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Beyond the Suffering Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Hebrews 12:1-3 “So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”. Session Four. This Far by Faith: Embracing the Lost Spiritual Legacy. Sign Posts from the Past. Some Sign Are More Helpful Than Others.
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Beyond the Suffering Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction Hebrews 12:1-3 “So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”
Session Four This Far by Faith: Embracing the Lost Spiritual Legacy
Lemuel Haynes: An Epitaph Worth Living For “Here lies the dust of a poor hell-deserving sinner, who ventured into eternity trusting wholly on the merits of Christ for salvation. . . .
Lemuel Haynes:An Epitaph Worth Living For . . . In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on earth, he invites his children and all who read this, to trust their eternal interest on the same foundation.”
Hebrews 12:2-3Following the Faithful Witness “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Hebrews 12:2-3—The Faithful Witness The great cloud of past Christian witnesses ultimately point to the greatest Witness and the greatest reason for enduring suffering— Jesus Christ! The result of earthly witness is to point to the Heavenly Witness so that together we will not grow weary and lose heart. Jesus is the Faithful Witness (Revelation 1:5).
Hebrews 12:2-3Following the Faithful Witness Only by fixing our eyes on Jesus can we move beyond the suffering.
Heaven-Created Manhood Payne believed that the separation of the AME from the white Methodist Episcopal Church was “beneficial to the man of color” in two ways. “First: it has thrown us upon our own resources and made us tax our own mental powers both for government and support. . . .”
Heaven-Created Manhood . . . Secondly, it gave the black man “an independence of character which he could neither hope for nor attain unto, if he had remained as the ecclesiastical vassal of his white brethren.” It produced “independent thought,” “independent action,” and an “independent hierarchy,” and the latter “has made us feel and recognize our individuality and our heaven-created manhood.”
Founding Fathers: Daniel Payne Standing his ground and confronting the white authorities on the train, he said to them, “Before I’ll dishonor my manhood by going into that car, stop your train and put me off.”
Founding Fathers: Daniel Payne Payne notes that after he left the train, “The guilty conductor looked out and said, ‘Old man, you can get on the platform at the back of the car.’ I replied only by contemptuous silence.” Payne then carried his own luggage, walking a great distance over “a heavy bed of sand” to his next speaking engagement in the deep South. Payne literally walked the talk.
A Manly Man of God “I was the child of many prayers. My father dedicated me to the service of God before I was born, declaring that if the Lord would give him a son that son should be consecrated to him, and named after the Prophet Daniel.”
The Birth of the Independent Black Church “We had not long been upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, H—M—, having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him up off of his knees, and saying . . .
The Birth of the Independent Black Church . . . ‘You must get up—you must not kneel here.’ Mr. Jones replied, ‘Wait until prayer is over.’ Mr. H— M— said ‘no, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and force you away.’ Mr. Jones said, ‘Wait until prayer is over, and I will get up and trouble you no more.’”
The Birth of the Independent Black Church “Here we were pursued with threats of being disowned, and read publicly out of meeting if we did continue to worship in the place we had hired; but we believed the Lord would be our friend. Here was the beginning and rise of the first African Church in America” (Richard Allen).
Richard Allen: An Artful Soul Physician “Feeling an engagement of mind for your welfare, I address you with an affectionate sympathy, having been a slave, and as desirous of freedom as any of you; yet the bands of bondage were so strong that no way appeared for my release; yet at times a hope arose in my heart that a way would open for it; and when my mind was mercifully visited with the feeling of the love of God, . . .
Richard Allen: An Artful Soul Physician . . . that he would make way for my enlargement; and then these hopes increased, and a confidence arose as a patient waiting was necessary, I was sometimes favored with it, at other times I was very impatient. Then the prospect of liberty almost vanquished away, and I was in darkness and perplexity.”
Amanda Berry Smith’s Aunt:Breaking the Snare “Don’t you ever speak to me again. Anybody that had as good a Christian mother as you had, and was raised as you have been, to speak so to me. I don’t want to talk to you.”
Amanda Berry Smith’s Aunt:Breaking the Snare “And God broke the snare. I felt it. I felt deliverance from that hour. How many times I have thanked God for my aunt’s help. If she had debated with me I don’t believe I should ever have got out of that snare of the devil.”
Spiritual Friendship Zilpha Elaw “If, therefore, there is anything in the soul reviving and thrilling Christian intercourse we have enjoyed together in the Spirit of Christ, and in the holy communion with which we have so frequently met together in the house of God, . . .
Spiritual Friendship Zilpha Elaw . . . mingled our ascending petitions at the throne of grace, unbosomed our spiritual conflicts and trials to one another, and listened with devotional interest to the messages of gospel mercy, and the unfolding mysteries of divine grace.”
Julia Foote Biblical Sufferology “God permits afflictions and persecutions to come upon his chosen people to answer various ends. . . .
Julia Foote Biblical Sufferology . . . Sometimes for the trial of their faith, and the exercise of their patience and resignation to His will, and sometimes to draw them off from all human dependence, and to teach them to trust in Him alone.”
Identity in Christ Maria Stewart “Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. . . .
Identity in Christ Maria Stewart . . . He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26). He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels (Psalms 8:5).”
Spiritual Identity Encouraging spiritual sisters with the good news that the Spirit intimately indwells them.
The Struggle for Faith “It has been a terrible mystery, to know why the good Lord should so long afflict my people, and keep them in bondage—to be abused, and trampled down, without any rights of their own—with no ray of light in the future. Some of my folks said there wasn’t any God, for if there was He wouldn’t let white folks do as they have done for so many years” (Nellie, a former slave from Savannah, GA).
Egypt, the Exodus, and the Promised Land For Europeans the Exodus had already occurred. For Africans, it was yet future. Europeans lived in the Promised Land. Africans were bound for the Promised Land.
Egypt, the Exodus, and the Promised Land “For African Americans the journey was reversed: whites might claim that America was a new Israel, but blacks knew that it was Egypt, since they, like the children of Israel of old, still toiled in bondage” (Albert Raboteau).
Egypt, the Exodus, and the Promised Land “It required no stretch of the imagination to see the trials of the Israelites as paralleling the trials of the slaves, Pharaoh and his army as oppressors, and Egyptland as the South” (Langston Hughes).
Trusting the God of the Exodus When her mistress questions her about her faith, a slave named Polly explains her hope. “We poor creatures have need to believe in God, for if God Almighty will not be good to us some day, why were we born? When I heard of his delivering his people from bondage I know it means the poor Africans.”
Trusting the God of the Exodus “The folks would sing and pray and testify and clap their hands, just as if God was right there in the midst of them. He wasn’t way off in the sky. He was a-seeing everybody and a-listening to every word and a-promising to let His love come down. Yes, sir, there was no pretending in those prayer meetings. There was a living faith in a just God who would one day answer the cries of His poor black children and deliver them from their enemies” (Simon Brown)
Trusting the God of Deliverance Charlotte Brooks noted that “Aunt Jane used to tell us, too, that the children of Israel were in Egypt in bondage, and that God delivered them out of Egypt; and she said he would deliver us. We all used to sing a hymn:
Trusting the God of Deliverance ‘My God delivered Daniel, Daniel, Daniel; My God delivered Daniel, And why not deliver me too? He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from the belly of the whale, the three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, And why not deliver me too?’”
