Father Pfleger leads entire church to murder site for prayer

Tells activist to “Leave my family alone”

 

By Chinta Strausberg

 

After preaching on the topic “Coming to Our Senses,” Saint Sabina’s Father Michael L. Pfleger Sunday led the entire church to 79^th and Throop to the scene of a recent murder where they stood where a man was gunned down and prayed for an end to violence especially in the Auburn-Gresham community.

Violence will end with the transformation of the mind and a willingness to clean up their spiritual temple. Pfleger said people have the power to make a change and to end co-dependency relationships that take them down the wrong road in life. The power for positive change, he said, is literally in their minds.

While standing outside of the Throop Food Mart at 79^th and Throop where 27-year-old Andrew Jackson was fatally shot late Saturday night and a 41-year-old man was wounded, Father Pfleger, flanked by hundreds of church members, said, “We want to bind up the spirit of violence, the shooting and the spirit of retaliation.”

Pointing to a pole where Jackson lay dead he says for three-hours in front of the Throop Food Mart, 1259 W. 79^th St., Pfleger said, “We want to bind up the retaliation spirit.” Ironically, three-weeks ago the owner of this store signed an agreement with Pfleger vowing to hire a black from the community and promised not to break any consumer laws.

Asking the crowd to face different directions, Pfleger said, “The bible says we have the power to bind up what we bound on earth is bound in heaven. What we loose on earth is loosed in heaven. How many believe we have that power? How many know it is stupid to have that power and not use it?”

On the count of three, Pfleger asked the men to kneel down and touch the ground near the site of the murder “and bind up the spirit of violence and retaliation.” He asked the crowd to face each direction to do the same. Pfleger, who gave the sign of the cross saying “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, lead a chorus of prayers that included pleas of “in the name of Jesus.”

As church members prayed, the grocery store clerk quietly came out and with head bowed placed two cases of water on the ground for the prayer warriors.

Referring to Genesis 4:9 when the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother”? Pfleger said, “Your brother’s blood cries out from the ground. Please, I beg you, don’t get immune, don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t get used to it…. Don’t let it consume you. Let it rise up in your righteous indignation. We can stop this.

“I believe with all my heart and soul that as Moses and Joshua were called to get away from Pharaoh,” he believes “just as they overcame that Pharaoh, I know we can overcome this Pharaoh. Don’t get weary…,” he said dismissing the church at the site of the murder scene.

Earlier in church, Pfleger announced the fatal shootings outside of the Throop Food Mart. He said because Saint Sabina has been so aggressive in marching against violence “the devil must be angry because we have drawn the line in the sand. We’re not going to tolerate it.”

Pfleger said he was at a retirement party for one of the Saint Sabina members when he received a text about the shooting. He rushed to the site “and saw a young man lying on the ground dead and another on his way to the hospital at a store we’ve been fighting….”

“I want the devil to understand that does not deter me. That pushes me. I’m determined, and we will stop it.” When asked by the media if this discouraged him, Pfleger responded, “It hurts me, but it’s impossible for the devil to discourage me. God is still God. If you’re a child of God, you are a prisoner of hope. The only way I will give up hope is that God tells me he ain’t God no more. That’s the only way I’ll give up hope.”

Saturday night, Pfleger said there was tremendous anger after the shootings and when several fights broke out, Pfleger said, “We want to let them know that retaliation is not acceptable. If you use a sword, you will perish by a sword and we are not going to accept retaliation. We want to send a message to them that retaliation is not acceptable.”

Preaching on Luke: 15:17-20 and the topic “Coming to Our Senses,” Pfleger said, “If we are ever going to live in the victory that we are called to God to live in and if we’re going to walk as the over-comers God has called us and destined us and made a way for us to be, then we’re going to have to think differently.

“Until we think differently, we are never going to act differently,” he said. “Until we change our thinking, we will never change our acting.”

