By now, most of you have heard about or saw the clip that went viral of Marvin Sapp while speaking at a church a year ago. While trying to collect an offering, he asks the ushers at the church to close the doors.
It wasn’t that he was asking for a lot of money; he was only asking for $20.00 from those sitting in the congregation, while at the same time, he was asking the preachers that were sitting in the pulpit, and I quote, “All y’all sitting up here, I need $100.00 from each one of y’all, that’s the price of being up here.”
Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m some place and somebody is trying to collect money or get my money, and the next thing I hear is, ‘close the doors’, it’s one of two things getting ready to jump-off, it’s either a shakedown or robbery.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Marvin is a bad guy nor do I think he was hustling. I think he, just like so many people in positions of leadership, just kind of get too far out in front of their skis and their mouth gets in gear when their brain is still in park. What I do know is that his actions were not the best advertisement for Black men to get involved in the church or certainly not a way to get them back involved in the church.
When you think about it, the interesting thing is as I said earlier, this happened over a year ago. So, we would have to ask ourselves why did this just become viral right now? I believe we can take a negative and turn it into something positive by opening some doors and let’s start with our minds.
Like many of you guys, I was raised in the church, but I had never had a high level of respect for the church. It was only until I came out here from Detroit and I first attended Ward AME Church, and I saw social justice Pastor (now Bishop) Frank Madison Reid III, who actually showed me there was a difference between personal prosperity and social justice. He opened the doors of my thinking about the Black church.
It was only when I read the autobiography of Malcolm X that I learned once he made his pilgrimage to Mecca that he opened up his mind, which allowed him to broaden his perspective and to see the value in collaborating with others outside of his own culture. It was only when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. opened up his mind that he was able to understand and say that a riot is the voice of the unheard.
For years I have worked in the area of HIV/AIDS trying to get our people into treatment and care. What you don’t know is that for years I hated gay people, and I felt justified in my hatred. When I was a little boy growing up back in Detroit, this guy hit on me and it scared me to death!
So, for years I carried hatred for homosexuals. It was only until I started working in HIV/AIDS that I learned that sick bastard that hit on that frighten little boy wasn’t gay, he was a pedophile and there is a difference whether you want to admit it or not.
Doing that work allowed me to open my mind and my heart, because I had to come to terms with the fact of do I love all Black people or just a certain group of Black people? I choose to love all Black people!
Is it a struggle? Hell yeah, especially when you’re being bombarded by negative imagery of us as a people in the media all day every day. And yes, even some of us collaborate in our own oppression, speaking pathology about our people not realizing we’re really just talking about ourselves.
Black people, let’s use this viral moment as an opportunity to open some doors, open the doors of kindness toward one another. Let’s open the door to a broader understanding of one another and we don’t have to agree on everything but if you’re Black, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve seen many of y’all make excuses for European Americans’ behavior. Try and have some measure of grace for your own people.
In the words of that great prophet, brother James Brown, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing. Open up the door, I’ll get it myself.”
Okay ushers, the doors of the church are now open!
