The personal blog of Anderson T. Graves II. Education, Religion, Politics, Family, and TRUTH------ but not necessarily the truth you want to hear.
I still love ya' though.
--Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
--Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the
popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Then Israel charged his sons and said to them: “I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my
fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite. . . There
they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his
wife, and there I buried Leah. . . And when Jacob had finished
commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last,
and was gathered to his people (Genesis 49: 29 - 33).
In his letter to the early church in Ephesus, Paul explained
how to live as a good Christian in a world and in a church where other people
don’t always live like good Christians.Drawing on Old Testament advice from Psalms 4:4, the apostle said, “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the
sun go down on your wrath (Ephesians 4: 26).
As a pastor who’s performed, it seems like, a LOT of
funerals I’ve noticed a trend in obituaries where instead of “birth – death”
the program will say “sunrise – sunset.”The image of death as a sunset is beautiful and perhaps comforting but combined
with Paul’s advice it’s also challenging.
Challenging because a fair number of Christians
enter the sunset of their lives as Jacob, aka Israel did.It isn’t a state that negates one’s salvation,
but it is a state that can have far-reaching negative consequences.So, please don’t go out like Jacob did.
Jacob died angry.
And he died often.Jacob was like that old auntie who sends for the whole family in June because
the Lord is calling her home and she gets out of the hospital 2 days later; then
she calls the whole family to her bedside in October because the Lord is
calling her home and she gets out of the hospital that afternoon; and next
August she sends a message that can you fly in because she wants to see you one
last time before the Lord calls her home and when you get to the hospital they’ve
already discharged her, etc., etc.
Jacob was at death’s door when he first thought that
Joseph had been killed
And all
his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be
comforted, and he said, “For I shall go down into the grave to my son in
mourning.” Thus his father wept for him (Genesis 37:35).
And, when he reunited with Joseph.
And
Israel said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face, because
you are still alive” (Genesis 46:30).
And, when he called in Joseph to explain his wishes
for his funeral.
When the
time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him.
. . Please do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers; you shall
carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place”
(Genesis 47:29-30).
And, when he amended his will to include two of his
grandsons.
Now it
came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, “Indeed your father is
sick”; and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim (Genesis
48:1).
But when the Lord did actually, finally call Jacob
home, Israel went out in a blaze of bitterness.
First of all, he made Joseph’s sons joint-heirs with
their uncles.
And now
your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt
before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be
mine. Your offspring whom you beget after them shall be yours; they will be
called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance (Genesis
48:5-6).
The firstborn son is assigned the double inheritance.
So basically, on his deathbed, Jacob-Israel told his 10 oldest sons “I never
really liked ya’ll anyway.As far as I’m
concerned, Joseph is my firstborn.”
To Jacob’s credit, he didn’t publicly call out his
sons for selling Joseph into slavery.Joseph had forgiven them and Jacob apparently let that go, too.But, Jacob did use his dying breaths to go all
the way back to the oldest of old offenses that his eldest 3 sons had every
committed.
In his last words, Father Jacob cursed his eldest
children.
“Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might
and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency
of power. Unstable as water, you
shall not excel, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you
defiled it.He went up to my couch.
“Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments
of cruelty are in their dwelling place. Let not my soul enter their council; let
not my honor be united to their assembly;for in their anger they slew a man, And in their self-will they
hamstrung an ox.Cursed be their
anger, for it is fierce; And their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide
them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:3-7).
Jacob dumped that on his sons and their descendants inherited
the emotional baggage of their grandfather’s curse.
Imagine being a Reubenite, Simeonite, or Levite
(like Moses) for the next 500-plus years.Imagine that every time you heard or spoke the name of your nation you
remembered that the father of your nation cursed your community ---- with his
dying breath.
(Cough . . . cough. George Washington was a slaveowner
until the day he died and Thomas “all men are created equal” Jefferson’s will
only emancipated 5 of his dozens of slaves and those 5 did not include Sally
Hemmings the slave by whom the married Jefferson had at least 6 children . . .
cough . . . cough)
That’s a lot of emotional baggage to pass down through
the generations.
