When I was in seminary, I regularly lampooned
and directed sarcasm at the Bible, suggested that its moral authority meant
little to me as a Christian. I found
very little eternal meaning in its pages.
In the dreaded Middler Orals at Eden
Theological Seminary, the seminary student is brought before a panel of three
faculty members and quizzed and questioned on every theological issue under the
sun. One of the professors on my panel
knew of my disdain for Scripture and sought to bring that forward for the other
two faculty members to see. By that time
in seminary, I had decided I was not going to die in a ditch created for me by
someone else. At the time, my seminary
was at war with itself, and too often seminary professors took out the
differences of opinion they had with each other out on the students.
And I was changing in
seminary. I had one of the most gifted
New Testament professors, the foremost Gospel of Thomas scholar in the world,
who taught us the basics, encouraged critical insight, did not allow us to be
lazy with politically opportune translations, and someone who sparkled when we
investigated the text. Like Steve, I
began to delight in the work required to do Biblical investigation and find its
meaning. But during Middler Orals, I
certainly was not going to display the transition I was going through,
believing that would have conveyed theological weakness to at least one of my
professors who wanted my Biblical certainty.
And Steve, my New Testament Professor,
helped me even further when I would call him about a particular text for a
sermon—usually late on a Saturday night!
Here I was, calling my New Testament professor out of the blue, and he
was taking the time with me to look at the Scripture. It was like going through a mini-class of
Biblical CSI. I would hear Steve working
through his analysis over the phone, looking at the Scripture through four
different angles, and delighting in a new perspective or understanding he had
found right in that moment. This was
usually followed by me saying, “How am I supposed to preach THAT?” And Steve would respond, with a smile in his
voice, “Mike, my friend, that’s why they pay you the big money!”
I retained my critical eye for
Scripture, but I began to see real life truths that emerged from ancient stories
and mythologies. I began to see Biblical
authors working the tradition—passing it on, repeating it to remind people that
the story could be heard echoing into a new time, reshaping it and
reformulating it for their day. I saw a
deep tradition beginning to reveal itself to me.
One of those deep, deep stories had to do with the
prophets, the truth tellers to power.
Something courageous within the heart of prophets placed them as
intermediaries between God and the people.
The prophets experienced the pain and suffering of
God in a very real way. I think I too
often forget to relate that to you as a congregation, but relating the heart of
God is done so well by the Biblical prophets.
God’s heart is full of revelry and joy when people live in right
relationship with one another. The
prophets relate that God delights in us.
Like a small child, God is gleefully clapping hands, making music, and
singing along. At the same time, when
God witnesses us taking advantage of the most vulnerable, the prophets share
that God moans and grieves, openly weeping.
God’s heart is broken. Almost
like a young lover who sees her sweetheart in the arms of another, God feels
jilted and scorned by such behavior. So
the prophet is given the job of relating God’s busting-at-the-seams joy with
the people. Or God’s disappointment,
sorrow, and anger to challenge people in power—to communicate God’s joy or
pain.
But the prophet also, as intermediary, must relate
the pain of the people to God. The
people wonder, “Is God listening? Does
God care? Where is God? Why is God not present when God
promised? Why must our people
suffer? Why must our people go on living
in such pain?” And the prophet is, at
first, when called to respond to the pain of the people by God, somewhat
reluctant. But when immersed in the
struggle, feeling the pain the people feel, and wondering whether God’s
character is to be believed, the prophet snaps, and begins to ask the perennial
question: “How long, O God, how long? How long must your people suffer in pain and
degradation? How long must they go about
suffering the stinging blows of their oppressors? How long must they live in slavery, prison,
and torture while you sit idly by, O God?
Where is your providence and care for us now, O God? You promised.
And we see no evidence that you are active, alive, and up from your
slumber, keeping your promises. How
long, O God, how long?” The prophet first
wants to know if God is woke.
Finally, returning from a God who listens, attends
to, and answers prayer, the prophet communicates God’s hope against hope in the
midst of despair. The prophet seeing
with God’s eyes has more clarity than most, and envisions the coming new
day. The prophet returns from prayer
newly aware how they and their people are responsible for joining together with
God in making a new creation. And so the
prophet begins to describe the contours of the new creation so that the vivid
detail might goad us into collaborating with God to bring it about. The prophet communicates that God is active
and ready to act as God has done of old.
March 25, 1965, Montgomery, Alabama.
I come to say
to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the
hour, it will not be long, Because
"truth crushed to earth will rise again."
How long? Not
long, because "no lie can live forever."
How long? Not
long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
How long? Not
long:
Truth forever
on the scaffold,
Wrong forever
on the throne,
Yet that
scaffold sways the future,
And, behind
the dim unknown,
Standeth God
within the shadow,
Keeping watch
above God’s own.
How long? Not
long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward
justice.
How long? Not
long, because:
Mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; God is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
God has
loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
God’s truth
is marching on.
God has
sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
God is
sifting out the hearts of all before the judgment seat.
O, be swift,
my soul, to answer God! Be jubilant my feet!
Our God is
marching on.
Glory,
hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!
Glory,
hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!
God’s truth
is marching on.[1]
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
towards justice. This quote from Dr.
King is the sentiment expressed in our psalm for today. But . . . we acknowledge, as Ta-Nehisi Coates
said, the arc did not bend for so many of the people enslaved on the Middle
Passage, African-American communities segregated, lynched, or set on fire, Trayvon
Martin, or Tamir Rice, or Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, or George Foster.
