Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, NC
November 15, 2015
In June of 1963, the
Baptist pastor and preacher the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed an
estimated 125,000 people in Detroit, Michigan, in what was at the time the
largest civil rights demonstration in our nation’s history. Toward the end of his
speech in Detroit, King told the crowd that he had a dream, and he told them
what was in it. Without even realizing it, King was warming up in Detroit for what
would become a far more famous speech in Washington.
I say “without even
realizing it” because the famous “I-have-a-dream” part of the speech in
Washington was not in the manuscript that King had prepared to deliver that
day. But when he got to the place in his prepared text where he spoke of “great
trials and tribulations” and exhorted the crowd, “Let us not wallow in the
valley of despair,” the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who was standing
near King as he spoke called out him, “Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell
them about your dream!” And so he did. He departed from the manuscript in front
of him to talk about the dream he had talked about in Detroit. And when he did,
his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial became the most famous oration by
a Baptist preacher in American history.
But I want to take
you back to Detroit two months earlier. In Detroit, King spoke of “the inner
conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some
things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for.” Fifty-two years and
innumerable deaths later, including King’s, there is all too much evidence in
our nation and in our world that King’s dream of universal justice through
reconciliation, redemption, and the creation of what he called Beloved
Community is a dream deferred, not a dream fulfilled.
From Ferguson, MO,
to Charleston, SC; on Staten Island, in Baltimore and Charlotte; in Sinjar
Syria, and in the streets of Israel and the Occupied Territories; in the air
over Sinai, and on the ground in Paris, the deaths—and the conflicting currents
of causation, incrimination, and recrimination are more than enough to drive us
into the valley of despair. And that’s why King’s words in Detroit are important
for us to hear. At the end of his speech in Detroit, King said this: “With this
faith, I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope through a mountain of despair.”
“With this faith, I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope through a mountain
of despair.” King’s dream words are inspirational. King’s tunnel-of-hope words
are perspirational. And it takes both Inspiration and Perspiration to turn what
is into what it must become.
And that brings me
to this morning’s epistle lesson from the book of Hebrews. I want to suggest this
morning that Hebrews 10:19-25 provides us with a working model for turning what
is into what it must become. It is a universal model for what is often called “change
agency.” The model in Hebrews 10:19-25 is not a spiritual warm fuzzy; it’s not a
dose of homiletical Prozac or Xanax. It’s a working model of the Inspiration
and the Perspiration that are necessary to turn what is into what it must
become in any and every walk of life: business, education, politics, community,
church, family, individual existence. There are five moving parts to this working
model.
The first moving
part is Deep Conviction. Deep Conviction is King’s something so dear, something
so precious, something so eternally true, that it is worth dying for. The great
twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich spoke of Ultimate Reality—capital “U,”
capital “R”—Ultimate Reality, what is Really Real, what is Truly True of God and
the world and human existence in the world. Every human being’s understanding
of the world and of human existence is grounded in some Deep Conviction, some
understanding of Ultimate Reality, what is Really Real and Truly True. Deep
Conviction about Ultimate Reality is an intellectual and psychological and
spiritual common denominator among Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus
and Buddhists and Baha’is and Native Americans and atheists and everybody else:
Deep Conviction about what is Really Real and Truly True.
The writer of the
book of Hebrews frames living in alignment with Ultimate Reality—or “right
relationship with God,” to use more familiar language—as participating in the ritual
activity that is commanded in the law of Moses; and in Hebrews 10:19-21 the person
and work of Jesus Christ are presented as serving the same function as the
ritual actions and the ritual personnel prescribed in Exodus and Leviticus. In
v 19, the blood of Jesus is analogous to the blood of animal sacrifices. In v
20, the body of Jesus is compared to the curtain of the sanctuary. In v 21,
Jesus is characterized as “the great high priest over the house of God.” The
writer of Hebrews 10 says that because of the structural similarity of the
person and work of Jesus Christ with the ritual system commanded in the Torah, we
can draw near to God in “full assurance of faith.” That’s a Deep Conviction, and
Deep Conviction about Ultimate Reality is Part 1 in turning what is into what
it must become.
The second moving
part in the model is Energizing Exhortation. King’s “I have a dream!” was Energizing
Exhortation. Roosevelt’s “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with
destiny” was Energizing Exhortation. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for your country” was Energizing Exhortation. Reagan’s
“Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!” was Energizing Exhortation. The
Energizing Exhortation in Hebrews 10:20-23 calls its audience into a “new and
living way” and to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering.” I’m
convinced that these very verses are the biblical reservoir from which King the
preacher drew his words in Detroit: a vision of a new way of living together grounded
in the fullness of faith and impelled by unwavering hope. Part 2 is the Energizing
Exhortation that it takes to turn what is into what it must become.
