In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen!
Some words from the book of the Psalms of David Chapter 90 and verse one, the Prayer of Moses:

‘Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations’…  And some may prefer a more modern version, which reads: ‘God you have been our refuge from generation to generation’.

It is good to be here this morning to share these few words of reflection.  Traveling with me from Nassau is my political assistant Calvin Brown, my Parliamentary Assistant Patrick Adderley.  I would just ask them to stand.

We have made this run before.  Not in this church of course but this is the third time that I have been invited to speak to a church during its normal Sunday morning convocation.   I am beginning to get teased by my colleagues that my vocation is heading in a different direction from politics perhaps into the clergy itself.  But that is what a Minister is in the truest sense, ministering to people wherever they are and wherever they can be found.  I am therefore, especially proud and honoured to have been asked to share these few words with you this morning.

I wish therefore to thank you Canon Barry for this kind invitation and thank the officers and members of this church.  It would be a serious lapse on my part if I did not also extend a grateful thanks to the Consul General of The Bahamas Alma Adams and some of her staff who join me this morning.

It is a special honour to be able to address the men of the parish.  In The Bahamas, much of my work in my constituency is aimed at helping men and boys discover themselves and their potential.  My aim is to help the mothers and wives support their boys just as the girls are supported and nurtured.  It is my view that this can be the only long term solution to the leadership problem that is coming down the pike with regard to men in both our countries.  For in fact, The Bahamas and the United States in its black communities suffer the same social pathologies as it relates to men.

Too many men are in jail.  I looked at our local newspapers yesterday, some 15 men between the ages of 30 and 40 are in custody for being involved in a drug conspiracy, in the prime of their lives, they now face the possibility of exile in the United States and long jail terms.

Too many boys don’t seem to have the energy to succeed.  Too many of us don’t set the right example. And so it is important that those of us who are in this generation begin a conscious effort just like the women’s movement did over the one hundred years of the 20th century to support the development of male leadership through special programmes of support.
 
But I do not want to leave the impression that there are not good men there in the world.  With all our worries, flaws and imperfections, we are here today.  And we will make our way in the world, remembering those words that ‘He has been our refuge or dwelling place in all generations’.

The prayer of Moses, Psalm 90 is most often used within the context of Anglican or Episcopal funerals.  It is a reflective prayer.  It is indeed a plea to God almost to confirm the facts which he sees before him.  Picture this, here is a man Moses who has been charged with the responsibility to lead a people out of the land of bondage in Egypt, through the wilderness wandering and into the Promised Land.  He can never please the people.  They start complaining that they want to go back because they had a better life in the land where they had been enslaved.  You can picture the human emotions involved where a man with all of the demands and stresses of his jobs must have in the quiet of the evening sat down and contemplated: just what have I gotten myself into?  Just what will happen to me and the people I lead?  It appears to me that the gravity of the task almost overwhelms him.

But the prayer begins with those words that set the scene, and provides the ultimate comfort, which is a comfort that is repeated in the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 28 and verses 17 to 20:

“And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth’.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you (and here is the important point that Jesus asserts and confirms from that prayer of Moses): and lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world.”

So in my view there can be no doubt of the reaching back to the previous generations and the fact that God has always been our refuge from generation to generation.  In that we have the assurance that nothing can go wrong.

The prayer of Moses continues at verse 2: “Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.”

There is Moses asking God to show him the way in a difficult period.  He recognizes that there is not a long time to get all of the work done.  He says in verse ten: “The days of our years are three score and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

I am reminded here today of my godfather Levi Gibson.  He is a relative, a cousin of the late rector of this parish Fr. Theodore Gibson, a great Bahamian son in this part of the vineyard, who led this congregation and this community.  Levi Gibson is today 90 years old, and I wish he were here this morning for you to see him, still up and active.

Our Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia Pratt is the prayer warrior of the Cabinet, and leads the Cabinet of The Bahamas in its weekly reflections before the meeting starts.  One day I brought Levi Gibson to the House of Assembly for my intervention in our country’s budget there.  And when I introduced him I talked about the fact that he was ninety years old.  I talked about the fact that he had come from humble beginnings where he had nothing but poverty in Long Island in the southern Bahamas but that he had risen up, with limited education and native wit to become a wealthy and influential man even in the time of racial discrimination in The Bahamas.  This brought rapturous applause from the members.  But ‘Mother’ Pratt as we call our Deputy Prime Minister said over all of our voices: “Give God the Glory! Give God the Glory!”

Moses says in his reflections in Verse 16: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children ”.

Verse 17: “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.”

