Brother West by Cornel West Read Free Book Online Page B

example, of Theodore Roosevelt, I was told where he was and what he did every year of his life. But the four biblical accounts of Jesus’s life don’t do that. The narrative is sketchy, the vast majority of his growing-up years undocumented. At times, Jesus expresses uncertainties and doubts. In the Garden of Gethsemane he falls to the ground and wants to know if God will let him out of this jam. On the cross, he cries out that worrying blues line, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
    None of this made me challenge the power of Christ-based love. I lived with people who modeled that love—my mom, my dad, my brother, my sisters, my grandparents, my preacher. They modeled humility. In their own way, they washed the feet of those they served, just as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. But at this critical juncture in my life I also knew what Keats was talking about. If Jesus Christ could express his uncertainties and doubts, then the English poet was pointing me in the right direction. I didn’t have to resolve every contradiction or inconsistency. When I read the poetry of Walt Whitman, I could understand why he answered the question, “Do I contradict myself?” with “Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
    Because I was considered precocious, I was asked to deliver sermons during the junior church service. I tried to avoid it, not because I felt incapable, but because it meant missing a sermon by our pastor, Willie P. Cooke. Cooke was not bombastic, although he would have Holy Ghost visitations during his sermons. He was not intellectual. He was sincere. He loved to talk about the litany of love. He started each sermon by quoting Psalm: 121 “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.” Later in my life, when I began speaking in churches, I followed his lead and started with those same wonderful words. He was a man of deep discernment and genuine charity. He was humble. He wasn’t interested in hellfire and he wasn’t interested in self-aggrandizement. It seemed right that he was a carpenter as well as a preacher. The only other preacher who came close to Reverend Cooke’s depth of spirit was Reverend Dr. J. Alfred Smith, the renowned pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church of Oakland, California. As an adult, I’ve been blessed to speak and preach many times in his church.
    Back in my childhood, I remember that my first sermon in junior church focused on Jesus as the “water of life.” I took it from John 4:14. I worked it hard. I compared the pure water of Christ to Kool-Aid—one can sustain you, the other can’t. The congregation got to rocking and I got to rocking even harder. If my desire to hear Reverend Cooke hadn’t been so keen, I’m sure I would have worked up more sermons. I had some rhetorical gifts and I liked the inspiration it gave to others. But I have never received the calling to preach. I am neither licensed nor ordained as a minister. I see it as a sign of God’s wisdom that I was never chosen to be a pastor. I have tremendous respect for that calling. But I know that, as a preacher, I would fall far short of the mark. Ironically, many people do believe that I’m a Christian minister simply because I speak in a preacherly style. But the simple truth is that I’m a Christian bluesman in the life of the mind and a Christian jazzman in the world of ideas.
    As a child, Cooke’s beautiful soul kept calling me. I also loved the way he called on the deacons to serve the parishioners. Deacon Hinton was our designated mentor. He was childless and treated me and Cliff like sons. Lord, this man was a loving soul! He was a chauffeur who drove for white folks. Every summer he’d make sure to take me and Cliff to the picnics put on by his rich employers. We were the only blacks in attendance. It was like something out of The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel about social