Pfleger said every now and then you have to “step off this merry-go-round we call life and have a coming to our senses moment.” “It’s easy in a crazy world to think crazy and if you think crazy it’s only a matter of time before you start to act crazy.”

“Crazy is not just some conscious decision rather crazy is something that creeps in little by little, creeps in your thinking…your acting. If you’re honest, when it seeps in you a little bit, you ask yourself where did that come from”?

Pfleger said a woman once came to him and asked him to take a demon out of her. “I said, ‘Excuse me. If you brought up a demon in here, I need you to get out of here, now.’” He asked her if she was saved and told her “Can’t no demon be in you if God is already in you; so all you’ve accepted is some demon to come in and have some power of influence over you.” He said she can send that demon out of her but that she had allowed “some demon to set up house” within her.

“Too often we allow crazy to set up house inside of us,” said Pfleger. Referring to storms people go through and the challenges of living every day, Pfleger said, “when all that comes knocking at your door, the line between right thinking and wrong thinking gets real fuzzy, real unclear…. It’s important every now and then to stop and ask yourself how do I think about stuff…including yourself. What’s in your mind gets followed by your actions and becomes your behavior. “Behavior starts right up here,” he said pointing to his brain.

He said people must ask themselves how to deal with the crazy things in life. “Some of ya’ll ain’t that far from being locked up. You know how I know it because I’m not far from being locked up. There is stuff everybody is going through but the question is how do you face and get through it. Do I see myself and do I see my stuff in my life the way everybody else sees it or do I see it like God sees it”? “Who is sitting in the control room of your life and determine how you respond”?

Pfleger told of a so-called black activist, Queen Sister, who has infuriated hundreds of Pfleger supporters by attacking him on Facebook including making disparaging remarks about his dead sons, Jarvis Franklin and Beronti. “She’s been trying to get me upset. She’s been doing this for years. Usually I ignore her because she’s crazy…. She’s ban from public schools. Ald. (Carrie) Austin has a court case” coming up this week.

“But she (Queen Sister) went there…talking about my son and raising the question if I contributed to their deaths and got some insurance money from my sons. You crossed the line, now. My sons never had a paycheck let alone insurance…. Talk about me. Hate on me. Call me what ever you want, but leave my family alone. You cross the line when you start talking about my family.”

Pfleger said he was at the point where “Bobo” was coming out. “I told you there’s a Bobo in each of us. Don’t let Bobo away because you never know when you may need Bobo, and she brought Bobo out…. I was ready.” Pfleger said his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright text him quoting the late Illinois Appellate Court Justice R. Eugene Pincham saying “She has nothing to lose and you have everything to lose. Don’t go there.”

“It brought me back. When the devil pushes your buttons, you have to understand that devil has nothing to lose. He’s already a loser, but you have everything to lose; so watch who is on the control panel of your life.”

Paul, Pfleger said, “Do not be conformed by the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It’s time to come to our senses. Your mind is what will mess you up. Your mind will get confused and get crazy and your mind affects your behavior and can get you into a lot of stuff. It’s not the water around the boat that brings the boat down. It’s the water in the boat that makes it sink…. Get the water out of your boat,” he bellowed.

“You and I cannot allow stuff to get in our mind and control us,” he said. “Stop allowing your condition to control you. Condition is something you go through. It’s not who you are. Stop letting what you’re going through define who you are. You have to stand up in the boardroom of your life and say that is not who I am. I am better than this. I go through a valley. I don’t live in a valley.”

“Stop letting your history and your past control your present and your future,” he told the church. “Stop letting that history take root in your mind and try to mess with you telling you that’s who you are. That’s what you can do. No. That is what I was. That is not who I am. Don’t spend more time looking in your rear view mirror than you do your windshield. It’s just a little piece of yesterday. There is a whole windshield of the future waiting in front of me. Pay attention to your future. Don’t get stuck on your past.”

“Don’t let folk around you begin to define you,” Pfleger said. “The only person who has a right to define you is the one that made you.”

