Community Church Sermons
January 14, 2007
The Second Sunday of the New Year
Isaiah 62:1-5
Listen To This Sermon!
Whenever we come to this Sunday – the Sunday before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday – I find myself feeling somewhat uncomfortable. Listening to the inspiring speeches and sermons that are a part of the King Day observances, I find myself realizing how very “white” I am, and how utterly unfamiliar my life experience as a white person is to the life experiences of African-American persons.
I suppose I feel a bit out of place and exposed, like the honeybee that ran into another bee one day and was asked how things were going. “Not very well,” the honeybee said, “it’s been cold and damp so there aren’t many flowers and I can’t make any honey.”
“Well, why don’t you fly a few blocks down the street, turn left, and go to where all the cars are parked?” said the other bee. “There’s a bar mitzvah going on and there’s sure to be lots of fresh flowers and fruit.”
So the honeybee flies off. Several hours later, the two bees run into each other again. “So, how’d it go at the bar-mitzvah?” “Oh, it was wonderful,” said the honeybee, “it was everything you said it would be.”
“Great!” replied the other
bee, “But what’s that black thing on your head?”
“Oh, that’s just my yarmulke,” the honeybee said. “I didn’t want anybody to think I was a WASP.”
Well, in a vaguely similar way and try as we may, we white people cannot very easily blend ourselves into the black experience in America. Our families were not taken from our native land and forced into slavery on the other side of the ocean. We WASPS cannot possibly imagine what slavery was like.
Neither will we ever know what it is like to live on the black side of segregation after slavery as an institution was abolished. Nor can we know what it is like to live in the post-segregation era today on the black side of town – if there even was such a side of town here in Tellico Village.
I’m just too white to understand it all.
And yet, I am powerfully drawn to the life and vision of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Every time I read or listen to one of his speeches, my soul is stirred, and I am left to wonder how it was and is that black people and white people alike – living on very different sides of life – were inspired to come together for the cause of Civil Rights.
It was not politics that brought us together. Not economics. And certainly not life experience.
So what WAS it about Dr. King that almost miraculously drew together such different kinds of people?
I think I would say that it was the Dream – the Dream about what the world would be like if we came together under the common bond of all of us being God’s children, and together worked for freedom and justice for all
I was in college during the 1960’s when there were protest movements galore. And along with the movements were the protest songs. My favorite back then was Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction.” Do you remember?
The eastern world, it is explodingViolence flarin’, bullets loadin’You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’ But you tell meOver and over and over again, my friendAh, you don’t believeWe’re on the eveof destruction. And the protest continues all the way to the last verse: Think of all the hate there is in Red ChinaThen take a look around to Selma, AlabamaYou may leave here for 4 days in spaceBut when you return, it’s the same old placeThe poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgraceYou can bury your dead, but don’t leave a traceHate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say graceAnd… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friendYou don’t believeWe’re on the eveOf destruction
Now there’s a happy song for ya!
There IS a place, of course, for poets and prophets to point out the ills of society. But the ills of society are not solved by talking about how bad things are. Human progress occurs only when the protest finds a voice that dreams of what can BE.
This is the essence and power of faith!
It was in the darkness of the Babylonian exile that the words of the prophet Isaiah called the Jewish people to move beyond the gloom and doom of judgment to the hope of a new day.
“For Zion’s sake,
I will not keep still,
for Jerusalem’s
sake, I will not remain quiet,
till her
righteousness shines out like the dawn
and her salvation like a blazing torch”
It is easy to condemn the world to hell. Not only is it easy, but it is common. Fundamentalisms in every religion begin with the idea that the world is a terrible place, that people are rotten, and that there is no hope. So the message becomes, “You must turn, or burn!” Come and join our church! Believe what we believe! Separate yourself from all the infidels! Look forward to the day when God – or Allah – or Whoever whisks you away from this awful place into heaven while the vast majority of the people of the world go to hell.
A great deal of religion today – including American
Christianity – may as well have as its anthem Barry McGuire’s “Eve of
Destruction.”
That is often the way of religion, but it is not the way of faith.
It is one thing to consign the world to hell. It is another thing to call the world to salvation!
Dr. King’s movement was not about wringing hands over a problem, but about the accomplishment of a Dream. “I Have A Dream!” There is not one of us here today unfamiliar with that speech. And it calls us to a faith that is aimed at making the world a world that is worthy of its Creator. Look at the words printed in your bulletin today – would you read them with me?
To be a Christian is to have a faith that dares to dream of what the world would be like if we lived like Jesus lived. Dr. King, I believe, is the single most important model of true Christian faith in our lifetime. Other Christian leaders have the kind of faith that write books and build TV empires. Dr. King had the kind of faith that changed the world, and continues to change it wherever that faith is embraced..
What kind of faith do you have?
Sometimes we Christian people slip right past Jesus’ call to forgive those who sin against us, and to love our enemies, and to seek reconciliation with those we are alienated from. Sometimes we look past Jesus’ call to non-violence and his insistence that no one should be denied God’s love and our respect. Sometimes we think of the Sermon on the Mount as a nice idea, but not one we are willing to commit our lives to.
I think we dodge these behaviors Jesus calls us to because we have been sidetracked into thinking that faith is about what you believe and not about how you live. We often don’t understand that the commandments of Jesus are the key ingredients of faith, and that the aim of faith is to build a world in which all God’s children can experience abundant life!
What kind of faith do you have?
There are, I suppose only a few elements to this faith that are truly important. One is the Dream of what the world would be if we followed Jesus.
A second is that the Dream is for everyone. No one is excluded, and everyone is needed!
John Lewis, one of the Civil Rights pioneers and now congressman from Georgia tells of growing up as a boy in rural Alabama. One of his most powerful memories is of going to visit his aunt Seneva in her rundown old shotgun house. Lewis says that at night you could lay in bed and look up through the tin roof and see the stars. It was a very ramshackle place.
But it was Aunt Seneva’s place and John and his siblings and cousins loved to go there. One day when there were about fourteen or fifteen of them gathered, playing together in the dirt yard, a great storm whipped up. The wind started blowing, the lightning started flashing, and the rain started beating on and dripping through the tin roof of the house. They all ran inside. Aunt Seneva became terrified. She began to cry. Then she told the children to join hands, and so they did. She thought the house was going to be blown away, and they all began to cry.
Lewis writes, “Well the wind
continued to blow, the thunder continued to roll, the lightning continued to
flash, and the rain continued to beat down on the roof of this little
house. And when one corner of the old house appeared to be lifting from
its foundation, my Aunt Seneva would have us walk to that corner of the room to
hold the house down. When another corner began to lift, we would run to
that corner, holding hands, trying to hold this house down with our little
bodies.”
“We were fifteen children walking with the wind. And we never, ever left the house.”
Lewis told this story as an illustration of America being a nation where we all move TOGETHER to support the weakest.
We must hold the Dream. We must hold each other’s hands and move to support the weakest.
And we must believe that God is who God says he is – a God of grace – and mercy – who gives his life so that ALL his children may find life!
What would the world be like if we lived like this?