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

New Portrait

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