Sermons

With words so eloquent, so emotional and so elegant, Ms. Whitney Houston in the movie, "The Preacher's Wife" lifted her melodious voice and gave homage to words written by Hallerin Hilton Hill and Mervyn Warren,

 

 

Within this song of Christmas that celebrates the Christ Child are found the hopes, the visions and the dreams of every mommy and every daddy for their little angel. These tender lyrics resonate within the heart, the mind and yes the sanctified soul of every mommy and daddy who peers down at their child and sees a shepherd, a teacher, a fisherman on the sea, a carpenter, a special child who could be anything. 

 

Within the cadence of this carol every mommy and every daddy can view the wondrous possibilities; the boundless future and the endless hope embodied in their little angel. But even the most hopeful parent, even the most optimistic parent would surrender to somber reality and ask but, "Who Would Imagine a King?"

 

And so it was on January 15, 1929 in the heart of Dixie, in the cradle of the former Confederacy, in a city called Atlanta, near a river that the Native Americans called the Chattahoochee that an ebony son with a hybrid ancestry, part African and part American left the comfort of his Black mother's womb and then took his place in the long line of other Black witnesses before him and stood where Du Bois said all Blacks stood, "behind the veil".

 

As Du Bois would say in, "The Souls of Black Folk", this sable child, Martin Luther King, Jr., this native son could one day be a Negro doctor, a Negro lawyer, a Negro teacher for the fate that awaited him in the Jim Crow South was that he would live, move and have his being, "behind the veil".

 

 

He would read the words of the brilliant and enigmatic Virginia slave holder Thomas Jefferson,

 

"We hold these truths to be self evident,

That all men are created equal, that

They are endowed by their Creator

With certain inalienable rights
That among these are life, liberty

And the pursuit of happiness",

 

only to have his aborted hopes dashed when he found out that Jefferson's "all men" did not include those, "behind the veil".

 

He would move his hands across the national sacred text. . . the Constitution as it unfurled the American vision, 

 

To form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution of The United States of America",

 

only to in time learn the cruel joke that "we the people" did not include those, "behind the veil". In the words of the Black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, this Black Boy, this Native Son would wear the mask; the mask that masquerades as an empty smile that cloaks the suffering of a race. 

 

Oh his parents had great hopes for him, this son of color. But they knew the story, they knew the legacy, they knew the history and they knew that their hopes for their son were tethered to the jagged stone of White supremacy. 

 

They knew that some 40,000,000 chained Africans had been captured by fellow Africans and boarded slave ships in West Africa bound for a life of slavery in the new world. They knew that of the 40,000, 000 who began the Middle Passage that only 10,000,000 survived leaving 30,000,000 in the Atlantic Ocean as fresh food for the sharks.

 

Indeed the odds were stacked against their child. They knew that for more than two hundred years black people toiled the fields, the plantations, the highways and bi-ways of America not as free labor, but as owned labor, as human beasts of burden. They knew of the slave auctions where black people were inspected, probed and prodded like animals by slave owners greedy for the filthy lucre gained from the forced labor of another.

 

They knew of those brave blacks who resisted the iron fist of slavery only to be branded or have their body parts cut off. They knew of the mothers who begged in vain for Master not to sell their children. They knew of the proud, but power-less Black men who had been forced to surrender their very wives to the lusts of Master.

 

They knew that even after slavery ended, the South laughed and scoffed at the 13th 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, using "grand-father clauses"; "poll taxes" and "literacy tests" to deny the vote to black folk. They knew of the Black codes the so-called Code Noirs, those laws that denied black folk ownership of property; the right to serve on juries; the right to live where they wanted to live in the land that called itself the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

And yes they knew that should their little Black boy grow up he must never look at, whistle at nor touch a White woman for to do so would invite the most heinous rage imaginable. To do so would kindle the deepest, most nefarious psycho-sexual fires that raged within so many Americans. To do so would transgress a taboo whose retribution was the snuffing out of his very life. Church, they knew.

 

My Father's children, maybe a shepherd, a teacher, a fisherman or maybe a carpenter, but what Black parents in their right would imagine a king? At a tender age, this tender child, Martin Luther King, Jr. began his life's journey.

 

Named in honor of a White, German priest named Martin Luther, who himself stood up to power and its abuse and became the father of the Reformation, this child with the hybrid ancestry (part African, part American) began his life's pilgrimage with the faltering steps of any child wrapped up, tangled up and tied up in the long dark night of racial exclusion.

