I’d like to welcome everybody … Welcome all the new Marathon members… to the experience of a lifetime… I need your hands up though… Let’s praise HIM.
“So God created man in his own image.” (Genesis 1 : 27) This is the essential Christian message which gets so mixed up in the minds of people. God created us in his own image. We intend to live as being created in the image of God, and everything we do in the church should be designed to help us live that way.
Something has happened to black people in these United States. We are not as we were a few years ago, a few months ago, a few weeks ago. Something has happened to us: not to America but to us, to the way we think, the way we fight, the way we work together. Personally, a change took place in me on March 31, 2019. The machinations of change were working in 2018, but for me, by 2019, I was a new man with a renewed sense of commitment to black life in America. The changes we have undergone since March 31, 2019 are the most important things that has ever happened in America.
What was it that changed within me? What was it that changed within all of us? What was that something? It is that fear is gone. Just a few years, months, weeks ago we were so different. Before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when a white southerner said, “Get off the sidewalk,” why did we get off? Because we were afraid of dying. The fear was a very elementary fear. It was not the fear of being brutalized, of being humiliated. Essentially, it was the fear of dying. Today we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. We are not afraid anymore. So, the white man has stopped saying it. Now he is afraid. Now he must redefine his relationship with us.
Why is Trump acting the way he is? Because he is afraid. The tables tide has turned in America. By 2042 at the earliest, there will be a non-white majority in America. That is already the case in California where the majority are non-white Latinos who speak Spanish. By 2050, there will be no turning back the hands of time. It will be too late for white Americans. It is already too late. We are not afraid.
Why is fear gone? Fear is gone essentially because we are in the process of becoming a Black Nation, a nation that is as real as if it had a capital, a Congress and a president. We as people are now dedicated to one purpose, freedom for black people. It is this which makes the difference. We didn’t understand what this was before because each of us functioned as an individual. We were afraid to fight because we felt that if we fought we would fight alone and we would die alone. It is hard to stand up and be a man when you are all by yourself. That is the way we are. The difference now is that we are coming together. We are no longer just individuals. We are becoming a Nation. You know that the rest of us are going to support you in every way we can. If you fight back against oppression, we are not going to turn our backs and run away. When you know that, you feel different. Now you are a part of a Nation, so fear is gone. Everything that is going on in America today stems from this basic fact. Once we were alone. Now we are together. We have changed.
Our Nation’s Constitution’s Preamble should read something to the effect: “We as black people, believe that a United States system that is committed to the practice of genocide, social degradation, the denial of political and cultural self-determination of black people, cannot reform itself. There must be revolutionary change.”
What is true about revolution in America is that without black people there isn’t any revolutionary movement in America. We are the revolution.
American blacks must also remember that there are some white people who are poor, who are exploited but they are white. There are some white people who are liberal, but they are white. There are some white people who are radical, but they are white. And in the final analysis all these white people stand together. We know this to be true. The black revolutionary resolve must be firm. We are committed.
We must agree that no white man, whatever he represents himself to be, is going to tell us what to do. This sentiment was echoed when Nipsey said: “I’ll be damned if I slave for some white crackers.”
We must agree that Black people are going to be free, and we are going to do it ourselves. This sentiment was echoed when Nipsey said: “Made my first mil’ on my own, I don’t need your help.”
What does it mean when we say, “Fear is gone”? It doesn’t mean that when you get into a situation you don’t have an emotional or visceral reaction. But that is not fear. The emotion, the adrenalin that is pumped into your body can lead you to either fight or flight. The body is ready for either one. Fear is determined by what you do with that energy. Don’t be ashamed if you react, if your pressure goes up, if your heart starts pumping. Just be sure you do the right thing. At work, when they begin to talk about “niggers” and you are supposed to be invisible, don’t worry if your heart begins to pump. What matters is, do you speak up, or do you just sit there and pretend not to hear?
We are a Black Nation in a white man’s world. Increasingly the white man’s world has become an enemy world, recognized as such, an enemy world from which we have been systematically excluded and which we now despise and reject. This sentiment was echoed when Nipsey said: “We are boxed out.” Nipsey himself went to the Taco Bell in his community ten times to get a job. They did not hire him. Boxed out. When we apply for jobs, they don’t hire us because we don’t speak Spanish. Boxed out.
They can’t exclude us anymore because we don’t want to be in their world. Now we are in our own world, our own Nation, so much so that sometimes we feel uncomfortable because we have to go out into their enemy world to work and to shop. We wish that we could stay with our own people all the time. When you get on the bus and you have an “Afro” or a “Natural” hair-do and the man stares, you think to yourself, “I don’t like the way he looks any more than he likes the way I look, and the way I look is just as beautiful to me as the way he looks is beautiful to him.”
