This morning I’m going to preach to you. Most Sundays I stand among you as a teacher – wrestling insights and ideas from the Word of God for our time together with you – as well as asking questions and exploring possibilities in community. This is my preferred approach for such strange and daunting times, but not today…
• No, today on the occasion of the 83rd birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inexcusable violence in Tucson, today is a time for preaching… for to preach is to publically proclaim a path of moral instruction.
• Dr. King once said in a sermon that: “When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men mu
st build and bind. And when evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”
And that is my hope and intention for today – to construct a moral context for understanding both the ugly words of hatred shouted by evil men and women in our generation as well as the alternative articulated in the glories of God’s love – for God’s people clearly have a role to play in matters of politics and public policy. Dr. King was right: when evil is articulated, it must be challenged; and when evil is given shape and form, it must be opposed.
It is disingenuous, dangerous and destructive to teach Christians that religion has no place in politics. For such thinking not only reduces God to a personal and private flutter of the heart, but also shrinks our capacity for compassion and action. Privatized religion, you see, trains us NOT to consider the public good, NOT to embrace the wounded as a sister or brother and NOT to notice when public policy and discourse becomes ugly and mean-spirited.
To be sure, I understand the motivation behind such a limited spirituality – no thoughtful person in our day wants a return to theocracy – but such a radical restriction of God’s love to only the interior life results in both a shrunken heart and a morally weakened body politic. Consider what the prophet Isaiah is saying to us in this morning’s lesson. There came time when this young prophet was demoralized and blurted out:
I've worked for nothing. I've nothing to show for a life of hard work. Nevertheless, I'll let God have the last word. I'll let him pronounce his verdict." (And WHAT does the LORD say?) It is not enough to simply care for the tribes of Jacob or merely round up the strays of Israel. So I’m setting you up as a light for the nations so that my salvation becomes global!"
Hold the phone – stop the presses – did you hear that: I am setting you up as a light for the NATIONS? Nothing private about that, is there? What’s more, God’s going global, baby – international - but hold on, that’s just the beginning because Isaiah concludes with this:
God, the Redeemer of Israel, the Holy of Israel, says to the despised one, kicked around by the nations, slave labor to the ruling class:"Kings will see, get to their feet—the princes, too—and then fall on their faces in homage. Because of God, who has faithfully kept his word, the Holy of Israel, who has chosen you."
The word of God is telling us that there is a moral way to treat one another – there are consequences to our lives that can either wound or heal – and WE have been chosen to make the moral path visible. Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it’s ME, O Lord – not my brother, not my sister, but it’s ME, O Lord – whose been chosen to make visible this global – not personal and private – but public and dare I even say political in the best sense of the word – moral way of living that embraces the kicked around people and celebrates the forgotten, enslaved and wretched of the earth as part of the holy, sacred family of the Lord. That’s the religion Isaiah was talking about and that is the religion that Dr. King advocated in his generation. “All I'm saying is simply this,” he once preached:
…that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Only Light, Only Love from United Church of Christ on Vimeo. St. Paul thought in a similar fashion when he likened our life in Christ to being a part of a body: what affects one part of the body, affects the whole. In today’s text from Ephesians, Paul builds on this insight by telling us that it has been God’s plan since the beginning of time to bind us together in Christ’s love.
• No, today on the occasion of the 83rd birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inexcusable violence in Tucson, today is a time for preaching… for to preach is to publically proclaim a path of moral instruction.
• Dr. King once said in a sermon that: “When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men mu
st build and bind. And when evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”And that is my hope and intention for today – to construct a moral context for understanding both the ugly words of hatred shouted by evil men and women in our generation as well as the alternative articulated in the glories of God’s love – for God’s people clearly have a role to play in matters of politics and public policy. Dr. King was right: when evil is articulated, it must be challenged; and when evil is given shape and form, it must be opposed.
It is disingenuous, dangerous and destructive to teach Christians that religion has no place in politics. For such thinking not only reduces God to a personal and private flutter of the heart, but also shrinks our capacity for compassion and action. Privatized religion, you see, trains us NOT to consider the public good, NOT to embrace the wounded as a sister or brother and NOT to notice when public policy and discourse becomes ugly and mean-spirited.
