hell. Persnickety about her food and yak chews. Wears a different preppy collar to daycare everyday and walks up to the other dogs like, “Good morning, bitches! Pun intended. *I AM SOMEBODY!” *Yes indeed. My dog be given’ them face, fur, tail, and paws.
I love me a dog that requires filtered water. That demands a temperature-controlled house. A fur baby that must have a fluffed blanket before she can lay down and enter into nightly rest beside her human.
I don’t know about your dog, but my dog Sojourner is blessed, highly favored, and living in the overflow! She knows the Lord is her shepherd and she shall not want. She knows that goodness, mercy, belly rubs, climate control, and treats shall follow her all the days of her life.
Because Proverbs 12:10 reminds us that “the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.”
This kindness, Saints, shows a heart that honors god. And when I say god I mean the animating ethic within us that recognizes all living creatures, human and animal, as worthy of tenderness, protection, and care.
Can I get an amen from all the pet people, dog sitters and walkers, vets, and the farmers in the sanctuary this morning?
No, my dog contributes nothing material to my household, but I love her deliriously anyway because she is loyal and every day she gives me somethin’ this world keeps trying to beat out of folk. She gives me uncomplicated tenderness. She sits beside me when I’m sad and doesn’t demand that I explain it. She knows when I’ve got a migraine coming and will snuggle her warm body next to my skin to let me know it’s gonna be alright. She stays next to me through the pain.
Whenever I leave the house, even if its only for just one minute to take out the trash, she rejoices in my presence like my homecoming is a resurrection, or like I’m the prodigal Black mama who survived 40 years in the wilderness! Unlike a cat who will just stare at you like, “Ah, it’s just you again. You survived out there. Now come worship me.”
Every day this dog reminds me that love doesn’t always need language. This loving, tail-wagging ball of fur won’t let me sit in the darkness and carry pain or grief by myself. And because of her I have decided *on purpose *that I will be even more attentive, more compassionate, and more tender because the way you treat the vulnerable and those with less power says something about the condition of your soul. Amen?!
Brotha Willie, they ain’t ready for this sermon!
Now Saints, the Bible does not give us a lot of favorable descriptions of dogs. Biblical dogs were not treated like our modern beloved house pets. They were considered symbols of uncleanness and predation. They usually appear in stories where they are scavenging, guarding, humiliating, hunting, attacking, or eating people down to their bones.
Dogs are agents of terror that surround vulnerable people. In **Psalm 22:16 **we hear the cry: “Dogs surround me; a pack of villains encircles me.” In Psalm 59:6 dogs are violent enemies prowling the city searching for their target: “They return at evening, snarling like dogs, and prowl about the city.”
Being eaten by a dog was considered the most degrading form of death because you died without dignity. That’s what happened to Queen Jezebel in 1 Kings 21:23, which tells us: “Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.” And then** 2 Kings 9:35 **tells us that after she was killed: “They went to bury her, but they found nothing except her skull, her feet and her hands.”
There are other stories about dogs prowling and searching for people in communities where state violence and bloodshed has appeared. You’ll see them licking the blood and attacking people who were judged and condemned by power.
Which brings me to our modern political moment. I don’t know if Y’all read the news this week. But did Y’all hear that ICE is trying to get approval to spend millions of dollars on mechanical dogs with 360-degree vision that can track people, do surveillance, and even open doors?
A metal animal with four jointed legs, Y’all. No mouth, no breath, no heartbeat inside it, no bark, no fur or eyes you can look into. The thing is a walking camera that can look in all directions and can extend its mechanical arm to open your door. It won’t hesitate or show affection or mercy. All it knows is that the unseen white supremacist machinery of empire has identified a target.
And on top of that, ICE got another big $16 million contract to produce thousands of electric-shock gloves! The government has given these things a name: “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device” a.k.a "The G.L.O.V.E.” So when an ICE agent’s hand touches somebody’s body, the agent will retain the appearance of gripping their target while concealed shocks send electricity through the body.
Turn to your neighbor and say,* “Neighbor, the devil got a damn federal procurement card.”*
Saints, these creepy-ass robot dogs and electric-shock gloves are tools of the machinery of an Empire that has already turned its prejudice into dehumanizing language and propaganda, policy, databases to identify people, contracts, and weapons of terror that seize and disappear vulnerable people. So now we might be about to see metal dog feet at people’s doors and electric hands on people’s flesh while the government stands back and calls this dystopian terror “public safety.”
