Sunday, January 18, 2015

Bill on Martin: A Call to Action

On April 14, 1968, my father stepped into the pulpit at Adams Shore Community Church in Quincy, Massachusetts – near Boston – to deliver his very first Easter sermon after being ordained. As the young pastor scanned the white faces in the pews before him, I imagine there was some anxiousness in the congregation, maybe even apprehension, about what he might say. Some may have thought, “This is Easter – a time to celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death. It’s no time to bring up divisive issues like race.” But others may have been lost in a fog of despair that morning. Just ten days before, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been gunned down – and with him their hopes for non-violent change in a nation torn by racial injustice and strife.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dad began to speak: “You saw it as I did on television. You saw 150,000 Negroes marching beside the casket of their patron saint, who had been murdered by a white man. But somehow it didn't seem like a funeral at all. Oh, some were crying, but most of them were singing: ‘We shall overcome, we shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day.’ They surely couldn't be serious about the meaning of that song. How could they be optimistic about their deplorable situation? Truly their cause was in its darkest hour. Small strides have been made, yes. Some schools have token integration; Negroes now may ride in the front of the buses in Atlanta; there are many civil rights laws on the books. But many Negroes are in no better position economically and socially now than they were 20 years ago before this all began.

And today, the hour is even darker because one of their leaders was struck down by the vicious racism that he tried to combat. When others were forsaking non-violence and turning to black power and its own kind of racism, saying that non-violence had been tried and had failed, this one man stuck with it. He preached love and black and white living together in peace and mutual respect, when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now, this voice is snuffed out. It is a dark hour for his cause; it is a dark hour for his black people, it is a dark hour for our nation.

So how is it that his followers are singing beside his casket? They are so few in comparison to the untold numbers who hate. They are so few, and the whites and blacks who oppose them are so many. They sing, 'We shall overcome.' They sing it like they believe it. They have no grounds for this hope. The evil they are fighting is too great. They are too few. Their leader is gone.  They are cockeyed optimists. Their optimism is absurd.

Almost two thousand years ago, there was another small group who, under their leader, had brought at least a dim light to the horizon, but now he was dead, and surely now, even that dim light had every reason to go out. There were other leaders – self-styled zealots and messiahs who sprang up almost every day – telling the people that the only way to freedom was through armed revolt. Their answer was to rise up and throw out the blood-sucking Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel. Only Jesus had advocated another way – a way of non-violence, peace, love, service. He preached love and brotherhood and peaceful community when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now this voice was snuffed out. It was a dark hour for his cause; it seemed a dark hour for our world.

But he did have these few followers – sometimes weak, sometimes vacillating, but basically faithful and committed. They were so few that no one could reasonably expect them to change the world; yet they continued to gather together in upper rooms and on street corners, praying, preaching, singing, witnessing. They were acting as if they actually expected to change the world. They were cockeyed optimists.

What is the basis for this we-shall-overcome attitude of both groups? The basis of their hope is the right reason for our being here this morning, my friends. We should be here to whoop it up, to celebrate the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is alive! The basis for their cockeyed optimism is that they serve an all-powerful, living God. The resurrection proves something. It proves that the most gigantic, hideous, evil crime man can perpetrate – the cruel torture and murder of the Son of God himself – cannot avail against the power of the living God. In the end, after evil and death has swung its last punch, God still stands there untouched. Both of these groups know by virtue of the resurrection that, even when the odds are so great against them, good is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, and they are on the side of good and love.

But now, my friends, a final warning – lest we mistakenly conclude that the Easter message is that God is in charge, so we can sit back and let him clean up the mess. There is reason to expect a happy ending. There is reason to believe in a nation where blacks and whites live together in happiness at every conceivable level. There is reason to see ahead a world community of peace. But the reason is only there if we let the resurrected Christ be alive in the way that he chooses to live … in us!

I truly believe that the living spirit of Christ incarnates himself in flesh – yours and mine – and works to change the world through us. This is how the resurrected Lord works. You prove the resurrection is true when you yield to the living spirit of Christ and allow him to use your body, your mind, your soul, your whole person to fight the battle against evil that is so real to us today. We prove Christ is alive by letting him live in us.

Since God has chosen us as his means of living and working in the world, it behooves us to get on the stick and become the transforming resurrection community we have so long failed to be. This means ACTION, not sitting on your hands bewailing the terrible state we are in, or even preaching pious words, but allowing the living Lord to empower us to actually tackle our predicament head-on, with the sure knowledge that with Christ in us we will win. Now I say this in all candor, and I’m sure you would too, given recent events: Either we become the resurrection community in action or the world blows up in our faces.

From: "Easter's Cockeyed Optimism"
Scripture: Isaiah 25:1, 7-9; Mark 16:1-7; Acts 13:26-33
Preached on April 14, 1968 at Adams Shore Community Church

1 comment: