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Please be seated. For our call to worship let us turn to responsive reading number 28 on page 494. In the Red Hymnal. Selection number 28. Page four. Page 499. Yeah. Correction. Correction. You can always tell when something is going wrong because you hear the rumbling selection. 28 on page 499.

We'll give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His steadfast love endures forever. That is that the house of aAaron say his steadfast love endures forever. Out of my distress, I call on the Lord. The Lord answers me and sets me free. with the Lord on my side. I do not. Fear is to me the Lord is on my side to help me.

I think it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is. And Francis the Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my top class songs of victory and the tense of the righteous. The right hand of the Lord. Does value play the boy? I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord. The Lord has opened to me the gates of righteousness that have. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall enter through it. .

The stone which the builders rejected. Has become the chief cornerstone. And this is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Thou art my God and I will give thanks to thee.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. Let us pray in adoration. Brand new morning, the God and Jesus Christ. And we have gathered in this place to pray, to lift up, to adore and to sanctify your blessed name. Come with us, dear Lord Jesus, and make us your new creation. Make us your mighty men, women and children of love. Grant us your spirit of hope that we will honor you all the days of our lives. Well, our prayer is offered this morning in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior. Amen. That's one. Oh. It's a young, rich ruler who would tell us that we serve a mighty God. One day this young man approached Jesus to ask him a question. What must he do? To be safe. What must he do to have eternal life? What must he do to have salvation? Our Lord responded to let him go and keep the commandments. Go and keep the Decalogue. Go and keep the statues, the ordinances of God. But the young man responded. All of these I have kept from my youth. Then Jesus said to him, Go and sell all that you have and share with those who are poor. We understand from the Scripture that the young man lowered his head and went away in sadness, in disgust. We live in a world today where the same question could be asked of a whole lot of men and women in our nation. And I think they, too, will go away from Jesus because they would not want to comply with his requests. It is this Jesus who loved us so much that he gave his life on a cross that we could have a brand new day. And I want to declare to you at this time, in the name of Jesus Christ, we have been forgiven for all of our sins and our transgressions. Let us praise him. Let us honor because we have been forgiven. Hallelujah! Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Let us pray together the prayer of confession that is printed on the bulletin. We are praying in unison and we are free. This prayer, it becomes our own as we honor the God of our creation. Let us pray, all my dear, because we know there is always my God. We are caught by the desires of our hearts. We have offended only God. We have drawn God. Those things which we ought to have done. And we have done both. We are not to have God have mercy on us. Lord, we are free. Sorry. All we have to do this. Please. You forgive my sins and help us and walk in your ways for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Now we privately confess to the God of our creation. Our. There.

Good morning. First African. As we give our hearts and our minds and our souls in our spirits for the reading of God's Word. Let us prepare for His words.

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Our scripture today will be found in the Old Testament in Judges chapter six verses 11 through verses 18. God has a special blessing and message for us today. We are open to hear and receive his words at this time. Now the angels of the Lord came and sat under the oak tree at Oak Brook, which belonged to Joe is the adviser right as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the many nights the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior. Gideon answered him. But, sir, if the Lord is with us. Why then, has all this happened to us? And where are all of us? When his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us saying, did not the Lord bring us from Egypt? But now the Lord has cast us off and given us into the hands of the millions. Then the Lord turned to him. I said, Go into this the might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of dominion. I hereby commission you. And he responded, But, sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasa, and I am the least in my family. The Lord said to him, But I will be with you and you shall strike down the many of the knights. Every one of them. Then he said to him, If now I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that is you. That is you who speak with me. Do not depart from me until I come to you and bring out my presence and said it before you. And he said, I will stay until you return. The Spirit of the Lord through his spoken words. Amen. Now, reading from the New Testament, Matthew, the first 11 verses speaks. We must listen. When Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted 40 days and 40 nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, If you are the son of God, command these stones to become a loaf loaves of bread. But he answered, It is written. One does not live by bread alone, by everything, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the Holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your feet against a stone. Jesus said to him again, It is written. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to them, All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me. Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan. For it is written Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him. Then the devil left him and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Words of encouragement and spirituality for the people of God's world. Alleluia. Amen.

