Rethinking Celebration by Cleophus J. LaRue

Author:Cleophus J. LaRue
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611646696
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

Conclusion

Even when one takes into consideration all of the possible misuses of celebration in contemporary African American preaching, Mitchell and Thomas have been right in seeking to remove the barriers that prevent a worshiping community from offering to God exuberant, unabashed praise and thanksgiving. Both scholars are well-intentioned, for they have rightly taken the high-church term celebration and taught it into the liturgical life of many African American churches. They have given the concept of celebration life and vibrancy as a meaningful part—expectation even—of the African American religious experience and particularly the preaching event. Though Mitchell and Thomas are liturgically well-intentioned, there is a theological deficiency in their homiletic, for with their limited definitions of celebration they have not gone far enough in drawing a clear distinction between festive revelry and celebratory praise.

First, I maintain that celebration from a theological perspective must in the first instance be defined as “ritual acts of worshipful praise.” To get at this more precise definition, one must make a clear-cut distinction between festivity as cultural phenomena and celebration as religious ritual even though both words are closely related. Festivity can be defined as mere joy and revelry (cultural) while celebration, used in a religious context, should be defined as “the worshipful praise of God,” which often includes joy and revelry.

Second, I argue that Mitchell and Thomas have turned their quasi-theological understanding of celebration into a “works-righteousness” function. They see functionality as the primary worth of celebration since they want to use it to teach (pedagogy). Mitchell says that people remember and do what they celebrate.1 Thomas declares that celebration in the final stages of the sermon functions as the joyful and ecstatic reinforcement of the truth already taught and delivered in the main body of the sermon.2 Both Mitchell and Thomas take this common term from the history of the church, lighten its load, and give it a lesser meaning. Thomas admits that his use of celebration to mean “climactic utterance” was first defined by Mitchell. Thomas then lifted celebration up as the genius of African American preaching.3 But in order to be theologically correct, the emphasis in contemporary celebration must remain on praise and not pedagogy. That, I argue, is one of the enduring contributions of African American preaching: climactic sermonic celebration as praise (doxology) and not as function (pedagogy). It is Mitchell’s and Thomas’s functional emphasis on celebration that causes their homiletic to come up short because it lacks a sufficient theological grounding.4

Third, I argue that while Mitchell and Thomas are right to suggest that praise should act in tandem with action, the rhythm between the two is neither triggered nor provoked through the use of embellished rhetoric purposely structured to evoke an emotional response in the listeners. There is no guarantee that emotionally laden speech that leads to their kind of celebration (emotional rejoicing) is a necessary kick-start to action. Adoration and action are binary in nature and interact with each other on the basis of a right understanding of the work of the Spirit as it relates to service and praise.

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