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On Our Guard

This is another selection from the 1909 sermon of Francis J. Grimké (1850–1937) to the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, a prominent African American congregation. Speaking of the necessary foundations for national unity, his sermon text was 1 Corinthians 16:13 (KJV)—“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

“In the passage of Scripture read in our hearing at the beginning of this discourse, three things we are exhorted to do, and must do, if we are ever to secure our rights in this land: (1) We are exhorted to be watchful. ‘Watch ye,’ is the exhortation. We are to be on our guard. ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’ There are enemies ever about us and they are ever plotting our ruin—enemies within the race and without it. We have got to live in the consciousness of this fact. If we assume that all is well, that there is nothing to fear, and so relax our vigilance, so cease to be watchful, we need not be surprised if our enemies get the better of us, if we are worsted in the conflict.

“(2) We are exhorted to stand fast in the faith. In the faith we feel that, as American citizens, we are entitled to the same rights and privileges as other citizens of the Republic. In this faith we are to stand, and stand fast. We are not to give it up; we are not to allow anyone, white or black, friend or foe, to induce us to retreat a single inch from this position."

“(3) We are exhorted to quit ourselves like men, to be strong. And by this, I understand, is meant that we are to stand up in a manly way for our rights; that we are to seek by every honorable means the full enjoyment of our rights …"

“If justice sleeps in this land, let it not be because we have helped to lull it to sleep by our silence, our indifference; let it not be from lack of effort on our part to arouse it from its slumbers. Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, while they were crying to the god, “Peradventure he sleepeth.” And it may be that he was asleep; but it was not their fault that he continued asleep, for they kept up a continual uproar about his altar [1 Kings 18:27–28]. And so here, sleeping Justice in this land may go on slumbering, but let us see to it that it is due to no fault of ours. Even Balaam’s ass cried out in protest when smitten by his brutal master [Numbers 22:28], and God gave him the power to cry out, endowed him miraculously with speech in which to voice his protest.”

Reflection

Francis Grimké was applying 1 Corinthians 16:13 to injustices and civic concerns in his time. How do you hear his exhortation and this biblical text in your contexts? How is the passage affected by the next verse, included in today’s Bible reading?