When he talks to “brothers in the street,” he asked them what else can he do? Pfleger has hired 500 young people for the summer yet there are more shootings in the community. He said one young man told him, “You don’t understand. Nobody told says we’re valuable to the world. The world has told me I don’t mean nothing. I am not worth nothing so I find my value out here in the street.”

Pfleger said, “Some of the shooting out here is not about gangs. It’s not about gang turf. It’s about who is the baddest this week. Some people are just shooting to have a name on the street on a corner you don’t own…to say that you’re somebody.”

Saturday night, Pfleger, who announced that three gangs have reportedly threatened his life though he’s trying to unify them. The shooting last Saturday night, he said, was one gang shooting one of its own members. The gangs, Pfleger said are “fragmented and broken up with one another because it’s not so much about drug dealing or tourism but who has the name on the street.

“I told this brother, ‘Sir. That does not get any value of who you are. You should have wake up value. You should get out of body knowing you are somebody. You don’t have to prove you to nobody certainly by taking a life. Who do you think you are when you’re sitting in a prison cell? You ain’t bad. You ain’t nobody if you got a gun. You’re a punk because you have a gun.”

“I’d rather be broke on a park bench and hold onto my character and to my integrity than to be up some place on a pedestal and not be respected by nobody,” said Pfleger. “Some folk find their identity by what they have… or whose on their arm” but when they lose that job or person “they crash.” “OK. Clean your house…. Isn’t that what the Prodigal son did?”

Pfleger explained as people serve “that stuff or person in your life,” that person becomes an idol…some person to complete your life…that person or job is your idol and when it’s gone your life collapse and falls on the ground because what you put all of your dependency on left you.”

He told of how the Prodigal Son “came to his senses” having once been wealthy but now living in a pigpen and eating pig food. “It’s about coming to your true self, not the perpetrated self, not the front we put on…. I feel so sad for people on these jobs or in relationships where they have to respond by saying what would my boss or spouse want me to say. You spend so much time trying to be what they want you to be you lose you altogether. We all have to come to ourselves to our true self. “

That is what the Prodigal Son realized…that he was a “broke ass dude,” said Pfleger apologizing for using the word ass.  “He was a broke dude with nothing sitting in a pig pen and all of a sudden he said, ‘hold up.’ Every now and then you have to look in the mirror and say ‘hold up a minute. This is not me. This is not who I am. This is not where birth me to be.’”

“Stop lowering the bar on who you accept yourself to be because God says I’m still up here. God says I called you to be famous and wonderfully made. I called you to be the apple of your eye.” God, he said, didn’t lower his standards on who you are so why did you lower your opinions of yourself.  Do not lower the bar on your life. You need to be who God called you to be. “Every now and think you have to say ‘hold up…and check ourselves.”

“It is sad when we get to a place in our lives where we become so arrogant in our actions we no longer check ourselves,” Pfleger said. Recalling the days when people not only checked themselves but each other. “We live in a day when we don’t check each other. We don’t even check ourselves.”

“Some of us our living in this Wizard of Oz age…. If you are waiting for the Wizard of Oz or you’re waiting for somebody to come riding in your life on a white horse and save you, you’re a fool. Ain’t nobody coming in and saving your life and place you in the big house; so if you’re waiting on the Wizard of Oz might as well give up now because it ain’t happening.

“You have to understand that the power to change yourself is inside of yourself,” said Pfleger. Saying he has learned the hard way, Pfleger said, “I cannot change how somebody perceives me, but I have control over how I perceive myself. You can’t change how anybody thinks about you, but you can control about how you think about yourself. Stop giving other people power over you,” he bellowed.

“Stop giving people power to name you, define you and control you because when you give somebody power over you, over your emotions, over your actions, over your thinking, you have become their slave,” Pfleger said. “Stop giving people power over you.” To those who say they didn’t give anyone power over them they just took it, Pfleger said that is not true.

