Week 16: #BringBackOurGirls

Scripture: 1 Samuel 30: 1-5

David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel.

#BringBackOurGirls

 Unless you have been living under a rock, the hashtag of which I have entitled the sermon is familiar to you. But, in case you are one of the few who have not heard about this campaign, I want to share with you the knowledge that many of us across the world share. In 2014, an Islamist militant group known as Boko Haram kidnapped approximately 276 school girls. Boko Haram whose name is translated as “Western education is a sin”, typically targets school-aged girls to become their sex slaves and homemakers. In their initial kidnapping, many of young girls were able to escape but some of them are still missing. The Bring Back Our Girls campaign was launched as a result to the inactivity of the Nigerian Government, after the learning of a warning given prior to the kidnapping. And even after the girls have been kidnapped there have still been no activity from the Nigerian government. So as the crowds rally, the only consensus was to bring back the girls.

Now, please forgive me from the very onset of this message, as I call these women “girls”. While they are all of feminine nature, I refer to them as girls in the sermon simply because of the comparison between them and the Nigerian girls.  It is unfortunate that parents and communities, who have entrusted their children, specifically their daughters, to be educated and protected in a safe space such as a school, only to find out the daughters have been kidnapped. We could go on for days fighting for those girls but what do we do about the girls who are lost and without regard in other countries? Not in the eastern hemisphere but what about the girls right here in the place we call home? While I love activism, I am a firm believer that charity begins at home. We have a responsibility to help bring back our girls. Our Advanced Society has become a vocal around, kidnapping and forcing our girls to be whoever and whatever we want them to be. It doesn’t matter what they have accomplished nor what their dreams or aspirations are, rather what we want of them and what we want them to do. Some of us may not see why this is such a significant matter for us to discuss, but allow me to Enlighten you.

The issue with America is, that unlike Nigeria, our girls are missing even though they’re standing right in front of us. African American women hold 66% of all doctorate degrees but still are overworked and underpaid. Still they are mistreated and abused.  They are not treated like their male counterparts when hired for similar positions. When they walk into an office people expect them to be a secretary, or the help. The reality is that we don’t often find Value in our girls. But, how can an entire community, built on the backs of Black Women, forget to acknowledge the people that have nurtured and cared of us, fought for us, motivated us, prayed for us and sacrificed their lives for us? These are our mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and friends. They help us when we need them most, but when they needed us to come and look for them we were too busy to get involved.

This is what is happening in the text today. David and his men left behind their women and children after attacking the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites. David’s decision to attack these people, in chapter 27, gave us the insight that they killed all of the people and took the cattle. In the process, they had left behind their women and children without any means of defense against those who would try to attack them. Isn’t it normal for people to want revenge? Why wouldn’t David consider the need to defend his people? Weren’t the girls important to him? Maybe David didn’t consider the safety of the girls because he had seemingly killed everyone who was in the opposing countries. Maybe he didn’t consider that there would be people who want to avenge the death of their own family members, to whom David caused much demise.

David was the King, who was supposed to ensure the safety of those who he ruled over. He would fight for their safety and defend them from threats both foreign and domestic but in this text he failed. He went and attacked a nation without the regard for their desire to have a revengeful attack on the women and children of his own Nation. David did not consider the repercussions that the women and children would have to face, as a result of his faulty leadership. But what then does David teach us about how we treat our girls? He teaches us that though men are the supposedly leaders of our Society, we often do not have the interest of our female counterparts at heart as we lead.  David is not in a remorseful for repetitive State because of the loss of the woman, but rather because his men are ready to kill him due to his unruly and faulty leadership.

·   How, my brothers, can we expect our women to follow us when our leadership causes them demise?

·  How, my brothers, are all women supposed to follow us when following us is what puts a Target on their Backs

·  How, my brother, should a woman feel comfortable about trusting you with her safety when her safety is not your priority?

