BIRTHDAY SERMON FOR MYSELF

BIRTHDAY SERMON FOR MYSELF The Bible is the paradigm of our people . Our foremothers and forefathers clung to its promises and provisions passionately. For hundreds of years, both night and day, in good times and in bad times, the Bible held its sway . Their music, spirituals were Biblical. Their language was Biblical. Their values and mores were Biblical. Their leaders were also Biblical: Richard Allen, Prince Hall, Absalom Jones, Gabriel Prosser, David Walker, Nat Turner, Madison Washington , Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, William Stilll, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, John Brown, David Coker, Father Moses Dickson, Henry Highland Garnett, Alexander Crummell, Henry M. Turner, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King. Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright. The list goes on and on... Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, our early and iconic sociologist, says that African Americans became a new people, literally, with a group identity and common culture through the Bible. Our people developed another, still yet unfolding paradigmatic identity. This new identity and its new ideas, although forced upon them, like the cross of Christ upon the black man, Simon of Cyrene, forged them into being! Their masters had thought that their Christianization would be a benefit to promote their domestic docility and ductility. Their masters meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. They absorbed Jesus Christ like some long-lost relative, reclaimed at a big family reunion. Our people's cultural existence and cultural productions were extruded into being then, inversely, by the Bible, through the actions of their former masters, who also followed the same divine script of human reclamation and of redemption ! The Bible's lessons, characters, prophets, parables, history, genealogies, proverbs, wisdom, gospels, letters, and revelations, were all encapsulated in the life, death, resurrection, and abiding enlivening, redeeming, legacy of the only begotten, son of God, the humble man-God, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Roman-ruled Egypt whose crucifixion now is the basis of western civilization . Intuited by us as kindred, i.e. , "soul brothers and soul sisters," we came to know, to celebrate, and to love each other, by reason of the Bible, because of the Bible. This social transition was an act of simple expediency. There was nothing else for us to cling to, but the Bible! Former families, affiliations, friends languages, customs, religions, and traditions had been all destroyed purposely to benefit their masters. So, we sublimated from old to new. We became "new creatures," black Americans, created in Christ Jesus. Our current existence is not due to some muted, now-mooted, quaintly curious, African icons or special "survivalism" other than ourselves ! We are the African survivalists, you, me, we! We are the fruit of those who have miraculously survived! They survived the fiery furnace, the lion's den, the valley of dry bones. Each former tribal members' divine, dogged determination to live, and to propagate, through it all, despite it all, has uniquely contributed to our largely successful assimilation, acculturation, transformation from Africans to Americans, first slaves; then as denizens; now as citizens. "Lift Every Voice," by Florida attorney, James Weldon Johnson, recounts, in rhythmic metaphors of song, the dire circumstances of the Africans' fateful capture; their weeks-long, chained processions to the coastal barracks and castles to await their sale across the seas; the white men with "big canoes" for fetid-filled, frightful trans-Atlantic Middle Passage voyages that lasted for weeks or months on in. "Let us march on till victory is won." Goes the conclusion of Johnson's "Negro National Anthem." More than "Negro," though, America too, whites and all ethnicities will also be changed and transformed by the resurrection of the blacks, the primordial people of God from when all others evolved, devolved. The resurrection of Jesus Christ prefigures that of black Americans. He rose. We still rise. The active agent, cosmic ingredient, actuating this rise is love. Love's Biblical facilitators are humility, long-suffering, fellowship, kindness, intelligence, virtue. These Sermon on the Mount features have been lived through us, as we turned the other cheek, blessed those who cursed us, prayed for those who despitefully used us and so on, throughout our history in this land! The true "brotherhood of mankind" is our natural offspring, sired by God and Grace. Truth gowns the attending physician and midwife! Wisdom and understanding are their siblings; meekness and mercy their playmates! History bears witness ! Mathematics keeps the score, marks the epochs of time, and rewards each by its works! Thus ends the birthday sermon of Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman on his birthday, January 3, in the year of our Lord, 2016. Glory to God! #30