 

In Atlanta he attended the public schools, a school system separate, but not equal. A school system that was under financed, under resourced and in a free fall of neglect. But still, he pressed his way. He beheld the empty faces of Black men whose hope in the words of James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice And Sing", "unborn had died".

 

He witnessed the tear stained faces of Black women who had been told by a White nation that to be Black was to be anything but beautiful. He cringed as racist police officers transformed "night sticks" into battering rams; transformed fire hydrants into water canons and transformed their own black shiny boots into blood-stained, soggy garments.

 

But still, but still he pressed his way. And in the midst of the despair, in the midst of the hopelessness and in the midst of surrender, Martin Luther King, Jr. found a sacred refuge, he found a "Mighty Fortress", he found the Black church. Within the priestly precincts of the Black Baptist church, King found atonement; he found at-one-ment with God.

 

He found a lively stone that the White builders of the Republic had rejected, far from a nations' death rattle. He found heavenly treasures in Black earthen vessels. He beheld Black hands, old and young alike out-stretched to a God who sits high and looks low. He eavesdropped as Black Deacons bent low on Black knees and spoke to a yonder Father whom they had come before as empty pictures before a full fountain. He watched in amazement as Black ushers spoke a silent language with gloved hands that brought decency and order every Sunday morning.

 

He watched in wonderment as Black nurses used fans and glasses of water to revive saints who had run away from a world of a pain and sorrow only to be over-taken by the presence of a God who told His people, "let everything that has breath, praise the Lord". He had felt holy rapture as Black voices called and responded back and forth, creating their own saintly concoction of the English Dissenter preacher, hymnologist Isaac Watts', "I Love The Lord, He Heard My Cry".

 

And finally, he was born a second time when he heard the Black Boanerges, the Black sons and daughters of thunder as they echoed the words that Jesus challenged Nicodemus by night with, "Ye must be born again".

King became the American dichotomy, the American mixed breed; for one part of him bowed beneath the oppressive burden of Jim Crow law, while another part stood tall and prodigious having told Jesus it would be alright if He changed his name. Racism caged him up in Atlanta's Black ghetto, but in his soul he was free for, "He whom the Son has set free, is free indeed". 

 

Racism scoffed at his black skin, at his nappy hair, at his flanged nose, but Genesis told him he was made, "in the image and likeness of God". Racism told him he was a man without a country, a man who belonged to no one, but God told him, "All souls are mine". It was in the presence of God that King dared to dream that he could be a shepherd, he could be a teacher, he could be a fisherman, he could be a carpenter and yes, yes a thousand times yes he could be a king.

 

It was the God of heaven, Himself clothed in righteousness and resplendent in holiness who whispered to this son of segregation, "you can be a king".

 

You can enter Morehouse College at 16, due in no small part to the lack of young male applicants due to World War II and although only reading on the sixth grade level you can graduate.

 

You can enter Crozier Seminary as one of only a few Black students and you can become the President of your senior class.

 

You can enter Boston University and earn a Ph. D. in Systematic Theology by 25.

 

You can lead a movement that will challenge a nation to indeed be that city on the hill; the hill of equality, equity and fraternity.

 

You can earn the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Yes Brother Martin, I birthed you "behind the veil"; yes I watched you as your wore the mask, but Martin,

 

 

Oh that's what God does!

 

He sees in us what we don't see in ourselves. We see ourselves in the valley, but God sees us on the mountain top. We see ourselves in the desert, but God sees us at the ocean side. We see ourselves in the winter of our lives, but God sees us embarking on a second spring time. We see ourselves forsaken and forlorn, but God sees us surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We see ourselves anonymous and name-less, but God gives us a name written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

 

Oh the other day I heard a great Black voice sing out, "Who Would Imagine A King?" Well, God does more, much more than imagine kings, He makes kings and queens.

 

You see God Himself is the King of glory and He's in the "king" and "queen" making business. If you walk with Him, He'll give you a robe in glory, just like any king or queen.

 

If you walk with Him, He'll give you a mansion beyond the skies, just like any king or queen.

 

If you walk with Him, He'll give you a crown of life, just like any king or queen.

 

Church, don't know how you feel about it, but

 

My Father is rich in houses and lands,
He holdeth the wealth of the world in His hands!
Of rubies and diamonds, of silver and gold,
His coffers are full, He has riches untold.

Church, I'm a child of the King!