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Sunday, 14 January, 2018
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday
Peter J.B. Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
I.
When it comes to seeing the ways in which a nation has gone wrong, or a people has lost its direction, it is much easier to look the other way, to ignore what is right in front of us. And yet there is in each of us the same gift that the child Samuel had, long ago: the ability to pay attention to what we see, hear the word that is being spoken in our ear or heart or mind—and be moved to become different people, be moved to take decisive action we would have never guessed we had in us.
The reading today describes a time not so different from our own: The word of God was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. And yet in that time, the light still hadn’t gone out—one young person still had hearing acute enough – or a heart and mind open enough—to hear a call in the night. And one old priest still had faithfulness strong enough say yes to a word that spelled his own end.
This weekend we remember the life and witness of one person who had a profound impact not only on what life is like in day to day America but also: re-shaping how we think about being followers of Christ; what our approach as people of faith is to social change; how people around the world regard issues of race and justice; how we SEE each other; and what constitutes fundamental human rights.
I remember clearly one night in India in 1968, shortly after we had learned of the death of Dr. King. The world was stunned—people of every race and nation stopped what they were doing. And that night my father and I went to the church of South India congregation where we normally worshiped. A service was taking place inside—but the church was full, and, like many others, most of them Indian, and I daresay many of them not church folk, we could not get in. So, we listened to the service through the open windows of the church, and we grieved, and wondered what would become of us, the little folk of every nation, people of color, and oppressed people around the world who had lost a compassionate, clear and articulate voice in the nonviolent struggle for justice. You see, th3 grief was as deep in South India as it was in Schenectady New York and Memphis Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia.
Five decades later, we look back. And we remember. He was not a leader in isolation, but rather part of a great movement, a movement for nonviolent social change, a movement with roots in South Africa and India, with a proud history around the world. Here in the United States, and indeed as others looked on from many parts of the world, Dr. King picked up the Gandhian mantle of nonviolent revolutionary change, heeding the voices of those who had gone before him, listening to the distant beat of a different drum. Who would have thought that in this gun-totin’ continent, unarmed masses willing to take blows could accomplish so much?
In a 1967 piece entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King wrote these words summing up his own pilgrimage: “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it til the end. This is what I have found in nonviolence.”
It is critical that we remember this individual, not as some improbable saint nor as an untarnished hero—but rather as a profound, prophetic and very human voice of conscience. We need to acknowledge a re-interpreter of Christian faith at its best; an ecumenist and interfaith activist far ahead of his time; and a teacher in what were for us new methods in social change. We remember him as not the only leader but nonetheless the key leader in a movement which inalterably changed the course of American history, and church history. They can sling as much mud as they like, but that is who Martin Luther King Junior was.
II.
It was a time when, even as in our own day, visions were rare in the land. Was it because no one expected to have them? Or were those who had them not asked to share? Or did the foul-mouthed commands of the corrupt sons of privilege distract the people? Who can tell? But visions were rare, and the capacity for vision was diminishing. At least Eli, an aging priest, couldn't see too well anymore.
Thousands of years ago, in the days before there were kings in the land of Israel, the young boy Samuel, foster child and apprentice priest in the household of Eli, heard a voice no one else seemed able to hear. The voice called to him as he lay there next to the container holding the tablets of the covenant between this God and the people.
I love this story of a child so young that he thought it was the old man calling to him, and kept having to be sent back to bed. And the voice kept calling to him in the night. Samuel had his ear to the ground. And he heard a voice. And eventually with some encouragement from his aging mentor, he heeded it.
Who knows what that voice was like? Samuel had his ear to the ground of being, the ground of truth, the ground of justice. Was Samuel having dreams where he put two plus two together from what he had already learned of the sacred covenant that was in that ark next to him, with a sense of disjuncture with what he saw around him? Or was he hearing an audible voice? Or was it something in between? It was so long ago, and all we have are a few written words, copied down with care for the millennia in between. But whether one very young person heard an echo of the basic principles of human rightness as he had already learned them, whispering to his soul in the night, or heard a voice in his ear, doesn’t much matter. One way or another Samuel found himself heeding the voice, letting his guardian Eli know that the abuse of the people by a corrupt power group—Eli’s own family-- had come to such a pass that they would soon reap the rewards of their behavior: their power was coming to an end.
