Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III Speech - 2022 Morehouse College Baccalaureate Service

the next voice you will hear at the podium is the prophetic voice of dr haynes thank you let me express my appreciation to president thomas for that extravagant and hyperbolic uh introduction i prayed that god would forgive him as he was engaging in his fabrications and that god would forgive me because i love the way he lied about me so thank you so much president thomas for your graciousness for your motto we salute and thank god for the continued legacy of leadership here at morehouse college under president thomas it was noted that we and believe in investing in black colleges at friendship west and so i could not do this without giving twenty five thousand dollars to morehouse college on behalf of myself and friendship i give that donation uh in honor of three more house men who have blessed my life tremendously my pastor dr amos c brown of third baptist church in san francisco california my beloved mentor dr harry s wright who was my dean of chapel at bishop college now defunct but never dead and of course the amazing dean of the chapel here at morehouse college the incomparable dr lawrence carter let me also say that's a down payment by september you will have an additional 25 thousand dollars which will make it 50 and by the next graduation another 50 because we want to give 100 000 to morehouse college on behalf of friendship west baptist church in dallas so thank you dan thank you so much thank you so now uh if this speech doesn't live up to uh the lies that were said about me by uh president thomas at least i got you with the money so thank you so much uh for what morehouse continues to do and let me also acknowledge in this moment the fact that there is a senator here in georgia that all of us claim y'all elected him but he is the senator for our country we thank god for my brother my friend reverend dr senator raphael warnock god bless you brother thank you thank you and we counting on y'all to do it again okay so i just had to drop that i just i i apologize this is not that moment but i had to drop that we need raphael warnock in this nation for such a time as this there's a wonderful passage of scripture found in second samuel chapter nine there in the 13th verse from the new living translation of the 11th century vowed hebrew masoretic text we find these words now mephibosheth who was crippled in both feet lived in jerusalem and every day he ate at the king's table and i want to use as a subject from which to share in these few moments i went from negative to positive i went from negative to positive arriving on a nightmare praying for a dream is a lament and luminous line from the magnificent mind and poetic brilliance of the late great maya angelou maya angelou delivered the poem entitled on the pulse of mourning during the 1993 inauguration of william jefferson clinton in this profound yes even prophetic poem maya angelou chronicled the history and hope of these yet to be united states to use her language and she refused to ignore the glaring contradiction of black people in this country maya angelou posited this profound poetic prophetic line i repeat it one more time when she said we arrived on a nightmare praying for a dream permit me to do a close reading of that line as it were because maya said we arrive the word arriving presupposes that this was not the beginning of our history in these united states of america arrived presupposes that bobby wright is on point when he says that as you if you begin your history in slavery you develop a slave mentality but maya angelou knows and knew that we had a history that was rich and resplendent even before we found ourselves chained and kidnapped and brought to these shores and participating in what baldwin referred to as the big lie listen my beloved brothers to what maya angelou was saying when she said we arrived arriving presupposes a game that we had a history and a story long before we were kidnapped and brought to these shores i'll see if i can shout you since you have yet to get it what maya was referencing was the fact that long before we were kidnapped and brought to these shores we were the descendants of the mighty dogan people who looked up and beheld the constellation of the stars in the heavens and before columbus got lost and copernicus had a telescope discerned that the earth was round and not flat i promise you we have a story before we arrived our story before we arrived testifies that we built the great libraries of alexandria that was considered a wonder of the world the great library in timbuktu we have a story before we arrive yes the assango people in congo they discovered a calculator and a bacchus as it were long before mathematics was something thought about by those in europe i'm just letting you know that long before we arrived there was greatness genius and grace that characterized our people and yet here is what maya angelou declared she said we arrived on a nightmare i hang out there homiletically arriving on a nightmare hang with me for just a moment because to arrive on a nightmare is a reflection poetically if you extrapolated of the fact that we arrived on the nightmare of the most evil expression of enslavement in the history of humanity that's a nightmare a nightmare that was continued with oak with almost 100 years of legalized racism oppression and second-class citizenship we arrived on a nightmare we arrived on a nightmare that continued even in the aftermath of the 64 civil rights bill and 65 voting rights bill we continue to deal with what eddie cloud morehouse man testifies as the value gap where there is a structured hierarchy in this nation we talk as it were of the wealth gap and the education gap but loud junior says there is a value gap where some are valued more than others we have arrived on a nightmare and that i believe is the testimony of one young young man by the name of mephibosheth in our hebrew bible passage the book lets us know that mephibosheth in chapter four at the age of five years old experiences a nightmare check out the nightmare the nightmare is his grandfather saul and daddy and and and and and father were killed in a war it was a violent war and the violent war snatched their lives and when his nurse found out or babysitter found out she got up running with mephibosheth in her arms and you know what happened chapter 4 says that she dropped him and when she dropped him he found himself please don't miss this crippled in both feet and because they did not have an affordable care act that took care of those with pre-existing conditions mephibosheth had to grow up watch it crippled in both feet i'm not even done because the book lets us know he ends up in a place called loader bar loaded bar i knew i was going to be sharing the back of lori but the mighty men of morehouse class of 22 so i had to do my homework and etymologically i unpacked the word loader bar in the hebrew bible and the book lets us know that loaded boy it literally means place of no pasture you missed it no pasture of course in biblical antiquity the economy was based on agriculture and so to live in a place with no pasture meant it was a place of no economic development it was a place of economic plundering dysfunction it was a place of no pasture so watch the story he arrives on a nightmare what is the nightmare the nightmare is that he was dropped by this woman his daddy and granddaddy have been killed by violence evidently they evidently mephibosheth can identify with kendrick lamar who dropped this week this luminous line in his album check out what kendrick lamar said kendrick kills me because kendrick said i come from a generation where murder is minor you missed your shout kendrick says we arrived on the nightmare of a generation that finds ourselves experiencing murder as so common that it has become minor and that is what mephibosheth grows up in mephibosheth can testify i began on a nightmare of negativity a nightmare of negativity but that's not the end of what maya says maya says we arrived on a nightmare but check out the spirituality that has characterized our journey in this country because even though we arrived on a nightmare we were praying for a dream in the midst of the nightmarish predicament of pain somehow we were able to envision possibilities beyond what this country wanted us to see we arrived on a nightmare but we were praying for a dream y'all still not getting it let me go ahead and give you my subject my subject ain't original with me i get it from the notorious b.i.g you know how big he threw it with biggie said damn right i like the life i live because i went from negative to positive i think that's the story of black folk in this country in general and more house men in particular our testimony is today damn right we like the life we live because we went from negative to positive arriving on a nightmare praying for a dream that's our story that's our story arriving on a nightmare yes we were enslaved but somehow out of slavery we gave birth to spirituals yes we experienced jim and jane crow segregation and second-class citizenship but out of that second-class citizenship we produced a first-class run of the harlem renaissance out of that second-class citizenship we gave birth to the naacp the national urban league i'm not done out of that second-class citizenship we gave birth to morehouse spelman clark and morris brown you see every time they tried to take us down we kept on rising up because damn right we like the life we live we went from negative to positive what does that say in our text i'm almost done the text makes me shout because mephibosheth and morehouse men testify we like the life we live because we went from negative to positive because at morehouse we got rescripted i'm about to shout re-scripted by the power of identity that fueled our sense of possibility preach freddie haynes i'm about to do that thing because i believe it's audrey lord who testifies that in this life i had to define myself for myself lest i be crunched into other people's fantasies and then eating alive you better know who you are because my pastor amos brown says if you don't know who you are other people will tell you who you are you've got to define yourself for yourself and here is what makes me shout in the scripture the text says that david the king at the beginning of chapter 9 i'm about to run out of here shouting because david the book lets us know is now king and he wants to know is there anybody from the house of my boy who i can show god's hesitant to god's loving kindness god's mercy god's goodness god's justice i want to show somebody out of the house of saul out of the house of my best friend i want to show somebody some hesitant that's the hebrew word there and when word gets to david that there is a grandson of saul and they referred to him as a as a lame person watch it he's defined by his dysfunction they don't call him by his name but the moment he meets david david calls him by name david says mephibosheth mephibosheth in the hebrew means exterminator of shame you didn't shout he's experienced the shame of being lame and yet his identity is exterminator of shame y'all still didn't shout he's been basically defined by his dysfunction but the text says david calls him by name because it's your identity that gives you a sense of possibility and when you've been rescripted by your identity you can live with the sense of possibility that will escort you to your date with destiny i'm trying not to rap but that's kind of fire right there and so look what happens my beloved brothers the text lets us know that he refers to him as mephibosheth i just knew this would get this class because y'all had me shouting a few months ago on social media i gotta give it back to you because you gave it to me the understanding or the story as it was told on social media is that mr president there was a delivery truck that had the nerve to pull up on the morehouse campus it came to the entrance of the morehouse campus and had on it here it is a confederate flag ain't that a trip they pulled up on the morehouse campus with the confederate flag a delivery truck delivering goods as it were but joe ratliff here's what happened some more house brothers saw the flag on the truck and here's what it said on twitter the language was this the language was g-t-f-o-o-h now i know your ears are very young and nice and naive so i won't repeat what the word said but i'll go ahead and remix it for you in case you're not ready to shout those more house brothers saw here it is a delivery truck carrying or waving a confederate flag and saying get the flag out of here i like that i think y'all to catch that now they said get the they said get the flag out of here but wait here's the shout the shout was the brothers looked at that delivery driver and said this is more house i got to go back and grab y'all because y'all not getting the metaphors that are jumping out at me making michelle the brother saw a delivery truck the