The greatest of these is love
Thursday, December 23, 2010
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
This morning, I was strangely transfixed by this verse, even though I had read it many times, in the “hymn to love”:
1 Cor.13:13 --
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“The greatest of these is love.”
During the 1960’s, Muhammad Ali used to defiantly shout, “I am the greatest!” But, time has shown his bold claim to be mere pugilistic bombast. His inspiring and charming utterance has proven to be mere heterosexual hype from the ultimate symbol of militant, black manhood. Love is the greatest, was the greatest, and forever will be the greatest.
Let us try to understand why “love” is greater than faith or hope.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
From this blessed scripture, we have the assurance that God not only loves, but God also gives! And what a gift! He gave His “only begotten son” to the whole world. Think of this! He spared Joseph, Israel’s son, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. He spared Abraham’s son, Isaac, by providing a ram in the bush. He even spared me and you! Yet, Jesus the Christ, was not spared. He was sacrificed. God’s “only begotten son,” was given unto the world by God to lave us in love. So, a corollary of love, and ineluctable consequence of love, is “giving.” One cannot love without giving. It is literally impossible. To love is to give.
John 15:13 (King James Version) says it all:
13Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Giving, sacrificing one’s life is the greatest gift anyone can give to another. It is the ultimate expression of one’s love.
Jesus came here expressly to live, to “give” his life, i.e. to “lay down his life for his friends” and to be resurrected, for you and for me, that we might be redeemed, spiritually irradiated unto eternity, like him. God, the father, refused to take away Jesus’ bitter cup at the Garden at Gethsemane, as Jesus, the man, had so fervently prayed. In the end, he, too, capitulated. “Not my will, but thy will be done,” Luke 22:42-44:
42Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
43And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Love can be agonizing, especially when it directly touches our flesh. It can involve “great drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Mark 12:30-31 (King James Version)--
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Note that we are commanded by Jesus to love God, as though we had a choice! Do we?How can we not love God? Every breath we take is a praise song to God! Every step we make is a holy dance to God. Commanding us to love God is like commanding water to flow downstream or like commanding the wind to blow or like commanding the sun, moon, or stars to shine!
We can’t help but love Him! We neurologically, physiologically, lymphangiologically “hardwired” to love him, to love ourselves, to love others, and to love all creation, by God himself! We were born to love, born in love, born by love, and born through love. We live for love. We are animated by love, sustained by love. Indeed, life is love.
31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Again, the operative verb is love. Perhaps, this is the soul/sole duty of man, “to love.” Regrettably many people do not love themselves, which is a precondition to loving your neighbor “as yourself”--especially people with a legacy of prolonged oppression and deprivation, like African Americans.
Taking away another’s desire or power to love is degradation at its worst. It is downright dehumanizing. Love is our crown. Man without love is bestial, other than human, arguably subhuman, neaderthal.
Revelations 3:11 says --
“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”
Love is our crown. Just like Jesus’ holy crown was displaced for one of thorns, so will those not disposed to love seek to replace ours’.
Ephesians 5:29 teaches “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”—
Back in BIBLE days that may have been true, that no one ever “hated his own body.” But, no more! Many people not only hate their own bodies, but they hate others’ bodies for many specious, vacuous reasons. Thus, many people must first learn to love themselves and their own bodies, that they may love others, in turn.
John 13:34-35 (New International Version, ©2010) says-- 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“You must love.” Indeed, you must be love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtWENe3V7Ds What is more insubstantial than love? Yet, what is more fulfilling? What is commanded is “more love.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5Sobdo8DE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
God is love.
1 John 4:8 : Whoever does not love does not know God , because God is love.
Martin Luther, the iconic priest and church reformer, who in 1517, launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses against Christian “indulgences” on the door of All Saints Cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, argues that “faith alone justifies us.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide Many subscribe to this view.
Justification by faith alone, “sole fide” (only faith) is the doctrinal basis of so-called Protestantism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#cite_note-0
However, with all due respect to Martin Luther, and to adherents to his arguments, I return to where we began, with love. 1 Cor.13:13 –
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
“Faith” is definitely in the mix. It is one of the three components in the “hymn to love”, “faith” and “hope” being the other two components, along with “love,” of which “love” is the “greatest” of them all.
So, the doctrine of “Sole Fide” is refuted by the 1 Cor.13:13 on its face. That is because it is neither “sole,” nor the greatest. “Faith” is merely 1 among 3 components and even then, it is not the greatest of the three; that is love.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (King James Version)
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Love is the “gift of God.” God made us to love, and sent Jesus to renew, restore, and revive our love, by and through his life-giving blood.
