Professing Faith John 1:43-51 January 14, 2018

Transcription

1 Professing Faith John 1:43-51 January 14, 2018 This weekend our nation celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. More than ever we need to pay attention to the words, actions, and legacy of this prophet in American history, for our nation is still deeply divided by racism. We have not lived into the dream of this Black Baptist preacher, a hero of the Civil Rights Movement. We have not lived into the dream of God, which King called the Beloved Community. It is timely to revisit some lesser known parts of the story of this philosopher, theologian, and preacher. Dr. King s childhood grounded him in the Christian life and faith. Every evening as they ate dinner in the family dining room with its fireplace and white lace curtains, Martin, his brother, and sister were made to recite Bible verses. After dinner Grandmother Williams regaled them with vivid Biblical stories. Their father was Reverend King, pastor of one of the largest churches in Atlanta, Georgia, college graduate, holder of an honorary doctorate, eloquent, politically active, and not at all afraid to march down to City Hall to present the grievances of Atlanta s Black citizens. (This was in the 1920 s and 1930 s.) Martin s mother, Alberta, was the daughter of Dr. Adam Daniel Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church. She attended the finest schools available to a southern Black girl at the turn of the century. Martin King, Sr., and Alberta Williams were married on Thanksgiving Day, When Dr. Williams died, his son-in-law became pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position he held until his death in For long hours every Sunday Martin, Jr., sat in the pews of the church, while his oratorical father preached and his mother played the organ for several of the six church choirs. Martin was called M.L. by his family. Many of his earliest childhood friends were white. That was typical in the South until they went to school. Then M.L. s friends informed him they could no longer play with him. Why? he asked. Because you re a Negro, they replied. That was also typical. His parents explained the race problem. They recounted the history of slavery in America, told him about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, explained how whites maintained superiority through the segregation experiences he was beginning to encounter. But, his soft-spoken mother said, you must never feel that you are less than anybody else. You must always feel that you are somebody.

2 He soon learned that he could not buy a Coca Cola or a hamburger at the downtown stores, nor could he sit at the lunch counters there. He had to drink from a colored water fountain, relieve himself in a rancid colored restroom, ride the rickety freight elevator, and, if he rode on a city bus, he had to sit at the back as if he were somehow contaminated. He saw WHITES ONLY signs staring at him from the windows of barber shops, restaurants, hotels, the YMCA, city parks, and swimming pools. There was not a white student in his school. M.L. witnessed his father putting his faith in action. Rev. King, Sr., served on the Executive Board of the NAACP. Its Social Action Committee won a legal battle to equalize teacher s salaries in Atlanta. At City Hall he challenged the tangle of Jim Crow laws and practices that systemically disenfranchised black people in Atlanta and everywhere else in Dixie. He put up with insult and evasion, paid his poll tax, passed Georgia s severe literacy test for Blacks, and finally secured his right to vote in national elections. In 1936 (when M.L, Jr. was seven), fed up with political discrimination, Rev. King led several hundred Atlanta Negroes on a voting rights march to City Hall, a spectacle, he said, that no living soul in that city had ever seen. Martin, Jr., was a gifted child. He loved language. When he was five he told his parents, You just wait and see. When I grow up I m going to get me some big words. His memory was phenomenal. Almost from the time he could talk, he could recite entire Biblical passages and sing hymns from memory. Martin Luther King, Jr. graduated from Booker T. Washington High School after the eleventh grade at the age of fifteen. He entered Morehouse College and graduated at nineteen. He spent three years in seminary and then earned a Ph.D. from Boston University by the time he was twenty-six. By this time, he had also been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, for a year and a half. As he began his higher education, he was certain he didn t want to be a preacher. He was shocked to discover that he read at only an eighth grade level a product of segregated schools. He quickly overcame this deficiency and collected an impressive number of A s in English, history, philosophy, and sociology. He was fascinated with economic theory and especially the idea that economic exploitation is one of the roots of racism. An English professor who demanded clarity, unity, coherence from all his students helped Martin hone his language and oratorical skills. At Morehouse College King learned that there were alternatives to Baptist fundamentalism. One of his role models was the College President, Dr. Benjamin

3 Mays, a renowned scholar, with iron-gray hair and a hypnotic voice. At chapel services Dr. Mays preached stewardship, responsibility, and engagement. His sermons were both spiritual and intellectually stimulating. He was a moral man who was socially involved. At seventeen, Martin, Jr., changed his mind and became a Baptist minister. Later that year he was ordained and made an assistant pastor at his father s Ebenezer Church. He was inspired to develop a religious position that was intellectually satisfying and whose morality drove one to engagement with society rather than simply personal piety. He attended Crozier Seminary in Pennsylvania. In addition to the prescribed coursework, he read the great social philosophers in search of a philosophical method to eliminate social evil. In the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch he encountered the idea of the Social Gospel. Rauschenbusch insisted that any socially relevant faith must deal with the whole person body and soul, material and spiritual well-being. King was forced to wrestle with the teachings of Jesus: love your enemy, turn the other cheek. He wondered if this counsel would keep oppressed people oppressed. At that point he attended a lecture by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, who spoke about the life and teachings of Gandhi. He explained how Gandhi had forged Soul Force - the power of love or truth into a mighty vehicle for social change. King studied Gandhi, who had studied Thoreau. Both insisted on total non-cooperation with evil; not a passive non-cooperation, but an active, though always non-violent, non-cooperation. Through strikes, boycotts, protest marches, all conducted non-violently, and all predicated on love for the oppressor and a profound belief in divine justice, Gandhi had changed the social fabric of his nation. King found the philosophical method he was seeking. He wrote, Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful effective social force on a large scale. Gandhi s goal had not been to defeat the British in India, but to redeem them through love to avoid a legacy of bitterness. King left seminary with the hope of putting Gandhi s ideas into practice. He understood that humans are capable of both great good and great evil, with an eternal civil war raging within most of us. The important thing was to resist evil, thoroughly, completely, consistently and non-violently equally determined to redeem the oppressor through agape love and to destroy the evil.

