I could never forget the image of angry Jesus. Raised in a religious household, I started learning from the Bible before I could read. My mom read to me from My Book of Bible Stories, a children’s publication with simplified Bible accounts, complete with large and vivid illustrations. Like the one of Jesus flipping over tables in a temple. Through that book, I was introduced to Jesus Christ — loving, fair and able to be pissed off.

To Jesus, the temple was a place for unadulterated worship. It was to be a safe and sacred space. In the events recorded in the Bible at John 2:13-25, Jesus found merchants using the temple as a place to sell overpriced animals that were needed for sacrificial offerings. Worshippers who didn’t have the means to own their own livestock supply still needed to offer sacrifices to be forgiven for their sins. So, they bought from the overpriced merchandise tables that were conveniently set up in their place of worship. They were taken advantage of as a part of their service to God. Jesus found the merchants, flipped their tables and demanded that they stop making the house of his father “a house for commerce” (New World Translation, John 2:16). As an adult, I understand that Jesus was not just angry. He was righteously indignant at the commodification of a relationship with God.

On January 6, 2019, the first clip of Kanye West’s pop-up praise session surfaced online and with it, he assumed the role of reimagining the boundaries of worship. The service isn’t hosted in a temple or traditional church, but in various landscapes that resemble mounts, locations which, in the Bible, were the scenes of holy happenings. God handed down the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai. Jesus gave his most famous sermon on a mount, in front of a large crowd the was free to join and be inspired, at no cost. The first thing that I noticed about Kanye’s Sunday Service is that you cannot come as you are, unless your celebrity affords your inclusion. In this pop culturally situated service, the majority of culture can observe, but cannot partake. 

In the spring of 2019, Kanye opened his live Sunday Service experience to the public. He didn’t try to uplift or include the community that he came from, by hosting the service in a Chicago neighborhood. Instead, he held the service at Coachella, where fans had to at least be able to afford a $429 General Admission ticket. The service was held on a mount, but also included a merch stand. 

The gear, loosely reminiscent of sackcloth, a fabric worn in biblical times as a symbol of humility, started at $50. Sweatshirts, decorated with the words “holy spirit” sold for $225. The items were modeled after the clothing worn by the service’s participants. The aesthetic is redemption, but make it fashion. The vibe is worship, but limit the inclusion to filter out the communities from which this particular type of praise was born. With the illustration of table flipping Jesus still crystal clear in my mind, I can’t help but to wonder: what would Jesus have done at Coachella’s Sunday Service? Or, more immediately, what is Yeezus doing?

While what it means to worship has evolved in 2019, as artists like Chance the Rapper sing praises on mixtapes, because of Kanye West’s own design, his Sunday Service cannot be removed from the historical context of Christianity. In 2013, Kanye released an album with the title, Yeezus. This nickname officiated his self-christening or, at least, begged a comparison between the rapper and Jesus Christ. Sunday Service is his latest attempt at walking like Jesus. 

In an April 2019 Elle.com interview, Kim Kardashian described Sunday service as “like a healing” for Kanye. “It’s definitely something he believes in,” she continued, “...It’s just a very spiritual Christian experience.” To be Christian, most literally means to be a footstep follower of Christ. In this context, the optics of Sunday Service make sense. Kanye is on a mountain, singing praises, dressed in a stylized interpretation of clothing worn in the Old Testament to denote a repentance or a turning around. On its own, the notion that Kanye is seeking spiritual healing, after a series of public breakdowns and emotional health battles, is believable -- even commendable. 

For what behavior, though, is Kanye remorseful? Perhaps it is for offending his community of black fans, throughout 2018, by fostering a camaraderie with Donald Trump, wearing a Make America Great Again hat, and declaring on TMZ that slavery “sounds like a choice.” To be forgiven for these acts, Kanye would need to seek redemption from the fans that are no longer able to justify using his art as a shield of protection for his actions. These fans are from communities that once regarded Kanye as a hero and an example of being raised in the city, by a single mom, and still working hard to create a dream life. These fans include me.

As a Kanye West fan throughout my teenage years and early 20s, I often looked to his music as form a therapy and an escape from the worries of my world. His early music, full of honesty and encouragement, had a quality of redemption. I watched clips from Sunday Service, looking for a sign that the Kanye of College Dropout was being resurrected. I looked not for just a performance of those songs, but for a manifestation of that spirit. Instead, I repeatedly find attempts to capitalize on black culture and the conscience of black fans, through, arguably, the one thing we hold as significant as our music: our worship. If God has the power to transform lives and forgive all wrongdoing, can we still hold accountable a man who has turned himself over to God? The nuance lies in the authenticity or lack thereof. Rather than a display of organic worship, Sunday Service feels more like a performance of self sanctification, meant to entertain those who view the black church as a show rather than as a pathway to God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, a visual that Kanye creatively nods toward in his service, Jesus offers specific examples of how not to praise God. In addition to the condemnation of commerce in worship, he rejects praise for the sake of spectacle. Ironically, Kim Kardashian’s description of Sunday Service as a “very spiritual Christian experience” that was born out of Kanye’s love of Jesus, conflicts with Jesus’ own teaching. During his sermon, Jesus says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people to be seen by them… And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (English Standard Version, Matthew 6:1, 2). 

Kanye didn’t use Coachella as a moment to highlight the black church and its longstanding position as a crucial pillar of black culture. He used Coachella as commercial platform and a marketing opportunity to sell the appearance of the black church to those who don’t know it well enough to oppose. Each Sunday Service is recapped on social media by pop cultural influencers. The service is produced by a Social Media Strategist who wrote an article on LinkedIn.com about his involvement, highlighting the power of social media as a tool to grow business. Each detail pivots the service away from Christian homage and closer to Kanye’s superficial attempt to be born again in the eye of a public.

Sunday Service is meant to be seen. In order to reconnect with the fans that he lost and demonstrate a true rejection of the behavior that lost them, he would need to ensure that Sunday Service is felt. Felt by more than the elite, chosen attendees. Felt by more than those who could afford to buy church clothes at Coachella. It needs to be felt by those who identify with the culture that is being put on display, by those who turn to gospel, to choir and to Sundays for relief from emotional hardships and societal injustices. These are the same social injustices that were belittled and invalidated by his statement that slavery was a choice. Fans who’ve had to evolve or abandon their connection to Kanye’s artistry, after he abandoned his position as an uplifting figure in black culture, are not invited to his service. We are reminded that Yeezus did not come to save us.