Celebrating XiXiZeta’s annual Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. Finer Womanhood Celebration at St. Paul AME Church, Lithonia, GA
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’,Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’,Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’ … We are marching in the light of God,We are marching in the light of God,We are marching in the light of God (see full texts below)
On the 3rd Sunday morning in February 2021, when members of my sorority gathered for our annual “Finer Womanhood” worship service, special African American history lessons were delivered in song and sermon. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., XiXiZeta Chapter members, among the congregants in virtual settings and socially distanced vehicles, received valuable tips on life’s “chain breaking.”
When the Dr. (Medical) Rev. Marvin L. Crawford was a child, his grandmother would tell him a story about her father Joshua (pronounced Josh-u-ay) who was a slave in 1863 when the word was passed around that slaves are being set free.
The day after that announcement, Joshua was said to get up on a table and dance to the tune of a fiddler. When the year was coming to an end and New Year’s Eve arrived, gatherings of slaves “watched all night long” and at about 12:01 a.m., Pastor Crawford’s grandmother told him that the people shouted for they knew the Emancipation Proclamation would set them free from the chains of the enslaved.
“Let the chains fall off,” extoled Pastor Crawford, pastor, preacher and physician from atop his outdoors perch with the south DeKalb County (Ga) community landscape in the background.
This Sunday morning, I am visiting one of my favorite churches, greatest congregations and perhaps the hardest and smartest-working pastor in the metro Atlanta area. An Associate Professor, The Morehouse School of Medicine, who directs 3rd and 4th year students during their training at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, also ensures that his church operates a food pantry and serves the community in countless ways.
“Street” preaching
As vehicles traveled by and the cold day’s sunshine broke through, Pastor Crawford told the virtual and in-car congregants that they must be like the ancestors and Peter, whose story of jail bondage by King Herod is found in Acts 12. Peter was imprisoned by the King, who was a Jewish man, because Peter was a Christian.
“The Herods of our do the same thing” as King Herod, said Pastor Crawford. The persecution that Peter and other Christians received by the King was similar to voter suppression, quieting of voices of women, Blacks and others. It is found in the proposed laws to restrict absentee voting. The Herod affect is evidenced in the deaths of civil rights leaders, George Floyd and Ahmad Aubrey, Pastor Crawford asserted.
The goal of the chains is to “destroy movements … make voting hard and close the doors on you,” preached. Yet, watch, fight and pray.”
Peter’s prayers and those of his church members gathered at John Mark’s mother, Mary’s home,” freed Peter. The Bible reveals that angels appeared while he was asleep and removed the chains. They asked people to put on his own clothes and sandals, arise and walk out of the prison with them guarding him on each side. The prison guards did not touch him, the prison gate opened and he walked humbly and triumphantly to the place where the “saints” gathered in prayer.
Be like Peter and do not become jealous or revengeful for “that is not as God has made you. Those are not your clothes. Those are someone else’s clothes. Pull off the prison clothes ….”put on your own clothes and live,” Pastor Crawford emphasized.
He gave examples of what keeps individuals chained in their inward prisons, bondage-like.
Chains
- Owning big houses to ‘keep up with the Joneses’
- Complacency
- Big houses
- Unsafe relationships
- Jealousy
- Unfaithfulness
- Fear of being fired from jobs
- Oppressing others
How fitting that the song written and composed some 70 years ago, was sung at the start of the worship service. The Zulu folk song, Siyahamba, composed by Andries Van Tonder, is a popular song that I learned as a child in the United Methodist Church. It is considered a protest song and a song of hope. https://www.academia.edu/30914382/Siyahamba_a_well_known_South_African_song_with_a_little_known_pa
Zulu text
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’,
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’,
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’,
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwen-,
Khanyen’ kwenkhos’,
Siyahamba, hamba,
Siyahamba, hamba,
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwen-,
Khanyen’ kwenkhos’.
Siyahamba, hamba,
Siyahamba, hamba,
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen’ kwenkhos’
Acts 12:6-15
English translation
We are marching in the light of God,
We are marching in the light of God,
We are marching in the light of God,
We are marching in the light of,
The light of God,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching in the light of,
The light of God,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching in the light of God.