You might even expect some of those the descendants to
carry some latent rage.
And a
man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. 2 So
the woman conceived and bore a son. . . And when she saw that he was a
beautiful child, she hid him three months. 3 But when she could
no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with
asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the
river’s bank. . . And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s
daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses. . . when
Moses was grown. . . he saw an
Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that
way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand (Exodus
2:1-12).
You might expect some of those descendants to carry
some self-hate.
Now Korah
the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan
and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben,
took men; and they rose up before Moses with some of the
children of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation,
representatives of the congregation, men of renown. 3 They gathered
together against Moses and Aaron(Numbers 16:1-3).
Jacob was an important man whose words of blessing
and words of cursing had profound consequences.But Jacob was just a man.
No man’s words to you or about you is the final say,
not even if they’re your father’s final words, not even if the words are a
prophetic declaration.
God alone has the last say about you and your
destiny.
The descendants of Levi were divided among and
scattered across the tribes of Israel, but not as nomads or vagabonds.God made the Levites the tribe of priests and
judges.Jacob said: let not my honor be united to
their assembly.God overruled Jacob
and gave Levi the united honor of all Israel.
Daddy or granddaddy or founding fathers declare
their opinion, preference, and predictions about who you and your people are
and can be.But you don’t have to
conform to that.Those historic men were
important, but those men aren’t God.Prove
them wrong.Succeed anyway.
Jacob-Israel installed Joseph as his firstborn,
intending for descendants of his 11th son to rule over all the
others. But Judah and his descendants
didn’t care.
Now the
sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel—he was indeed the firstborn, but because
he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph,
the son of Israel, so that the genealogy is not listed according to the
birthright; yet Judah prevailed over his brothers, and from him came a ruler,
although the birthright was Joseph’s (1 Chronicles 5:1-2).
Israel died old-man angry and bestowed an
unnecessarily painful legacy on a segment of his population.Don’t die angry.Don’t let the sun set on bitter words that
God has to spend generations undoing.
And if you are living in the shadow of an angry parents’
death ----- defy them.
Succeed anyway.Define your legacy for yourself.Prevail.
The Levites defied Father Israel’s curse and gave us
the Moses, the Law, and the sacrifices that laid the foundation for the gospel.The
sons of Judah defied Father Israel’s expectations, defined their own legacy,
and gave us kings and psalmists and books of wisdom and the Bible’s dirty love Song
---- and Jesus.
Don’t let an angry sunset determine the rest of your
days.
--Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education,
ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He
writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
31 And
Terah took his son Abram and his
grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s
wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt
there. 32 So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years,
and Terah died in Haran. (Genesis
11:31-32 )
. . . 5 Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot
his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the
people whom they had acquired in Haran, and
they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. (Genesis 12: 5)
You are not an
original.
Yeah, I know what we say, but it’s not true. You and I and all of us are UNIQUE. But none of our
stories is truly
ORIGINAL. We are all living remakes and sequels.
For example: you know
the story of Abraham, right? Abraham is
THE patriarch. The common ancestor of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
But Abraham wasn’t a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew; at least
not at first. At first, his name wasn’t
even Abraham.
Abram (that’s what his daddy named him) was a native of what
we know as Syria. The irony of the Israeli
patriarch being an ethnic Syrian wasn’t lost on God, and God didn’t want the
Jews to forget it either. That’s why the
Old Testament liturgies include a responsive reading with these directions:And you shall answer and say before the
Lord your God: ‘My father was a Syrian, about
to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there
he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. (Deuteronomy 26:5)
The story of the great patriarch Abraham begins when God
spoke to Abraham/Abram and said, “Get out
of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that
I will show you. I will make you a great
nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will
curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).
But originally ------ God didn’t call Abraham out of Syria
and into the Promised Land. Originally, God called Abraham’s dad.
