SermonStudio

As we commence celebrations of Black History this month, I want to say what a wonderful thing that we have time for formal observances of the great contributions black people have made to world civilization in general and to America in particular. We are a great people who have literally and spiritually come a long, long way. We have built the pyramids and originated the mathematical, medical, and physical sciences. We invented the first alphabet and gave to humanity its first language and systems of civil and political government. We have made our mark in literature and letters. Our writers range from Socrates and Aesop to William Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, and Alexander Pushkin;from Ralph Ellison to Toni Morrison; from Cheikh Anta Diop to W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson. We are a people of music, culture, and industry. We have among us Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Joseph Haydn as well as Harry Burleigh, John Coltrane, Wynton Marsalis, Marian Anderson, Kathleen Battle, and Paul Robeson.

We have built some of the greatest monuments in the world and have made some of the greatest discoveries and inventions in the world, ranging from the fountain pen to the ironing board, from the electric lamp to lubricators for steam engines and intricate systems of refrigeration. We have built highways, byways, and bridges on American soil. We have fought America's wars and won her medals. Our sweat, blood, and brawn laid the economic foundation of America's capitalist system, and our mothers and grandmothers nursed white babies while our men bore the brunt of the overseer's lash while working from "can't see to can't see." While our gifts to America are vast and varied, one of our greatest gifts is our spirituality, for it is the raw material, the vital impetus, the true substance, which has fueled our souls and lives and has sustained us through the trials and troubles of the American experience.

As an African-American, who unapologetically and unashamedly celebrates the life, history, and culture of his people, I want to say that I love my country. I love America. Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, once observed that the university is not a very good place, but it is the best there is. Some might say that of America. For some, America may not be a very good place. But it's the very best place on earth. America is not a perfect place, but there is no better place. There are some things I do not like about my country: its racism, its hatred, and its injustice; the way it throws away its old people and idolizes youth. I disdain the polarization of human groups around issues which ultimately have no value, because we have more in common than indifference. I don't like those things which separate and alienate people and bring out the worst in them, but I still love my country and am not ashamed to say that. This does not mean that in our love we ignore the things which hound, plague, and discomfit us. It only means that we must all work harder to help our nation realize its true potential. It means focusing on the positive, the strengths, and using them as points of bringing all of us together rather than means of alienating us further.

What nation is as diverse as America? What other country on earth can boast of giving experiences to so many people of so many different lineages and racial and ethnic backgrounds? You can't go to any other country on earth, be it Japan or Germany or even our northern neighbor Canada, and see the diversity of people in government, in business, and in other aspects of the nation's life. The great Howard Thurman said that the American experiment was the very mind of God doing a new thing in human history. I love America. Because I have traveled in other parts of the world, I have seen the poverty. I have seen the decadence. I have seen the repression. America is not a perfect place; it's just the best place there is, and as an African-American I am not ashamed to say that I love my country. What makes America great is that various people can contribute the best they have to make the whole better. The great challenge of America in the future is to allow each group of people to do what it does best and make its contribution for the betterment of the whole.

Although Africans came to America under debilitating and excruciating circumstances, and endured the horrors and terrors of slavery and later Jim Crow, we are still here, still striving with all our wits and guts to make our land a better place. We're still here, striving to be all that we can be. Striving to make ourselves and others around us better, and we are not ashamed to make positive statements of worth our people have made in making America great.

Several weeks ago, after preaching a sermon on the positive principles of Kwanzaa and about the need to build our people up and strive to set standards of excellence, I received a card from an irate listener who castigated me for preaching racism over the air. All I did was say some positive things about our people and encourage them to keep looking up and lifting each other up by practicing Kwanzaa not just in December but every day during the year. This response totally misinterpreted what I said. But it corroborated something I knew already: that however positive you are in helping your people, there are some people who will take what you say and twist it for the worst, for there is something in them that cannot grasp black people saying something good about themselves. The whole tone of the note was to place me on the defensive, to make me apologize for saying the positive things about my people, which is something I will never stop doing. Such people are so quick to cast blame. But they don't realize that this preacher is unapologetically helping his people become the best they can be. I don't need to apologize to anybody for making positive statements nor do I need to get permission from anyone to do so. Every other group can do whatever it wants to enhance and empower its community and it presents no problem, but the moment we do something positive to make our people better and not bitter, to make positive strides to help our people be the best that they can be so that America can be the best that it can be, certain people have problems. If you've got a problem, turn the channel, but don't ever expect me to stop saying the positive things to make our people better citizens and better human beings, better businessmen and better politicians, better husbands and better wives, better fathers and better mothers, better entrepreneurs and better builders for the future.

