By Chinta Strausberg

With a stuffed lion in a cage resting by the altar, Father Michael L. Pfleger titled his Sunday sermon, “Captivity Ain’t Normal” warning his members that the lion’s captivity has become their entertainment to the benefit of others at their expense.

Before he began preaching, Pfleger called on those who had cancer but overcame that disease to come to the altar. A number of members stood around the altar and received prayer. He also welcomed Lt. Governor hopeful Paul Vallas and a group of University of Chicago divinity students.

Turning to  John 4:4: ^4 “You,dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world, Father Pfleger also turned to Romans 12:2 and John 8:36.

Pfleger told of how one of the members of the Saint Sabina Academy said she had not seen him attending the Universoul Circus. He explained after being hooked on an Animal Planet series and how great and strong the lion is but emphasized the lion is called the king of the jungle for a reason other than his size and strength.

A lady on the show said it was unnatural for a lion to be caged. “It really got to me,” said Pfleger who a week later went to the circus. “While I am watching the lion in the cage, I am getting more and more angry…, mad…hurt and uncomfortable about this lion at the circus.” Pfleger said that was all he could think about and has not been to a circus in the last three-years.

The woman on the show explained how “domestication was not natural for the lion…not a natural place for the lion. A lion is never comfortable in a cage,” said Pfleger. “That is why we often times see so many lions end up often times attacking their trainers… and perhaps the reason is because the lion is not comfortable in a cage.”

“It is interesting to me to see people want to see a lion locked in a cage but not go out in the wild and see the lion in its natural setting,” he said. “The woman said it’s not natural for a lion to be caged up.” She also said, “The lion’s captivity has become our entertainment.”

Pfleger realized that “somebody was benefiting and somebody was being entertained at the expense of the lion’s captivity. The like to see the lion walk around, situp on its legs….” But after all the tricks he was put back in the cage.

Referring to Donald Sterling, the former owner of the LA Clippers and his racist comment she made to his girlfriend that he did not want blacks coming to his game. “He did not want her hanging with all those blacks or bring all those blacks coming to his game.

“Interesting that he didn’t mind having blacks on his team…. He didn’t mind them sweating and jumping and running down the court, performing and entertaining all the people in the stand. He just didn’t’ want them in the stand watching the this performance.”

Pfleger said it is similar to the caged lion….”come out and perform, come out and entertain, come out and use your gift, but when the game’s over go back into the cage of America’s segregation. Go back into the cage of America’s racism. Go back into the cage of all the divided, crooked roads of the world we live and the imitations go back in your cage of unequal playing field. You may be equal on the court, but when you get off the court, go back into your cage.”

Pfleger said back in the 1960’s they had a saying to stay in your place and how Stokely Carmichael rejected that saying “That day is over…. Every place is my place.”

Pfleger urged members to read two books concerning the owners of NFL teams, “The $40million Slave” by William C. Rhoden and the “The New Plantation” by Billy Hawkins.

Pfleger said it was interesting the Rhoden calls the $40 million player a slave because “that was the slave owner mentality of days gone past. “The slave owner would call the slave out in the morning” because he needed their “gift, their talent…their strength labor” to harvest the field and to build the infrastructure of America.

“It was the slave that built the Capitol. It was the slave who built the White House…,” but at the end of the day Pfleger said the slaves were sent back to their slave house “and I’ll send somebody with something for you to eat.”

Pfleger told of his late son, Beronti, 32,  who was a great basketball player who attended Brother Rice High School. “He was a top scorer on the team.” His son told him when he has a great day everybody praised him but when he had a bad day, they called him the “n…..” word.

When Pfleger asked his son why didn’t he tell him and his son said, “Because, dad,you’re crazy. I knew what you would have done” and that he wanted to get through his last year of school. ”Not only were they pulling him out of using him for his gift, I’m paying them….” He warned parents to be careful where they send their sons in college.

“Don’t send your sons just any place..,” he warned. He told of how when his son was a senior in high school. He was being recruited by (basketball coach) Bobby Knight who was nicknamed “The General.”

“I told him my son has a gentle spirit. You are a mad man… You can’t have my son because you want him for what he can do on the court and I want him for what he will do for the rest of his life.