To be sure, I understand the motivation behind such a limited spirituality – no thoughtful person in our day wants a return to theocracy – but such a radical restriction of God’s love to only the interior life results in both a shrunken heart and a morally weakened body politic. Consider what the prophet Isaiah is saying to us in this morning’s lesson. There came time when this young prophet was demoralized and blurted out:
I've worked for nothing. I've nothing to show for a life of hard work. Nevertheless, I'll let God have the last word. I'll let him pronounce his verdict." (And WHAT does the LORD say?) It is not enough to simply care for the tribes of Jacob or merely round up the strays of Israel. So I’m setting you up as a light for the nations so that my salvation becomes global!"
Hold the phone – stop the presses – did you hear that: I am setting you up as a light for the NATIONS? Nothing private about that, is there? What’s more, God’s going global, baby – international - but hold on, that’s just the beginning because Isaiah concludes with this:
God, the Redeemer of Israel, the Holy of Israel, says to the despised one, kicked around by the nations, slave labor to the ruling class:"Kings will see, get to their feet—the princes, too—and then fall on their faces in homage. Because of God, who has faithfully kept his word, the Holy of Israel, who has chosen you."
The word of God is telling us that there is a moral way to treat one another – there are consequences to our lives that can either wound or heal – and WE have been chosen to make the moral path visible. Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it’s ME, O Lord – not my brother, not my sister, but it’s ME, O Lord – whose been chosen to make visible this global – not personal and private – but public and dare I even say political in the best sense of the word – moral way of living that embraces the kicked around people and celebrates the forgotten, enslaved and wretched of the earth as part of the holy, sacred family of the Lord. That’s the religion Isaiah was talking about and that is the religion that Dr. King advocated in his generation. “All I'm saying is simply this,” he once preached:
…that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Only Light, Only Love from United Church of Christ on Vimeo. St. Paul thought in a similar fashion when he likened our life in Christ to being a part of a body: what affects one part of the body, affects the whole. In today’s text from Ephesians, Paul builds on this insight by telling us that it has been God’s plan since the beginning of time to bind us together in Christ’s love.
What a blessing God is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ… (For it is) in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living…
Did you hear that? Do you grasp the moral consequences at stake? Those of us who have been embraced by t
he Word of God have been called together as a body to be made whole and holy by Christ’s love. And I’m talking about whole and holy by Christ’s love – not raggedy and incomplete – but whole and holy. And that includes our hearts as well as our homes – our checkbooks as well as our Smart Phones and the world beyond – because we have been called by God to become whole and holy – part of the living evidence of Christ’s love. Now listen carefully:
• This is not a call to be a partisan Democrat or Republican – you can do that in your spare time if you must – but your primary calling is as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be made whole and holy in his love. His grace. His forgiveness. His living presence within and among us.
• And don’t try to parse this with ideology or sophisticated word games telling me that you’re only being a devil’s advocate because guess what? Satan already has too many helpers and we’ve been called into Christ’s love.
Therefore, beloved, I have been persuaded that in the light of Christ’s love, Dr. King’s birthday and the shootings in Tucson we need to do some serious rethinking about how God is shaping us into whole and holy disciples in this global and inter-connected world. It just won’t do any more – if it ever really played – to say that religion and politics don’t mix. It isn’t political, is it, to notice that a patient is dying of neglect and bring them healing balm of both medicine and attention? So consider these three insights into what it means to be whole and holy in our generation.
Did you hear that? Do you grasp the moral consequences at stake? Those of us who have been embraced by t
he Word of God have been called together as a body to be made whole and holy by Christ’s love. And I’m talking about whole and holy by Christ’s love – not raggedy and incomplete – but whole and holy. And that includes our hearts as well as our homes – our checkbooks as well as our Smart Phones and the world beyond – because we have been called by God to become whole and holy – part of the living evidence of Christ’s love. Now listen carefully:• This is not a call to be a partisan Democrat or Republican – you can do that in your spare time if you must – but your primary calling is as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be made whole and holy in his love. His grace. His forgiveness. His living presence within and among us.
• And don’t try to parse this with ideology or sophisticated word games telling me that you’re only being a devil’s advocate because guess what? Satan already has too many helpers and we’ve been called into Christ’s love.
Therefore, beloved, I have been persuaded that in the light of Christ’s love, Dr. King’s birthday and the shootings in Tucson we need to do some serious rethinking about how God is shaping us into whole and holy disciples in this global and inter-connected world. It just won’t do any more – if it ever really played – to say that religion and politics don’t mix. It isn’t political, is it, to notice that a patient is dying of neglect and bring them healing balm of both medicine and attention? So consider these three insights into what it means to be whole and holy in our generation.
