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[ Silence ] ♪ Of sweet reward ♪ ♪ God in the world may lead ♪ ♪ God in the heart ♪

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♪ And joy in the ears ♪ ♪ But great is His name ♪ ♪ The conscience is to tolerate uncertainty ♪ ♪ Because it is ♪

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♪ Because it is ♪ ♪ I can wait tomorrow ♪ ♪ Because he lives ♪ ♪ On this river ♪

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♪ Because I know ♪ ♪ He knows I'll get there ♪ [music] Our speaker today is one who has distinguished himself as a pastor, as a scholar, as an author.

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He has not only pastored some of our most outstanding churches, but he has served on the theological faculty of some of our most outstanding institutions. He serves now at Virginia Union Theological Seminary. He has served at Colgate Rochester and at Claremont.

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His most recent book that I've been talking to you about is "Soul Theology," and we count ourselves honored to have him to share with us in our services today. We ask that you will pray while he breaks to us the bread of life. Here, Dr. Henry Mitchell.

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Dr. Mitchell. Let us pray. Lord, let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight.

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O thou who art our strength and our redeemer. Amen. Dr. Griffin, pulpit associate, officers and members and friends, I'm delighted to be here. I have known of Marvin Griffin for many, many years.

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We are about the same generation and there weren't that many people going to seminary when we went. I won't say how long ago it was but it's something over 40. I feel close to him now through another connection since his daughter Marva is organist at the church of which my wife is a member. She having left me

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momentarily to be the Dean of the chapel at Sisters Chapel Spelman. So she goes at eight o'clock to worship and then she goes and preaches in her own service at 11 and when she worships at eight o'clock the organist is a young lady you may know from around here. So I have known her husband all his life for he's

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from my hometown so the the network is quite quite tight. I have told somebody that I used to think the black world was a half-inch wide but I think it's more like 3/8. I shall be speaking all this week on something that most people have not even stopped to think about I suspect and it has to do with the

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spiritual significance of self-understanding and self-esteem. Indeed in this month of black history I shall be talking about the spiritual significance of black self-understanding and black self-esteem for many of us I suspect are not aware that our wholeness as spiritual beings is heavily

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contingent upon these two things unless we love God or let me say it this way unless we love who we are how we are where we come from how old we are and and all the rest of it, we don't like who made us. We may not know we don't like it, but we don't.

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So it's extremely important for us to understand and affirm ourselves if we are to affirm our maker and to be closely spiritually related.

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This morning, I want to talk about a facet of this whole business as related worship on the subject a drink of water from home. I invite your attention to the book of First Chronicles the 11th chapter and I read from the 15th to the

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19th verses. Now three of David's 30 captains went down to the rock to David in the cave of Adullam and the host of the Philistines encamped in the valley of Rephaim and David was in the hold and the Philistines garrison was then at Bethlehem and David longed and said oh that one would give me a drink of the

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water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate and these three captains broke through the host of the Philistines and drew the water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate and took it and brought it to David but David wouldn't drink of it poured it out to the Lord and said my God

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forbidden me that I should do this thing shall I drink the very blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it therefore he would not drink it these things did these three mightiest. There is a sense in which worship is one of the most

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important things we do in connection with knowing who we are and being comfortable with it. This morning I invite your attention to this tale which you may not have heard before, an interesting story nevertheless which has a powerful message for our theme of this week. Let me tell it to you in more

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modern language so you will see perhaps better what the story is about. Here is David, he's a great warrior, he is not yet king, he is a kind of guerrilla war captain. He's got a band of people who support him and they are busy running at one time from the Philistines and again from Saul for Saul had turned on David.