The hymn to love is set forth below, in full, for edification:
1 Corinthians 13 (New King James Version)
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, [a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Amen.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
CHARGEABLE TO NO MAN/ANSWERABLE TO NO MAN
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
By Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 2 Cor. 11:9 (NIV)
In one respect, Bishop Richard Allen, a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, went beyond the Apostle Paul, whose fiscal support was supplied by the "brothers who came from Macedonia.”
Bishop Allen supported himself fiscally by working outside the church and in time came to be an essential financial resource to the church, itself. His church never paid him anything of substance. His sacrifice, doubtless, helped to assure the church’s vitality and longevity since 1787, when it was the Free African Society, and since 1816 when it was incorporated.
Bishop Allen, being chargeable to no man, was answerable to no man.
FARM WORK
Born a slave, upon his conversion to Christianity, he along with his older brother, also a slave, worked harder than ever to show their master and to prove to their doubters that Christ did not spoil good workers. Christ made them better workers! They put their farm work before their church meetings; their crops before their confessions. Their diligent labors bore fruit. Not only did their example convert their master to Christianity, but he enabled them to purchase their freedom from him for $2000.
WOOD CUTTING
By cutting wood they purchased their freedom, and their lives. This useful skill was employed, whenever and wherever necessary to procure bread.
26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. 27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
Joshua 9:26-27.
BRICK-YARD WORK
He also worked in a brick-yard to purchase his freedom and feed himself. “I used often to pray sitting or standing or lying; and while my hands were employed to earn my bread, my heart was devoted to my dear Redeemer. Sometimes I would waken from my sleep preaching and praying.”
That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7“You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”Exodus 5:6-9
SALT-DELIVERIES
After the brick-yard, Bishop Allen began to supply salt from Delaware during the Continental War, making deliveries at regular stops and intervals, all the time preaching, praying and meditating. His salt delivery work pleased him greatly “in many happy seasons.”
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13
SELF-RELIANT PREACHER
After the Continental War, he traveled with numerous Methodist preachers of renown, preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ, and, as always, he relied on his own hands to feed and to clothe himself. He was also present at the first Methodist Episcopal general conference ever held in the United States in December 1784. Rev. Bishop Francis Asbury thereafter sent for Bishop Allen to travel with him down into the Carolinas slave states and other places, plainly telling Allen that he would have to sleep “in his carriage, but he would allow him his victuals and clothes.”
While Bishop Allen was a man of God, fully committed to John Wesley’s Methodism, his own background as a slave rebelled against the notion of sleeping in a carriage while being furnished only food and clothing as hire, something he could do for himself, had done for himself, and preferred doing for himself. His position was somewhat analogous to Isaiah 4:1--
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."
Allen would be a Methodist upon his own terms, as a free man, under his own vine and fig tree, not as a slave, destitute and dependent on another.
JUST SAY “NO” TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Allen told Bishop Francis Asbury “no” to his travel request in the South. Allen told Asbury “I told him if I was taken sick who was to support me? And that I thought my people ought to lay up something while they were able, to support themselves in times of sickness and old age.”
Who was Bishop Francis Asbury? The most powerful Methodist in America:
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. . . Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers. Among the men he ordained was Richard Allen in Philadelphia, the first black minister in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury
FAITHFUL DILIGENCE IN PHILADELPHIA
Eventually, after traveling with others, Allen made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states, “My labor was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people, and few of them attended public worship.”
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.Proverbs 10:4-5
Allen preached as early as 5:00 a.m., and as often as 4 or 5 times per day. He established prayer meetings and raised a society of 42 members in 1786, which included Rev. Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings. Absalom Jones and William White were pulled from their knees during prayer at St. Georges Episcopal Church by trustees, due to race discrimination. This led to a walk-out by the blacks, who in due course purchased land for construction of a church of their own, which became St. Thomas Episcopal Church, pursuant to majority vote by society members, which Rev. Absalom Jones ultimately headed, as priest.
6TH AND LOMBARD STREET BLACKSMITH SHOP
Meanwhile, Bishop Allen, an inveterate Methodist , had purchased land at 6th and Lombard Street for a church, which the society rejected in favor of the 5th street site occupied by St. Thomas. So, Bishop Allen purchased the property for his own account. He also purchased the frame of an old blacksmith shop, had it ferried to the 6th and Lombard St. site, and paid a team of carpenters to render it habitable and secure as a place of worship.
This converted blacksmith shop became Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which opened July 1794, with a sermon by Bishop Frances Asbury. This taproot of “African Methodism” was established despite the zealous, organized opposition from St. Georges Episcopal Church, including litigation. Bishop Allen served as pastor of Bethel as well as the first consecrated bishop of the AM.E. Church.
