Teach and Remember!

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:1–9 KJV 1900

1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: 2 That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Moses told the Children of Israel “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.” He told them God had commanded that he teach them the statutes that God had commanded them so that when they entered the Promise Land they would not forget them. Keep this in mind as I will come back to it later.

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

As a Harvard-trained historian, Carter G. Woodson, like W. E. B. Du Bois before him, believed that truth could not be denied and that reason would prevail over prejudice. His hopes to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization was realized when he and the organization he founded, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), conceived and announced Negro History Week in 1925. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The response was overwhelming: Black history clubs sprang up; teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils; and progressive whites, not simply white scholars and philanthropists, stepped forward to endorse the effort.

By the time of Woodson's death in 1950, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid–century, mayors of cities nationwide issued proclamations noting Negro History Week. The Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history, and the Civil Rights movement focused Americans of all colors on the subject of the contributions of African Americans to our history and culture.

The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation's bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” That year, fifty years after the first celebration, the association held the first Black History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American story. Since then each American president has issued Black History Month proclamations. And the association—now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—continues to promote the study of Black history all year.

This morning I want to impress upon you the importance of understanding your history – whether you are black, white, Native American, Hispanic, etc., you need to know. Why? Because when you understand the history you can better understand your approach to the future. When you understand your past others cannot define it for you and tell you what you should or not know, accept and ultimately believe based on “their” understanding of “your” past. When we know our past and can teach others who share a similar history, the past is not forgotten and we have evidence and fuel for the future. To prove this point,

Raise your hands if you know or have heard of Bass Reeves. How many of you are familiar with the legendary figure the Lone Ranger? Maybe you saw the TV series or you read about him in books. In the TV series the Lone Ranger was portrayed by Clayton Moore, a white male. Tonto, was played by Jay Silverheels, a Canadian of the Mohawk Aboriginal people. In the TV series, the Lone Ranger wore a black mask so that his enemies could not recognize him. In reality this character was modeled after the “real” lone ranger, a black lawman named Bass Reeves. Many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics however remained the same: a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark. Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man was African American, a free black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern states. He was credited with arresting more than 3000 felons.

How many of you have heard of Simon of Cyrene? He was a man of color whom the Roman soldiers tasked with carrying the cross of Jesus when Jesus was too weak to carry it (Matthew 27:32). It is interesting that he is sometimes left out of the lists of black people in the Bible.

Perhaps Harriet Tubman said to herself, “It is not enough that I have gained my own freedom by escaping into Canada, "If only" I could help others gain their freedom as well.” Her response to this self-imposed burden led her on 19 dangerous but successful trips into Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania to guide over 300 slaves to freedom.

Richard Allen was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential Black leaders. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia.

Elected the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816, Allen focused on organizing a denomination in which free Black people could worship without racial oppression and enslaved people could find a measure of dignity. He worked to upgrade the social status of the Black community, organizing Sabbath schools to teach literacy and promoting national organizations to develop political strategies.

Moses told the Children of Israel to Teach and Remember! They were not just to learn it for themselves, they had to teach them to their sons and daughters and their grandsons and grand-daughters. Each generation was to teach the next so that nothing was lost with each subsequent generation. Moses was not telling them to passively teach their children, there was a sense of urgency and importance that was to accompany it. This was about life and death – mainly theirs! The commandments that God had given Moses was so important that they were to write them down and put them in places where they could not help but see them. These were not to be placed in a journal and left on a shelf never to be read. They were to be publicly displayed so all could see it. Nothing was to be hidden.

Black history month is to make sure the contribution of people of color is not hidden. It should be shared alongside the achievements of other races. Just as all lives matter, all history matters. It’s not just the selected, approved history that justifies a lifestyle! Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained. But happy is he who keeps the law.” Some translations say “without a vision the people perish.” We need to be able to see where we are going – that is the vision. Being able to see sets the boundaries. It gives us the ability to take in some information and ignore other based on where we are going. Having a vision allows us to stay focused on the goal because we take in what will help us reach the goal while removing what is not helpful. All of this is tied to our understanding of our past. Everyone, regardless of race, has a desire to know something about their ancestors. This is why websites that allow you to search your backgrounds are so popular. To understand our pasts allows us to operate in our future.

Black history month is not just about famous black Americans who have done something great. Everyone sitting under the sound of my voice has a history. Black history month does not capture your specific history, but focuses on the history of members of our race. But this is where it stops and where our jobs begin.

Black history does not capture the story of the single mother who worked three jobs to educate her children to be successful. It does not capture that father who was not educated but provided for his family and ensured that his children were well taken care of. It does not cover the teachers, both black and white, who encouraged us in school to go further than society would ever have thought we could go. It does not cover the lowly school janitor who always had an encouraging word on Sunday morning because he was also the pastor of a local Church. It does not cover the many small acts of kindness that many have done because people did not seek recognition for it.

This is the history that we must tell our children. We must tell them our stories. We must tell them of our struggles and how we made it through. We must instill upon them a sense of self that is not based on how others define them, but on how they define themselves based on what they can do. We must teach them our history!

Your individual history, regardless of your race, is important to your children and to their children. Stop withholding that knowledge.

Closing

Moses brought the people together to give them the laws of God, with clarity and a conviction that spoke to the hearts of everyone. In chapter four Moses told the people to remember and to teach their children otherwise they would forget. In chapter six he goes a step farther. He tells them to diligently teach their children. That word diligently means to show persistence and hard word work in doing something. In other words, Moses was telling the people to make teaching their kids about everything God had done for them a priority. He told them to talk about what God had done and His laws when they sat in their homes, when they walked down the street, when they went to bed and when they got up. The image that he was painting was that they should always (persistently) be teaching their children and their children’s children about God and everything He had done for them. They were to always be talking about it. Finally he told them that they should write the words on the doorposts of their homes and on their gates. This was to ensure that the words were forever before their eyes.

Now why was this so very important? Why was this constant, persistent teaching of history to their children so important for those who actually experienced it? The answer lies in verses 10-12.

Deuteronomy 6:10–12 KJV 1900

10 And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, 11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; 12 Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Moses told the people that they needed to do this so that when they came into a land with beautiful cities that they had not built; with houses full of all things that they had not purchased; with wells they had not dug; with vineyards they had not planted; and when they had eaten and were full they would not forget the Lord who brought them out of Egypt. When they were living the promise Moses did not want them to forget who got them there. He knew the possibility existed that when they came into their promise if they did not remember what God had done for them, they would forget and begin to serve false Gods. Through Moses God wanted the message delivered that they were to never forget what He had done for them.

Everything that I have just shared with you is in our history. But celebrating black history is more than just remembering what happened during the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights movement brought to the forefront the struggles experienced by blacks in America because of racism. But, if we do not teach our kids our history, they will never know that Sarah Breedlove (Madam CJ Walker) was said to be the first black woman to be a self-made millionaire (in today’s dollars her estate was worth eight million dollars at the time of her death in 1919.) They will not know of our contributions to the space program as portrayed in the movie “Hidden Figures.” They will not know how Dr. Shirley Jackson paved the way for the touch-tone telephone or how Marie Ban Brittan Brown, a nurse, developed the foundation for our current home security systems. No they will not know any of this information because we are not making them learn the history. We are all enjoying the fruits from the labors of others and just as Moses told the Children of Israel they would do, we are forgetting the people who got us here. And again, what’s really important is that we are forgetting the God our ancestors served with conviction, we believe but not with the same focus, dedication and commitment that our ancestors had.

Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)