Today, I want to uplift our people again by talking about the positive aspects of African-American spirituality. I stated that African-American spirituality had been one of our greatest gifts to America. It is the one thing we possess which has allowed us to sustain ourselves through the difficult times of life in America. It has been a positive contribution, not only to us but to America as a whole. It also conferred upon us a sense of positive identity and encouraged us to be the best that we can be in all things by setting standards of excellence in an environment which potentially threatens to bring out the worst in us.

Black spirituality has been our greatest gift and we must do all we can to nurture and sustain that gift as we move into the future. African-American spirituality is not only an emblem of hope, but a guidepost for building strong and viable communities for the future. You might ask how is it so important and why is it so important.

Long ago, when our forebears came to the new land, everything was stripped from us but our spirituality. This alone sustained us through the hard times. We have always believed in God. We have always been a spiritual people who believed in a higher power and a God who controlled the universe and providence. We believed that God would bring a brighter day for our people. This belief in a higher power helped us develop a sensibility about our condition that made us hold out for a better day. We had nothing else but a firm belief that God would somehow see us through the trials and terrors of living black in America. A hallmark of African-American spirituality is first the ability to face, adapt, and overcome the terrors of our social condition. Our spirituality created within us a desire to go beyond the limitations placed upon us by the larger society. Our belief in God helped us to be more than just slaves. There had to be something within the belief system of the slave which allowed him to face, adapt to, and finally overcome the problems he or she faced. This has always been an important part of our spiritual belief: our ability to overcome hardship; to face trials head on and to make life better; to turn disadvantages into advantages and to claim the spiritual victory to press on towards the mark. Many scholars speak of the expressive needs of African-American spirituality, but the adaptive needs - that is the ability to face, adapt to, and overcome great odds - are an equally important element of our spiritual heritage. How could we have survived slavery and all the troubles we've faced, were it not for firm belief in a higher power? We didn't have psychologists and psychiatrists to give us therapy to cope with our condition, so there had to be something to help us through, and I say it was God, very God.

Our spirituality has equipped us with methods of problem solving and resolving which helped us get through the hard trials of life's experiences. We have always had to solve problems since our beginnings here. Many people would have us believe that we are the problem, but the truth is we have been since our beginnings here the answer to some of America's greatest problems. The creativity and genius of our spirituality have helped America get through her toughest times and we should never forget that. Our spirituality provided answers when nothing else could or would. Ever since our genesis here in America we have been used as an answer to a problem facing the nation, whether it has been working America's plantations, or working in her factories, or packing her sports arenas, or reviving failing franchises, or serving in her armed services. We have always been called upon to help solve the nation's problems and have been the answer to the problem rather than being the problem, as some would have us believe. Even Lincoln wanted to enlist black soldiers to fight the war because he knew that they would be the answer to the problem of civil strife which wrecked and wracked the nation. And whatever you say about slavery, it was instituted as an answer to a problem facing American entrepreneurs and merchants. How can we develop an economy that will make us and the nation wealthy and who can we use to do the labor to sustain that economy? Who will work our fields and build our wealth? Who will nurse our children and feed our hungry bellies? Who?

Our spirituality has taught us to overcome difficulties and has given us answers to problems facing us, because it transformed us from going-unders to over-comers, and this is the first and important fact. The first great gift of African spirituality to black people in America is the ability to face problems with great odds, to develop a spirit, a mind, and a will to overcome the barriers standing in our way. We have proven this time and time again. Who else has come from that pitiable and peculiar institution of slavery and discrimination and emerged from beneath its veil with some semblance of sanity and spirituality still intact?