It was Ibrahim X. Kendi, the director of the Boston
University Center for Antiracist Research, where he’s the Andrew W. Mellon
professor in the humanities, who, in remembering the longer arc of history,
reminded us that when African American people have exercised their right to
vote, have exercised their right to hold office, or have exercised their right
to be free, they have experienced a consistent push back of white supremacist
mob violence over the course of 400 years.
Professor Kendi points to what the super wealthy have done to all of
us—the disinheritance they have created, the pressure they have put on our
economic system to be like rats racing around for the fewer and fewer
resources. And many of us white folk who have suffered,
even more so during pandemic, had their anger educated that the source of their
suffering was not corporate elites but those Latinx invaders, those Black
anarchists, or even antifa protesting in Portland. You didn’t lose an election, they were
educated to believe, you had it stolen from you by African American voters in
Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and Detroit.
When that is repeated and hammered day after day, why wouldn’t they
believe it? Professor Kendi asked in
referencing the capitol insurrection “What did you think they were going to
do?”[2]
As people of faith in a largely white church, we
must take up the task of confrontational education and protest so that the
white supremacy abounding in this country is met and stemmed by an
other-hearted people who remember the courage of their faith ancestors and hold
the purveyors of violence accountable and will not stop until all God’s children
see themselves as sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins. We must rise to that task
Dr. King and that Psalmnist are not about
optimism. They are about a hope against
hope. There is no evidence but for God’s
character that a people ground in suffering is not God’s plan and purpose. Psalm
107 reminds us that God’s purposes are being worked out. God is active and moving. Providence is knowing that God is active and
moving on our behalf, particularly as we found ourselves enslaved, broken, or
economically destitute.
But hear these words very carefully. They are not spoken from a place of power and
privilege. For when these same words are
spoken from places of power and privilege, they become justification for
genocide and slaughter. God does not
trample out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored to declare
supremacy for one people over another.
No! That wrath is to rightfully
restore those who have had their own humanity taken from them, left broken and
hurting along the road of life, so that they might know God is their advocate
to restore and redeem them to human community.
That it is not in God’s character to leave us in
desolate places, hungry and thirsting.
So where we see people redeemed from such troubles in the world, we know
that God is at work.
Even those who end up in prison and hard labor from
their own actions and rebellion against God, when they cried to God, it was not
in God’s character to leave them in chains and behind bars. Where we see people freed from their chains
and brought forth into the light of day, we know enough to say that God is at
work.
Some people are caught in their own sinful ways and
find themselves caught up in destructive ways of being and close to death’s
door, and they wake up from their nightmare and call to God, and it is in God’s
character to forgive and heal. So where
we see people delivered from their own paths of self-destruction and healed, we
know for certain to say God is at work.
Repeating over and over again, as a mantra, Psalm
107 tells us that where the oppressed are liberated, the hungry are filled,
creation is renewed, the needy raised up, and the politically powerful brought
low, God’s purposes are being worked out.
It is not so much that God does these things through His power but
rather through Her persistence and endurance, acting in love along that long
moral arc so that right relationships are built in our personal lives, in our
families, in our schools, in our community institutions, in the systems and
structures of our government, and throughout our world.
It is in the nature of God’s character, that God’s
providence is found in His persistence and not in Her power. That is the claim of Psalm 107, that God
wills and wants our liberation from anything that would destroy us, even if
what would destroy us is self-inflicted, so that we might experience joy.
Can we possibly hear the good news that God wills
and wants and works hard at delivering us from what would enslave us from the
outside and what would enslave us from the inside as well?
This is what those Congregationalists believed, one
of the historical denominations that came together to form our beloved United
Church of Christ, against all odds, when slavery was still the norm in our
country and a group of would-be-slaves revolted, took over the ship, La Amistad, and turned the ship back
toward Africa during the day. At night,
the Cubans who had formerly been steering the ship, reversed course until the
zigzagging ship landed in Long Island.
The Africans were jailed and charged with piracy and murder. Congregationalist Lewis Tappan headed up
the Amistad Committee, that was the precursor to our present-day United Church
of Christ Global Ministries Board. It is the courageous history in Jackson of
abolitionist papers like the American Freeman and the Sentinel and Jackson’s
history in the Underground Railroad.
In God’s great providence, not in power over, but in
persistence and endurance, this church has been part of the long moral arc that
bends toward justice.
And I think that continues to be. That Biblical story I have come to love so
well, the prophet who cries to God, “How long, O God, how long?” is repeated in
age after age. Let us as a church in
matters of justice, continue to join with those in our local community and
throughout our world, to say for another year, “How long? Not long.” for we know God’s providence and
purpose are being worked out through St. John’s United Church of Christ. We communicate through our many and varied
ministries and missions that the arc of the moral universe is long and that we
believe God intends joy for the people in our church community, for those in Jackson,
in Michigan, and for all of God’s creation.
How long? Not long.
The Bible teaches that persistently and with
endurance, God’s Truth is marching on.
And we are marching in the light of that same God. Glory.
Hallelujah. Glory! Hallelujah!
And thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] http://www.mlkonline.net/ourgod.html . I have edited the speech to make language for
the speech divinity gender neutral and language for humanity inclusive and
expansive. lThe video of this portion of
Dr. King’s speech can be found at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAYITODNvlM
[2] “Ibram X. Kendi &
Keisha Blain on Impeachment, White Supremacist Violence & Holding Trump Accountable,”
Democracy Now! February 10, 2021,
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/2/10/ibram_x_kendi_keisha_blain_impeachment,