CHIEF AFRICAN METHODIST FINANCIER
More than pastor and bishop, though, Bishop Allen was also chief financier. He specifically refused to accept his $500 per year salary, accepting only $80 total for all his years of service, bequeathing any balance due him to the church. He bequeathed another $1400, when the Bethel was sold and bought back by the members. The bishop also loaned Bethel $4,000. His claims against Bethel once aggregated $11,700, and if that is not enough, “At the time that Robert Green sold it, Mr. Allen bought it in for the congregation at the sum of $10,500.”
SHOE AND BOOT SHOP
In addition to his others intereinterests Bishop Allen owned a boot and shoe store, from which he retired a couple years before he died leaving an estate of $30,000-$40,000 in 1831 dollars.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter: a man removed his sandal and gave it to another; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. 8So the closest relative said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Ruth 4:7-8Yesterday’s sandals are today’s shoes. Bishop Allen was a man acquainted with redemption and exchange, so the scriptural reference applies. The shoe and boot shop joins farming, wood cutting, brick labor, and salt delivery as means by which he acquired his freedom and gained immortality as a religious founder, crusader and reformer among Africans and Methodists, world-wide.
THE GREAT ALLEN COMMISSION
Bishop Allen was chargeable to no man, and answerable to no man.
Would that certain born-again members of our great church, whether laity or episcopacy, or any in between, would not only celebrate Allen, but imitate Allen; would not just adulate Allen on Founder’s Day, but emulate Allen every day, in Jesus’ holy name! Amen.
Returning now to the Apostle Paul, for summation, we conclude:
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:7-18
#30
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Of Chitlins and Church Folk
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Friday, December 17, 2010
By LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, Mark 8:38).
Neither am I ashamed of being an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nor am I ashamed of “chitlins”—or, more formally, chitterlings, a/k/a, “wrinkles”—hog intestines, which have been thoroughly cleaned, thoroughly seasoned, and thoroughly cooked.
This soul food delicacy has its roots in our southern slave heritage, when our inventive women found a way to feed us from what white folks threw away. If it wasn’t “high on the hog,” they’d give it to us. And we’d take full advantage of it! http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/ChitlinsHistory.htm
Now, admittedly, there probably are some so-called Christians who shrink from boldly confessing Christ as Lord and Savior. There may be a few AME preachers who’d prefer keeping their affiliation quiet, i.e. “on the down low.” There certainly are a profusion of both so-called Christians and AME preachers who dislike and/or are downright disdainful of “chitlins.” Be that as it may.
This article is not for them. It is only for those who can receive it, the few, the faithful, the unfettered, i.e.—those who love Jesus, the AME church and chitlins.
Every Wednesday night, weather permitting, I engaged in Bible study at Gilbert Memorial A.M.E. Church, in Kansas City Missouri, Rev. Brenda Smith, pastor. Then, I had a stroke in July2010, which hospitalized me for nearly 3 months. Nevertheless, during my hospitalization and rehabilitation, Rev. Smith and her prayer warriors would call me on my cellphone and pray and read from the scriptures to me throughout the period of my convalescence.
Well, I was discharged home in October, still too weak to work, but able to matriculate, slowly, on a cane. Rev. Smith and her prayer band continued to call.
Finally, the holidays were upon us: first, Thanksgiving; now, Christmas.
The next time Wednesday rolled around, and Rev. Smith, et al. called to pray, I let them have it with both barrels. “Prayer is good, Reverend, “ I said. “It changes things. And I really do appreciate you all calling me so faithfully for Bible study. But, that’s all talk. And that’s all too many Christians want to do is talk! In 1 John 3, the Bible condemns folks who have the world’s goods, who see their brother has needs, and who don’t do nothing about it, but talk. That lady at your church that sells them dinners on Fridays, have her to call me. I want some chitlins. “
“Is that what you want, Reverend?” Rev. Smith asked me. “We can take care of that. We’ve been intending to come by and see you, anyway, since you came home. This gives us that opportunity!”
My heart jumped for joy! My loving wife, though almost perfect in other respects, doesn’t like chitlins at all. So, I had no chitlins coming from her. But, the Lord had made a way! I told everybody I knew about this: my siblings, my uncle, my friends. And, now, Dear Reader, I’m telling you! God is able to put chitlins on the table!
When the next Wednesday came back around, Rev. Brenda Smith and her Chief Steward, Donna Randolph, came over to our home for Bible study, and brought dinner with them. They brought chitlins, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and meat loaf, all exquisitely prepared and presented. We feasted. We studied. We praised the Lord!
