A
Epiphany 2 BFC 2016
John 1:29-42
January
15, 2016
Tomorrow the children and youth of our public
schools will have a day off from school.
Will they know why? What will we
tell them about what the day is about?
What shall we tell them about the ministry and message of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.? Who was he? What did he preach? Was he a Christian? Was he, as many accused him of when he was
alive, a godless communist? Why is he
celebrated now? There are many, who
loved him and his teaching, who believe that Dr. King has been so domesticated
that he and his teaching are barely recognizable. What will we tell our children?
I’m not sure why I stayed in
Christianity. Maybe because my parents
attended church regularly. Or because my
pastor was like a second father for me. Intellectually,
though, I did not get a faith where Jesus died to take away my personal,
private sins. And the idea that once I
had accepted Christ into my life I would sin no more or that there were four
spiritual laws that did not present themselves as spiritual laws in the Bible I read added to my belief that I would
just never get it. I did not have the
adolescent self-esteem to believe that the Christianity adults and other peers
were teaching me might be intellectually empty.
The
book Strength to Love, a collection
of writings by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was my way back to Christianity. The hard and difficult sayings of
Christianity that seemed to be at the centerpiece of Christ’s life were not
only explained but being lived. Words
about the “poor” that I had always heard as, “Well, what he means by the poor
is . . . “ were actually about the
economically poor. Instead of
fabricating another heavenly and spiritual world that had little relevance to
flesh and blood reality, Dr. King seemed to be living out the gospel, dare I
say it, much more literally.
In
reading Strength to Love, I also had
a better understanding of why Jesus had been killed. Marcus Borg once said that if you had heard
back in the 1960s that Dr. King had been killed, you would not have assumed he
died in some hunting accident. And after
reading Strength to Love, at the end
of my high school years, I understood why King had been killed. King was in Memphis marching in solidarity
with the sanitation workers, had recently spoken out against the Viet Nam War,
and forever challenged white folk to imagine a table with black folk gathered
round.
Dr.
King made many folks spiritually uncomfortable, “comfort” being a strong value
in many churches.
Found in his
pocket after the assassination in Memphis was a list of “10 Commandments” he
planned to use in a speech to a large anti-war rally in New York on April 27,
1968. Perhaps the most important for our
time: “Thou shalt not believe in a
military victory. Thou shalt not believe
that the generals know best. Thou shalt
not believe the world supports the United States. Thou shalt not kill.”[1]
Dr. King recognized that
love of God walked hand in hand with love of neighbor and love of neighbor
required looking at not only personal morality, but the systems and structures,
the powers and the principalities. Abe’s
favorite quote, that helps him make sense of his faith is, “True compassion is
more than flinging a coin to a beggar.
It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs
restructuring.”
That restructuring needed to
happen regardless of who was elected President of the world’s sole super-power
on November 8th. But the
results of the election have set off a whole conversation on how we should
resist authoritarianism. Rose Marie
Berger, in the most recent issue of Sojourners
magazine, wrote of four different responses she has observed. The first is the ostrich. We bury our head in the sand. For white, male, straight folk, we can just
tune out the rhetoric because we know the cabinet appointees will safeguard our
interests. The second option is the spaniel. We fluff up our coat and appear clean and
eager on the doorstep of the new master.
We want to show our readiness for a new unity and hope that our behavior
might make the new master go easy on us.
The third option is the cockroach.
When the light comes on, we scatter from the street with our sign
saying, “Not my President” and hope the dark, obscure corners hide us. Finally, Berger writes, there is one more
option. This is the mosquito. “If you think you are too small to make a
difference,” says the Dali Lama, “try sleeping with the mosquito.” There is a reason to drain the swamp. Mosquitoes everywhere take small bites out of
an agenda through sanctuary faith communities, “deport me first” campaigns,
active bystander trainings, citizen oversight communities to prevent police
abuse. Mosquitos seem to have this
knowledge about how to get what is needed by showing up in numbers.[2]
With that kind of marching,
speaking, and table setting, King seemed to “get” what the cross meant to
Christianity. For a high school kid
about ready to leave Christianity, Jesus made sense because of Dr. King, and
Dr. King was infused with even more meaning because of Jesus.
In our continuing New
Testament scripture about the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist points at
Jesus and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world.” Such strong historical allusions
would be understood by the Jewish people.
“Lamb of God” refers to the lamb that is slain by the Hebrews, a
reminder of the violence as its blood is put on the doorposts of the Hebrews so
that the angel of death would pass over Hebrew homes. The angel of death takes all the first born of
the Egyptian sons—a reversal of Pharaoh’s declaration to kill all the Hebrew
male children. At every turn, God sought
to soften the heart of Pharaoh through non-violence. It was not to be. President Kennedy said, oft quoted by Dr.
King, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable.” The angel of
death comes to liberate the Hebrew people; while death-giving to all that
prevents their liberation.
So Jesus is the “Lamb of
God” who takes away the sin, defined by ancient story as political and economic
slavery and oppression. Jesus and his
relationship with his community point the way to liberation and unmask and lay
open all the violence and death brought by its systems and structures.
The story of the Lamb of
God and the cross remind us that, as Father Joseph Brown, priest and professor
at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, has said, symbols remind us that
hate has a face that needs to be remembered.[3] Symbolism and story were important during the
time of Jesus. John the Baptist
remembers for the Jewish people that we cannot have a polite discussion about
the Lamb of God. That story is about slavery
and oppression--suffering and death.
In our day, symbolism
and imagery are important. We must
remember images from Auschwitz and Dachau and are faithfully reminded of them
by our Jewish sisters and brothers. But
remembrance in our country, particularly when it comes to race, has always been
difficult. Father Brown puts it this
way: “America has always had a virus that is anti-historical.”[4]
That could not be any
more true as fragile, straight white folk again and again talk about their
victimization as if granting people equal rights, or equal protection under the
law, or equal opportunity somehow grants special privilege or access never afforded
to them. (in whiny voice) “It’s not
fair that we might have to make room for people to get the same rights,
protection, and opportunity that we have had had. So stop whining. Stop being a snowflake. Put on your big boy panties. The election is over. Quit asking for integrity and justice.”
Never was our
anti-historical virus been so evident as the reports of swastikas appearing
recently on places like the Rims. But
nooses appearing throughout our country about eight years ago, sweeping through
our country like a virus--nooses in Farmingdale and Roosevelt, nooses hung from
a schoolyard tree in Jena, Louisiana, nooses left for a black member of the
U.S. Coast Guard, nooses at New London, Connecticut, a noose left on the door
of a university professor’s door in New York City.[5] Do we get that such symbols go even beyond
swastikas—effectively symbols of public execution?
Dr. James Cone, professor
at Union Theological Seminary in New York, believes we in the United States
need to remember the imagery of the lynching tree to interpret the cross and
the cross to interpret the lynching tree.
Both are images of slavery and oppression, suffering, and death. The lynching tree reminds us that the cross
is not to be romanticized into some ethereal realm with no real life
meaning. We do not get past the lynching
tree by avoiding conflict and difficult conversations. Stony the road we trod. The cross reminds us that violence and death
do not have the final word. Love and
compassion are not defeated.[6] We
shall overcome.
Cone asks us,
“Historically and today, do we identify with the people who lynched and lynch
or do we identify with the people who were lynched and are being lynched?” If we cannot identify with the lynched, then
can we possibly identify with one who dies on a cross? Cone also observed that the cross was the
most dominant symbol in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cone said, “And the more difficult it became-- and it did
become difficult-- the more difficult it became, the more he [King] knew he was
going to be killed, the more he turned to the cross.”[7]
Though Strength
to Love was how I made sense of Christianity to stay within the church,
faith did not become any easier. Like
many Christians, sometimes I appear to be more uncomfortable with the cross
rather than turning toward it.[8] If anything, my faith and belief went from believing
the impossible things to what my beliefs compelled me to do and did my faith
have the courage to do as God called.
I’m pretty much a wuss that uses my preaching to buck my up my faith and
to speak my courage into existence. So
I’ll put it out there knowing that I probably embarrass myself by doing very
little to practice what I preach. I’ll
hope for God’s grace to keep walking, hoping that the faith and spirituality of
Dr. King might not only make sense intellectually but, eventually, in every last
red blood cell in my body.
Two years before his death, Dr. King went to one of
the worst neighborhoods in Chicago and told people of his faith and
spirituality, “I choose to identify with the underprivileged … I choose to
identify with the poor … I choose to give my life for the hungry … for those
who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity … I choose to live for
and with those for whom life is one long, desolate corridor with no exit sign.
This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little, I'm going that way.
If it means sacrifice, I'm going that way. And if it means dying for them, I'm
going that way, because I heard a voice saying, do something for others.”[9]
The gospels and the cross make a lot more sense in
the light of Dr. King, his life, and his teaching. But that doesn’t make the way any
easier. Full of love and compassion,
grace and mercy, God is going that way.
And we are invited. So tomorrow,
if you had to tell the children and the grandchildren of this church the meaning
of Dr. King, what would you say? How
will we celebrate? And are we going that
way?
If we are, I would counsel as Rose Marie Berger
does. Be a mosquito. Find each other. Swarm. Swarm.
Amen.
[1] Gar Alperovitz, “Beyond
the Dreamer,” Sojourners, January
2014, p. 24. All Ten Commandments were
stated by Correta Scott King and can be found here: Coretta Scott King, “Ten Commandments on Viet
Nam,” Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/corettascottkingvietnamcommandments.htm.
[2]
Rose Marie Berger,
“The Mosquito Manifesto,” Sojourners,
February 2017, p. 47.
[3] Fr. Joseph Brown, S.J., “Before
the State of Illinois Governor’s Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes,”
Town Meeting Proceedings, City of Carbondale City Council Chambers, October 12,
1999, p. 95.
[4] Brown, “Before the State,”
p. 99.
[6] Ibid.
[8] King criticized Christians
like me in his letter from the Birmingham
[9] Vincent Harding,
“Dangerous Spirituality,” Sojourners January/February
1999.
No comments:
Post a Comment