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As they live the life of guerrilla warriors they tend to win a lot of battles but they can never win the war because there's not enough of them. They strike and run. It's a demanding thing. It's the sort of thing that you could never win and so one day David is in the cave of a Julem in the evening and he

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stretches out on a rock and he is so tired and and so exhausted emotionally that he sighs out all I wish I had a drink of water from that well down by the gate at Bethlehem. So two or three, three of his captains were within earshot and knowing how he felt always vulnerable, always having to be on the

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alert, always on edge, knowing that that he felt this way they broke through the lines of the Philistines went back to David's hometown, reached in and got some water and brought it back through the lines and gave it to them. David so awed by their valor and their loyalty to him poured it out on the ground in an act of

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libations such as is still engaged in in our motherland in Africa. What does all this mean? What what was on David's mind consciously and unconsciously? What what would make him want this water in the first place? Well I want to sum it up in three R's, refreshment and refuge, reaffirmation and regrouping. Obviously

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as he lay on that cool rock in the cave trying to relax he thought of the hot days he had had as a boy when he had after the long walk with the sheep come to the gate of the city and any cool drink was likely to be very very refreshing. So he thought of that water as refreshment but then there are these

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other three things, the refuge of it. As he came with the sheep to the gate, he came to safety, to refuge, so that he associated the drink with the letting down, the relaxing. In this city, behind these walls, there are no more bears to fight no more lions to confront. As I come into this this this place where

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this cool water is I come into safety. Perhaps even more importantly he came into a kind of reaffirmation. Out in that world he was at risk and the bears and the lions didn't care who he was but as he came into the city you will remember that the cities were in effect kinship groups, everybody there was kin to him

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and there was a sense in which he was now coming to the support system. He was no longer alone, he was loved, he was understood. Bethlehem, the least of all the little old villages, was nevertheless his home. He became David there, he was a somebody there. He was a somebody first in Bethlehem and Bethlehem therefore was

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a way of reaffirming him as a person. Then as he came into this place he came also to regroup for future action. Without these breathers, these times of relaxation. Struggle is impossible. Nobody can stay in the guerrilla warfare or any other kind of stress situation perpetually. You have to have some breaks,

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you have to go into some retreats, you have to get yourself together and so his warriors made this retreat in the cave all the more meaningful because they They knew he had to be gotten together, regrouped as we say, for life in the future. Now I propose that the black church and its worship are very much parallel to this same

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sort of process when that black church is at its best. The black church has been for all these years a kind of refuge. saints of God have somehow always felt when they got to church that things would be all right. I've heard sisters testify Satan tried to keep me away. I

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felt bad but I decided I'd go on up to church anyway but when when I just saw the church my loads started lifting and when I set foot in Zion I just felt better. You don't have to be old folks to feel like that either. There's a sense in which this this church becomes for us what Bethlehem was for David as a refuge

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from a world which is not in the same sense at war with us but which nevertheless keeps us always on our toes and always at risk. We are not fully accepted anywhere yet and while progress is being made the deep inward spirit of us all cries out for a place but we don't have to wonder how we're going

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over. There's a sense then in which the church is also as was Bethlehem a place for the reaffirmation of our selfhood, of our being as persons. A place where our identity is recalled and respected and affirmed and indeed celebrated. There is no place else I know of in our world where I can be who I is and glad about

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it. Where I can act like I want to act and know that folk will understand me and love me. I feel like shouting or doing something radical, everybody will be glad. I don't have to put up a front and I am who I am. Nobody can do what must be done in our world unless that person knows who he or she is and where

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they are from. Much more than we realize many of us are not at home with our Bethlehem, not at peace with our church or any other place of beginning. And if this be true then we are not really healed and whole for we aren't happy with where we came from. I know you don't do this in Austin, but when I was pastor in California for years, I would say

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to somebody as a way of building a bridge and establishing conversation, I'd say, "What church you from? What town you from?" And they'd say, "Shreveport."

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I'd say, "Oh, what church were you from in Shreveport?" And they'd say, "Well, I wasn't from Shreveport. I was from Robeson or Plain Dealing or Cushatta, Bernice or someplace like that. Or I say, "Where are you from?"

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They say, "I'm from New Orleans." And I say, "Oh, what was your, who was your pastor there?" And they say, "Oh, well, I wasn't really from New Orleans. I'm from Gretna or Lutcher or Venice or Garryville or Nagatosh or Slidell or one of them places.