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Almighty God, our. Creator and our sustainer. We thank you for the opportunity to be in this place once more and again, even in our brokenness and our pain. And. Places where it aches. We thank you for having the opportunity to come out and worship and to be part of this community of believers. We thank you for the piece of music it's been rendered this morning. We thank you for the prayers, their victory for the lilies and testimonials that were shared while hearing. Most of all. Oh, God. We pray that you would continue to show us the way and show us the way not to fortune or fame, nor to the laws of praise for our name, but show us the way to tell the old story, to live the whole story. That is the Commonwealth, the power and the glory. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray. Amen.

Our sermon this morning, "Moving From Disgrace to Dignity" on this first Sunday in the season of lent is based on the story of Gideon found in the Book of Judges, chapters six and seven. And as our story opens up this morning, we find that the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hands of Midian. For seven years, the hand of Midian prevailed over Israel. Because of Midian, the Israelites found themselves living in a situation of disgrace. The people of Israel survived and provided for themselves by hiding in the mountains, by living in caves, by dwelling in ghetto type strongholds. But whenever the Israelites put seed in the ground, planting crops in order to grow enough food to stay alive, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. The Midianites and the Amalekites would camp out against the people of Israel so that they could destroy the produce of the land, leaving no sustenance, no sheep, no ox, no donkey for the people of Israel, For the Midianites and the Amalekites would bring their livestock and they would come up and pitch their tents as thick as locusts. The people were so numerous that neither they nor their camels could be counted, so they wasted the land. They used it up. Thus, the people of Israel were greatly impoverished because of Midian, and the Israelites cried out into the Lord for help.

