Somebody’s Little Boy and Girl

Scripture: Ephesians 4:14 "…so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried with every wind of doctrine”

Somebody’s Little Boy and Girl

David Brooks in a New York Times column was ‘heavy handed’ with his opinion on what happens during a crisis. He wrote, “Some disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes can bring people together, but if history is any judge, crises generally drive them apart.” In other words, crises and challenges kill who we were meant to be, compassionate and community-oriented people. Howard Thurman wrote in his classic book The Inward Journey, “It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is the need of mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give. The urge to be accountable to someone, to know that beyond the individual himself there is an answer that must be given, cannot be denied. The deeds a man performs must be weighed in a balance held by another’s hand.” Black people when in a crisis, probably more than ever must be accountable to each other and know that our actions will be judged.

We cannot simply do what we want with our lives; we are to live by the order of the divine. James Baldwin, writer and civil rights activist, talks about his early years of being adrift as a black boy in Harlem in the 1960’s. Amid pimps and whores, Baldwin asserts he could see that many of his friends were “headed for the Avenue.” When Baldwin was asked by a female pastor “Whose little boy are you?” which were the same words used by the pimps and whores, Baldwin knew he wanted to be somebody’s little boy. Having been raised in a Christian home, Baldwin knew something about Paul’s admonishment in his letter to the Ephesians when he wrote, “…so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried with every wind of doctrine.” Deep down we all must know, like James Baldwin, we are somebody’s little boy or girl! We have been claimed by God and called by God.

There is no way of getting around the fact that a Black Lent Resistance is a powerful movement that seeks to have an entitlement on every facet of our lives. A Black Lent Resistance prevents us from being tossed “to and fro and carry us from the foundations of what we know to be true.” Of course, the DEI roll back and other executive orders by Trump’s administration has unscrewed many ideas and beliefs that were seemingly bolted. Nevertheless, the underpinning of what is true remains. Right now, we need to trust and believe we are somebody’s little boy and girl.

Of course, this is not the first time we have experienced some form of a crisis. Songs, like the old negro spiritual, “Somebody is calling my name. Oh, my Lord what shall I do,” nurtured Blacks in America while enduring the Black resistance of segregation. Many years after Rosa Parks’ courageous act, she was asked why she refused to move to the back of the bus. Legend has it that she didn’t say that she sat down to launch a movement because her motives were more basic than that. Rosa said, “I sat down because I was tired.” However, she did not mean her feet were tired. She meant that her soul was tired, her heart was tired, and her whole being was tired of being claimed by the racist plague that denied her soul’s claim to selfhood. Rosa Parks had grown up in the south under the demeaning and degrading hand of Jim Crow laws. In a place that denied blacks their God given rights Rosa Parks continued to hear a voice from within that told her she was somebody. It was in Montgomery Alabama - riding buses where blacks were demanded by law to stand while whites sat- that Rosa Parks found her place to answer the question: What shall I do?

“Somebody is calling my name…what shall I do,” is an ethical echo and the imperative whisper that must be heard by God’s people in times like these. May we like Rosa Parks find a seat, in the belly of this Black Lent Resistance, where we can rest assured that we belong to Somebody, the God of all creation.

+ Rev. Darryl Aaron, Providence Baptist Church