New Portrait - KB, Lisa Sharon Harper, Dr. Jarvis J. Williams

Look, was Christ really buried?

Is this whole story very fairy and I was just a man?

Did they really find His bones and they lied to keep the cold

Or did He walk out of His tomb to a throne?

Was He God?

Was He not?

Did He buy us a spot in Heaven or is all of this a ruse?

Are we just delusional tools who refuse to believe in the truth or we fools?

Is all this the white man religion?

European invention to drive the weak to submission

How can an African like me get division

When these preachers owned slaves but taught that freedom was Christian

Christ to the culture

Christ to the vultures

Committed genocide with a cross and oldster

Christ of America

Christ of the system

That is not my Saviour, that’s a politician

Christ that the Lord knows

Christ that was foretold

Christ that’s shoulda come back in His war clothes

Which Christ do you believe?

You gotta know before you leave

Yes He did arise

Yes He was alive

Brown Middle Eastern definitely wasn’t white

No, He never married and never had any wives

But committed His life to an interracial bride

Yes He did rise days after He died

God of the oppressed and in it He still thrives

Died as a criminal from the hood part of town

What can I say?

Yes He is God

From the womb to the tomb to the throne

You can go to the moon but you can’t hold to His bones

Nobody owns a saint

Portraits have all failed

He made us in his own image

Da Vinci returned a favor

But He is still risen

He is still risen

He is still risen

Over guns and supremace

Over all the divisions

Over the wicked and tenacious

The real one is living

Christ of the Galilee

Christ of the Nazareth

Christ that will vindicate

He will make it right again

Christ that was worshipped by the ancient of Africans

Many men claimed Him

But then He overclaimed them

Christ that the Lord knows

Christ that was foretold

Christ that shoulda come back in His war clothes

Which Christ do you believe?

You gotta know before you leave

Now the thing I would argue is that race isn’t even real

It’s something that we create in order to determine how the polest of people

will live together on this land it’s a political construct

What’s real is ethnicity, what’s real is the people groups who move through

time, in space and land and are shaped by their experiences together

So I would argue we need to reclaim ethnicity

Yeah He is the Messiah and that what is prioritized and that these are the

categories that we have to work at

But Jesus doesn’t sit nicely and neatly with our categories

And scripture tells us clearly if you are human then you are created in the

image of God therefore called by God to help steward the world