III.
Such a word as this is required in our day. We must speak in the name of God to those who have let their own power go to their heads, who rip off the poor, malign peoples of color, and speak words of abuse and arrogance. We must say: your power is coming to an end. And yet more is required than the word of negation to the most obvious abusers of power. The voices – not one voice but a whole chorus of them-- spewing hatred and gutter language are designed to distract us from the day that is at hand, and the world that so desperately still cries out for the justice Dr. King proclaimed.
We must refuse to be distracted or derailed by the voices of hatred and by the smooth bait and switch of those who like the best cut for their own. We cannot afford to give up hope. In a time when visions are rare and clear moral vision rarer in this land, we must nonviolently and yet forcefully take matters into our hands, as we the people.
This spring there will be a series of national actions that invite us to do just that. They will address not some vague legacy of Dr. King but the specifics with which he was concerned at the end of his life: national issues and local issues.
In 1968, when his life was cut short, Dr. King was deep into the work of a new movement, the Poor People’s Campaign. With the leadership of Dr. William Barber, this year a new coalition has formed under the same name, Poor People’s Campaign. The group is planning direct action including nonviolent civil disobedience, in Washington DC and in 25 state capitals…. for starters. The organizers write:
This is not a celebration or commemoration of Dr. King’s work, but a continuation. We seek to confront four interconnected evils - poverty, systemic racism, militarism and the war economy, and ecological destruction – with a new moral narrative. We are non-partisan – this is not about left or right, but about right and wrong. We don’t endorse candidates and elected officials don’t speak at our events. This movement is based in the leadership and organization of those most directly impacted by the crises we face.
IV.
When it comes to our callings, few of us hear voices straight from heaven. Mostly for us the voice of God comes as it did for old Eli, through the voices of others. The truth of what is good and right and just and peaceable is communicated to us by very human others—like Samuel to Eli, like Martin Luther King Jr. to a nation. But the heeding—the recognition that something is right, that we need to pay attention—that must come from us.
You and I live in times that require clarity, courage, humility, boldness. I don’t care if you are seven or seventy—we need your openness to a vision of a world made right. White and Black and brown, Latino, Liberian, Haitian, South Sudanese, Indian, American and Karen; male, female, transgender and figuring it out, gay and straight and bi, we need your attentiveness to that voice that is calling us by name in the night. Poor and affluent, we need your openness to hear and see.
The holiday we observe this weekend is dedicated to the memory of someone who helped not only a nation but the world of his day, to heed that voice, to listen for the heartbeat of justice and liberation. We all need to take some time out once more, step back, listen again. We all need a day that reminds us not only to remember and memorialize, but also to pay attention, to look around, to heed the voice that is whispering in our ear, or the concern kicking around in our guts.
Go home today, sisters and brothers, and listen. Go out this afternoon or tomorrow morning, walk somewhere, volunteer somewhere, listen to a speaker if you dare, but listen for that Holy voice. What is truth calling you to? What is justice calling you to? What is love calling you to?
If, the first time, you aren’t sure what the voice is about, go back and listen again. If the second time you still aren’t sure, go back, and listen again. Go back and listen a third time, or a thirtieth time. One of those times you will hear, and understand, and it will be time then to do the even harder thing.
Carry that word in your hand. Carry that justice in your head. Carry that love in your chest. And get back to the pilgrimage at hand, the pilgrimage of nonviolence, the pilgrimage to a promised land where poor children get the same education as the rich, where White and Black and Latino people all get respect, where women get paid as well as their male counterparts, and respected and protected in the workplace and at home. It’s time to say a word about preserving and strengthening the rights of gay and lesbian people, human rights, immigration rights. It is time to get back to the march, reclaim the Word, resurrect the promise.
Graphic art: He, Qi. Calling Disciples, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46099 [retrieved January 18, 2018]. Original source: heqigallery.com.
