2nd
Sunday after the Epiphany; Yr. A, January 19, 2014
Isaiah 49:1-7;
Psalm 40:1-12;
MLK “The Power of
Nonviolence” (1957); John 1:29-42
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
At
Strong, when I was there for my CPE observation last week, they were discussing
vacation time that was coming up, and one chaplain said, “I want Monday.” The supervisor said, “We work on Monday.” At first, I thought she meant she wanted
Monday during the two weeks that were allotted to them for vacation. But then I looked at her. She’s African American. She wanted Monday, this Monday, Martin Luther
King Day. Tomorrow, many of us have a
day off from our regular responsibilities.
Many of us do, but not all of
us. Perhaps not even those who might
find the festivities of the day most significant, and appreciate it most.
Last
year I attended the martin Luther King, Jr. event at the Eastman Theater. The event was well attended and clergy of all
kinds were invited to attend and process.
It was my first time, and I was interested to see who I would know.
I arrived on time, and stood mingling with
others who had gathered, almost all were African American. No others were Episcopal clergy. We processed in at the start of the
celebration, and sat together at the front.
To my surprise, about an hour into the event they invited all the clergy
to come up on stage and introduce themselves and name their church. When I announced St. Stephen’s I heard a few
shouts from the balcony. It made me
smile.
A
few weeks later, Precious Bedell, a member of Two Saints saw me, and said, “Did
you hear us cheer? At the Martin Luther
King event? Did you hear us? That was me!”
Of course, I had and I told her so.
Her response has stuck with me.
“You don’t know how much that means to us. To have you there.” There were only a handful of white pastors
there, in the midst of many more black faces.
It means so much to have you there.
This year, I can’t
go, because I will be at the hospital with the chaplains. We work that day. I’ve been wondering how many African
Americans in our city have to work, instead of celebrating. How many don’t have the opportunity to
celebrate a man who encapsulates a movement that gave many of them access to
the liberties they enjoy in this country.
It means so much to us. I keep
trying to think of a parallel holiday that might have the same significance for
the rest of us, and strangely, the closest thing I can come up with is Gay
Pride Day. It seems a shame to me, that
we don’t give the Martin Luther King holiday the same respect that we give
President’s Day or the Fourth of July, because for many of our African American
brothers and sisters, it’s that important. I think it’s something like a celebration of their
independence.
The
civil rights movement ushered in a new era for us as Americans. It launched us into 50 years of rapid social
change. The justice fighters, those like
Martin Luther King, Jr., did it without physical violence. They did it with the power of the Spirit.
As Christians we
accept our call to be justice makers through our baptismal covenant. In that, we become the sharp sword and the polished
arrow that Isaiah talked about. We
are God’s tools for justice, but it comes with a cost. John the Baptist sees Jesus and points him
out to his disciples. He says, “Here is the Lamb of God”! Twice he refers to Jesus as the Lamb, the meat for the sacrifice, a
reference to the crucifixion and, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, the cost of discipleship. We all know that being a prophet is dangerous
business, don’t we? That ‘s why we
sometimes tread lightly on issues that we know will provoke others. We want to get along. We don’t talk about some things in mixed
company. We don’t want to have a fight
with people we love.
But Dr. King knew
that love could handle that. Justice
wasn’t about one group winning over and against another, it was about everyone winning. It was about living in love. Paul Tillich, a 20th century
theologian, wrote a small book called Love,
Power and Justice.[1] In it he talked about the relationship
between the three. Tillich identifies
several kinds of justice, distributive justice (giving to each his/her due),
retributive justice (repaying in proportion to what has been lost) and transformative or creative justice. Tillich
claims that the first two are proportional in nature and are really about an
exchange of goods or punishment. The
third form is different. It’s not
proportional, in fact, it cannot even be calculated before the outcome is
decided, because the justice comes about when one being meets another, when
power meets power. It’s worked out in
the presence of reconciling love.