First, in the wake of the Tucson shootings let’s be clear that this is not the time for blaming or deep sociologica
l explanations. They have their place and will happen no matter what given our obsession with cable news and talk radio. But for those of us called to be made whole and holy in Christ’s love perhaps our first response is to let ourselves suffer the agony of this moment deeply. Let’s not try to escape it or push the pain away, but rather like Jesus the Lamb of God let us enter and embrace it. Preacher, Brian McLaren, put it like this and his words ring true. This is a time…
… to be suffered, something that must, in a sense, crash over us like a wave or knock us down like a fever, shake us so that we truly feel our feelings and name them; so that we can speak of them and share them and feel an exchange with others of sympathy, empathy, common grief, and common sorrow. This kind of sorrow doesn't make us bitter; it makes us better. It doesn't make us smug at having an explanation; it makes us humble as we understand our shared vulnerability. It doesn't make us put up walls of blame; it tears down walls as we feel our common humanity. In so doing, it teaches us wisdom - wisdom that, in the scriptures, is often associated with pain and struggle. It softens us, makes us more sensitive to the pain that others suffer but we often ignore. It forms compassion in us.
We American Christians are not so good at suffering – we’re a feel good people – we want solutions to our problems. We are the world’s most active utilitarians w
ho want to get things done. And action has its place – but not reaction. Unless we allow ourselves to suffer the depth of our loss like Jesus we will not be able to move into the next truth of the Lord’s love. Remember how did the Hebrew poet put it? “To everything there is a season…”
A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
First, there is the redemptive and soul enriching work of suffering – without we are shallow chaff blowing in the wind.
l explanations. They have their place and will happen no matter what given our obsession with cable news and talk radio. But for those of us called to be made whole and holy in Christ’s love perhaps our first response is to let ourselves suffer the agony of this moment deeply. Let’s not try to escape it or push the pain away, but rather like Jesus the Lamb of God let us enter and embrace it. Preacher, Brian McLaren, put it like this and his words ring true. This is a time…… to be suffered, something that must, in a sense, crash over us like a wave or knock us down like a fever, shake us so that we truly feel our feelings and name them; so that we can speak of them and share them and feel an exchange with others of sympathy, empathy, common grief, and common sorrow. This kind of sorrow doesn't make us bitter; it makes us better. It doesn't make us smug at having an explanation; it makes us humble as we understand our shared vulnerability. It doesn't make us put up walls of blame; it tears down walls as we feel our common humanity. In so doing, it teaches us wisdom - wisdom that, in the scriptures, is often associated with pain and struggle. It softens us, makes us more sensitive to the pain that others suffer but we often ignore. It forms compassion in us.
We American Christians are not so good at suffering – we’re a feel good people – we want solutions to our problems. We are the world’s most active utilitarians w
ho want to get things done. And action has its place – but not reaction. Unless we allow ourselves to suffer the depth of our loss like Jesus we will not be able to move into the next truth of the Lord’s love. Remember how did the Hebrew poet put it? “To everything there is a season…”A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
First, there is the redemptive and soul enriching work of suffering – without we are shallow chaff blowing in the wind.
Second, the time has come for us to revisit the wisdom of Dr. King when he said: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” In his day he was thinking about the good people who looked the other way when a person of color was degraded; or turned a deaf ear when a r
acial slur was blurted out; or a politician stood mute when their vote would have helped. He was addressing all those who said, “It isn’t the right time… you need to learn to wait” whether the waiting was for civil rights or an end to the war in Vietnam.
A generation earlier, the silence of good Christian people encouraged the Nazis to systematically exterminate all of their social and political enemies. Pastor Martin Neimoller, who had once urged patience and silence only to find himself incarcerated at Dachau, to tell the world:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; for I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. And then they came for me and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Words matter – so does silence. We should know this as People of the Word – and the Word of God made flesh – but most of the time we forget. We forget and excuse our political leaders – we forget and excuse our loved ones – we forget and excuse ourselves. But let me remind you this morning that as People of the Word we must not only remember, but we must urge caution and discretion in the public square.