And so as Mother Pratt says, give God the Glory.  And you say in your theme today To God be The Glory.

Why to him the glory?

We are a people who came to this part of the world as slaves.  Despised men and women, the daughters and sons of Africans, despised for our very selves, and yet look where he has brought us.

This year marks the 170th years since the abolition of slavery in The Bahamas.  It has been 139 years since the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States.  We all have along way to go but we have come quite far.

It is always therefore a source of some regret that we may be failing to effectively communicate how far we have come to the present generation and the role that they must play in continuing the struggle.  Have they bought into the vision of faith?  Do they know the Bible story of a people enslaved, that those who are the sons and daughters of slaves can free themselves and make much of themselves?

Karen Armstrong writing in her Book ‘In the Beginning’ tells how Joseph, despite the fact that he had been hard done by his family and friends knew the nature of letting bygones be bygones.  In other words, there can be no excuses in life.  There may be reasons from history but no excuses.  In fact Ms. Armstrong says that Joseph had two sons: Manasseh [He who makes me forget] and Ephraim [Double Fruit].

The generation of today have the examples here right here in their own country of men and women like you who sit in this congregation today who have struggled and overcome without excuses.  Like Canon Barry who always lets you know what his grandmother used to say to him.  Who raise their families, and provide food to eat on the table, and who have faith that in the future everything is just going to be all right.

There is in the Bible the story of Joseph who came as a slave to Egypt and yet was able to become the Prime Minister of Egypt.  Does it not sound like the story of some immigrants who came to this country from the Caribbean: you have Sidney Poitier and Colin Powell; sons of the Caribbean, sons and daughters in part of African slaves who are now in high positions throughout the land.  So it can be done.

In this generation think about Lennie Kravitz whose late mother Roxie Roker is a descendant of the island of Exuma in The Bahamas.

Our Prime Minister Perry Christie tells the story of Hester Argot and her three children brought to The Bahamas in 1804 after being intercepted on the way to Cuba from Haiti.  One of those children was Stephen Dillette who became our first Black Member of Parliament, and who was the grandfather of James Weldon Johnson, the author of the Negro National Anthem.

Then you will know also that W.E.B. Dubois had roots to the remote island of Rum Cay in The Bahamas and according to the late Dr. Cleveland Eneas passed though Nassau in 1960 on his way to Rum Cay to see his ancestral lands.

To God be the Glory!

Dr. Eneas writes in his 1986 work ‘Tuskegee Ra! Ra!’  Dr. Eneas was born in 1915 and says of his life:
“The circumstances under which I was born were not all stringent, but neither were they spectacular.  I was born in a remote section of a small town, on a small island in a small colony of Great Britain, that was virtually unknown to most of the world.  It was really a small colony, and at the time of my birth, it didn’t make an impact on any of the world happenings… My family could have been considered as being at the bottom of the upper stratum of the middle class Bahamian.  In comparison to the United States the only country we knew anything about, we were poor. We were of that ethnic grouping that was not highly regarded by much of the world, since we were descendants of the Africans who were brought over from that continent to be slaves… and yet in the genes of my father, there was the knowledge that education was the key which opened up the world of goodness to anybody who could acquire it.”

Dr. Eneas went on to become a dentist at Tuskegee Institute, founded in a generation before him by a son of Africa.  It is a great institution.  He became a leader in our civic life in The Bahamas.
To God be the glory!

I am here then to tell you the story of how you can make it.  To some it will be reaffirming the story of how you can make it.  I have talked about Levi Gibson and Fr. Theodore Gibson and Canon Barry.  In my time, I was inspired by yet another Anglican priest the late Archdeacon William Thompson.  Sidney Poitier and Colin Powell, Lenny Kravitz and W.E.B. Dubois.  I have spoken of Stephen Dillette, Cleveland Eneas and James Weldon Johnson.  All men.  All sons of Africa who are raised up to be great persons in their own right.

It goes to show, and it confirms that no matter the circumstances of our birth, we have a right to exist, we have a right to be here, we have a right to make our way in the world.  If we live by the principles which our forefathers have taught us, if we remember the lessons of history, then this generation, you boys and young men in the audience can join the pantheon of these African heroes.

Faith, prayer and works are the key to life’s successes.  I hope that I can inspire you young men and women to continue to struggle by my words today.  To dare to win.  You have a rich heritage.  To you in my generation, I say: “Keep on keeping on!”
 
Psalm 90, the prayer of Moses says:

“Lord, you have been our refuge from generation to generation…
Lord, thou hadst been our dwelling place in all generations”.

May God bless you all in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit Amen!