Now, the first lesson for us this morning as we celebrate this last Sunday in Black History Month for 1996 and this first Sunday season of Lent is that as members of this faith community, we too can identify with the part of the scripture lesson that talks about somebody walking away with all our stuff. There's always somebody somewhere, sometime coming into our communities and taking out of our communities, those things that we need taken out of our homes, our churches and our cultural institutions, those things that we've barely wrestled out of life that cover the basic bottom line necessities of life. Yes, sisters and brothers. For the vast majority of us who are members of the African diaspora. We know in our heart of hearts how this oppressed, impoverished description in our biblical text for this morning mirrors our historical reality. Throughout the month of February, people across this nation have lifted up for commemorating this celebration the stories of our survival against great, formidable odds. Regardless of the multiple obstacles of living 244 years under chattel slavery and almost 100 years of legalized Jim Crow racial segregation, we are here and, bearing in mind deplorable living environments and dilapidated rundown learning situations for so many of our sisters and brothers. We are here even when the much needed material resources were nonexistent and our ancestors continued to tote barges, to lift bills, to make bricks without straw. And yes, church. We can say we are here. All right. In other words, whenever we as a people were able to accumulate what we need for our general well-being, there's always somebody who stands ready, willing and able to take out what we've just brought. And what I'm saying here is that there are always people in corporate bodies ready, willing and able to pluck up what we have planted. They are always powers and principalities ready, willing and able to tear down what we've worked so hard day in and day out to build out and assess. No matter where we go, no matter what we do, there are always people in the world who serve as contemporary media, nice and modern day Americans and those of us who have read and studied the Book of Judges. We know that what has been described here in this story about Gideon is what the whole book of judges is about. And the cycle goes like this The people cry out to the Lord for help, and God delivers the people. When the people of God receive their blessings and return to prosperity, the people forget God. When the people forget God, the people once again experience the destructions of their communities, and then the people cry for help. God hears God delivers. Yes, this is a cycle of events going on through. Every passage and every story in the book of Judges. Therefore, being that the divine cycle continues even to this very day in time. The first lesson that we too can believe is that whatever's ailing us today, if we ever were hurting this morning, whatever is keeping us from being right, relations with the creator on this first. And nevertheless, we too can cry out like the Israelites we took in crowd our hurts crowd our longings, crowd our pains and our frustrations. I trust with all our heart that God hears our cry and that God can and God will deliver us. On the second lesson in our Somali text for this morning, as found in the biblical passage where we listen so that we can hear God's response to the cries of the people. Far too often we lose a lot of life, energy, talking too much about our victimization and not enough talk about our deliverance and liberation. God is saying to the people, Don't worry about whether or not the Midian knives and the Malachite are going to get their just retribution that's coming to them. But God says yes, the name of the Midianites and the Amalekites are known down to history as the people who stood on the necks of God's people. But as the people of God, we must always remember that judgment comes two ways in advance. We want to make in preparation for deliverance from oppression requires that we each have to ask for help, others done to us. And at the exact same time we must ask, and what have we done to ourselves? The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that the root cause of sin in the world is that as human beings, we allow ourselves to become attached to material things. We get so addicted to people, places and things, so much so that we reach out to those material attachments at all costs, even when it means sacrificing our own integrity, even when it means forfeiting our right to the tree of life. And when we turn to our texts, we find Gideon, the outstanding leader in his community, located in a place doing the kind of work that he found to be extremely embarrassing and disgraceful. The Bible tells us that the people of Israel could not even harvest their own crops because the Mennonites in the Malachi would descend upon the Israelites in need of all of their produce. So what some of the Israelites ended up doing was planning their own wheat and taking it down into the small enclosure of the wine press in order to thresh it, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, the substance from that idol out of form. Now, you see, if any of us would have to do this kind of work within the narrow, close confinement of the wine press, then we're not going to be very efficient in separating the wheat from the outer shell. And even with the little harvest that we might be able to eke out. And the reason that getting is there in the wine press is, yes, has a heart so that the wheat will not be stolen from you. And in turn, there will be enough to feed the babies. It is truly an embarrassing moment for any of us when we realize that we're in a situation where there's no food, no clothes, no shelter for the children. Gideon refused to give up, even though a lot of the other folk in this community had already quit, so many others had already stopped trying. The primary problem is that the human condition requires that each and every one of us reach out and that we grab on to certain material things for survival. And in order to survive, sometimes in order merely just to stay alive. There have been times in our past, or there will be times the coming of future when we abdicate, when we relinquish, when we let go of our commitment to God is our Creator and our sustainer. The inability to trust God with the possibility that we can maintain our faith, commitment and survive at the same time. It's a fundamental downfall of any enslaved people. This is why the institution of slavery was and is such a deep building institution, because slavery forces people to act as if God told a lie and to act as if the slave is the holder of the truth. Yes, slavery is an abomination because slavery makes it almost impossible for people to risk faith for living and survival as a feasible co-existing package. Time and time again, Christian women and Christian men. Time and time again, Christian youth and Christian adults have been forced often far too often, to make a choice between holding on to faith in God and merely staying alive. We must confess that there have been some times when we, as a people of God, did not act like God's people because we were treading economic water, simply trying not to drown, trying with all our might to keep food on the table, clothes on our backs and a roof over you, trying with every fiber of our beings not to throw in the towel and call it quits.