And Terah took his son
Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai,
his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to
go to the land of Canaan . . . (Genesis 11:31a)
Terah had an idea, a goal which he may or may not have
recognized for what it was: a call to his family’s Divine purpose. Still, Father Terah pursued his calling.
But he didn’t make it.
A lay-over in Haran (Turkey) turned into a long-term stay,
and Terah died there (Genesis 11:31-32).
Years later, when God
called Abraham to the Promised Land, the son would have known he was finishing
the journey that his father had begun.
The plan God is working out didn’t begin with us. Each of our stories is a continuation of the stories that have
already been told in the lives of our parents and predecessors. The episode before ours may be a story of
triumph. Your parents may have been
great, godly, loving people who taught you everything you needed to succeed and
blessed you with an honorable legacy. Or, maybe your parents lived a tragic comedy.
Maybe your childhood was so sad that it was funny. Even when the parents knows what they're supposed to do, sometimes they don't make it.
Whether your ancestors led you in the right direction or
left you stranded in a bad place, listen to what God says. The journey is yours now.
Listen. God is speaking
to you now.
Listen. God wants you
to complete or to correct your family’s course.
Listen. God knows
where you’re coming from, but He has a plan to direct your part of the story
into legacy of greatness.
Listen to God’s Word and God’s Spirit. And remember that your story isn’t the whole
story.
Abraham had 8 children: Ishmael, Isaac, and 6 sons by his 3rd
wife --- or his 2nd concubine, depending on how you count (Genesis 16:15; 21:3; 25:1). Eight kids is a nice-sized family, but it isn’t
a great nation. It took 2 generations after Abraham to even get the
name Israel. The promises of Abraham began BEFORE Abraham
and were most fully achieved AFTER Abraham.
Jesus hasn’t come back yet, and the world hasn’t ended,
which means that the story, the series of stories that is God’s plan isn’t
finished. Live your story right. Live your story well. Make sure that the next generation can pick
up from a better place than you did.
And may the Lord give you grace to watch your children and
successors take the story on to greater promises.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T.
Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
And
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and
called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch.
To
Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael,
and Methushael begot Lamech.
Then
Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah. And Adah bore
Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His
brother’s name was Jubal. He
was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. And
as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in
bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.
Then
Lamech said to his wives:
“Adah and Zillah, hear my
voice;
Wives of Lamech, listen to
my speech!
For I have killed a man for
wounding me,
Even a young man for hurting
me.
If
Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech
seventy-sevenfold.” (Genesis 4: 17-24)
Far
too often, I hear people (usually women) tell a child, “You’re going to be just
like your daddy,” spoken as a curse. “He
wasn’t no good, and you ain’t gone be no good either.”
No
Christian should ever say something like that.
It is absolutely, Biblically wrong.
The
Bible says that no child can be defined by their father’s worst day.
Cain
was a murderer, and he was an exile (the ancient equivalent of a convicted
felon). One of his descendants, a man
named Lamech, committed the 2nd murder in recorded history and then
wrote a song bragging about it. The song,
in Genesis 4:23-24, has kind of a Johnny
Cash vibe.
(You
don’t know who Johnny Cash is? Johnny Cash
and his wife were the Jay-Z and Beyonce of country music, back in the day. Anyway, moving on.)
Cain
was also an architect, builder, civic leader, husband, father, and
grandfather. He named his son and the
city he founded Enoch which means “dedicated,”
as in dedicated to God. Lamech, the 2nd
murderer, had 3 sons. Those boys pioneered
the fields of nomadic herding, music, and metal-working (Genesis 4:20-22).
The
children of Cain were great men and unrepentant criminals. Some of his progeny decided to repeat his
most famous and terribly bad choices. Other offspring chose to manifest the
untapped positive potential that God saw in Cain. Make sure that every child you influence
understands that they have the same choices.
In the
flesh, Jesus was the descendant of prophets and kings. He was also the descendant of liars,
idolaters, immigrants, murderers, and at least one prostitute (Matthew 1:1-16;
Luke 3:23-38). Jesus’ genealogy
legitimated His claim to Israel’s throne, but His Divinity defined His mission.