David showed these women that his priority was achieving success through the Riches of others, and not taking care of them. Even if the women had a chance, I’m not sure they would have ever asked David for help. David might have been capable of leading their husbands, Brothers, father’s, family members, and Friends into battle but David was not good at protecting our girls. Some may disagree with me, but I would have to argue that there are more David's in this world than we wish to talk about. I’m not simply discussing that there are more David's in the sense of the name but rather in the attributes. There are more David who are preoccupied with their own occupational success to care about the oppression of the women that are very close to them. Too many David's are far too concerned with climbing up the political ladder at their places of employment to consider the reality that women are not receiving the fair wages. there are too many David’s in this world, spending too much of their time trying to impress a man of their army to realize that the women that God entrusted to him with are now gone. And finally the husbands stand up in the text and say, where are the girls?

David was so stressed because he made a bad decision that caused the girls to be in captivity. David’s men wanted to Stone him, as a means of punishment for putting their wives and children in jeopardy. David himself had lost his family including both of his wives: Ahinoam and Abigail. David, I know you had good intentions and you wanted to defeat a people who were seemingly our enemy even though they weren’t bothering us. And I know you didn’t mean to cause any problems, but now we’ve lost our girls. Because of poor leadership, we’ve lost our girls. Because of your selfish intentions, we’ve lost our girls. Because of your inadequacy as the protector of our people, we've lost our girls. But David, since YOU cause our women and children to be left in an unpatrolled or safe space, YOU need to go and get our girls. As a leader, you must have known that there was problem with leaving our women and children unprotected while we are in a foreign area. But since you didn’t take any of this into consideration, YOU, David, go get our girls.

This doesn’t suggest that there is no responsibility on the people who have lost their loved ones, but the leadership of our retrieval is found in the one who allowed them to get lost in the first place. I would argue that the Davidic Correlation to us today are the men of our society who do not fight for, speak up for, advocate for our female counterparts. Modern-Day David's live in to their privilege by suppressing, devaluing, isolating, limiting and silencing our women. No longer can we go on without our girls. Not only our boys, but Our girls are also the Future Leaders, Legislators, Makers and Shakers. So to all of the David's, whose carelessness and lack of self-esteem caused us to lose generations of our girls, I have one thing to ask of you: #BringBackOurGirls! Bring back our girls from the isolated cells, and silos that we have locked away to the limited possibilities of being the help. Bring back our Girls from the stereotypical prisons of being less than their male counterparts. Bring back our Girls from the cages that we’ve put them in, suggesting that they could not do anything more than be a homemaker. Bring back our Girls from the receptionist desk and put them in the corner office where they belong.

Our Girls have made some substantial shifts in the way we see the world today, and if we don’t begin to value them, there will be no women of the next generation to make some major shifts in the future. We need our Girls! And without us taking the time to bring them back:

·         There won’t be another Audre Lorde

·         There won’t be another Betty Shabazz

·         There won’t be another Coretta Scott-King

·         There won’t be another Daisy Bates

·         There won’t be another Ella Baker

·         There won’t be another Fannie Lou Hamer

·         There won’t be another Gwendolyn Brooks

·         There won’t be another Harriet Tubman

·         There won’t be another Ida B. Wells

·         There won’t be another Josephine Baker

·         There won’t be another Katherine Johnson

·         There won’t be another Lena Horne

·         There won’t be another Michelle Obama

·         There won’t be another Nina Mae McKinney

·         There won’t be another Oprah Winfrey

·         There won’t be another Patricia Bath

·         There won’t be another Queen Latifah

·         There won’t be another Rosa Parks

·         There won’t be another Sojourner Truth

·         There won’t be another Teresa Fry Brown

·         There won’t be another Ursula Burns

·         There won’t be another Venus Williams

·         There won’t be another Wil Gafney

·         There won’t be another Yasmin D. Philor

·         There won’t be another Zora Neale Hurston