“There is a danger of having our sons drafted into this plantation of a multimillion universities who want their gifts, want their talents…but they don’t care about the development of their minds, their purpose, their destiny and their future.They just want to use them to make money off of them….”

To the universities, Pfleger said, “You got to stop making billions off the lives of our sons and daughters and then when they get hurt and they can’t play you don’t even pay their tuition anymore and you tell them you don’t want to be bothered with then anymore…. You can’t use our children like that,” he said.  “Maybe if they had to pay them, they would treat them a little bit better.”

But, Pfleger said it is not just universities that use the children in sports. He pointed to the music industry and the “plantation owners we call Inerscope…Universal…Sony who throw money at our kids and say we’ll keep giving you money if you just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep talking all this gangster talk. Keep doing all this drill. Keep people angry. Keep degrading our sisters and our mothers; keep using the "N" word. And then they put the "N" word to a beat…”

Pfleger said he recently went to a high school and heard one girl call another girl the“B” word. A stunned Pfleger said he stopped and said, “What the hell are you talking about.” When the girl told him, “That’s what we call each other. It’s cool.” Pfleger set her straight saying it gives others leeway to also call blacks the “N” word. “The “N” word wasn’t cool when you were being beaten and the "N" word is not cool when you see it to a beat today. The “N” word ain’t cool no where, no how, no time any place.”

“This mentality of caged in using your gifts and talents is not just an issue with the lion. It’s not just an issue slave trade” or sports “it’s an issue with the world in which we live today. Just like the circus owner, like the plantation owner and professional and entertainment owner, the enemy and the wickedness of this world benefits from and entertain off the captivity of other people,” he said.

“There are people who are benefiting and people who are making money off of yours and my captivity. People are benefiting from the captivity of violence. Violence is a big business in America.

“A whole lot of people’s jobs depend upon violence continuing. There may be a whole lot of folk who say they may want it to end, but they understand that money that corporate America is tied up with the violence in America and if it ends people will be out of a job.”

I fthat happens, Pfleger said there won’t be a need for as many lawyers, police, courtrooms, judges or probation officers. “People are benefiting off of mass incarceration.” That is why he gets angry with people like Senator Mark Kirk who wants to lock up one particular gang. “

However, Pfleger had some choice words for that plan. “Lock your butt off. You’re in a gang call Congress. You’re in a gang called Washington, D.C. You just wear suits and ties. Have people sit down to you, bow down to you and work for you but understand you got the biggest gang in town, brother; so lock your own butt up.”

“And then they want to lock them up in prisons that are now being privatized and one of the biggest investors is the gun industry that puts guns on the streets and then have people shooting lock the brother up and then make money off them brother in prison. No, you can’t do that no more. I ain’t staying in this cage.People are benefiting due to the captivity of people in poverty.

“The world is full of those who re making big money off of poverty,” said Pfleger.“I have a problem when somebody is running for governor of the state of Illinois who made $60 million last year but wants to end the minimum wage and wants to lower the minimum wage in the sate of Illinois.

“I got a problem with that. You make $60 million and you want to keep grandma who is working at Walmart’s 60 hours a week and still in poverty and you say she’s making too much…. Something’s wrong with you, brother,” Pfleger said referring to Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner.

“People are benefiting over the captivity of racism. There are a whole lot of people climbing up the ladder as long as they can keep some at the bottom of the ladder. There are a whole lot of people trying to keep he broken capitalism society going because the rich can get richer and the poor stay poorer the wayit is set up in this society. It’s evil and needs to be dismantled.”

Tot hose who may think he is a socialist, Pfleger said, “Maybe I am but I know what we have now ain’t working. People are benefiting off captivity and some neighborhoods look like Third World countries while other neighborhoods” are living in ease and beauty.

When violence happens in upscale communities, Pfleger said when interviewed some people say it should not occur there. “Like it’s supposed to happen down here.” Violence…killing, he said should not be tolerated anywhere.