As a pastor, I
think Dr. King knew that when he said, “Another thing that we
had to get over was the fact that the nonviolent resister does not seek to
humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding.
[This was always a cry that we had to set before people that] our aim is not to
defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win
the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the
past.” Dr. King wanted to make friends with his
opponents. He wanted to win them over,
not crush them into dust. He understood
that it was the system that allowed injustice to flourish, and taking sides
that turned potential friends into enemies.
The kind of servant
leadership that Jesus modeled included a lot fraternizing with the enemy, the
outsider and the undesirable … lepers, the demon possessed, tax collectors, and
women, even prostitutes. Jesus showed us
that power with others, is much more
effective in building community then power over
others. Dr. King knew that demonizing
people wasn’t going to lead to a transformed world. Humiliation would lead to a world that in the
end looked strangely like the one that was overthrown … but with roles
reversed. Those on the bottom would now
be on top, but they would be acting just like those they sought to overthrow… perpetuating
a cycle of injustice. But Isaiah is
clear that justice is meant for all, not just some.
Love is the power that
can break that cycle. Transforming
justice takes spiritual strength and courage because it demands that we stand with
love in the midst of conflict and sometimes even hate, holding onto mercy and forgiveness as the sharp
swords and polished arrows that they are, resisting the urge to give into
violence, whether physical or emotional.
It’s spiritual warfare we’re talking about. As Dr. King said, it’s a struggle between the forces of light and the
forces of darkness. Creative justice
comes about through relationship, by staying in the game with one another, by
making the focus of the fight about living in loving relationship.
When I was
younger, my brothers and sisters and I used to fight with one another. I’m sure that’s a shock to those of you who
grew up with siblings. You probably NEVR
fought with each other, right?
Wrong. In families as in
communities differences crop up and we have to find ways to resolve them. When I was a child, we often tried to solve
them with force, by punching and hitting.
Screaming at each other was usually involved as well. One day, my brother and I were arguing about
what show to watch. He said that I had
gotten my way the day before. It was his
turn. Of course, I was older, and being
older usually counted for something in an argument. Instead of chasing us around the house with
her ruler and sending us both off to different rooms as punishment, Mom
escorted us to the sofa. “You two sit
here until you work it out.” Those words
felt like death to me. In case we
hadn’t caught the drift of what was supposed to happen, she added in a stern
voice, “And no hitting.”
Sit next to him
and work it out? What was she
thinking? I was so angry with him that I
could have spit nails. If she had sent
me to my room, I would have stewed for a while, but then picked up a book or
something to occupy myself. Eventually
Mom would have come up and ended my sentence.
My brother and I still wouldn’t have resolved anything, and chances are
we’d be fighting about TV control within another few hours.
The sofa strategy
changed things. We sat there not talking
for quite a little while before we both realized that as long as we sat there,
neither of us we getting to watch any TV.
In a weird way, working it out meant that we both won. We’d both get released from the purgatory of
the sofa, and at least we got to watch something. She hadn’t taken away the TV altogether, just
until we had “worked it out”. Sitting on
that sofa taught me something. Staying
in relationship, talking about the things we disagree about actually produces
something worth having … freedom. It’s
kind of ironic that we have to recognize our own captivity before we can fully
appreciate the value of freedom. Dr.
King knew that unjust systems hold us all captive. He wanted us all to be free. At some level, I think that’s what we all
want, isn’t it? Freedom. Security.
Love.
I’m sorry my friend
will not get to celebrate that freedom with other African Americans on Monday,
but I will certainly touch base with her on that day … as we both go through
the day as if it were like any other work day.
We can celebrate it together.
Freedom doesn’t come free … we have to work for it, sometimes for
lifetimes … but it’s worth it. Love will
be our weapon, and faith our shield.
Jesus taught us that.
Amen.
[1] Tillich, Paul. Love, Power, and Justice, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1957. Much
of this is paraphrased from pp.62-66.
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