No
Greater Love
John Shuck
First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee
January 15, 2012
Martin Luther King
John 15:1-26
Today
we honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the struggle for equality. We do so in the context of worship because we
know the sacred nature of this struggle.
The
marches across the south were holy marches.
The
sit-ins at lunch counters were divine epiphanies.
The
willingness to walk rather than to ride segregated buses was to follow the
cloud by day and the fire by night through the wilderness.
Those
who participated in the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s knew
they were involved in something much larger than what they could see or
hear. It was a movement for dignity. A movement for dignity is a movement of
Spirit. The struggle for equality
was cradled in the language of faith.
King was a preacher who used the stories and teachings of Christianity
for inspiration and for clarity.
It
can be dangerous to do that even as it is necessary. We know the dangers of fanaticism when people
claim that their cause is God’s cause.
That assuredness that “God is on my side” has caused pain and suffering
as well as healing and hope. Those in
positions of leadership and influence have to take care when they invoke
Spirit, the Holy, and the Sacred in their cause. When someone speaks with certainty that
their cause is God’s cause, it is a good time to watch your wallet and to watch
your back.
Even
so as Reinhold Niebuhr said, ‘justice cannot
be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a
sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but such madness will do battle with
malignant power and ‘spiritual wickedness in high places.’ Moral Man, Immoral Society, p. 277.
It
took a “madness in the soul” to resist entrenched and institutionalized
racism. How could freedom rides ever
translate into real freedom? Weren’t
those who suffered these injustices each and every hour of every day too small,
weak, and poor? Weren’t the powers of
the economy, culture, and government too large, strong, and rich? Yes, they were. The “world” to use the Gospel of John’s term, hated them.
They needed an identity and a purpose that was not of this world.
The
world as John uses the term refers
to the unequal and unjust powers of
racism, economic inequality, political oppression, and misuse of natural and
human resources on behalf of a few over the many. It is all sanctioned by the dominant
religion. That is the world. Another phrase for it is the Domination
System or even Civilization.
It
is no surprise then what started as a civil rights movement grew in King’s mind
to be connected with the war in Vietnam and the cause of the poor
everywhere. It is all connected. We know today that the connections are
even larger and include the struggle for dignity and equality for all people
regardless of gender and sexual orientation, and now for Earth and the systems
that sustain life itself.
We
know that these assaults on people and on Earth are the result of entrenched
and institutionalized injustice that is pervasive and consuming. Are we not too small, too weak, and too
poor? Are not the powers of this
world—namely, the global corporations to whom our elected leaders bow down and
worship—too large, too strong, and too rich?
Yes, we are and they are.
We
need an identity and a purpose that is not of this world to do battle with this
“malignant power and spiritual
wickedness.” Perhaps, dare I say
it? We need Jesus.
We
need Jesus the truth teller.
Part
of the malignant power of spiritual wickedness is spin. That is the ability of the powerful, rich,
and connected to get you to deny what you see with your own eyes. These representatives of the world wear nice
suits, are clean shaven, and speak in complete sentences. They are so skilled at deception that they
can convince us that destroying the top of a mountain that has been there for
500 million years is a good thing. So
skilled are they that they have done this trick 500 times. In Appalachia, 500 mountains have been
flattened.
So
skilled are they, that they can convince us that clear-cutting all the forest,
literally blowing 500 feet of elevation off a mountain and dumping rock and
dirt into the valleys and thus poisoning streams is perfectly normal. To do so, they say very calmly as they
gently pat your hand, is a necessary thing.
That destroying human and animal habitats not just for today but for
millions of years in the future is the only
thing that is rational. It has to be
done. It is the only way.
That, is to use
Niebuhr’s phrase, “the malignant power of
spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Segregation
in
King’s time and before was normal. It
is just the way it was. Smooth talking
people who wore nice suits, were clean-shaven and spoke in complete
sentences,
told the rest of us how normal and good and important it was for society
to be
segregated, separate, and they assured us, “but equal.” It took a
long time for that to
change. That change didn’t come by
sitting down calmly with the powers and negotiating. That was tried to
be sure. Again and again and again. Change only happened when the
small, weak,
and poor realized that the large, strong, and rich were never going to
change.
They
realized that if change was going to happen, it would have to be done by
force. Pressure would have to be
placed on the powerful from every angle and at every opportunity. That pressure and force would need to come
from the outside. They found ways to
expose the truth. Thanks to television,
people around the country and around the world could see the violence of
institutionalized racism in their living rooms. Peaceful marchers attacked by dogs and fire
hoses led people to ask, “Is this America?”
Yes
it is. That is the truth. Now, is this the America you want? For you who are in church, is a segregated
Jesus the Jesus you worship? They were
forced to wrestle with the very core of their identity. Who are we?