“I’m glad we’re getting involved in Syria,” said Pfleger, “but I want us to get involved in Englewood, in Auburn Gresham, Lawndale and Roseland….yes, send somebody here because we got ISIS killing here. People are benefiting over bad schools and no jobs. People are benefiting over minds that are deteriorating while other minds are being formed and shaped to become the best…”

Pfleger said he’s glad some students go to Ivy League schools but others don’t have money to go to any schools for lack of funds. “And then we blamed them” for not getting an education. “There are people benefiting from somebody else’s captivity.”

Fore xample, Pfleger pointed to the gun industry. “People are getting rich selling guns and fight every single time when we try to say just make people responsible, get a universal background check. I don’t understand any candidate running for office anywhere you cannot be elected if you do not want to ban assault weapons and you do not want universal background checks. You cannot get elected in this city, in this state, this country. You deserve not to be elected,” he said.

“It’s time to come out of the cage,” said Pfleger. “People are even benefiting from the captivity of bad relationships. Folk who agree to be the other woman or the other man. You know they are married. You know they are with somebody, but you are the other, you just glad you’re glad to have somebody sometime. Really?

“That person is benefiting from calling or texting, or tweeting you saying ‘now.”  “They call it friends with benefits, and you think that’s OK because you’re just glad for that benefit for a moment soy ou’re in captivity and somebody is benefiting and being entertained by your captivity.

Pflege rquoted from Jesus in the book of Isaiah saying, “It’s time for the captives tobe set free. God did not intend for any of us to live in a cage. God did not create us to come in a cage, be taken out, paraded around in life, put then thrown back into the cage and say I’ll call you when I need you,” he said taking the stuffed lion out of the cage.

“Just because something becomes familiar does not mean it’s normal,” he bellowed“violence may become familiar but we can never allow it to become normal. Shooting and killing may have become familiar, but we must never allow it to become normal. Racism may be familiar…poverty may be familiar…sickness ain’t…sexism ain’t genderism ain’t…normal. Glass doors and glass ceilings ain’t normal…. It may become familiar to your life, but it’s not normal or natural.

“The bible says God has a plan for you...a future for you…. I have a divine plan, a divine destiny…. He calls me a holy nation… The apple of his eye…. He died for me on the cross because I am so valuable. Why would I allow anything put me in a cage”?

Father Pfleger told his members just as he couldn’t watch the lion in the cage at the circus, he is “uncomfortable with Christians who come to church week after week, get stirred up in the word, and they get challenged to move to a higher level and a higher place in their life and reach their destiny and their purpose and then they go back to their life experiences and their life experiences tell them get back in the cage. I don’t care what you heard in church, get back in the cage.….

“I know we all have cages that are trying to hold us back,” he said.  “Some are emotional. Some are spiritual, some spiritual; some are relational, some social…class…gender…. Some of us were born in cage-like circumstances. Some of have felt locked into generational curses trying to hold you in a cage and then have adults say to you (that) you are just like Joe….” He said you have to stand up and say, “I am not Joe…. I am myself.”

Referring to John 4:4, Pfleger said, “I got something in me the devil can’t mess with…that racism…prejudice and classism cannot mess with.  I believe once the Holy Ghost lives in you no matter what the enemy, what the society evil or structure is, no matter how many two-legged devils you got in your life, once the Holy Ghost lives in you here is something inside of you that keeps saying more when the world is saying less. There is something in you that says I am more than an over comer…that I can do all things that Christ has strengthen me. There is something inside of you that says yes I can when the devil says no you can’t.  The abundant life belongs to me,” he said.

“The reason I stand here week after week is not to entertain you,” said Pfleger.“Some people like to go to church to be entertained. I am not trying to entertain you. I am trying to equip you because when you walk out there hell is waiting for you. When you walk out of here, it’s your job is to change the universe around you where ever you are and where ever you live and who you come in contact with.

“I am not trying to entertain you nor be entertained by you,” he said. “I don’t come here because I’m Catholic and it’s a ritual or an obligation…. I ain’t here because of an obligation…. I come here for one purpose to feed the lion in you.”

Speaking to the University of Chicago divinity students, Pfleger told them, “If you want to understand your job. Your job is to not make people comfortable and your job is not to say I have to be careful what they say…they may leave the church. I’d rather have ten people in a storefront who are sold out than a mega church full of people clapping like they are on cocaine or something.

“I ain’t here to make nobody feel good. I’m here to make you mad so when you leave out of here you will send the devil back to hell from which he came. I don’t come here to make you feel good. I want you to make you go out there and do some good because this don’t mean nothing if it don’t change you when you walkout those doors…. I don’t come here to just stand and speak. I come here to feed the lion in you.

“When you walk out those doors, the world is going to try and put you back in a cage and make money, benefit off your captivity. I want you to keep feeding the lion until that lion rises up and roar to the point where you walk out of here and you roar. You roar at poverty. You roar at racism. You roar at inequality. You roar at injustices in the world.  I want to keep feeding you until you understand those things are not normal.Captivity ain’t normal. Poverty ain’t normal. Domestic violence ain’t normal.Allowing yourself to be disrespected, sickness, depression, low-self-esteem, racism ain’t normal,” he bellowed.

“I come to feed the lion in you until you get to the point that says, you know what, I’m coming out of this cage, and nobody putting me back in it,” Pfleger said taking the toy lion out of the cage and placing it in top of the altar then casting the cage aside.

He said “God call me to come out and stay out of the cage. Ain’t no sense in you keep coming to church and leave these doors and go back in your cage. You are in the wrong place. You better go and join somebody else’s church, but in this house if you are going to keep coming here, you are going to get free and when you are free anybody come up in your face and try to knock you back into captivity you say you got the wrong one. I ain’t the one. You see I know Jesus.I know who he is. And he came to set me free and I am free so you can’t put me back in the cage.”

Pfleger challenged them when they do that “do like the old cowboy movies go free somebody else on your journey,” he said as the choir sang, “No more shackles no more chains. I am free….”

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To listen and see Father Michael L. Pfleger’s Sunday, October 14, 2014, sermon,“Captivity Ain’t Normal,” please click on this link:http://www.saintsabina.org/worship/sermons/message/captivity-ain-t-normal.html

Having watched Animal World where the host said caging lions, putting them captivity, is not natural, Father Michael L. Pfleger hasn't been to a circus in three-years, but he had a message for those who who are experiencing racism, poverty, domestic violence,a victim of sports slavery, depression, the penal system...that it is NOT NATURAL and to come out of the cage. (All photos by Chinta Strausberg)

Father Pfleger said people don't belong in a cage.

“People are benefiting over the captivity of racism. There are a whole lot of people climbing up the ladder as long as they can keep some at the bottom of the ladder. There are a whole lot of people trying to keep he broken capitalism society going because the rich can get richer and the poor stay poorer the way it is set up in this society. It’s evil and needs to be dismantled.” To those who may think he is a socialist, Pfleger said, “Maybe I am but I know what we have now ain’t working. People are benefiting off captivity and some neighborhoods look like Third World countries while other neighborhoods” are living in ease and beauty.

“People are benefiting over the captivity of racism. There are a whole lot of people climbing up the ladder as long as they can keep some at the bottom of the ladder. There are a whole lot of people trying to keep he broken capitalism society going because the rich can get richer and the poor stay poorer the way it is set up in this society. It’s evil and needs to be dismantled.” To those who may think he is a socialist, Pfleger said, “Maybe I am but I know what we have now ain’t working. People are benefiting off captivity and some neighborhoods look like Third World countries while other neighborhoods” are living in ease and beauty.

Speaking to the University of Chicago divinity students, Pfleger told them, “If you want to understand your job. Your job is to not make people comfortable and your job is not to say I have to be careful what they say…they may leave the church. I’d rather have ten people in a storefront who are sold out than a mega church full of people clapping like they are on cocaine or something.

Father Pfleger puts lion on the altar telling his members to come out of the cage because captivity isn't natural.

“I come to feed the lion in you until you get to the point that says, you know what, I’m coming out of this cage, and nobody putting me back in it,” Pfleger said taking the toy lion out of the cage and placing it in top of the altar then casting the cage aside.

Father Pfleger challenged them when they do that “do like the old cowboy movies go free somebody else on your journey,” he said as the choir sang, “No more shackles no more chains. I am free….”