Sermon, Second Sunday of Easter, "Necessary doubt and doubt that does violence"

 

C Easter 2 Pilg 2022

John 20:19-31

April 24, 2022

           The best preacher I have ever heard in person was Rev. Dr. James Forbes. When I heard him preach at the national meeting of the United Church of Christ General Synod at Kansas City in 2001, I laughed and cried all at the same time.  Moved . . . I was.  When I heard him preach at his home church, Riverside Cathedral in New York City, it was for this Sunday in the liturgical year probably close to 30 years ago.  He used the “doubting Thomas” story we have in Scripture today, its proximity to Earth Day, to talk about climate change and remind people that some folks will have to be brought along, not everybody has seen the light as many had.  Others will need to have not only evidence but personal experience of touching and seeing to join in the work of stemming climate change.  That was over 30 years ago!

           We come from a faith tradition that recognizes doubt as an important part of an examined life.  We ask critical questions of ourselves.  We necessarily challenge authority and power with doubts and questions.  The Risen Christ even allows doubting Thomas to examine his wounds so that he can make his own proclamation of the resurrection.

           But there is another form of doubt that seeks to unseat confidence of the examined life in favor of the unexamined miraculous, the uncritical claims to power, and for keeping a story being revealed to us under wraps.  Too often that kind of doubt is in favor of a romantic past.  This doubt is about flooding the market with dollars and influence to allow the powerful to continue along a path that harms, destroys, and does violence.  Advertisements, paid endorsements and movements, all show up to make us believe that the movement of the divine comes from the devil.

           Last year, several members of the congregation and I came together a movie inspired by Naomi Oreskes’ book, Merchants of Doubt.  The basic premise of the movie is that the fossil fuel industry, borrowing from the wisdom and leadership of the tobacco industry, intentionally created and is creating doubt about climate change in the wider populace.  Even with 99% of climate scientists agreeing that climate change is real and that human activity is the driver of climate change, much of the United States’ population has not bought in.  Much like the way the tobacco industry made us doubt that cigarettes or second-hand smoke were harmful to human health for so long, doubt about climate change has made it almost impossible for us to get the necessary oomph necessary for the sweeping and transformative change we need.

           The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has been very conservative about the impacts of climate change and how far along we are.  But now in this latest report, I read, “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all."  As a Christian pastor, when I read such things, I believe I am obligated to once again put this before you . . . to say that there are direct and simple ways to work, to say that you are not to blame.   But we need to wax up our anger and courage as people of faith.  To doubt and challenge doubt.  To say that there are different and diverse ways of knowing each of us can bring to this urgent love we must now display for our home.

           Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and now the senior citizens climate group Th!rd Act[1], environmentalist, educator, and writer for the Christian social justice magazine, Sojourners, believes the only way we might be able to turn the tide for the will on climate change is actual relationships people develop with rivers, mountains, and animals.  Out of those relationships, that real touch and see, McKibben believes, we may grow the necessary courage to step forward. 

           Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, is a professor of political science at Texas Tech University where she is the Director of Climate Science.  She is a self-described evangelical Christian.  Professor Hayhoe believes the most important thing we can do about climate change is talk to people about climate change.  We need an overwhelming movement that transforms people’s hearts and minds.  We can be the leaders, the movement, those who finally turn the tide because we are persistent, because we keep talking, because we refuse to go away.  Let us help the “doubting Thomases” touch and see the reality of climate change. 

           How?  Aditi Judeja, co-creator of the Resistance Manual, said it is critical to have conversations about climate change in the everyday places.  “The basis of democracy is self-governance,” Judeja writes, “and that requires citizens to engage with one another.”  We begin, Judeja believes, by assuming the best in other people.  We should remember that others can disagree with us and still be good people.  Secondly, we should be well-informed.  But it is to remember, she warns, that people will rarely come together over the facts.  Know our audience, use humor, and learn what the other person cares about.  Finally, she counsels, stop complaining about it and take ownership for making conversations happen.  Start.  Practice.  Stink at it.  Keep practicing.[2]

           What every person who advises in getting climate conversations started is not only knowing your audience but finding out where you connect with the other person, have in common in them, discerning what the other person values.  As Katharine Hayhoe suggests, if they are a skier, talk to them about the shrinking snowpack.  If a birder, how bird migration patterns are being disrupted.  Tim Guinee, as a volunteer firefighter, always wears his dress uniform and talks about how climate change creates danger and exhaustion for emergency service providers.  One of friends in Billings, Montana, related how her work fighting fires in the West, used to be a seasonal job.  It is no longer.  And the risk of losing one’s life has become even greater.