The third moving
part in the model is Mutual Provocation. Mutual Provocation. It’s in Hebrews
10:24: “Let us consider how to provoke one another.” As if there weren’t enough
provocation in the world and in the church already, “Let us consider how to
provoke one another.” I don’t have to be from around here to know that some of
us are experts at provocation. Mutual Provocation is where Inspiration and
Perspiration intersect. In words and in deeds, by exhortation and by example, we
must encourage, support, challenge, instigate, and agitate one other to turn
what is into what it must become. The pledge walk in worship this morning is an
act of personal devotion; it is also a demonstration of Mutual Provocation. Individually
and collectively, the act of walking your pledges forward is a sermon without
words that says without saying, “C’mon, ya’ll! Hitch yourselves to this wagon
and pull with us!” That’s provoking one another by example, and Hebrews 10:24 says
to do exactly that inside these walls and outside them as well: encourage,
support, challenge, instigate, agitate, and demonstrate to turn what is into
what it must become. Part 3: Mutual Provocation.
The fourth moving
part of the model is Prevailing Disposition. Prevailing Disposition. In the
academic study of personality and personal and professional effectiveness,
research has demonstrated that what a person believes makes a difference in his or her behavior. Those beliefs
are called dispositions: They are values and commitments that influence
behavior. In Hebrews 10:24, the prevailing disposition that influences behavior
is love: “Provoke one another to love,”
it says. It should come as no surprise that Hebrews 10:24 posits love as the
Prevailing Disposition. After all, according to Jesus, the Great Commandment is
“You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength” (Mark
12:30) and the second is like unto the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). And Jesus said, “This
my commandment that you love one
another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). And to bring us back to the first
moving part in the working model, Deep Conviction, 1 John 4:8 and 16 say that “God
is love.” So according to 1 John 4, God, Ultimate Reality, what is Really Real
and Truly True is Love. It’s no wonder, then, that the apostle Paul wrote, “Faith,
hope, and love, these three abide. And the greatest of these is love.” Because
“God is love.” This Deep Conviction—God is love—and this Prevailing
Disposition—love—are fully aligned with each other.
And that’s
important, because failing to align Deep Conviction and Prevailing Disposition
is a root cause of the intellectual and psychological and spiritual dis-order
and dis-ease that plagues so many individuals and religious communities the
world over. My friend and former colleague Charles Kimball, an expert in
Christian-Muslim relations who also happens to be a Baptist minister, has
described the root causes of religious disorder and disease in his books When Religion Becomes Evil and When Religion Becomes Lethal. A
religious system—or any other kind of system: a family, a business, a school, a
church—in which Deep Conviction and Prevailing Disposition are misaligned leads
to evil, not good; illness and injury, not health; hate, not love; death, not
life. Kimball gives dozens of examples in his books, and the last two weeks of
news coverage have added yet more.
I’ll give two. The oppressive
and murderous American apartheid of race-based slavery and Jim Crow segregation
was perpetrated by deeply religious people whose Deep Conviction and Prevailing
Dispositions were misaligned. The horrific atrocities of the so-called Islamic
State and Al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab are perpetrated by deeply religious people whose
Deep Conviction and Prevailing Dispositions are misaligned.
But in the working
model in Hebrews 10, Prevailing Disposition—Part 4—is rightly aligned with Deep
Conviction, and so it leads to the fifth part, Effective Action, which is characterized
in Hebrews 10:24 as “doing good deeds”: deeds that are good, not evil; deeds
that promote health, not injury and illness; deeds of love, not hate; life-giving,
not death-dealing deeds. Good deeds flow from the right alignment of Deep Conviction,
Energizing Exhortation, Mutual Provocation, and Prevailing Disposition.
Arriving there takes
Inspiration, and it takes Perspiration. It takes lining it up—that’s the Inspiration,
and it takes living it out—that’s the Perspiration. So think of it this way. The
invitation to the pledge walk that will be extended in a few minutes is an invitation
to a path of alignment. Whether you carry a commitment of your finances in your
hand, or whether you write another sort of commitment to God on the card and
carry it forward, or whether the commitment you make is written on your heart
or in your soul, I invite you to participate in the pledge walk as a pledge of
yourself: a pledge to align or realign your Deep Conviction, your Energizing
Exhortation, your Mutual Provocation, your Prevailing Disposition, and your
Effective Action so that what you experience inside these four walls forms and
transforms who you are and what you do outside these four walls. Lining it up
is the Inspiration. Living it out is the Perspiration: “With this faith, I will
go out and carve a tunnel of hope through a mountain of despair” to turn what
is into what it must become.
Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey
S. Rogers. This material may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use,
provided this notice is included. It is available online at www.pulpitbytes.blogspot.com. The author can be contacted at jrogers3@gardner-webb.edu.
