Black Studies in Theological Education: The Camel Comes of Age

Extract

Several Sundays ago, I sat in the congregation of a local church which is part of a black denomination. The Church was celebrating its 100th Anniversary. The pastor took his text from the psalter, “How wonderful is the Lord in all his works. In wisdom has he made them all.” The preacher's sermon title was “Consider the Camel.” He proceeded to describe this ungainly beast with broad flat feet, skinny legs, and a shuffling gait, with an unsightly hump on his back, a neck like a giraffe and a face ludicrous to behold — in short, a grotesque, the proverbial horse designed by a committee, a divine joke on all four-footed things. Ah, but not so, for it turns out that the Camel, far from being ridiculous, is in its setting a thing of beauty. Those broad feet enable it to walk across the sands when the hoofs of more traditionally shapely creatures would be hopelessly ensnared. That hump, far from being a deformity, is a marvelous storage tank enabling the beast to carry its own commissary in a land singularly devoid of any regular fruitstands or water fountains. And the eyes in that unspeakable head are equipped with transparent lids which permit the creature to see while they are closed protecting his pupils from the wind and sand. “How wonderful is the Lord in all — even his most unlikely — works. In wisdom has he made them all.” The Camel turns out to be perfectly designed for what we would regard as a harsh, unfriendly setting. He is designed for a particular kind of adversity. The preacher, however, did not have a zoologist's interest in this creature but hastened to use it as an object of comparison to the congregation, at its foundation, shortly after the War Between the States. At that time he averred, when men and women of quality worshiped in Gothic and Georgian structures lighted with beeswax candles or gas chandeliers, the founders of that house of worship gathered in a humble home. When the people of quality were driven to church in coaches or borne in sedan chairs by their servants to the door, these former slaves trudged on foot through the dust of summer and the mud and snow of winter to praise their creator. And while the better folks heard well-seasoned sermons delivered in a calm and critical mode and were inspired by string quartets or deep-boweled organs, the poor blacks hooped and shouted, lined out their hymns, and accompanied themselves with clapping hands and patting feet. To their more cultured fellow believers they must have seemed as foolish and unfortunate as the Camel. Yet — as the Camel was designed for his particular setting — it was the preacher's intent to make us see that the congregation of which he spoke was similarly designed, and that the wisdom which Divine grace lavished on the Camel, he lavished also upon the black church.