“No. Can’t nobody make you do nothing…that you don’t decide to do.” When Pfleger talks to residents, he tells them, “can’t nothing happen on this block that you do not allow.”

And for those who say they are afraid to speak out about the violence, Pfleger answered, “then you’ve allowed fear to become your idol. When you lock yourself in your house, behind your blinds, behind your door, and you become afraid and you become into this fear that roams and rules over you, you have thrown faith out the window, let fear take throne of your life and now you live as a tool of the devil. “

Pfleger asked the church to repeat: “Can’t nobody control me unless I let them. I refuse to let anybody make me a slave to them. I refuse to become another human being’s slave; so I am taking back control of my life….. This is my life….

“We can’t keep running around telling people we’re Holy Ghost filled but we’re running from everybody and everything…. How are you going to say you’re Holy Ghost filled and you’re running from every two-legged devil that comes at them? The Holy Ghost ain’t afraid of nothing. If I’m Holy Ghost filled, who am I afraid of” The Lord has not given me a spirit of fear but of boldness and a sound mind. I ain’t afraid. I got a Holy Ghost inside of me,” he told the church.

“You have the power to change your circumstance…your situation. You have the power to come to your senses and come to yourself and change your life,” Pfleger said. “You don’t need Oprah to do it. You don’t need Dr. Phil to do it. You just need God to do it. Let God be God in your life.

“If you want to think with a sound mind and have right thinking, you need to stop your co-dependency behavior. Stop feeding co-dependency relationships. Stop doing and inviting what you say you don’t like.” Pfleger said grandma would say it this way: “If you stop putting out dog food, you’ll stop attracting dogs.

“What you’re setting out is what you are drawing, the attitude, your opinion, the way you present yourself, your presentation. What you are putting out and setting out is what you are drawing, and some stuff needs to be cleaned up so you stop drawing stuff you don’t want.”

Explaining further, Pfleger said one day he told his mother he found a roach in his room. His mother told him, “I told you to stop leaving food all around your room because if you have a dirty room, you will attract roaches. I told you to stop doing that.”

Pfleger told the church, “What you are leaving around…some of you all have a roach problem and it’s not in your physical house. It’s in your spiritual temple. Stop inviting stuff you say you don’t want. Clean up your room.”

“It is time for us to come to our senses. It’s time for us to come to our true self. It’s time for us to look at what’s around us and look what is sitting around us and look at where we are at now in our life,” said Pfleger. He’s hoping that you “have a hold up moment…and who is sitting at the control panel of your life.

“The control panel is not at your job. It’s not your family. The control of your life is between your two ears,” he said pointing to his brain. Referring to the book of Genesis, Pfleger said, “We are supposed to be rulers. You’re not supposed to be ruled. You’re supposed to be the rulers….” He said God put us here to “run it” and asked since that is the mission “why is it running you”?

Admitting he recently had a “come to my senses meeting,” Pfleger said given Queen Sister’s attacks on his dead sons and on him and the fact that he is still healing from their deaths, and while he’s trying to bring unity among three area gangs that have now targeted him for death…and he continues to get hate mail every day, he said “sometimes it weighs on you.”

To get away from the tension, the threats and the personal attacks against his family by Queen Sister, Pfleger said he went for a drive and ended up Michigan City in a forest preserve he says was not very smart. He cried and prayed.

There, he said God gave him “one of those ‘are you through’ moments. Pfleger said God told him “Well, number one. You’ve been trying to bring unity in the gangs and they all want to kill you. They are all together. You brought unity.”

Pfleger said then God asked, “Whose child are you”? “God drove a conviction in me that made me weep more than I wept about the problem. I said to God, ‘I repent. How dare me put them bigger than you. You are God who is sovereign and omnipotent. You are God who is almighty and can do all things. You are the he in me that is greater than the he in the world. That is when God said to me ‘Run it and stop running.’”

Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host. You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.