Nothing like chitlins and church folk, in Jesus’ holy name!
#30
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Divided House Becoming One
Divided House Becoming One
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
#30
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, presciently paraphrased it, when, as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in 1858—Stephen A. Douglas being the pyrrhic victor-- he said, in reliance upon Matt. 12 :25, and Mark 3:25 http://bible.cc/mark/3-25.htm :
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. "
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
Similarly, the epic battle between “sinners” and “saints” in the black community, since slavery, which has so long, and needlessly divided it against itself, and sapped its united vigor, is dissolving: empowering the whole world through its dynamic fusion.
No single event or person is responsible for this cessation. Essentially it is a recognition that black people love, and are beholden to, all kinds of black music—the principal plane on which the battle was fought. They will not only listen to it, but will dance to it, and will buy it, regardless. This incremental recognition has accrued gradually, inexorably, even grudgingly. Its triumph is accented by the prevalence of eclectic musical genres and instrumentation in contemporary worship, as well as praise dancers in worship. Such was rare, if not unthinkable, prior to the 1990s, even though certain “holy dances” have always been an extemporaneous part of black worship, in many, though not all, churches going back to slavery days.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/614115/the_evolution_of_black_history_dance_pg2.html?cat=2
It was in the black church, and by extension, the black family, that this epic battle, between “right” and “wrong” and godliness and ungodliness, has held sway, since the days of Thomas A. Dorsey in the early 1900’s. Dorsey, a popular blues musician popularized blending the blues with spirituals to create “gospel music”. Stevie Wonder, for example, performed a concert at the National Baptist Convention in 1998 in Kansas City, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
This spiritual and cultural reunion is about more than music and dance, however. It is also about the veritable epigenetic “soul of black folk,” as expressed through religion, and, more broadly, through life itself. Taken to its ultimate expression, it is about the “soul of all folk,” since all humans on earth descended from Africans genetically and culturally. Acts 17:26 .
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus
Much of the thrust toward black self-assertion, expressed in some manner by every “leader” from Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, through Rev. Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been against the outer constraints imposed upon the liberty of the freed slaves, since Emancipation in 1865, which cruelly circumscribed the full ambit of their constitutional and statutory rights, privileges, and immunities.
The internal thrust toward black self-assertion now underway is against the inner constraints, which have similarly circumscribed the spirit, creativity and initiative of the freed slaves since the failure of Reconstruction in 1877. Leaders of the freed slaves obligingly imposed equivalent inner constraints upon themselves in conformity with norms decreed by others, as they struggled “up from slavery” wrongly believing assimilation and dissimulation would save them from discrimination and stigmatization.
Thus, a middle wall of partition was erected among black Americans. On the left were the hopeful assimilationists and on the right were the traditional “indigenes,” i.e. those who were content with their own indigenous essence in all its dimensions. Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us…” Everybody “wore the mask”, i.e. dissimulated, to quote poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who carefully observed black folks’ behavior,
and who then wrote in inimitable verse, “We Wear The Mask”:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw8.html
Dissolving the middle wall of partition, which divides these two groups is the looming goal of “a divided house becoming one.” Cries arose from all our tortured souls—secular and non-secular—and the clay was vile beneath all our feet for many a mile. Flip sides of one coin we were and are.
Both the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Prince Hall Masons, the oldest institutions in black America are scions of European institutions, including their discipline and ritual and dogma. While these venerable institutions, along with their august founders—Richard Allen and Prince Hall, respectively—have stabilized and nourished black people over their two hundred years’ of existence, it is now time to push out into the deep. Luke 5:4 “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
A new age has come. And certainly we, each of us, is blessed to see it. We join with late poet,Margaret Walker Alexander, of Jackson State University, who prophetically sung in the concluding stanza of her 1942 poem, “For My People:”
“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/354.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
I had long sensed that something new and wonderful was evolving, as I watched and heard Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bland Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Rev. Al Green, and others, make music “naked and unashamed” Gen.2:25 of its church or blues overtones in the 1960’s and '70's. Other musicians rushed in feeling and sensing the same, like the Commodores, with “Jesus is Love.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPKBkW6a1s&feature=related
Little did I know that I was born to play a part in this rapprochement between the sacred and the secular, the churched and the “un-churched,” and gospel and “the blues,” the historical and the theological.