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And every time what they were saying was really that I am ashamed of that little old funny town I came from and I wish I had come from somewhere else but somehow we need to be like David you may be from Bethlehem the least town in Judah but if God made you in Bethlehem if God made you in Letcher or wherever be glad about it for that's

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where you became who you are and you will never be anybody else and you will not be what you ought to be unless you can celebrate that little old church in that little old town, that little shack if it were, from which you came. If you're ashamed of where God made you, you're ashamed of who God made and you may not be

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on too good of terms with God because he didn't do you right. So there's a sense in which worship for all of us must be a place where we affirm and indeed celebrate God's creativity at work in us. When you have homecoming it ought to be a way of saying I'm glad I'm from here wherever it is and you ought

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not to miss them and you ought not let your children miss those homecoming. Carver, a great scientist, George Washington Carver said for his epitaph judged me not by the heights to which I have risen but by the depths from which I come. Worship must be for us that reaffirming of the depths from which we've come. There's a sense

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also in which all this means that we regroup and get ourselves together, puts us back in touch with the resources of inner being which make us capable of dealing creatively with all people in all situations and therefore able to glorify God with our lives. Let me recall two people I know. One is a young woman who was a student

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when I was working on a doctorate out in California. She was a former nun. She had become a Methodist. She was working on a graduate degree in religion but I discovered to my absolute amazement that this lady was probably the worst alcoholic I had ever seen off a skid row. I couldn't believe the things she would

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do, the ways she would act, the things she would steal to get a hold of some more alcohol. When she was right she was right but when she was wrong she was very wrong and I wondered about this and eventually I got to the bottom of it this young lady had grown up in North Carolina somehow she had become

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connected with the Roman Catholic Church she had moved up very rapidly she was widely respected an outstanding person but underneath all of this the factor that made her drop out of it all was that all the while she had been trying to be white and one day she discovered that she was not and nobody would ever

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let her be and that's the day the world came to an end the bottom dropped out and she started on this drinking kick which she could control for periods of time but then it would break out again and when it did it was awful. It is a a terrible sickness to be unhappy about who you are.

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Every now and then I visit, living in Richmond, I visit a young man who was in high school when I went to pastor a church down by the Cotton Patch in Fresno, California.

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This young man is moving up very rapidly in the IBM organization. He left the managership of a bank by City Hall in Los Angeles to go to IBM.

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And he's been on a fast escalator ever since. He lives on an estate. He has a magnificent home, swimming pool, and all that. And every time we get together, guess what we talk about?

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We don't talk about IBM. We don't talk about all of his travels and all the region he's responsible for all the way back to the Mississippi River. You know what we talk about?

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We talk about the cotton he used to pick, because I want you to know that the best cotton in this country is grown in the San Joaquin Valley in California.

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We talk about the raisins he used to cut. And we talk about how he used to put the grapes on what we call trays with just a piece of paper. And when the sun had dried the grapes on one side,

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you roll the trays, or turn the trays rather, and they become dry on the other side. And then you roll them. We talk about the dirt.

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We talk about all of those hornets and things that used to be up in those grapevines. And we talk about how tired he was and our boy was when they came off the field.

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And we celebrate the dirt and grime and the little bit of money. When you are who you are and glad about it, if you are in the position of being able to say,

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I can go back to any place I have been, to any status I have had, and be at peace with myself and with God, you are ready to face the future. And if you can come to church and recall

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what in contrast to your context is the real you, and if you can nourish that real you, you will have the power, the strength, the intelligence, the courage to deal effectively in every other context.

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We therefore must reclaim and refine this healing tradition in our churches. We who have good jobs and education and have at sometimes felt that we ought to be more

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like somebody else have got to face the fact that who we were is who we will always be. and God can best deal with us in all contexts when we know who is the real me.

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The Philistines of violence and racism are still out there. There is a sense in which Western materialism and aggressiveness prevail. And there are some signs that it is lightening up,

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but there's still a whole lot of it out there. No black person can be whole and functional without regular drinks of water. Regular drinks of water from home, regular refuge and rest

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inside the perimeter of safety, regular reaffirmation of who we are, and regular getting it together to go back and try once again. Some people wake up to this need early, some wake up late.

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But we must understand that whatever integration means, it does not mean that we can be anybody other than who we are. And we integrate best when we are real, whole, healthy entities ourselves.

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I shall never forget being in-- well, our family was in a gray church. It was a white church, downtown, a large city on the West Coast. My wife was director of Christian Ed Among Children.

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And one of our children was baptized there. And I shall always be grateful to that church. But I will always remember also that at a certain age, our children were still allowed to lead worship.

