The Second Sunday after Epiphany 2011
Note: I confess that I am a preacher who is always suprised whenever I discover that someone actually listened to what I say. So you can imagine my surprise when this morning, as I walked out the aisle during the singing of the Doxology, several paper airplanes flew toward me--and from adults, no less! Priceless!
We all know that before we begin a trip, no matter how short or how long it may be, we always “buckle up.” A month or so ago, as I prepared to back out of the driveway of the home of Demauth and Bea Blanton down in Union where I visited them, Demauth stood at the end of the drive giving me a hand signal that I didn’t recognize for a minute. And then I realized that I hadn’t yet buckled my seatbelt, and he was signaling me to buckle up before I started back to Greenville. But this morning, as we continue on the journey of the stewardship of our lives, I want to suggest that in addition to buckling up, we need to lighten up. Lighten up.As our nation pauses on this long weekend to remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am reminded this time around of how often and how deeply the metaphor of the journey appears in Dr. King’s understanding to the Civil Rights Movement, in Dr. King’s understanding of the movement of human history, and in Dr. King's understanding of his own life.
His first book, published in 1958, was titled Stride toward Freedom. In that book, King laid out what he called his own “pilgrimage [or journey] to nonviolence.” The intellectual side of that journey this pilgrimage began, he said, his freshman year in college when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. Thoreau’s idea of “refusing to cooperate with an evil system” fascinated him, he wrote (Stride toward Freedom, p. 73).
Several years later, in 1950, when he was in seminary, King heard the Baptist pastor and university president Dr. Mordecai Johnson speak of a recent trip to India and of the life and the teachings of Mohandras K. Gandhi. Having read Thoreau and having heard Johnson, King became committed to “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence” (Stride toward Freedom, p. 79).
Five years later, King put his intellectual commitment to nonviolence into direct action for the first time during the Montgomery bus boycott that began with the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955. As King articulated it, the idea and practice of nonviolence contained “six key principles. The first principle is that is possible “to resist evil without resorting to violence.” The second principle is to seek always “to win the ‘friendship and understanding’” of one’s opponent, not to humiliate him or her. Third, nonviolence opposes “evil itself, not the people committing evil acts.”
Fourth, persons “committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive.” Fifth, “nonviolent resistance avoids ‘external physical violence’ and the ‘internal violence of spirit’ as well.” As King put it, “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him” or her. And sixth, engaging in nonviolent resistance requires “a deep faith in the future” grounded in the conviction that “the universe is on the side of justice.” That’s the framework of the journey of the Civil Rights Movement that King sets out in Stride toward Freedom.
In the final public address of his life the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, TN, King framed his own life and ministry in terms of the biblical image of the ancient Israelite journey out of Egypt and through the wilderness when he said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a journey worth taking. Surrounded by threats on his life (evidently with a premonition of his own death), surrounded by fractures and competing factions in the movement he was attempting to give leadership to, and surrounded by resistance to his work not only by white people but by some black people who accused him of moving too slowly, too indecisively, who accused him of cowardice for his unwillingness to take up arms to end oppression, King was able to say, “I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a life worth living. There’s a journey worth taking.
It is unfortunate, I think, that King’s legacy of nonviolence is too often analyzed as a method for social change and not often enough proclaimed as a way of life, a way of living and being. On the other side of the horrific incident the week before last in Tucson, AZ, as I have listened to some of the public reactions, especially in the political arena, I am saddened to watch and to listen to how little we have learned from King. We have a holiday in King’s honor, but our nation has yet to learn the most basic and most important lessons King taught and preached and lived.
I, for one, have been glad to hear the calls for “civility” in the political arena and in the public square. But I tell you, “civility” is sterile and lifeless compared to King’s call for friendship and understanding with one’s opponents. Wisely crafted and Constitutionally grounded policy for the licensing and controlling firearms is worth debating, but it pales by comparison compared to King’s call to avoid “an internal violence of spirit” as well, not only refusing to shoot one’s opponent but also refusing to hate her or him. That’s what we need to hear in the political arena and in the public square. Adopting a King holiday means nothing if we don’t adopt King’s journey as well.
In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells a story about a field that a householder had planted with wheat. But weeds sprang up among the wheat, and the immediate impulse of those who were watching over the field was to pull out the weeds. But the householder in the story surprised everyone by saying, “No, don’t do that; for in rooting out the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” Do you see the nonviolence of that parable?
The late Dr. Foy Valentine was the long-time Executive Director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission. When he died in January 2006, he was characterized by a Dallas newspaper as “a white Texan who, during the 1960s and ’70s, forced fellow Southern Baptists to confront their denomination’s racist past and move toward integration.” The last time he was here at First Baptist Greenville, two years before he died, Foy told me that during that era, one of the most famous Southern Baptist missionaries of the twentieth century stood up on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and made a motion that the staff of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission be “eliminated.” “Eliminated?” Foy asked. “Terminate my employment, that’s one thing. Fire me, fine. But eliminate me?”
It is not only politicians and partisan pundits who use extreme language that reveals an internal violence of spirit. It happens in the church as well, whenever we fail to put “friendship and understanding” ahead of opposition, whenever we are unwilling to suffer without retaliation, whenever we don’t refuse to hate our opponent, whenever we give up our deep and abiding faith in God’s future regardless of the circumstances of the present.
Now if all that sounds like too big a thing for you and for me to accomplish, take a look at the two short parables that Jesus tells after the parable of weeds. All it takes is a tiny seed, Jesus says, to produce a large tree. All it takes is a pinch of yeast to leaven an entire loaf. That second short parable in Matthew 13:33 suggests to me that proofing the dough, allowing the yeast to ferment, allowing the dough to rise is a too-often ignored metaphor for the kingdom of heaven and the work of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t stop working the dough long enough for the yeast to ferment, you end up with flatbread, not a loaf. And a lot of what we are living these days is flatbread because we are unwilling lighten up and proof the dough, just let it alone and let it rise. Lighten up.
“I’m happy tonight,” King said. “I’m not worried about anything.” Who among us can say that even when we are not surrounded by threats on our life, faced with a premonition of our own death, and surrounded by fractures and competing factions and resistance in the workplace, at home or in school. So this morning, in effort to help us all lighten up on the journey, I’d like you to hear another parable, a contemporary one. It’s the parable of Throwing Paper Airplanes in Church. Becky Ramsey wrote this parable from a real-life experience. Becky wrote. . . .
Don’t tell anyone, but someday when I’m in the building and dressed for it and no one is looking, I just might try it myself, just to lighten up. Just to remind myself that the kingdom of heaven is never so serious that it fails to include children of God of all ages at play under a tree under which Christ's stories are told. King told us that. The kingdom of heaven is where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.”
Congregations such as ours are called to be the leaven in the loaf. We are called to cultivate friendship and understanding even where there is opposition. We are called to set aside the internal violence of the spirit and to refuse to hate. We are called to suffer without retaliation. We are called to sustain a deep faith in the future. That’s the journey we’re on. And every once in a while, it just might require throwing a paper airplane in church and taking the secret slide. So let’s lighten up. Let’s lighten up.
This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.
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