Maybe even more than what others value, speak to what people most love and how climate change will most affect the people and things they most love.  When Hayhoe spoke to the West Texas Rotary Club, she used the Four-Way Test the Rotarians use as an ethical guide to talk to them about climate change.[3]  

For example, we may have heard about the vast amount of plastics being dumped in the oceans.  But we may want to talk about how, locally, a study done five years ago, "estimates 22 million pounds of plastic debris enters the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada each year!"[4]  

If the thriving of our ecosystem is not a concern, then maybe we can relate what was just reported in March of this year.  Plastices have so inundated our lives, that microplastics have now been found in human blood, detected in almost 80% of the people tested.  Microplastics are known to cause damage to human cells.[5] 

And as a recent article in Popular Science magazine pointed out, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel problem.”[6]  And according to the International Energy Agency, plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury.[7]

As people of faith, we can care for our place, our own Lake Michigan ecosystem by bringing our doubts, our critical eye, our movement toward something more life-giving by being critical of the fossil fuel industry and by weaning our investment in it.

Or, as this congregation has been so faithful in supporting relief for Ukraine, we could turn our continued work as peacemakers by recognizing that wars are fought on blood and treasure. 

 

Putin can only fund his war because 40% of his economy is floated by fossil fuel exports.  He also controls the chokepoint of natural gas to western Europe.  Peace may require a rapid and massive scale-up of renewable energy—especially in the United States and Europe, as German is implementing.  Such actions, said Bill McKibben, “dramatically reduces the power of autocrats, dictators, and thugs."  With guidance from Patriarch Batholomew, “the Green Patriarch," who strongly condemned the Russian attack, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine could emerge as an advocate for God’s creation and renewable energy as a sign of Ukrainian resilience, independence, and national pride.[8]

 

            Meanwhile, corporate has tried to make us believe either that climate change is not happening, that it won’t be that bad, that human activity is not to blame for it, or that we, personally, are the ones responsible.  They cast doubt on their responsibility and cast blame on us . . . as individuals.

           This casting blame on us has been done through repeated corporate advertising.  The word “litterbug” was coined by the corporate industry.  “Carbon offset” was coined by corporate.  All to make us believe that we are the ones responsible and to blame and to take away our hope that we can ever measure up to meet the challenge.  When what we really need is to bring our critical eye, our diverse ways of knowing, and our imagination for a future that does not depend on fossil fuels.  Even the International Monetary Fund, long seen as a conservative organization, detailed that the fossil fuel industry receives 11 million dollars a minute in subsidies to keep its crumbling infrastructure afloat.[9]  But imagine . . . just imagine . . . if that kind of money was directed toward renewable and sustainable energy.

           You can’t be what you can’t see.  Children’s rights activist, the late Marian Wright Edelman, would say, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

           What Christian writers have done for centuries, advocating for an examined life, is to not only use their critical eye, and their diverse ways of knowing, but also use our imaginations for what a future might look like if we could choose walk a path that is very different from a harmful, destructive, and violent status quo.  As in the book of Revelation, the writer asked critical questions of a power that seems to be hell-bent on destruction.  And then they ask, what would water look like, flowing crystal clear from the throne of God?  In our mind’s eye, how can we imagine it.  And so, to end, I want to share one of the videos imagined by journalists at The Intercept.   

           (The video is shown) “Message from the Future II:  The Years of Repair,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m8YACFJlMg

Let us begin these conversations, knowing that the power is within us to do this.  We will do this imperfectly.  Who cares?  Seriously. 

Winona LaDuke has written,          

 

Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit.

Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you.

Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.[10]

 

Power is in your spirit and in your soul.  Have the strength of our faith to doubt and ask the critical questions—feel the actual wounds of Christ, the suffering that is already happening on God’s good earth.  Have the strength of our faith to not let the doubts of those who are invested in an unexamined status quo steer us away from a faithful future.  Believe that and begin these diverse conversations and diverse actions to transform so that we all may know the power that is in the earth.  Amen. 

---

[1] Get started now!  www.thirdact.org

[2] Aditi Judeja, “Your next bar conversation is about climate change.  Here’s how to do it,” grist, https://grist.org/guides/umbra-apathy-detox/your-next-bar-conversation-is-about-climate-change-heres-how-to-do-it/.

[3] “3 Tips from the Experts:  How to talk about the climate crisis effective,” The Climate Reality Project, March 29, 2019, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/3-tips-experts-how-talk-about-climate-crisis-effectively.

[4] Susan Galowicz, “Researchers study plastic pollution in Great Lakes,” Rochester Institute of Technology, December 19, 2016, https://www.rit.edu/news/researchers-study-plastic-pollution-great-lakes.

[5] Damian Carrington, “Microplastics found in human blood for the first time,” The Guardian, March 24, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time

[6][6][6][6] Erica Cirino, “Plastic production is a fossil fuel problem,” Popular Science, October 14, 2021, https://www.popsci.com/environment/fossil-fuel-plastic-production-links/  

[7] IEA (2018), The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals.