delivery truck was bringing some goods to morehouse college but the brother said this is more house now g-t-f-o-o-h i'm gonna do it one more time because here's your shout the shout is the brothers put the identity of the school over the appetite for what the truck was delivering because the truck watched this was an essence saying i'm going to disrespect your heritage i'm going to dishonor this school and wave this confederate flag and the morehouse brothers said we ain't for sale we're not going to let you try to disrespect us because of what you're delivering to us this is more house y'all need to know that that made me shout because the brothers of morehouse in essence were saying this is more house the school of benjamin maze this is more house the school of martin king this is morehouse the school of julian bond this is morehouse the school of samuel l jackson spike lee joe this is morehouse the school of kevin johnson amos brown harry s white this is morehouse the school of who gloucester this is morehouse the school of senator raphael wartnot and you're not going to bring your confederate flag wave and delivery truck on this campus because we know who we are and all i'm saying more house class of 22 here's what y'all do take that morehouse anointing on up out of here when you graduate take it from wall street to main street and martin luther king boulevard and every time you see injustice say this is more house get that up out of here every time you see racism this is more house get that up out of here every time you see toxic masculinity this is more house get out of here every time you see anything that disrespects humanity just go ahead and refix it and say you ain't got it go home but you gotta get up [Applause] this is more house this is more house this is what america needs in this dark day we need a more house anointing that will tell anything that violates democracy this is more house now get up out of here hold on hold on he says he says your name is mephibosheth i'm rescripting you based on your identity so you can fulfill possibilities but but then i'm going to reposition you through public policy uh oh the text says king david now issues an executive order that's public policy what is public policy the public policy is that this man who's been broken comes from a line of people who bless this country set this country up and so what we're going to do is repair what was broken by a prior generation okay we're going to repair we're going to repair because brokenness happened in the past that still haunts him in the present and so i'm going to issue an executive order i'm going to have a public policy now that hooks the brother up and the text lets us know he moved from lodibar to jerusalem and every day eight at the king's table you didn't shout i'm not done because the text also says all the land that was owned by saul was now given back to saul's family member whose name is mephibosheth that means he got repaired he got land that his ancestors had cultivated he got land that his ancestors had grown and so as a consequence he's being repaired he's given land he's given employees to work that land and then he reaps here it is the dividends of the land where they are working and this is what gets me the text lets us know this is david we know david sweet singer of israel we know david whose what laudable lyrics bless us the lord is my shepherd i shall not want makes me lie down in the green pastures leaves me besides still what restores my soul we know david david theologically has lyrics that we love ah but david connects theology to anthropology and ensures it is structured in his sense of sociology okay i'm showing off my education because this is morehouse so so let me break that down theology what we think of god anthropology what we think of human beings sociology how we structure systems in light of our anthropology and our theology i'm not coming through i make it real plain so so last last august last august and i saw senator warnock there uh and and so i was in dc uh with bishop william barber and reverend jesse jackson reverend liz the o'haras and we were there protesting because i of course am from texas and uh they're in texas i've added an s on to uh to the suffix because of the policies that have been passed that are detrimental to democracy the policies that have been passed i think i'm a quote senator warnock senator warnock says some people don't want some people to vote and so in texas we've got some people who don't want some people to vote on top of that in texas we have men who want to control a woman's body bodily autonomy and so in texas we have that kind of nonsense going on and here's what happened we decided to protest we hit the streets in austin and then we went to washington dc and when i got to d.c i found out that we were scheduled to engage in civil disobedience and get arrested and so i said cool in the gang that's a great tradition i want to be a part of and so y'all i got arrested i can't wait to tell you all about it because i got arrested for protesting in washington d.c in the tradition of raphael warnock and martin king and john lewis i got arrested in washington d.c i wish y'all had seen me when they arrested me with the zip ties and this is last year they actually arrested people who were engaged in protesting now they didn't do it january 6 but somehow they found it within themselves to to so i got arrested i got arrested and when i got arrested y'all would love my my uh my mug shot my mug shot they said all right stand for your mug shot i went like this i got arrested i got arrested but but here's what shouts me the shout is when i got arrested those who were with us but were not getting arrested they began to chant this is what democracy looks like i said yeah made me feel good because democracy is not a spectator sport we've all got to get involved to make america what america should be this is what democracy looks like but then somebody recognized me and said no y'all that's pastor freddie haynes let's shift it and this was their chance they went from this is what democracy looks like too this is what theology looks like i ain't in church i'm in the streets and they said this is what theology looks like i'm not up preaching the word i'm getting arrested standing up for the meaning of democracy and they said this is what theology looks like i'm not singing a hymn in a magnificent sanctuary i'm getting arrested standing against voter suppression and the young folks said this is what theology looks like whatever