No
matter who a child’s father was, no matter what that man did, do not define the
child by what biological daddy did. Teach children to define themselves by what
Heavenly Father sees in them.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
When
I was an English teacher I pushed my adolescent writers to expand their
vocabularies, but sometimes, while trying to impress me, my students would stretch
their word choices beyond their grasp of definitions. They’d use big words, but the wrong big
words.
For
example, sometimes students would confuse the words epithetand epitaph.
An epitaph is “something written or said in
memory of a dead person; especially :
words written on a gravestone.” (Merriam Webster online)
An epithet is a word or phrase, often “an
offensive word or name that is used as a way of abusing or insulting someone” (Merriam Webster online),
as in “a racial epithet.”
In
the Bible, when a prominent character died, Scripture often gave a one verse
summary of his/her life --- an epitaph. Epitaph
not epithet.
But
then, there was King Jehoram of Jerusalem.
The summary of his life is in 2 Chronicles 21:20.
He was
thirty-two years old when he became king. He reigned in Jerusalem eight years
and, to no one’s sorrow, departed.
The
King James Version says that Jehoram died without
being desired. That English phrase
is a single Hebrew word.
Jehoram’s
epitaph is kind of an epithet.
How
sad.
Remember
that other people will bury you. Someone
else will decide what your tombstone says.
Even if you have the stone carved while you’re living, someone else will
still decide.
How
sad it would be for you or I to attain great titles, to gain positions of power
and personal prosperity, and then die “to no one’s sorrow.” To be remembered as an epithet.
Live
daily the verse you want carved on your grave.
Be now the person you want preached in your eulogy.
By
your actions, choose an epitaph that is not an epithet.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield,
Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking
Organization (SAYNO); and director of
rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
There’s
an old Southern tradition of “sitting with the family” when someone dies. (It
might not be strictly Southern, but it seems Southern-ish.) This means that when a member of my
congregation dies, it is my duty as pastor to visit the home of the deceased
and make myself available to talk, to listen, to counsel-advise, and otherwise
shepherd the family through the grieving process.
That’s
what I’ve been doing the last few days since Isabell Seawright, the oldest
member of Hall Memorial CME Church, passed away.
The people who gathered in the family house had lost their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
auntie, mother-in-law, best friend, neighbor, mentor, and matriarch. We were a house full of people in
mourning.
And
we spent most of the time LAUGHING.
Now
this wasn’t the forced, nervous laughter of people pretending that their hearts
aren’t broken. Nor was it the bitter
laughter of people diverting attention from their guilt by ridiculing others
and revealing their hurtful secrets.
The
laughter at Mother Seawright’s house was pure, peaceful, genuine, and virtually
continuous.
Mother
died, and we laughed.
It
was beautiful.
It
was the sound a pastor prays for (or should pray for), because it was the sound
of a family whose individual and collective memories of 92 ½ years were full of
joy.
The
laughter was the sound of peace--the kind of peace that people have when they
are absolutely certain that if there is a Heaven, Mama’s there; and if there
isn’t a Heaven, God will make one just for her.
The
laughter was the sound of a family diverse as any other, but united in their
love for this one woman. It was the
sound of 4 generations who each and all honored their matriarch and had received
her smiling blessing in turn.
The
laughter was the sound of the legacy of a loving life so well lived that not
even death could diminish her spiritual presence.
I
want to live that well. I want to raise up a family--- a tribe--- like Mother
Seawright did. And when I pass on, I
want to leave them with unreserved joy.
I want them to gather without drama even when I’m not there to preside
and mediate. I want to leave my family,
my church, and my community such a well-lived life that compliments, flowers,
and resolutions are insufficient. I want
to pass on the kind of peace and hopefulness that cannot be contained in silence
or corralled in words and so must manifest as only the greatest joys can---- in
laughter.
I’ve
always looked up to Mother Seawright, but I admire her more now than I ever
did.
She
gave me one more goal: to make my family
laugh when I die.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall
laugh. (Luke 6: 21)
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T.
Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse
Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