[8] Rose Marie Berger, “’War Is A Great Evil,’” Sojourners, May, Vol 51, No. 5, 2022, p. 16.

[9] Damian Carrington, “Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds,” The Guardian, October 6, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

[10] Winona LaDuke, https://sacredecology.com/honor-the-earth/

 

Sermon Series, Responding to the Religious Right 6, "What is your religious koan?"

Responses to Violent Christendom 6

Micah 6:6-8; Amos 5:24; Mark 12:30-31; Matthew 25:31-40

October 29, 2017

          The Lutherans have been going crazy this year.  They are actually meeting with the Roman Catholic Church to heal the great divide.  This year marks the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.  There had been many abuses, poor practices, and wrong paths the church had been about which had led to a call for reform, but the precipitating event had been a church effort to make afterlife salvation up for sale to the highest bidder.    Legend has it that the Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel, would say, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”  We thought about using something like that for our church offering but we haven’t found a good rhyme with ATM card. 

Martin Luther’s call for reforms within the church were about “democratizing access to the holy.”  Theologian and Church futurist Phyllis Tickle cites Anglican Bishop Mark Dyer’s observation that, “the only way to understand what is currently happening to us as 21st-century Christians in North America is first to understand that about every 500 years the church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale."[1]   Tickle puts it this way, “about every five hundred years the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be at that time, become an intolerable carapace (carapace meaning something like a tortoise’s shell) that must be shattered in order that renewal and new growth may occur."  When that 500 year emergence happens, Tickle reflects, a new and more vital form of Christianity comes forward and the previously dominant form of Christianity is reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self.[2]  Could it be that is what we are on the threshold, what our congregation is responding to, as God uses our institutional biorhythms to shatter the tortoise shell so that the emerging renewal and new growth might occur?

I think we are always tasked, as people of faith, as Christ’s disciples, with charting a path that is often not covered by mass media.   While certain parts of the Reformation were charted by those supported and protected by political power, another more radical reformation undertaken by small groups like the Anabaptists returned Christianity to its understanding of humility and nonviolence.[3] 

I want to encourage that radical reformation undertaken by those small groups in response to the tortoise shell of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity.  I have asked us to build our own frames, ask questions, trust your uncertainty, focus on content of Jesus, and to not get caught in the Bible thumping of believing that one of our tools for faith only says one thing.

We must also not only respond to what fundamentalist and evangelical Christians say to us, we must have something positive to say about what we believe to them.  And then we need to repeat it over and over as a way of recognizing that deep faith is more about courage than it is about complexity.

 What is your spiritual mantra, maybe even a koan, your “go-to” word or phrase that guides your feet, opens up to a wider complexity, and begins to define the life you are trying to lead?  Is there a Scripture verse you might use, take as your own, maybe a question like “Who is my neighbor?” or “Am I my sister, brother, sibling, cousin’s keeper?”  How does that mantra, koan, or question reflect all the decisions you make as a person of faith?  How does it operate as a baseline to make you courageous, loving, and compassionate?  I remember hearing interviews with people who hid Jewish people when the Nazis came calling.  When asked why they did what they did, the response, more often than not, seemed to be, “Because that’s what you do.” 

When Tracy was in seminary, every student was asked to come up with a mission statement to define not only what they believed but what their ministry would be.  Tracy, who sees her primarily role as an educator within the church took as hers, one that we used last week to distribute Bibles, “My role is to help a congregation see their lives as sacred stories and to see sacred stories as their lives.”

          I am not one for jewelry or extra things I have to account for, so it is one of the treasured gifts Tracy gave me that I wear every day.   It is a foot necklace that reminds me of that African proverb at the end of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” “When you pray, move your feet.”  That phrase is a reminder for me that my spiritual life can never be removed from my political life and that my political life forever informs my spiritual life.  “When you pray, move your feet.”

          I think coming up with a short, strong mantra, koan, or salient question to inform our faith is important in a world that has gone mad with information is critical to having a voice that can be heard in the public sphere.[4]  If we do not have something that we can repeat, we end up overwhelmed with all that we are supposed to account for, remember, and make sense of in the midst of a 24-hour news cycle content with making us believe that there is no such thing as discernable Truth or lying or transcendent value.  We are being told again and again that it is just really different points of view as the most vulnerable in our world are met with exclusion, violence, and death. 

          I believe it is critical, particularly in those exchanges with friends and family who are evangelical or fundamentalist, to have something that cannot only be repeated in our brains and through our bloodstream, but said enough times we might actually begin the transformation of the spiritual being across from us. 

It goes like this.  “Love God. Love neighbor.  Doesn’t that about sum it up? Sure, I know you think the most important part is them breaking the law but that’s an imperial narrative, right?  Love God.  Love neighbor.  No, love God.  Love neighbor.  Everything starts and ends there, right?  Well, no, love God, love neighbor.”  In so doing, you become an impenetrable wall of love, compassion, and kindness.  And there are so many of these mantras, koans, salient, Socratic questions in our tradition.  Pick one.  Roll with it.  Over and over.  Courage. 

