Theme: Women of Friendship United in following the Vision
Topic: WHAT GOOD IS FAITH WITHOUT WORKS?
Delivered at Friendship Baptist Church/Rev. Tim May, Pastor
Pensacola, Florida, Sunday, May 20, 2007
By
Rev. Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
Well, Scripture asks us in James 2:14 & 18 “What doth it profit my Brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? Yea, a man may say thou have faith, and I have works: Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.
Throughout his years of public service, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encouraged everyone to participate in community service. In his Drum Major for Justice Sermon, he said:
"Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's ˜Theory of Relativity to serve. You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant."
"The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve." Mark 10:45 NKJV
Jesus entered the world to serve. And we should enter our jobs, our homes and our churches - to serve. Servant hood requires no unique skill or seminary degree.
(1) To serve is to love the overlooked. Jesus sits in your classroom wearing thick glasses, outdated clothing and a sad face. You've seen Him. He works in your office.
Pregnant again, she shows up late and tired. No one knows the father. Water cooler rumors say even she doesn't. You've seen her. When you love the misfit and befriend the hurting, you love Jesus.
"Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored . . . you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40 TM).
(2) To serve is to wave the white flag. We fight so much: "Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from?" asks James, "Do you think they just happen?
Think again. They come about because you want your own way" (James 4:1 TM). Real servants don't struggle, they submit.
(3) To serve is to do something each day that you don't want to do. Pick up someone's litter. Surrender your parking place. Call that long-winded relative. It doesn't have to be a big thing.
Helen Keller once told the Tennessee Legislature that when she was young she longed to do great things and could not, so she decided to do small things in a great way. Don't be too big to do something small.
"Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort" (1 Corinthians 15:58 TM).
Today, I say to you, my sisters, one of our duties is to serve our God and our people by EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION TO BE ALL THAT THEY CAN BE.
We can talk about various verses in the Bible, and what is said therein, but of what good is faith without works.
We can get down on our knees and pray everyday, but at some point, we have to get up and follow up our prayers with action.
We can talk about how too many of our young people are irresponsible, unthoughtful, ungrateful and don’t have a clue about accountability and responsibility.
We can talk about the virtuous women year after year on Women’s Day, but what about the children?
Who is empowering them to take over where we leave off? And what does it really mean to empower the next generation “be they young men or young women?
To me, that means investing in someone in order to enable growth and development in that person, and if we are going to spend time helping them to grow and develop, we might as well do it in a way that they can make a difference that makes a difference.
We, women, are called upon to do so much. We have always held up more than our share of the sky with dignity and with grace, and as Dr. Dorothy Height always say,
We women don’t always do what we want to do, but we always do what we have to do.
And we don’t deserve some of the things our young people have been calling us in gangsta rap, on street corners, in videos and some to our faces “without shame or remorse.
It is as though many have forgotten that some mother lovingly, and often through great pain, carried them for 9 months, nursed them through childhood and into adulthood.
In her dying words to her daughter, Lucy Stone, the famed human rights activist, said, Make the world better.
I believe we are empowering the next generation for a noble cause when we challenge them to do something to make the world better.
As we grew up, we had role models, and the role models began with our parents in our own homes.
We saw adults, including our parents, going about the business of making the world better, and we wanted to be like them.
We read about women like Sojourner Truth.
We could hardly believe she had the courage to do all the things that she did under very trying circumstances.
I was talking with Cicely Tyson the other day, and she said that Sojourner’s speech, Ain’t I a Woman, one of the most empowering speeches in the world for anyone especially for women.
She delivered her most eloquent and empowering recorded speech in 1851 at a women's convention at Akron , Ohio , and she motivated and empowered those who wanted the right to vote with the following words:
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [Member of audience whispers, "Intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or Negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
With all the limitations in her life that might have discouraged the average person, Sojourner Truth worked to abolish slavery.
She worked to gain the right for women to vote.
