Palm Sunday Worship April 13, 2014 Matthew 21:1-11 A couple of weeks ago I was having a conversation with Nic Gibson, pastor of High Point, our nearest chuch neighbor. Nic and I get together regularly for conversation. Sometimes, I have lunch with him and his wife and I ve met their family a couple of times, too. Nic s become one of my favorite clergy friends in part because our conversations are always so engaging and unpredictable. The last time we met we were talking about the race to equity report and the recent conversations that have been taking place in Madison around race, the achievement gap in our schools and the fact that black children are worse off in Wisconsin than in any other state in the nation. Over the course of our conversation, Nic spoke openly about the motivation behind his own and his congregation s involvement in these conversations. Nic explained his position on this issue in the following way: Let s assume that the number of slots open to high school graduates who want to attend college is finite and that the financial support for those spots grants, scholarships and loans are also finite. Nic has four children whom he is assuming will all go to college. He is supporting his wife and four children on the salary he makes as the Pastor of High Point. His wife works in the home. His children will most likely rely on financial aid in order to attend college. If African American and other children of color do better in school and achieve at a higher level this means that there will be more students graduating from high school equipped for college. In this scenario Nic s children and the children of families of color in the schools will be competing for the same finite number of college slots. The same rationale applies when it comes to financial aid. If there are more families in need of financial support who are sending their children to college this means that Nic s children might not receive as much aid. Why, Nic asks, should he work for racial equality and greater achievement of students of color in Madison when potentially that means that his children might have a
harder time getting into and paying for college? What would possess him to work against his own self interest in this scenario? You have to keep in mind that Nic is a Republican, he owns a gun for which he has a concealed carry permit and his theology is quite conservative. At the same time, he is also a person who takes the gospel as he understands it very seriously. And he has a really big heart. So, here, much to my surprise, is how Nic knows that it is the right thing for him and the congregation he serves, which is also predominantly white, to be involved in working toward greater justice for people of color in Madison and around our state because this is what Jesus, the suffering servant, the humble ruler riding into Jerusalem on a donkey requires of us. The Jesus that Nic and I and most if not all of you believe in tells us that the greatest commandment of all is to love our neighbor as our selves. Over and over throughout the gospels, including in this morning s story, Jesus rejects the rules of the empire, the pomp and circumstance of royal procession, the power and privilege that could have been his in favor of self giving compassion, and God s justice. Jesus says no to the idea that we draw lines around who is in and who is out based on who agrees with us or who is most like us and invites us to love the stranger, the other, the outcast as we love ourselves. Jesus even goes so far as to redefine family stating that whoever loves and follows him is his sister, brother, mother and father and his child. In light of these truths about who Jesus is and who he shows God to be through his compassionate, self-sacrificing, humble love there is no other choice, in Nic s mind and indeed in my own mind as well that we should work toward greater justice for children of color and indeed for all people not only in Madison or Dane County but in Wisconsin, our nation and the entire world. White people and all people with power must be ready and willing to give up some of what we have achieved on the backs of others in order to move toward a higher understanding of justice grounded in the love of God for all of God s people. This year we are celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One thing that has become painfully clear as we ve shone a spotlight on this
incredible achievement is that really this legislation and the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act that followed it were just the beginning steps toward racial justice and equality in our nation. As we open our eyes to the incredible injustice of the achievement gap between white children and children of color we can see that the discrimination and prejudice that kept blacks and whites separate at lunch counters, and drinking fountains and public bathrooms has just shifted subtly and is functioning in a more insidious way. Racism may be harder for us to see today but it is no less damaging to the fabric of our society. What other conclusions can be drawn when the achievement gap between white students and students of color is so incredibly wide? What other evidence do we need that racism and prejudice are alive and well than the reality that according to Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow Today there are more African- Americans under correctional control in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities today, more than half of workingage African-American men are either under correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives." When my success, when my ability to succeed comes at the expense of another human being there is something sorely wrong that needs to be corrected. And as a primarily white community of faith we need to face the fact that there may be things we need to give up privileges we may no longer assume, advantages we may need to relinquish, long held positions we will need to re-think and reconsider in order for our sisters and brothers of color to experience justice and fairness in their own lives. We must and will make these sacrifices because, like my friend and colleague Nic, we love and follow Jesus. And the Jesus we love and follow calls us to lose our lives in order to gain them. The Jesus we love and follow reminds us that the last will be first and the first will be last in the realm of God toward which we work every day. And the Jesus we love and follow risks humiliation, isolation and even death to extend love to the least among
us, to bring the marginalized and oppressed into life giving relationship with their communities and their God. In 2007 the United Church of Christ celebrated its 50 th anniversary as a denomination with a spectacular blow out celebration in Hartford Connecticut. I was lucky enough to be a delegate from Wisconsin to that event and it was an incredibly inspiring, uplifting and spiritually convicting experience. Speakers heard at that gathering included Barack Obama, back when he was still a Senator from Illinois, Miriam Wright Edelman of the Children s Defense Fund and Bill Moyers. Each of these speakers packed the convention hall with thousands of enthusiastic UCC people from all over the country. This past week I was thinking some about that experience and recalling a little bit about what I heard especially from Bill Moyers so I looked up his speech, which I recall being electrifying and re-read it. The basic argument Bill Moyers makes in this speech is that our democracy is under attack by what we now think of as the 1% of political and economic elites who control the vast majority of our nation s wealth and who are wreaking havoc with the social contract between us and our government in every way they can think of. Seven years after this prophetic speech, we are experiencing the outcome of some of what was only being hinted at then. Here is what Bill Moyers said in that incredible speech seven years ago: Please, please... listen... this new struggle for a just world it's not a partisan affair. God is not a liberal or conservative. God is not a Democrat or Republican. She may be a Baptist, I don't know. But to see whose side God is on, just go to the record. It's the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor who are blessed in the eyes of God. It is kindness and mercy that prove the power of faith, and it's justice that measures the worth of the state, not empire. Kings are held accountable for how the poor fare under their reign; Presidents, too. Prophets speak to the gap between rich and poor as a reason for God's judgement. Poverty and justice are religious issues, and Jesus moves among the disinherited.
Today, Palm Sunday, is the first day of Holy Week. In the coming week we will pray with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, we will dine with him at a table in an upper room, we will watch as his friends and closest allies betray him, turn away from him, deny they ever knew him; we will participate with the crowds who proclaim Hosanna today in crying Crucify Him tomorrow and we will meet the unbelievable reality of Christ s death on the cross and God s grace and forgiveness in the midst of the worst we can do. Finally, we will celebrate in one short week how God s love overcomes even the darkest time; how grace and forgiveness, humility and service shine in the face of despair; how love overcomes and transforms fear and uncertainty and heals grief and reconciles people to one another. The events of this week, this Holy Week, are real and the Jesus we follow invites us to be transformed by them so that we might engage the world out of humility, selfsacrificing service and a willingness to relinquish all of the power and privilege and advantages the world has to offer in the name of moving with him among the disinherited and indeed perhaps becoming the disinherited ourselves. And so I invite you to examine your soul and your lives this week and always where is there a sense of entitlement that needs to be corrected? Where is there a fear of the other that needs to be overcome by love? Where is there a tendency in you to cling to position, power or privilege that needs to be transformed by humility and the desire to serve God through self-sacrificing service of one another? Find those places in your lives and hearts and with God s help transform them and then act accordingly in the world to change the structures and institutions in our society so that God s justice prevails and so that all of God s people live in peace and harmony on the earth. May it be so. Amen.