          Some time ago, the Christian social justice magazine, Sojourners, decided that they needed to develop a core Christian statement as an explanation for why they stood strongly over and against the Trump administration.  For the editors, writers, and contributors of Sojourners knew that there were Christians who heard their faith calling them to support and advocate for President Trump and his policies.  Rose Marie Berger, one of the editors, put together a video that used Scripture verses from Matthew 25 in the style of the poem, “First they came” written by German pastor Martin Niemoller to chastise the cowardice of German intellectuals in the face of growing Naziism.  Here is Berger’s video.  (Show the first video)  http://rosemarieberger.com/2016/11/10/im-rose-marie-berger-jp-keenan/.

Also, Sojourners itself put together a short video that related Matthew 25 as a credo, as a reason for action, taking a stand, and displaying solidarity such that one of our relatives might say over holiday dinner, “Well, Charlene, why do you believe as you do?  Does it come out of some Communist, Marxist plot?”  And then you can kindly respond, “Maybe.  I use the Bible.  Matthew 25.”  To make it sink in you could then show them this minute and a half video.  (Show the second video)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6uJfJycbFA

Are we just pretending?  Christianity is not about complexity.  It is about courage.  And this congregation is full of courage.  And it is time we stopped playing small and pretending as if those who can quote chapter and verse much better are the only spiritual beings in town.  I have placed out in the narthex the Matthew 25 pledge Sojourners is asking all of us to sign.  It reads thusly,

I pledge to protect and defend vulnerable people in the name of Jesus.

In America right now, too many people are feeling very afraid because of the new political realities in Washington, D.C., both because of the political rhetoric of this election campaign and how they were targeted as groups of people. In response, the message of Matthew 25 is rising up at the grassroots level and among faith leaders — within faith communities, congregations, denominations, seminaries, and faith-based organizations. It's the Gospel text where Jesus says: How you treat the most vulnerable is how you treat me.

People are feeling a need to act. Matthew 25 can lead us in what to do. And so we've created the Matthew 25 Pledge — just one sentence which simply says: I pledge to protect and defend vulnerable people in the name of Jesus. Clearly, many people in America are feeling quite vulnerable right now, but the Matthew 25 Movement — a broad collection of national faith-based groups, grassroots activists, heads of denominations and more — is focusing on three groups of people who are especially at risk under a Trump administration. So here we offer our starting point, pledging to:

1. Support undocumented immigrants threatened with mass deportation; and advocate on behalf of refugees who are being banned from coming to America.
2. Stand with African Americans and other people of color threatened by racial policing.
3. In line with our commitment to religious liberty we will defend the lives and religious liberty of Muslims, threatened with “banning,” monitoring, and even registration.[5]

This is the beginning. This is where to start now. But if and when other groups of people are targeted by government decisions or by hateful cultural responses, we who sign the Matthew 25 Pledge will also seek to surround and protect them. Rather than just watching, grieving, and feeling sorry for what is happening to the most marginalized, who are named in the 25th chapter of Matthew, we can pledge to join together in circles of support in the name of Jesus.

You can merely sign the pledge on the clipboard I have in the lobby.  Or you can include your email and area code so that Sojourners may put you on a notification list for toolkits, actions, and how the movement is seeking to live out what it means to be Christian. 

It is the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation.  Christians, even Roman Catholics, are celebrating.  But the question I leave for you all today is this: “What mantra, what koan, what salient question will you nail on the church door to proclaim your faith in courage and conviction?  As you do so, you give courage for others to do so as well.  The time has come for the tortoise shell to crack open and reveal the new life and ministry seeking to be expressed.  Could it be that this church is that expression?  Could it be?  Amen. 

---

[1] Tom Roberts, “The inevitable, necessary crisis,” National Catholic Reporter, May 13, 2009, https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/inevitable-necessary-crisis.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ken Sehested, “Signs of the Times:  The Protestant Reformation,” Prayer and Politiks, October 17, 2017.  http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/signs-of-the-times/2017/10/18/news-views-notes-and-quotes.2882429.

[4] I think the success of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which relied on central, identifiable messages repeated again and again, reflected how important that can be to be heard in the public markeptplace.

[5] http://matthew25pledge.com/

Sermon for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sunday, January 15, 2017, "I'm going that way."

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 8^th.  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.

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[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.

[5] “Interview with Dr. James Cone,” Bill Moyers Journal, November 23, 2007.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] King criticized Christians like me in his letter from the Birmingham jail, “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’  Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

[9] Vincent Harding, “Dangerous Spirituality,” Sojourners January/February 1999.