At the same time, she took care of her children without the benefit of a father in the home to help her.
She didn’t know Standard English; in fact, she grew up speaking Dutch.
She was not a formally educated woman.
She was not legally a free woman much of her life; in fact, she was an enslaved woman “but in her mind she was free.
She filed lawsuits seeking justice on more than one occasion, and won something that was almost unheard of for Black people to do in her day and time.
She challenged an unjust system that shut women and Black people out so that they had no power to make their lives, or the world at large, better “but did she accept that condition?
Oh, NO
She didn’t sit around and moan and groan and complain about what was wrong. She worked, and showed others how to meet their challenges.
As a result of her efforts, she empowered future generations to work to make a difference “to make the world better.
More than a hundred years later, women who were inspired and empowered by Sojourner have caused Congress to pass a bill to honor Sojourner by placing a bust of her in the United States Capitol to memorialize her work.
In October of 2008, the National Congress of Black Women will proudly hold a ceremony in her honor, and that will be a day that every Black woman can lift her head, throw back her shoulders and take pride in old Sojourner because she will be the first Black woman in an honored place in that Capitol and she will stand there for the entire world to see the historical achievements of Black women.
She empowered not only the women and young people of her generation by her example, but she empowered generations for years to come.
Empowerment is a simple term, and all of us have the ability to empower ourselves and others to take action to make the world better.
Mothers are the first teachers of our young people and that is a role that most of you have played with great pride.
There was a time when mothers taught young women not to leave home being indecently exposed.
Mothers taught their daughters how to be respectful so that they are treated with respect; to be honorable so they will be honored; to be loveable, so that others will love them; I challenge mothers to do that again.
That’s how we can empower young women to make a difference that makes a difference.
Teach young men and women again how to say Yes Mam and No Mam to those older than they are; we can teach them by doing it ourselves.
Yes, we can teach much by example, but when example is not enough, and they just don’t get it when we show them, don’t be afraid to call them aside and explain it to them until they do get it.
Don’t try to talk with them in some fancy vernacular; tell them in simple words what they need to know.
I know my mother said to her 9 children that she had to raise without the benefit of a father in our home Baby, I can’t be with you all the time. All I can do is teach you what you need to know to survive, but you’ve got to live your own life and die your own death, and somewhere in between you’ve got to justify your existence and she empowered us to do just that.
All of us, whether we are mothers to young people by birth, or mothers to them as adults who work with them and play the role of mother, let’s go back to the basics and teach our young people some of the valuable lessons we were taught.
Teach them the golden rule to do unto others as they would have others do unto them.
Teach them that where there is a will, there is a way.
Teach them about honoring their fathers and their mothers.
Talk with them in a language they can understand.
Women still play the major role in teaching our children what they need to know to survive. just as women have done historically “but what happened to our children.
How did our children begin disrespecting their parents and other adults?
How did children begin murdering their parents and grandparents, and thinking nothing of taking the lives of their peers?
Somewhere we failed too many of our children, and weave got to take back the roles we once had of being the nurturers of young people from the cradle to adulthood.
The Bible tells us to: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
The problem today is that so many of our children are not trained; they are just allowed to grow up doing their own thing “whatever that is.
When you love your children, you won’t allow them to just grow up on their own without showing them the way.
Showing the next generation the way is the responsibility first of the parent, mainly the women, but also of other relatives, of teachers, of tutors, of preachers, of the entire community-- and as Senator Hillary Clinton says in her book by that name, It takes a village to raise a child..
We are all a part of that village, and if weave been blessed, it is our duty to empower the next generation to be all that they can be.
A part of empowering them is to teach them about the challenges they will face on their way to becoming what they want to be.
Despite all of the wonderful, beautiful, heartwarming things that occur in my life, I know that I have had challenges I sometimes thought that I could not bear; yet, I worked to overcome them because my mother and other ancestors empowered me by teaching me to overcome obstacles in my life; they taught me that barriers were made to be broken.