You can’t exclude a man when he doesn’t want to come in. You can’t tell a man that he can’t marry your daughter when he doesn’t even want to spit in your face. It is a strange new world that we have created. It keeps the white man confused. He doesn’t know what to make of it.
We are a Black Nation. Yet America is set on a disaster course of conflict and violence. The black man cannot accept America as it is. The white man refuses to make the changes necessary for the black man to live in America with dignity and justice. There are two facts. We will not accept the conditions as they are, and the white man will not accept the changes which we demand. There is not solution except open conflict and violence. You don’t have to feel guilty about that, either. It is his fault, not ours. We say that we are created in the image of God – Black Jesus. He refuses to accept that – he shows us white Jesus. It is his fault, not ours.
Jazz musician John Coltrane has a church. They said he couldn’t be a God, so they limited him to sainthood. We all feel it deep down in our beings that there was something special about Nipsey, but we haven’t yet mustered the courage to call it out. YG said it. Jermaine Dupri said it. They called him Jesus. Nipsey, that is. They called Nipsey Jesus. I, personally, found myself in the desert of the country called Oman where I stared into the sky and witnessed a miracle. I saw lines in the sky that were not supposed to be there. Yet they were there. I knew it was a sign from God. It was clear to me. And this happened exactly seven days after the world lost Nipsey. We know him as Nipsey, but his birth name was Ermias, which meant GOD WILL RISE. What a coincidence! But, I don’t believe in coincidences. And those lines in the sky that I saw formed a cross! What a coincidence. Seven days after we lost Ermias and a cross appears in the sky. But, I don’t believe in coincidences.
It was even on the day that we lost Ermias that I saw the numbers 109 on the license plate of a truck. That morning I woke and got ready for work. I took a break to scroll through my Instagram feed when I noticed that many people had posted pictures of Nipsey Hussle. I wondered why he was trending. Then I scrolled to Amil’s page. Amil is a friend of our family. He and my sister were classmates. Amil keeps a low profile on social media. If he ever posts something, you can believe he had very good reason to do so. I knew he didn’t post photos often to Instagram, but he had posted a photo of Nipsey Hussle that day. The caption under his photo read, “Prayers up for Nipsey. A great man.” I sensed that this kind of message was reserved for somebody who had died. And it was so. Nipsey was no more in the physical form.
It was on that day that I no longer was afraid. I was proud of Nipsey’s accomplishments up until that day. Just the week before, I read the article in Forbes magazine, and I walked around that country the way a proud father would. I was proud to be from Los Angeles. I was proud to share in the success of our city. New York had Biggie and has Jay-Z. But, the west coast had Nipsey. I hoped for only great things for Nipsey. So, when he was taken from us, I felt a tremendous sense of loss. Everybody felt it. I was in the desert in my home sitting before the computer watching new report after news report on YouTube. Even on April 12th, I sat in my home for four hours watching the funerary ceremony.
Nipsey said: “If I die, ya’ll better ride for me.” I took those words to heart. It wasn’t that I wanted to ride for a gangbanger. No, I wanted to ride for a black man who was downed by a misguided black man. I wanted to ride for Nipsey because he inspired me. He demonstrated for me that having belief in yourself will allow you to overcome anything. Nipsey demonstrated what success means for me, but for all of us. And for that, Nipsey was a great man.
But, Nipsey, who was born Ermias wasn’t only a man with a mission on earth. He was a man who walked with God. His name, Ermias, is already a powerful coincidence. But, I don’t believe in coincidences. On the day that Ermias was taken from this world, I saw the number 109, and when I learned that in the Bible Romans 10:9 says: “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” I wondered what a coincidence that such a powerful verse matches those same numbers I saw the day we lost Ermias. But, I don’t believe in coincidences.
My faith was stirred. It had always been in tact, but it was stirred that day. That week. That month in the desert of Oman. Ermias had done that. If I wasn’t afraid then, I was truly unafraid after we lost Ermias. Something in me was activated. Seeing the cross in the sky one week later, and I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. It was confirmation. I wasn’t sad that the world lost Ermias. I knew Ermias’s mission on Earth was complete and that the Lord must be pleased with Ermias’s work. It was now time for Ermias to return to the essence to be with the Lord.
This church is dedicated to a Black Messiah. This church believes that the purpose of Christianity is to free Black people, to rid black people of injustice. This is what we believe.
Heavenly Father, we thank thee for the opportunity of worshipping in this house. We thank thee that we have this house to come together in. Be with us and help us to do those things that must be done. Let your spirit be in our midst and lead our brothers and sisters to feel the call to join together with us in this task of uniting our people. This we ask in the name of the Black Messiah, Jesus Christ. Amen.