My Last Sermon

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. — Genesis 32:24, 26

I stood in that pulpit in December 2023 and preached what I did not yet understand was my goodbye.

The text was Jacob. The title was This Means War.

I told the congregation that God was looking for people willing to sacrifice everything for one promise — even when they could not see what that promise would require of them, even when they had no idea what it would cost or where it would take them.

Jacob did not understand what his blessing meant when he received it. He only knew it was his. His older brother would serve him. He could not see the decades of running, the wrestling, the long night alone at the river, the hip that would never walk right again.

He only knew the promise belonged to him, and he would not let go until he had it.

I told that congregation the church was hungry. Not for another program. Not for another building campaign. Not for another decade of waiting on what had already been promised. Hungry for the redemption that had been dangled in front of Black people in pews for generations with no real power behind it.

I told them people were leaving. Not because they stopped loving God — because they stopped accepting a servant’s portion after being promised a king’s.

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What I did not say out loud was that I was one of them.

I had been in theology school asking questions that made my professors uncomfortable. I had spent three years in research that cracked open everything I thought I knew and showed me something older, deeper, and more connected than any denomination had prepared me for.

• I found that the Moses they preached about on Sunday was the same Moses the rootworkers called on by candlelight.
• I found that the Psalms the church sang were the same Psalms my ancestors whispered over herbs and water and petition papers in the dark.
• I found that scripture and conjure had been sharing water in Black spiritual life for generations — even when the church refused to name the river.

And I could not unsee it.

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So I stood in that pulpit and preached Jacob one last time.

I preached about wrestling with God until the blessing comes. I preached about refusing to accept less than what was promised. I preached about the hunger for real power in a people who had been told to wait long enough.

And then I walked out.

Not because I stopped believing. Because I believed too much to keep pretending the whole truth was fitting inside four walls on a Sunday morning.

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If you are reading this, you probably know exactly what I am talking about.

You love God. You always have. But something cracked open in you and you cannot close it back. You started asking questions and the answers led somewhere your church could not follow. You felt guilty about it. You wondered what was wrong with you.

Your questions are not proof that you have lost God. Nothing is wrong with you.

You are Jacob at the river. Wrestling. Refusing to let go until the blessing makes sense. Refusing to accept a version of faith that keeps you small when everything in you knows you were built for something larger.

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That is why I built the Conjure Compass Institute.

Not to pull you away from God. To show you the room in the house you were never shown — the one your ancestors knew, the one that was always yours.

• You do not have to destroy your faith to investigate it.
• You do not have to leave God to examine what people taught you about God.
• You do not have to abandon the tools your people used because somebody taught you to fear their names.

The promise is still yours.

But inheritance without understanding becomes dependency.

Come learn what you were never taught to ask.

Welcome to the school.