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday
Peter J.B. Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
I.
When it comes to seeing the ways in which a nation has gone wrong, or a people has lost its direction, it is much easier to look the other way, to ignore what is right in front of us. And yet there is in each of us the same gift that the child Samuel had, long ago: the ability to pay attention to what we see, hear the word that is being spoken in our ear or heart or mind—and be moved to become different people, be moved to take decisive action we would have never guessed we had in us.
The reading today describes a time not so different from our own: The word of God was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. And yet in that time, the light still hadn’t gone out—one young person still had hearing acute enough – or a heart and mind open enough—to hear a call in the night. And one old priest still had faithfulness strong enough say yes to a word that spelled his own end.
This weekend we remember the life and witness of one person who had a profound impact not only on what life is like in day to day America but also: re-shaping how we think about being followers of Christ; what our approach as people of faith is to social change; how people around the world regard issues of race and justice; how we SEE each other; and what constitutes fundamental human rights.
I remember clearly one night in India in 1968, shortly after we had learned of the death of Dr. King. The world was stunned—people of every race and nation stopped what they were doing. And that night my father and I went to the church of South India congregation where we normally worshiped. A service was taking place inside—but the church was full, and, like many others, most of them Indian, and I daresay many of them not church folk, we could not get in. So, we listened to the service through the open windows of the church, and we grieved, and wondered what would become of us, the little folk of every nation, people of color, and oppressed people around the world who had lost a compassionate, clear and articulate voice in the nonviolent struggle for justice. You see, th3 grief was as deep in South India as it was in Schenectady New York and Memphis Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia.
Five decades later, we look back. And we remember. He was not a leader in isolation, but rather part of a great movement, a movement for nonviolent social change, a movement with roots in South Africa and India, with a proud history around the world. Here in the United States, and indeed as others looked on from many parts of the world, Dr. King picked up the Gandhian mantle of nonviolent revolutionary change, heeding the voices of those who had gone before him, listening to the distant beat of a different drum. Who would have thought that in this gun-totin’ continent, unarmed masses willing to take blows could accomplish so much?
In a 1967 piece entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King wrote these words summing up his own pilgrimage: “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it til the end. This is what I have found in nonviolence.”
It is critical that we remember this individual, not as some improbable saint nor as an untarnished hero—but rather as a profound, prophetic and very human voice of conscience. We need to acknowledge a re-interpreter of Christian faith at its best; an ecumenist and interfaith activist far ahead of his time; and a teacher in what were for us new methods in social change. We remember him as not the only leader but nonetheless the key leader in a movement which inalterably changed the course of American history, and church history. They can sling as much mud as they like, but that is who Martin Luther King Junior was.
II.
It was a time when, even as in our own day, visions were rare in the land. Was it because no one expected to have them? Or were those who had them not asked to share? Or did the foul-mouthed commands of the corrupt sons of privilege distract the people? Who can tell? But visions were rare, and the capacity for vision was diminishing. At least Eli, an aging priest, couldn't see too well anymore.
Thousands of years ago, in the days before there were kings in the land of Israel, the young boy Samuel, foster child and apprentice priest in the household of Eli, heard a voice no one else seemed able to hear. The voice called to him as he lay there next to the container holding the tablets of the covenant between this God and the people.
I love this story of a child so young that he thought it was the old man calling to him, and kept having to be sent back to bed. And the voice kept calling to him in the night. Samuel had his ear to the ground. And he heard a voice. And eventually with some encouragement from his aging mentor, he heeded it.
Who knows what that voice was like? Samuel had his ear to the ground of being, the ground of truth, the ground of justice. Was Samuel having dreams where he put two plus two together from what he had already learned of the sacred covenant that was in that ark next to him, with a sense of disjuncture with what he saw around him? Or was he hearing an audible voice? Or was it something in between? It was so long ago, and all we have are a few written words, copied down with care for the millennia in between. But whether one very young person heard an echo of the basic principles of human rightness as he had already learned them, whispering to his soul in the night, or heard a voice in his ear, doesn’t much matter. One way or another Samuel found himself heeding the voice, letting his guardian Eli know that the abuse of the people by a corrupt power group—Eli’s own family-- had come to such a pass that they would soon reap the rewards of their behavior: their power was coming to an end.