Like many of you, I have sometimes needed to dig deep down within to come up with answers, but the seeds to do so were planted, and I shall never forget them.
Now, how did my mother empower me, and pass on to me the seeds for empowering those who come after me?
Well, by example, she taught me to have a very strong faith in a power that is bigger than I am, and to know that I could do the things God has blessed me to want to do in life if I believed in myself and worked hard to achieve them.
She taught me to always remember who I am and from whence I came.
She taught me to always be willing to do an honest days work for every day of pay I receive, and she taught me that the road wouldn’t always be easy.
She taught me to always recognize and honor those who paved the way for me, because all of us stand on the shoulders of somebody who sacrificed before us.
She taught me the importance of giving back to the world something meaningful for all the blessings I have received, and a part of what I must give back is the empowerment of others not only to do what I have done-- but to do it even better.
She took her children to church, and taught us to acknowledge that there is a God, who is always with us, and when we just don’t know where else to turn, turn to God and we will find that God is enough!
If we believe in God, we must learn to trust the God we serve, knowing that nothing is too hard for God.
Life is not always easy, so there are times when we have to turn everything over to God, and trust that God knows what to do.
We can’t just throw up our hands and say children will be children; they are our children and nothing can be more important than teaching our children right from wrong, and the basics of life that our parents taught us.
That’s how we empower them.
We must provide for our children a legacy of love, hope and all the things Mary McLeod Bethune talked about in leaving our generation a legacy.
That’s how we empower the generations after ours.
We must teach young people respect and how to be grateful for what they have, courageous to do the things they should, to settle disputes non-violently as Dr. Martin Luther King taught us to do a principle for which he paid the ultimate price by giving his life.
We must show our children the way, and not just expect them to know these things.
If we don’t teach them, there is always somebody out there just waiting to shape and mold their minds to do things that are not in their best interest.
Our love for the next generation must go deeper than the lure of popularity or the "in thing" that all of their friends are doing-- and you know all the reasons young people can give for having their own way.
My niece e-mailed me the other day and told me she just had to have a cell phone with unlimited text messaging because all of her friends had one! We have to teach them how to live without many of the things their friends have and not be persuaded by that reasoning.
Some young people may think that good manners are old fashioned or taboo, and that disrespect of elders is funny. We must teach them that it isn’t so.. Please and thank you are always in style.
Teach them the basics because no matter how difficult the job is, it is cheaper to build a child than it is to repair an adult.
We must not buy profane, obscene, indecent lyrics for our children, nor allow them to buy them or listen to them.
Let us not be afraid to go back to the basics with our children and young people for whom we are responsible.
As Sojourner Truth said, If one woman could turn this world upside down, then surely together, we women can turn it right side up again .Let us work together to turn it right side up.
Young people have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Be their example. Empower them to be the very best that they can be.
Empowering the next generation to make a difference that makes a difference depends upon our doing so.
Putting your own oxygen mask on first sounds like such a sensible and obvious thing to do, because if you can’t breathe during an emergency, surely you cannot help anyone else.
It seems that we must have our own lives in order before we can help someone else, because we cannot teach what we do not know. We cannot give what we do not have.
There was a time when parents, or any adults for that matter, expected children Do as I say do, not as I do but that doesn’t seem to work today.
We women can and must lead the way.
Despite our struggles, we are so blessed because God has given women the ability to be so many things to so many people and they depend upon us.
Let’s not waste our blessings.
Let us reach back and empower those who come after us.
Let us always acknowledge that there is a God who is always with us, and when we don’t know where else to turn, turn to God and find that God is enough to help us to do what we must do to make this a better world for all of God’s children.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
For more information or to contact Rev. Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq., see her websites (
www.efayewilliams.com or
www.npcbw.org) or call 202/678-6788. You may also send an e-mail to efayed@aol.com