Over the weekend, my friend, Lou Erste, who used to work with the Citizen’s League in Cleveland, Ohio sent me a link to a front-page editorial that Ralph McGill, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote in the wake of a synagogue bombing in 1958. It appears that the rabbi had been too outspoken on behalf of civil rights for some so the local citizenry decided that he needed to be silenced. “Let’s face the fact,” McGill wrote:
This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown. It is the harvest of defiance of courts and the encouragement of citize
ns to defy law on the part of many Southern politicians… It is not possible to preach lawlessness and then restrict it. To be sure, none said go bomb a Jewish temple or a school. But let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take law into their hands.
acial slur was blurted out; or a politician stood mute when their vote would have helped. He was addressing all those who said, “It isn’t the right time… you need to learn to wait” whether the waiting was for civil rights or an end to the war in Vietnam.A generation earlier, the silence of good Christian people encouraged the Nazis to systematically exterminate all of their social and political enemies. Pastor Martin Neimoller, who had once urged patience and silence only to find himself incarcerated at Dachau, to tell the world:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; for I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. And then they came for me and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Words matter – so does silence. We should know this as People of the Word – and the Word of God made flesh – but most of the time we forget. We forget and excuse our political leaders – we forget and excuse our loved ones – we forget and excuse ourselves. But let me remind you this morning that as People of the Word we must not only remember, but we must urge caution and discretion in the public square.
Over the weekend, my friend, Lou Erste, who used to work with the Citizen’s League in Cleveland, Ohio sent me a link to a front-page editorial that Ralph McGill, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote in the wake of a synagogue bombing in 1958. It appears that the rabbi had been too outspoken on behalf of civil rights for some so the local citizenry decided that he needed to be silenced. “Let’s face the fact,” McGill wrote:
This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown. It is the harvest of defiance of courts and the encouragement of citize
ns to defy law on the part of many Southern politicians… It is not possible to preach lawlessness and then restrict it. To be sure, none said go bomb a Jewish temple or a school. But let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take law into their hands. There will be, to be sure, the customary act of the careful drawing aside of skirts on the part of those in high places. "How awful!" they will exclaim. "How terrible. Something must be done." But the record stands. The extremists of the citizens' councils, the political leaders who in terms violent and inflammatory words have repudiated their oaths and stood against due process of law, have helped unloose this flood of hate and bombing.
This too is a harvest of those so-called Christian ministers who have chosen to preach hate instead of compassion. Let them now find pious words and raise their hands in deploring the bombing of a synagogue. You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in histor
y. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe. Hate and lawlessness by those who lead release the yellow rats and encourage the crazed and neurotic who print and distribute the hate pamphlets - who shrieked that Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew - who denounce the Supreme Court as being Communist and controlled by Jewish influences.
Beloved, words matter: I don’t care whether you are a Republican or a Democrat – words matter. I don’t care whether you are Sarah Palin teasing and flirting with the nuances of a “lock and reload” ammunition metaphor or Joe Biden carelessly shooting off your mouth in public – words matter. And as People of the Word we need to hold one another accountable for the words we speak and the words our elected officials utter, too.
y. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe. Hate and lawlessness by those who lead release the yellow rats and encourage the crazed and neurotic who print and distribute the hate pamphlets - who shrieked that Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew - who denounce the Supreme Court as being Communist and controlled by Jewish influences.And third, we need to own as Susan Thistlethwaite’s so clear wrote in the Washington Post this weekend, “That incendiary political language needs a match to turn rhetoric into lethal violence – and the USA the proliferation of guns is that match.”
There is NO “God given” right to handguns and the second amendment is NOT holy writ… The United States of America is staring down the barrel of a gun, literally and figuratively. Handguns and ammunition proliferate and strong gun lobbies pour millions of dollars into political campaigns to make sure the guns keep coming. When you combine how easy it is to obtain a handgun under permissive gun legislation with inflamed political rhetoric and authorize the whole unholy mess with talk about how this is connected to belief in God, you are asking for trouble – and trouble is what we’ve got.
It is not enough to urge civility – that is essential and needs to be done. It is not enough to pause for moments of silence and write on your website “I hate violence.” As disciples being made whole and holy we must testify to the world that God and guns don’t mix. Again, Thistlethwaite cuts to the chase: When one of Jesus’ disciples used a weapon to defend Jesus from arrest, Jesus rebuked him. God’s own son warns us about what happens to those who choose to live by weapons. And what happens is that they die by weapons.
That’s my moral take on this morning’s lessons as we stand in the light of both Dr. King’s birthday and the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords:
• Feel the horror and tragedy of this pivotal moment in our public life and enter into the suffering like the Lord Jesus.
• Face the very real consequences of our words and silences and remember the path of Christ.
• And follow the call of the Cross by “rejecting any connection that links handgun ownership with some kind of divinely authorized freedom.” (Thistlethwaite.)
And let those who have ears to hear, hear.
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