Just like Joseph, in the latter day, rescued and revived Israel nee Jacob and his sons from starvation and want, though they had sold him into slavery in Egypt; so, also shall this rapprochement be salvific for the children of Ethiopia, who have suffered, mightily, themselves since selling us into slavery. God has worked it out. What they intended for evil, he intended for good. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen. 50:20 (ESV)
Having personally fought for that “freedom” wrought by the civil rights movement, in education, public accommodations, housing, employment and voting, I have also studied deeply and read voraciously. I knew there was something fundamental going on in black culture, which had long been a bulwark of protestant conservatism. And, I came to know that something fundamental was going on in me. In 1992, I fell critically ill, being hospitalized for 12 days. Then and there, I promised the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that if he restored my life, I would give it to him. Well, he did and I did. I confessed Jesus Christ as head of my life at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Kansas City, Missouri, on Palm Sunday 1993. I was licensed to preach in 1994. Following four years of study, under our Board of Examiners, I was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in 1998, by the late Bishop Vernon Randolph Byrd, the 105th elected and consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This digression into my personal transformation makes the parallel point that change is endemic. I, too, became, as each of us must “become, all one thing." Until, and unless, one is reconciled to one’s self, all is lost. One is left two separate souls in one dogged body, to paraphrase DuBois.
Blues and spirituals and their adherents seek congress, a renewal of their connubial bond with each other, unfettered by others’ self-righteous opprobrium. It is the season and each is in season. When they get together, so will their respective constituencies—which heavily overlap, so much so, one cannot tell the “wheat from the tares!” Matt. 13:24-30
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mltares.htm
This disunion, this estrangement has severely weakened the black community, just like faulty timing disables an engine. Ministers who have recognized this injurious alienation and who have worked to overcome it, have included Rev. C.L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin, and his good friend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At critical times during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, would troll for, and obtain the support of, denizens of the diverse dives frequented by blacks, places which the traditional black church excoriates as “juke joints”. Jesus also patronized the “juke joints” of his day. And he, too, was criticized by the so-called righteous. Mark 2:15 “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”
The scriptures, once again, are instructive:
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 (NIV)
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25 (NIV)
And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. Mark 3:26(NIV)
We—Africans in America—are descendants of the two tribes of Ethiopians of whom Homer sung in The Odyssey. We were also the tallest, fairest, most just of men of whom he sung in The Iliad, from whom the Greeks acquired their gods. Our unity will bring about Satan’s downfall.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jcpQqkHr328C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=iliad+ethiopians+land+of+the+gods&source=bl&ots=PVbONmQHtx&sig=7gi4qQGeKTVThH67ZvqifVdgASI&hl=en&ei=p57yTKfmIcWqlAeP4aX0DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=iliad%20ethiopians%20land%20of%20the%20gods&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2wtYvc2ZLT0C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ethiopia+land+of+the+gods+iliad&source=bl&ots=eU2IduiRN3&sig=eSsoFZGpWInoEvzbTLA7S4YGKKo&hl=en&ei=EqHyTJ9rxZuWB47SrIIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false http://tseday.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/ethiopia-birth-of-the-gods-by-diodorus/ http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_morality.html
Everything has a shadow. Neither can the two, the shadow and its object, be separated from each other, where there is light. As Smokey Robinson has said “It would be easier to take the wet from water, or the dry from sand.”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Love-Has-Joined-Together-lyrics-The-Temptations/5505A3B5B4C3948248256D2F002C6A9B http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfqStzknhA&feature=related
The blues and spirituals are “what love has joined together” in our people. Those who resist this union have long “kicked against the pricks.” Acts 9:5. The music of black people, along with their elan, their “cool,” their mojo,has saturated the globe, as evidenced, in part, by the Michael Jackson phenomenon. This divine love, perfect union, this consummation has been hitherto thwarted by well-meant, though unnatural and often hypocritical, resistance from church folk. Somehow, they saw something ungodly in the celebration of physical love, passion between a man and a woman in song and especially in dance, notwithstanding the Old Testament book’s “Song of Solomon,” and the profligacy of David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Acts 13:22.
It was “sin”-- blues, jazz, etc. --they ominously intoned. “When, in truth, under their cosmogony, practically everything is excoriated as sin, outside church. Yet the holy scriptures condemn all, even the so-called saints! “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” http://bible.cc/romans/3-23.htm Rom. 3:23. This holier-than-thou dogma and creed have given rise to wide-spread hypocrisy, and scandalous apostacy of historic proportions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
Some of the principal proponents of this version of piety have been caught in homosexual and/or extramarital relations, over the centuries; including that abomination of degradation involving sexual abuse of little church children.
http://www.enotes.com/catholic-child-abuse-article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
Another Lincoln quote concludes the matter---
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm
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