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But, well, they were made to stand on the side in social affairs. I discovered that there was a certain boundary beyond which they could not go.

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And that's when I took the first thing smoking and went to that little old funny church down by the cotton patch where everybody loved my children, where everybody couldn't care less what they looked like,

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where everybody gave them unrestricted acceptance. They are in the integrated world, city government and all the rest of it now, but they could never be there had they not somehow gotten a chance

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to be who they were in a church. We no longer have to steal through lines to get our drink of water from home. We no longer have to hide from old master,

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but we must know the value of that water from home. As I close, I'm reminded of two scenes in a church. Years ago, I was speaking at a Roman Catholic consultation on black worship.

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And finally, they said, well, you shouldn't be lecturing on Sunday morning. You should preach. Let's go to Bill's church in Southeast Washington,

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and you just preach. I got to that church, and I was absolutely amazed. They were singing "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior." There were people who were all but shouting.

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When they sang the Kyrie, they did it in that old black chant, "O Lord, have mercy." And when they sang it, it was with a powerful four-part harmony.

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I sat there and cried like a baby. And it dawned on me that I had gone to a Roman Catholic church expecting to starve, as often I had done, only to find that with little touches like,

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oh Lord, have mercy, they had affirmed me, given me strength. And I was able to proclaim the gospel in a Roman Catholic church which had picked up the real power of our culture and therefore healed me in what I thought and feared was going to be an alien setting. When they gave

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the communion, the Eucharist as they call it, and people were walking down the aisle singing "Pass me not, O gentle Savior," the tears flowed again for I was home. It was a Catholic Church but it was God's Church. I think of still another church it's in Cambridge Massachusetts not far from Harvard University and in

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this church there worshipped a number a large number of Harvard students, Wellesley students, whatever the Ivy League cream of the crop. Indeed Dr. Griffin there was some Baptist preacher's kid in every pew, though it was an AME church.

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They had found their way to this church in Cambridge. It was graduation Sunday, and they stood up a number of young people who had achieved great things and graduated from these various schools.

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And when the sermon was over, behold, Our daughter sang a solo. And I saw something I had never seen before. I saw a young woman of outstanding academic

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achievement sing for a while, and then choke up and shout, and somebody else had to sing. And my soul gets filled even now as I I recall in this most elevated academic world

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that a girl who finished Jackson College, which is the women's college of Tufts, was shouting on the front seat here, and our daughter was shouting there, and somebody else sang for her, too.

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She got herself back together. And I get blessed every time I think about the fact that in the midst of MIT, where her husband went, and Harvard and all those other schools,

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God was healing our young people. And our daughter said one day, when they kidded her, you ought to be back at home studying because you've got to try a case in moot court tomorrow.

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She said, I can't try the case if I ain't together. And she stayed at church. But when she got to court, the professor said you are born trial lawyer and you almost invented the English language and

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when he found out she was a preacher's kid he said I should have known. We need a drink of water from home. We must never be so intelligent, never so outstanding by alien criteria that we are not ready with David to say oh I wish I had a drink of water from home when eight o'clock comes on Sunday morning I got to go get

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my drink amen [Music] I only trust him as an invitation extended by the Lord God to give me a prize. [music]

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♪ From every stone a sailor passed ♪ ♪ His mercy filled the loam ♪ ♪ And he was surely giving rest ♪ ♪ At the stair in his train ♪

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♪ All we trust Him ♪ ♪ All we trust Him ♪ ♪ All we trust Him, God ♪ ♪ He will save you ♪

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♪ He will save you ♪ ♪ He will save you, God ♪ ♪ Our Jesus, Him ♪ ♪ His passion's power ♪

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♪ His mercy to bestow ♪ ♪ From his heart unto the realms of love ♪ ♪ The world should like a song ♪ ♪ Only trust him ♪

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♪ Only trust him ♪ ♪ All is lost in God ♪ ♪ He will save you ♪ ♪ He will save you ♪

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♪ He will save you ♪ ♪ All is lost in ♪ ♪ All is lost in ♪ ♪ All is lost in God ♪

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♪ He will save you ♪ ♪ He will save you ♪ ♪ He will save you ♪ [ Music ]

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