A central truth about our scripture lesson in Exodus today is that Moses, in leading the Hebrews out of Africa, had to prepare them to develop a spirituality that would sustain them through the wilderness of hard times. It was a faith that allowed them to overcome the challenges of their daily encounters. And so it has been for us. Just as Moses challenged his people to redefine themselves and their potential for self-worth, our spirituality has helped us do the same.

Second, our spirituality has conferred on us a positive identity when the larger culture and society tried desperately to reduce and define us as persons of no value. A friend once told me how his daddy would always tell him that he would never be anything, that he was shiftless and worthless, but yet whenever his daddy got into a serious bind he would call on the son to help him. The son had two choices: to believe he was really shiftless and lazy based on what his daddy said, or to use his mind to analyze and draw his own conclusions about his own self-worth.

When the larger society had defined us virtually as worthless chattel, as animals, as three-fifths of a man, our spirituality defined us as children of God, as people of worth, as people possessing possibilities amid disabilities and infinite opportunities to make life better. Many of our people and those of other cultures are woefully afraid of us because the larger culture has defined us as the problem, violent, savage, and disrespectful of human life. Some of this is true, but this is not true for the great majority of us. The majority of us are law-abiding and have values which reflect the best that this nation has to offer, having been sired under conditions of constant adversity.

We see this problem continuing today. Many of the images of black persons in the larger media are negative. We seem virtually always to be defined as a problem rather than as a problem solver. But the negative images disseminated in the media all help to define us from a deficit perspective: as always being a people in need rather than a people of great resources. We are defined as always not quite having it together, as never fully hitting the mark, and this is because of the negative labels used to limit and define us. Once we buy into the negative mythology, we reinforce the belief with negative behavior. Our positive spirituality has always encouraged us to exceed the negative definitions, to go beyond the demeaning labels, and to develop an identity that would incite dignity, self-respect, and integrity.

African-American spirituality has developed and instilled in us a positive sense of self, and much of these values has been affirmed in the black church. This sense of self does not need to disparage or put down people of other races and cultures. It has been a positive, proactive response to the attempts by the larger culture to limit our self-worth and value. African-American spirituality does not and will not spend its energy and resources blaming or depicting other people in a negative light, but focuses on developing its own strength. When the rest of the society defined blacks as second-class citizens, the church and spirituality lifted us up as children of God, worthy of God's greatest gifts and blessings. When all others scorned us, our spirituality catapulted us beyond the crippling constraints of that rejection.

Again, the experience of Moses is pertinent here. After liberation from Egyptian bondage, the Hebrews had to fight hard not to develop a wilderness mentality, where all their strengths and gifts would be defined in terms of their limitations rather than the gifts and resources they possessed that would make them a promised land people.

Third and finally, African-American spirituality has always affirmed the expenditure of positive energy towards positive and realizable goals and aspirations. Because we have had to fight hard not to become consumed by the terrible ordeals of our experience, we have found creative ways to use our energies in a positive direction. That's why worship and the creativity of black culture are so important. They allow us to take potentially negative energy and sublimate or channel it into things which will make a positive difference in our lives and those around us.

How else could we have survived our holocaust without the ability to spiritually take our energies and channel them into constructive purposes? We never could have done this without it.

The gift of African-American spirituality has been 1) our ability to face, adapt to, and overcome insurmountable odds and difficulties through unswerving faith in God; 2) the ability to retain a positive self-image in a society and culture that viewed it from a deficit perspective; and 3) the ability to take potentially negative and destructive energies and turn them into positive gains for the betterment of ourselves, our people, and the nation we live in.

Our success for the future will not only be based on how well we continue to practice that vital spirituality, but how well we instill the same values in our children and their children. As the world becomes more complex, we still need something: a faith that will sustain us through the difficult and troublesome times. We need a power to hold on to, a God to keep trust in. Our spirituality is the lifeblood of our health and vitality. We must not abandon our heritage or relinquish our faith, for if it can get us through the past, it can prepare us for the future. We must keep the faith to remain strong, get stronger, and take a rightful place as a proud and gifted people in this land.