else you want to discover if you are true to the god of the universe the god of the universe says don't you worship me if you're not going to work for me on behalf of those who cannot work for themselves because the god i serve is a god who so loved the world that god gave god son for all of us and not just some of us this is what theology looks like theology fights for justice theology stands up for righteousness theology is not what you do in church on sunday but how you live throughout the week for those who don't have for themselves because i dare say when america stands before the bar of justice god may well say to america i was hungry but you cut aid to dependent children i was thirsty and you contaminated water in communities of color like flint michigan i was a stranger and you dared to build a wall i was i was in prison and it was because of your prison industrial complex america's gonna say lord when did we do this and the lord will say in as much as you did it to the least of these my sisters and brothers you steward also unto me this is what theology looks like i'm done i've got to quit i've held y'all too long it got good to me here it is and i'm done the text says in the final analysis after you get rescripted and repositioned oh my god you get reset reset for a reservation that upgrades you mephibosheth er erday sat at the king's table and he was crippled in both feet you didn't shout okay every day mephibosheth was at the king's table crippled in both feet not loaded bar king's table in jerusalem crippled in both feet why do they have to keep bringing up his dysfunction well i did my homework and culturally in biblical antiquity when you sat at a table here it is it's gonna shout you you set what reclining your your your upper body was closest to the table your lower extremities were behind you and so every time they gathered at the king's table mephibosheth's dysfunction was behind him [Applause] you're going to shout in a moment every time they sat at the table they could not see his dysfunction because his dysfunction was now behind him and the good news is all of us got some negatives all of us have some dysfunction but isn't it good to know we serve a god who puts our dysfunction behind us if any man or woman be in christ jesus they are new creations old things have passed away all things are become new and y'all that's more house that's morehouse i was here in 2011 and and dean carter introduced me to the one who is now my youth pastor david malcolm magruder david malcolm magruder during the interview i asked him about his story his autobiography and this is what david malcolm magruder said dean carter he said morehouse gave me intellectual room to breathe because it was at morehouse i was exposed to a big brother like willie francois at morehouse i got connected with dean carter and i began to intellectually breathe he was being reset for what god was doing in his life and just this past fall he received his urn ph.d from cambridge university not in cambridge texas but in cambridge england why because at moore house he was reset and given the intellectual room to breathe he was reset for a reservation that upgraded him okay that that i thought that would get you so i'll just go ahead and testify i'm done here it is i'm done uh uh this was real good last november friendship west we have been shut down uh for the you know for the pandemic uh covet 19 and covet 1619 and so so we we we shut down and and so in november in november what we did we decided to have an outdoor worship drive-in style outdoor worship drive-in style and then after service people were greeting me and so one little girl she about seven years old she runs up to me she ain't trying to do no covet protocols she runs up to me she grabs me and she says pastor haynes i'm so happy to see you i had a bad week and i had no idea where mommy was bringing me this morning her mother now catches up to her out of breath and when a mother catches up to her out of breath she overhears her daughter saying to me i had a bad week past the hands i i don't like this cover stuff because i haven't been to church and this morning when she got me dressed i had no idea we were coming here but pastor once we got off of 20 on polk street and i looked and i saw that plus sign on top of the building it changed everything for me she said pastor when i saw that plus sign on top of the building it shifted everything y'all she used the word shifted when she saw the plus sign she experienced a shift her mother tries to correct her and says baby that's not a plus sign she said excuse her pastor she's learning math right now and so she thinks the cross is a plus sign i said don't correct her i think she's got something real good right there because the cross is a plus sign she just said she felt better once she saw the plus sign so whatever else the cross is i've discovered it's a plus sign because damn right i like the life i live i went from negative to positive positive is the plus sign it is a plus sign because my bible says he was wounded for our transgressions bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed it's a plus sign because the book says that god showed us god's love and that while we were yet sinners christ died for us i got to go old school it's a plus sign because alas and did my savior bleed and did my sovereign die would he devote that sacred head for such a person as i at the cross at the cross where i first saw the light and the burdens of my heart rolled away it was there by faith i received my sight and now i'm happy all the day because the cross is my plus sign so go ahead morehouse class of 22. i know you've had some negatives but the good news is the cross gives you the ultimate positive so take your positives to a minus world take your positives and give us a new understanding of masculinity take your positives and bring justice to a country where democracy finds itself in intensive care bring your positives to the school board where they are engaging in a run on ignorance talking about critical race theory and they can't spell critical race theory but you bring your positive to the school board bring your positive to the senate bring your positive to the house bring your positive and if folk want to know your testimony say listen it's like this damn right i like the life i live because i went from negative to positive peace [Applause] you

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Length: 37min 23sec (2243 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022