4 Little did he know that he would be called to test these ideas in the crucible of America s fierce racial hatred. Little did he know the price he would have to pay in his attempt to redeem America s soul. Dr. King was 26 when Rosa Parks nudged history forward by refusing to move to the back of the Montgomery bus. For 19 months King urged all the Blacks in Montgomery to car-pool, take taxis or walk and to love the white folks who cursed them, spit on them, threatened them, and jailed them. He tapped the power of love and redemption in people. When a car-pool driver chanced on an old woman hobbling with difficulty, he offered her a ride. She waved him on. I m not walking for myself. I m walking for my children and my grandchildren, she said. Then there was Old Mother Pollard. Now listen, King told her at church one night, you have been with us all along, so now you go on and start back to ridin the bus, cause you are too old to keep walking. Oh, no, she protested, I m gonna walk just as long as everybody else walks. I m gonna walk till it s over. But aren t your feet tired? King asked. Yes, she said, my feet is tired, but my soul is rested. Martin had to quiet a mob that gathered after his own home was bombed. He often had to quiet his own heart when Coretta hung up the phone, pale and shaking from the attack of yet another threatening or obscene phone call. The Montgomery Bus Boycott; weeks in an Albany, Georgia, jail; the lunch counter sit-ins; riding with students on Freedom Rides only to discover that his colleagues had been beaten as soon as he left them for another engagement; leaving the church in Montgomery for his father s church in Atlanta; criticism from more militant Black leaders; his picture of the cover of Time magazine; meetings with President Eisenhower, Senator Kennedy, President Kennedy; publication of his book, Stride Toward Freedom. While signing autographs a young woman approached and stabbed a knife into his chest, the point coming to rest against his aorta. His doctors said if he had sneezed, it would have ended his life. He received get-well cards from President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon. Another letter said: Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth grade student at the White Plains High School. While it shouldn t matter, I would like to mention that I m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed you would have died. I m simply writing to say that I m so happy that you didn t sneeze.

5 What makes you think you are the exclusive property of the Negro race only? another white writer asked. You belong to us too, because we love you. Your voice is the only true voice of love today and we hear, we hear. A true voice of love, silenced by an assassin s bullet fifty years ago. It is a voice of love which we need to hear again today. King professed his faith in Jesus Christ by working to eliminate social evil. He knew that the welfare of the whole person needed to be addressed: body, mind, and soul; material and spiritual well-being. He adopted an ethic of non-violence, for he understood that redeeming the oppressor was necessary for creation of a just society in which the needs of all are met. I close with his own profession of faith: Let us remember that there is a great benign power in the universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world. God of all creation, we praise you for your boundless compassion and undying love. You are the loving Parent of people of all colors and continents, all nations and races. Your image is planted within each one of us. Even in our varied personalities, you abide within each of us, calling us to live into our goodness, pricking our conscience to do that which is right and just. Even when we miss the mark and fail to live up to your calling on our lives, you extend your forgiveness and create a teachable moment. We acknowledge that sometimes we speak a harsh word, we fail to take action, or we simply don t care. Forgive us, O God. Melt our hardness of heart, fill us with your cleansing Spirit, and shape us into the likeness of Christ. Amidst the cacophony of voices that claim our attention, help us to be still and to listen to your still small voice, your voice of truth, your voice of compassion, your voice of justice. Guide us to act upon your voice, that we together we might be the bold and faithful presence of Christ in the world today. Pour your Holy Spirit afresh upon our nation. Enter in to the bitterness and division, and guide us forward toward liberty and justice for all. Guide our national leaders toward cooperation and civility. Renew the courage and strength of residents of Montecito, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Houston, Puerto Rico, and so many places devastated by disaster. Encourage those who are frightened by the threat of deportation or loss of health care for their children.

6 Pour your Holy Spirit afresh upon your church, O God, that we might be a model of loving service to neighbors near and far. Guide us to resolve our differences with understanding and respect. Pour your Holy Spirit afresh upon your people who are living with illness or challenged by aging..offer your healing touch to all overcome by flu and cold. Pour your Holy Spirit afresh on us, O God, making us bold to profess our faith in word and action, as beacons of light amidst the shadows. We pray in the name of Jesus, and unite our voices with his together in prayer. Rev. Lori B. Sawdon, First United Methodist Church, Lodi, CA