What I'm saying here is that there are a whole lot of us as regular churchgoing folk that there have been times when we've had to mortgage ourselves. In other words, as we prayed this morning in our prayer confession, there've been times when we've done those things which we are not done and we've left undone those things which we ought to have done. And we have felt in the very core of our beings as if there was no help in us. And it is during these times of helplessness that God always sends an angel in verse 11 of chapter six that says that an angel of the Lord came and sat under an oak tree. This is a very familiar scene for those of us who have lived or traveled on the continent of Africa. It is quite common to see the elders in the community sitting under a tree dispensing wisdom, and according to the text, whenever the end of the Lord comes, it is an expression of God's love and God's concern for us. The angel comes to us with a message to let us know that God is truly invested in what is happening in our lives and inform us of what we need to do as God's people. Now the Angel of the Lord is a divine presence, sits under the oak tree, and this is what the angel said. The Lord is with you. Let us imagine how this message. The Lord is with you Must have sound to Gideon Gideon, a man who's living in a disgraceful, embarrassing, compromising situation. And yet the angel said to Gideon, The Lord is with you. Here we have Gideon in cramped quarters. Gideon can't even stretch out his arms in order to work by the sweat of his brow. Here's Gideon bent over and bowed down, trying to make ends meet. And yet the messenger from God brings the good news, boldly stating The Lord is with you. And not only does the angel say that the Lord is with you, but that you are a mighty warrior. And verse 13, Gideon, answers the Angel of the Lord by asking this question: If the Lord is with us, why then have all these things happened to us? Yes. The second lesson in our sermon for this morning is God's answer to Gideon's question. Lord, if you are here with us, then why all these things happening to us? Did it be love in the midst of our momentary Jordan, these first two months of this New Year? There have been a lot of somber and a lot of melancholy memories. When we look into each other's faces here in this congregation, and when we look into the faces of those outside in our community at large, we can see that brothers and sisters everywhere are asking God in 1996 the exact same question that get in polls. Lord, if you are here with us, this is why all these things are happening to us right now. Gideon goes on to say to the Angel of the Lord, Yes, we've heard the great stories of what happened in the past. We know our heritage as to how God delivered us up out of Egypt, how God carried the water so that people could escape to freedom on dry land. And we as a people want to know why God, why God? If you deliver us in the past, why God can't you deliver us now? Yes, sisters and brothers, this is the key. This is the fundamental theological question that our children and our grandchildren and our nieces and nephews, the children of rappers of the hip hop culture, are now asking of each and every one of us. We tell us that God delivered us as a people. God delivered us up out of the bowels of slavery and out of segregation. Then why can't God deliver us now? Every day in the United States of America, 15 children are killed by firearms. God, where is our deliverance, Right? Every day in America, 2660 babies are born into poverty. The people asking God for the deliverance every day in this great country of ours, 2833 children drop out of school and within every 24 hour cycle, 8493 children are reported abused and neglected. People in the church community, as well as those standing outside, are asking where is the evidence of God's deliverance in these latter days of the 20th century? As a nation, we're building more prisons and we're instituting longer jail time. And as a nation, we are removing access to public education, and we are formalizing social policies to circumscribe housing and downsize job options. As a nation, we are underwriting de facto forms of social containment because your children, because our children are considered to be a threat to the social order, people everywhere are a crown crying out asking Where is God? Will God deliver us? And in verse 14, we hear God's response to Gideon's question, and it's the exact same answer for all of us gathered here on this very day. The messenger of God turns to Gideon and says, Take this might of yours and deliver your people from the hands of the enemy. I hereby commission you, take this mite of yours and deliver your people from the hands of the enemy. I hereby commission you. Is this not what God is doing to us today? This passage is stating in the most emphatic tense of the indicative mode. The Bible is telling us in clear certain terms that Yes, God is with us. We are a mighty and powerful people because God has made us so. And now God is commissioning each and every one of us, especially during these 40 days of the Lenten season, to let this be a time when we prepare ourselves. So by the time that the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning that we are equipped in new and empowering ways to do the specific work that God is calling for each of us to do. Yes, this is what the Angel of the Lord said to Gideon. So now we need to hear how Gideon replied to the angels. Gideon told the Lord how this message of commission created all kinds of confusion, all kinds of cognitive dissonance for him. Gideon said, How Oh, Lord, can I be called mighty when I'm down here in a disgraceful situation, forced to thrash wheat in a wine cellar, working nonstop wrestling, squeezing, eking out the bare necessities of life. Gideon said, Lord, how can I be called mighty when I have to slip and slide? How can I be a warrior when I have to sneak and hide? How can I be a mighty warrior when I have to live in a tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next? How can any of us be called Mighty Warriors and Powerful deliverers? When the late Dr. Martin Luther King Junior said so well, we are people harried by inner fears and haunted by outer resistance. We are a people always fighting a degenerating sense of nobody-ness. No the status of mightiness, this position of being deliverers, this commission of mighty warrior, did not compute for Gideon.