III.
Such a word as this is required in our day. We must speak in the name of God to those who have let their own power go to their heads, who rip off the poor, malign peoples of color, and speak words of abuse and arrogance. We must say: your power is coming to an end. And yet more is required than the word of negation to the most obvious abusers of power. The voices – not one voice but a whole chorus of them-- spewing hatred and gutter language are designed to distract us from the day that is at hand, and the world that so desperately still cries out for the justice Dr. King proclaimed.
We must refuse to be distracted or derailed by the voices of hatred and by the smooth bait and switch of those who like the best cut for their own. We cannot afford to give up hope. In a time when visions are rare and clear moral vision rarer in this land, we must nonviolently and yet forcefully take matters into our hands, as we the people.
This spring there will be a series of national actions that invite us to do just that. They will address not some vague legacy of Dr. King but the specifics with which he was concerned at the end of his life: national issues and local issues.
In 1968, when his life was cut short, Dr. King was deep into the work of a new movement, the Poor People’s Campaign. With the leadership of Dr. William Barber, this year a new coalition has formed under the same name, Poor People’s Campaign. The group is planning direct action including nonviolent civil disobedience, in Washington DC and in 25 state capitals…. for starters. The organizers write:
This is not a celebration or commemoration of Dr. King’s work, but a continuation. We seek to confront four interconnected evils - poverty, systemic racism, militarism and the war economy, and ecological destruction – with a new moral narrative. We are non-partisan – this is not about left or right, but about right and wrong. We don’t endorse candidates and elected officials don’t speak at our events. This movement is based in the leadership and organization of those most directly impacted by the crises we face.
IV.
When it comes to our callings, few of us hear voices straight from heaven. Mostly for us the voice of God comes as it did for old Eli, through the voices of others. The truth of what is good and right and just and peaceable is communicated to us by very human others—like Samuel to Eli, like Martin Luther King Jr. to a nation. But the heeding—the recognition that something is right, that we need to pay attention—that must come from us.
You and I live in times that require clarity, courage, humility, boldness. I don’t care if you are seven or seventy—we need your openness to a vision of a world made right. White and Black and brown, Latino, Liberian, Haitian, South Sudanese, Indian, American and Karen; male, female, transgender and figuring it out, gay and straight and bi, we need your attentiveness to that voice that is calling us by name in the night. Poor and affluent, we need your openness to hear and see.
The holiday we observe this weekend is dedicated to the memory of someone who helped not only a nation but the world of his day, to heed that voice, to listen for the heartbeat of justice and liberation. We all need to take some time out once more, step back, listen again. We all need a day that reminds us not only to remember and memorialize, but also to pay attention, to look around, to heed the voice that is whispering in our ear, or the concern kicking around in our guts.
Go home today, sisters and brothers, and listen. Go out this afternoon or tomorrow morning, walk somewhere, volunteer somewhere, listen to a speaker if you dare, but listen for that Holy voice. What is truth calling you to? What is justice calling you to? What is love calling you to?
If, the first time, you aren’t sure what the voice is about, go back and listen again. If the second time you still aren’t sure, go back, and listen again. Go back and listen a third time, or a thirtieth time. One of those times you will hear, and understand, and it will be time then to do the even harder thing.
Carry that word in your hand. Carry that justice in your head. Carry that love in your chest. And get back to the pilgrimage at hand, the pilgrimage of nonviolence, the pilgrimage to a promised land where poor children get the same education as the rich, where White and Black and Latino people all get respect, where women get paid as well as their male counterparts, and respected and protected in the workplace and at home. It’s time to say a word about preserving and strengthening the rights of gay and lesbian people, human rights, immigration rights. It is time to get back to the march, reclaim the Word, resurrect the promise.
Graphic art: He, Qi. Calling Disciples, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46099 [retrieved January 18, 2018]. Original source: heqigallery.com.