Turn to your neighbor and say, *“Neighbor, ain’t nothin’ new under the sun.” *
You and I know that empires throughout human history have built evil technologies according to their theologies. Pharaoh had those expensive chariots which were like the armored tanks of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar had those powerful furnaces that he ordered heated seven times hotter for anybody who refused to bow to his demands. Rome had crosses, which were essentially state-engineered instruments of torture designed to humiliate and lynch the body to force the public into obedience.
Brotha Willie play your organ.
These regimes had terrifying machinery. But at the end of the day, all three regimes failed.
Pharaoh lost his control over the people. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire fell. Rome became ruins. The machinery made them terrifying but not eternal. The chariots may chase you, but they can’t stop the Exodus. The fire furnace actually killed the men trying to feed people into the flames and it couldn’t force every knee to bow. The cross killed Jesus and many others who were condemned, but it could not kill the justice that Jesus represented.
Beloved children of the sun, what is the lesson here? If you study history, I mean really study it, you’ll see that every corrupt empire suffers from the same fatal delusion. They think that just because they have the power to exploit, dehumanize, and take the lives of vulnerable people, that means they get to control history. ** **But they don’t. Cruelty and terrifying weapons don’t make an empire immortal. And they can’t manufacture righteousness or save your racist government’s rotten-ass soul.
Beloved children of the sun, the machinery of American Empire does not have to have the last word.
While dogs may not have been depicted as beloved in the Bible, scripture also gives us the famous story of some other dogs that recognized and surrounded a suffering man when other powerful human beings refused to see him.
Do Y’all recall the story of a man named Lazarus? He appears in Luke 16. He’s poor. He’s downtrodden. He’s afflicted. He’s starving. He is lying outside of a rich man’s gate with sores covering his body. The rich man passes by this suffering every day without stopping. He treats him like he’s invisible and worthless.
Luke 16:20-21 says: “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”
The dogs came and licked his sores. Umph.
Now church, there’s a theological debate about this. Some folks say that the dogs licking the man added more indignity to his situation. Remember, street dos in the ancient world were seen as unclean nuisances. But others argue that these dogs gently licking this beggar’s sores were a sign of compassion. The dogs offered more compassion and mercy than the rich human inside the large house who had status and religion.
The dogs didn’t care about Lazarus’s skin color, country of origin, citizenship status, or poverty. They didn’t ask the man for an ID or to explain his hunger or sickness. Think about it, Y’all. Did dogs were demonized. The dogs got no pets and snuggles. They were always living in survival mode themselves. But despite their lowly position, they still had the ability, the instinct to recognize another wounded being while the rich man who had everything just kept on feasting and refused to acknowledge Lazarus’s humanity.
Now Black folks in America know some things about how the state has used dogs as agents of terror. During slavery, some states had slave codes that forbid our ancestors from owning dogs because dogs are loyal, dogs could send messages, and dogs could protect and enslaved person being whipped or chased by catchers. Bloodhounds were used to track our people through the forests and swamps when we committed the crime of seeking freedom. During the civil rights era, we watched redneck assholes like Bull Connor unleash dogs onto our children in Birmingham and elsewhere. And now, what was tested on our people is being turned into high-tech machinery against our Brown brothers and sisters who’ve dehumanized as prey.
Black Liberation Theology teaches us an important lesson about this kind of oppression. This new machinery of terror won’t stay confined to the border. It won’t just be applied to immigrants being targeted by ICE. America has always rehearsed its experiments and violences on the most vulnerable and demonized groups whose rights have been disregarded. Mark my words, Saints. If there is no radical resistance against this regime, we will see these robot dogs and electric-shock gloves spreading to major cities, other marginalized communities, college campuses, protests, and prisons.
And so, beloved children of the sun, you must decide what kind of human being you will become when you hear the metal dogs showing up at somebody else’s house and turning their doorknob. Will you be like the cold-hearted rich man? Will you ignore the suffering outside your gate? Will you keep on feasting? Will you be too frightened, compromised, or comfortable to resist oppression?
Or will you be a member of the sanctuary?
Will you jam the machinery? Will you burn the contract? Will you put your body between the hunted and the machinery of the state? Will you remember that god is in Lazarus, in the starving, the unhoused, the disabled, the sick, the abandoned, and the migrant being hunted by the state? Will you remember that god is in the gentle dogs reminding us that love and uncomplicated tenderness doesn’t always need language?
Our true liberation will begin when we refuse to let the terrifying machinery of Empire get the last word. Let that promise be our terrible nightmare to America.
And let the church say Amen, Amen, and Amen.
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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.