The country was exposed to the truth and it needed to make a
decision. Jesus as truth-teller was a
model for resistance. We need a little
Jesus.
I
think there is a similarity between mountain top desecration in 2012 and
segregation in 1950. The similarity is
that it both were hidden. Neither
injustice was hidden to the people who suffered of course, but their suffering
was hidden from the rest. I wasn’t aware
of mountain top desecration until a few years ago. The
spin to the wider world was that everything is OK. No problem here. Public relations is one of the most
lucrative careers you can get into these days.
Good spin doctors are in high demand, especially when there is a lot to
keep hidden.
But
truth from the mouths of the small, weak, and poor can conquer the spin of the
large, strong, and powerful.
Truth
from the mouths of the small, weak, and poor can conquer the spin of the large,
strong, and powerful.
You
have to believe that.
Martin
Luther King didn’t just lead one march and call it quits. He didn’t think that he just needed to
preach one sermon, offer one eloquent speech, go to jail one time, and people
would get it. He had to do the same
darn thing again and again and again.
Remember, he was dealing with the world, “the malignant power of spiritual wickedness in high places.” You don’t just do that as a weekend
hobby. It is a life commitment. If you get discouraged, well duh, you are
dealing with “the malignant power of
spiritual wickedness in high places.”
You
can’t do this alone. You need others and
you need a strong spiritual core. You
need a center, a rock, a fire, a baptism of spirit. You need to know who you are. That no matter what happens on the outside,
you are still and undisturbed at the center.
The Jordan River is chilly and cold.
It chills the body but not the soul.
Those
spirituals are all about this. They are
all about knowing who you are. I don’t
tell others the way they need to find that spiritual core. For me, though, it is through my man,
Jesus. The Gospel of John’s Jesus is not literal or historical, I don’t think,
anyway. It is a portrait, and a valuable
portrait of who Jesus was on the inside.
“I am from above,” he
would say. As if to say, “You can’t touch this.”
That
is not a cocksureness or an arrogance.
It is a statement of identity.
I know who I am and who I am is not defined by the values of this world. Thus John’s
Jesus is the invitation to discover yourself.
Who are you? What do you live
for? What matters?
The
world says you are a consumer. You live
to consume stuff. The more the
better. What matters is that you don’t
question that and you just keep on buying useless crap as fast as you can. The world says to us:
“We, your caretakers, your providers, your gods, “the
malignant powers of spiritual wickedness in high places” will provide you with
these shiny things in exchange for keeping your mouth shut.
“Don’t
talk about the mountains or streams. Don’t talk about the factory
farms. Don’t talk about climate change. Don’t talk about the people
that need to be
displaced because they are in the way of the stuff. If you don’t let us
do what we want, you
won’t get the shiny things.”
We
say, “Well…if you put it that way, OK.”
No,
we don’t say that. We say, “No!”
We
say, “It is not worth it. We
don’t want what you are selling. We are not consumers. We are human
beings. We are Earthlings. This is home.
We will not allow you to destroy it. We will fight for it. We will
fight for our children’s future. We will tell the truth about it. We
won’t stop.”
And…
“We are willing to sacrifice for it.”
In
Montgomery, throughout 1956, for over a year, African-Americans stopped taking
the bus. The bus was their lifeblood. It was their transportation. They had to find ways to get people to and
from work and to and from the grocery and to and from church and to and from
wherever they needed to go.
It
required of them sacrifice.
It
required of them creativity, organizing, and sharing.
They
did it.
They
built community.
They
found their strength in nightly meetings.
They
endured the KKK and bombs and daily indignities.
The
sacrifice didn’t kill them.
It
made them stronger.
They
knew that there was no greater reason to exist,
no
greater love,
then
to give up their lives for their friends.
They
knew who they were.
They
knew what mattered.
They
knew what life was about.
Change
requires speaking the truth, finding our spiritual center, endurance, and it
requires of us the willingness to sacrifice and to change our patterns—to give
up the trinkets. The world, “the malignant powers of spiritual
wickedness in high places” are betting that we won’t do that. That is their ace in the hole. They think all we can do is a talk a good
game, but when it comes down to it, we will always come crawling back to them
for our treats.
That
is where we need to prove them wrong.
We
prove them wrong by knowing who we are, what we live for, and what matters.
It
begins with a decision.
It
is a decision to be a human being rather than a consumer.
A
human being like Jesus was.
Like
Martin Luther King.
Like
Rosa Parks.
Like
the tens and hundreds of thousands of people who history will never remember
but who make up that cloud of witnesses,
who
resisted,
who
spoke their truth, again and again and again,
and
who demonstrated the greatest love,
to
give up their lives for their friends.
And
who through it all, changed the world.
Amen.
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