Honoring Our Saint: The Reverend Alexander Crummell

UBE Sunday – Sunday, September 17, 2017, 8am and 10:15am

St James Episcopal Church, Austin TX, USA

Sermon by Simone Monique Barnes

 

I want Jesus to walk with me

I want Jesus to walk with me

All along my pilgrim journey

I want Jesus to walk with me

 

Let us pray. Eternal Spirit, Earth maker, Pain bearer, Life giver. Creator. Light. Lord. God. Love. You are known by many names, and seen in many images, and felt and experienced in many ways… I come before you today, asking, like every day, that there more of thee and less of me in my words and deeds. Let these meditations of my heart scatter in the wind, and fall down where they are needed. In you and to you, we pray. Amen.

 

African American opera singers have a tradition that is passed down from singer to singer, generation to generation. In every solo concert that is given, be it arias in Italian, German, French, or Broadway show tunes by Gershwin or Sondheim, they will always, always end with a Negro Spiritual in order to give honor, honor unto the mentors, role models, ancestors who have come before. They do not forget where they came from. I don’t sing very much anymore. Years ago, I transitioned my creativity into writing, and teaching, and curating. But my time spent at the “Fame” school in NYC, in the Harlem Girls Ensemble/Girls’ Choir of Harlem, and later in conservatory, laid a foundation for who I am today. Most of my writing, speeches, and just about every college and graduate school essay I have ever written, have started with the lyrics of a song, usual a negro spiritual, as a way of bridging past and present, and acknowledging that my life is but a moment on this continuous thread of time, giving honor to those who came before, and to gird me with their strength.

 

And in that tradition of giving honor, we are here to pay tribute to the late Reverend Alexander Crummell, a giant whose footsteps we walk in and whose shoulders we stand on. You may hear this refrain from time to time in this sermon. Feel free to join in if you feel so moved.

I want Jesus to walk with me

I want Jesus to walk with me

All along my pilgrim journey

I want Jesus to walk with me

 

Today’s reading from Mark is on the parable of the sower. Discussion of this parable often focuses on our response to the gospels. How do we receive God’s word and love? Are our hearts hardened, unchanged, distracted, or open? Are we or the fertile soil ready to receive, nurture, and grow? The metaphor is a moment to reflect on what kind of ground are we.

 

But today I’d like us to turn our attention to the sower. We don’t know a lot about this particular sower. The sower in this story is imagined; a fictitious character. So like actors, we have to imagine ourselves into the story.

 

It is interesting that this story focuses not on the farmer, who sees things through from start to finish, not the tiller and cultivator of the soil, who checks and balances the nutrients of the ground’s health, but specifically on the sower. They don’t prepare the ground.

 

This sower seemed to throw seed everywhere. Not the meticulous planter who digs a hole, and carefully places a single seed into the dirt, pats it gently, and watches it grow. But the sower scatters seeds everywhere, with some falling on the path, some on rocky ground, some in the thorns (bushes), and some into good soil.

 

This sower went out: didn’t stay home. Who are the sowers? They are the sojourners, the travelers. The go to places like Cambridge. Liberia. Like Texas.

 

They change jobs often. They are the bees and the butterflies. They are the immigrants. The migrators. The risk takers. They often do not have their names on buildings.

 

I went to a conference once, where the leader gave an introductory talk about the conference sessions and workshops. He ended with a request for us to be sure to leave room for the bees and the butterflies. The bees are the ones who go to one room for a few minutes, then they leave and visit several conference sessions never staying long enough to get the full impact of a workshop or talk. They are the cross pollinators. And then there are the butterflies. You see them in the elevator, you see them sitting at the bar. They are hanging out in the lobby. But they are never where they are supposed to be. Never. But you sit next to them and they say something so insightful, so impactful…that one key thought that suddenly puts all of the puzzle pieces of that project you’ve been working on together. And then they float off, often not even knowing how much they have changed your life. They are the sowers who change our lives.

And, in this parable, we see that the sower is alone, a solo traveling worker who walks amongst us. They are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They spend a lot of time alone in their heads. The sower plants the seed and often leaves it for us to find and experience, away from their eyes and ears.

So why do we tell this story when remembering Reverend Alexander Crummell? To acknowledge that the seeds he sowed we harvest today. WEB Dubois wrote of him in his work The Souls of Black Folks: “He did his work,–he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in this broad land, means little…” (362)

In my troubles, Lord walk with me

In my troubles, Lord walk with me

When my life becomes a burden,

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me

 

How does a sower survive and thrive?

By finding other sowers who see them. I live the legacy of Rev Alexander Crummell. It was him with his Black skin being rejected by white members of the school community in New Hampshire in the 1800s that allowed me to be accepted by an elementary school community in the Bronx during the New York City’s first attempts at school desegregation. I live the legacy of Rev Crummell when I think of a time when in graduate school at Harvard, when each of us knew firsthand the experience of being rejected, and being in foreign spaces, planting seeds. There is an empathy that only other sowers can see.

 

What can you do for the sowers in your life? Cook for them. Feed them. They long for home, but know that this earth is not their home. See value in their work. You can remember them. Write their stories. Tell their tales.

 

I’m sure there were times in his life when Rev Crummell wondered if the work he was doing was in vain. He was rejected by godly men, rejected by his church. But the seeds he planted gave us WEB Dubois (who counted him among his greatest heroes). The seeds he sowed gave us Arturo Schomburg, whose namesake, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide…and it holds the legacy of our history and scholarship. The seeds he sowed gave us Langston Hughes, whose ashes are interred in the floor of the lobby of the Schomburg Center, and whose words have inspired us, from childhood to adulthood, for generations. The seeds he sowed became the Union of Black Episcopalians, which gave to all of us here today.

 

In my sorrow, Lord walk with me

In my sorrows, Lord walk with me

When my heart is aching

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me

 

Amen.