A Sankofa Moment? | July 20, 2025 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills

Knowing my help is coming from You

Your peace You give me in time of the storm

You are the source of my strength

You are the strength of my life

I lift my hands in total praise to You

You are the source of my strength

You are the strength of my life

I lift my hands in total praise to You

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen

You are the source of my strength

You are the strength of my life

 I lift my hands in total praise to You

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen

The opening words (and music) were sung at the burial for Dr. Dorsey Blake. His birthday is coming up next week and several people plan on going to the gravesite for contemplation and prayer. The recording of this song (shared online) was from the choir at Trinity United Church of Christ, led at the time by Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. an important colleague of Dr. Blake. Dr. Wright spoke here at Fellowship Church on May 24, 2009, when he also received the Howard Thurman Award. Dr. Wright, a powerful preacher, has been described by Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Sr. like this:

Dr. Wright allows his spirituality to crest like an ocean wave to a mysticism

that allows God to address the hearer through the biblical text.

This kind of preaching transforms lives.

This is the essence of a preacher who is able to speak to people’s needs…to touch people in their hearts and souls. Under Dr. Wright’s leadership the congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ grew to over 8,000. If you watch him preach, you will see the dynamic, living spirit of what W.E.B. Dubois termed, the Negro preacher. In Souls of Black Folks, Dubois wrote about his first experience with this preacher when he visited the South:

The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular eloquence.

The people moaned and fluttered…

Another description of such a preacher comes in the words of Dr. Howard Thurman as told to him by his grandmother, who had endured slavery, Nancy Ambrose. He wrote:

Once or twice a year, the slave master would permit a slave preacher from a neighboring plantation to come over to preach to his slaves. The slave preacher followed a long tradition {bringing} the sermon to a grand climax by a dramatization of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. But this preacher, when he had finished, would pause, his eyes scrutinizing every face in the congregation, and then he would tell them, “You are not niggers! You are not slaves! You are God’s children!” When my grandmother got to that part of her story, there would be a slight stiffening in her spine as we sucked in our breath. When she had finished, our spirits were restored.

A stiffening of the spine…a renewal of our spirits…this is what many of us are looking for in a worship experience. These examples of the slave preacher illustrate what it is like for a preacher to help people keep fresh before them the moments of their high resolve…that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests…they would not forget that to which their lives are committed. Thurman saw these moments as a deposit left by some former radiance. It is this radiance that Dr. Dorsey Blake helped us to access and what Jeremiah Wright has also done. They have accessed that living spirit connected across time to a people that were so creative…so audacious…so connected to the all-pervading presence of the Holy.

It was with these examples in my mind that I was reminded of a book by Dr. Wright, given to me by our board chair, Bryan Caston. It is a book of sermons entitled, What Makes You So Strong? I settled on a sermon entitled, What’s in This for Me? One of the passages that he based his message on was Isaiah 43:1-5 which in part reads:

I have called you by name and you are my own.

When you pass through deep waters, I am with you,

 When you pass through rivers, they will not sweep you away;

Walk through fire and you will not be scorched,

through flames and they will not burn you.

For I am the Lord your God…have no fear; for I am with you…

Dr. Wright emphasizes the ‘promise’ of these words…the promise that despite trials and tribulations…despite problems in our lives, God will be with us…each of us as a part of the living spirit…the all-pervading presence…the Great Spirit of life, evident in all creation…urging us on to Total Praise! Dr. Wright calls this the heavenly presence, pointing out that he does not want to lose the ability to refer to heaven. He says that there are many in his church who are intellectuals and people who come out of that strong left-wing African American Afrocentrism that get nervous when he talks about heaven. He tells them that he understands where they’re coming from but that he needs the idea of heaven.

I understand this viewpoint. Although I do not come from a strictly Christian view of spirituality, I also need heaven…the idea of Father Sky…of a sense of freedom and a view of the horizon. It provides a balance and a sanctuary that connects to our crown chakra…what Dr. Caroline Myss calls the spiritual connector. She says that the sacred truth of this chakra is live in the present moment. Isn’t this the message we have been hearing all around us? In order to connect to the spirit of life, we must focus on the current moment. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, Life is available only in the present moment. So, the idea of heaven is important. Not only is it a reminder of coming back to the present moment but the idea that our crown chakra also connects us…to our own body and to each other, for Thich Nhat Hanh continues by saying…we are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness…in life and in death, as we are said to be reunited with our loved ones in heaven.

It is this idea of heaven that Dr. Wright emphasized in his sermon and spoke about throughout his life. In his book, A Sankofa Moment in which he discusses the history of Trinity United Church of Christ, he describes the early history of his denomination and this particular church. This was an eye-opening experience for me as a white person with ancestors (presumably in heaven) who were part of one of the roots of the United Church of Christ. My ancestors, on both sides, were part of the Congregationalist Church. Wright describes this church as being at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement. I guess I hadn’t realized this before and it did, I admit, help me to stiffen my spine a bit.

Wright goes on in that book to discuss the history of the church…the trials and tribulations, as well as its stability under his leadership. Reading this, I was reminded of the beginnings of our own Beloved Community in the words of the Declaration, written at its founding:

The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples is a creative venture in interracial, intercultural, and interdenominational communion…

While it derives its inspiration primarily from the source of Hebrew-Christian thought and life, it affirms the validity of spiritual insight wherever found and seeks to recognize, understand, and appreciate every aspect of truth whatever the channel through which it comes…It recognizes and affirms that the God of Life and the God of Religion are one and the same, and that the normal relationship of people as children of…God is one of understanding, confidence and fellowship.

Reading this Declaration, hammered out by the founding members of our church, reminded me that we are, perhaps, again at a pivotal place in our own history…a kind of Sankofa Moment of our own. The Sankofa is a symbol of the Akan people of Africa expressed as a bird whose body is facing one direction and the head is turned in the opposite direction…teaching us that we cannot go forward without first understanding our past. It is, in other words, important to know where we came from…to honor it…to learn from it. I believe we have much to learn from our founding documents…indeed we still use them today, over 80 years later, in their revised forms. In this Sankofa moment of grief and perhaps reexamination of our roots…our vision as a congregation…including Dr. Dorsey Blake’s legacy, may we find our way forward…the way that all those who have come before, all those here in the present time and those yet to come can envision and work toward. May we follow the beams connecting us to heaven.

Beams of heaven as I go,

through the wilderness below,

guide my feet in peaceful ways,

turn my midnights into days.

When in the darkness I would grope,

faith always sees a star of hope,

and soon from all life's grief and danger

I shall be free someday.

Refrain:

I do not know how long 'twill be,

nor what the future holds for me,

but this I know: if Jesus leads me,

I shall get home someday. 

Harder yet may be the fight;

right may often yield to might;

wickedness a while may reign;

Satan's cause may seem to gain.

There is a God that rules above,

with hand of power and heart of love;

if I am right, he'll fight my battle,

I shall have peace someday.

(Refrain)