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What to Expect on Sunday |
Preparing to be here today it was pretty much inevitable my mind would be focused on the events happening in Washington, D.C. and the inauguration of our new President, Barack Obama…and the celebration tomorrow of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The comparison of those two events couldn’t be more amazing, revealing, vivid, poignant…fill in whatever word is appropriate. The fact that we are inaugurating America’s first black President forty years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. is something beyond what words can adequately express. How far we have come. The fact that honoring Martin Luther King, with a national holiday is still controversial in some people’s minds and hearts, that Martin Luther King’s name still sparks acrimonious feelings and debate reveals how far we yet have to go. It is a tangled and clashing mix of emotions that races throughout our country for the next several days. And I wanted to take a moment this morning and speak about it. First, a bit of my own personal journey, I’d like to hear yours sometime. This issue of race relations struck me fairly early in life, primarily through my love for and participation in sports and my love for reading. While my personal life and the neighborhood of my growing up years in Southwest Denver in the 60’s did not bring me into contact and relationship with a "person of color," my participation in sports did. They were fellow athletes and competitors to me and didn’t seem much different than me beyond the color of our skins. My love of sports also led to my watching and admiring professional athletes, including blacks. While Mickey Mantle, a white, was my favorite baseball player growing up, my second favorite was Willie Mays, a black. Wilt Chamberlain and Walt Frazier, both black, were the basketball heroes of my youth. And while Johnny Unitas, a white, was my favorite football player and his team, the Baltimore Colts, was my favorite team, my second favorite Colt was Lenny Moore, a black. And another black, Jim Brown, was a close second to Unitas as my favorite football player. They were athletes I admired and the color of their skin didn’t mean that much to me. My love of reading would bring deeper awareness to me of the troubling significance of their skin color. Reading biographies of Jackie Robinson and Jim Brown, reading in sports magazines about the journeys of and discriminations against black athletes such as Hank Aaron and Muhammad Ali confronted me with the realities of prejudice…and its blatant unfairness. I remember one occasion when I was in high school. I participated in a speech club sponsored by Toastmasters International. Each meeting one of us would give a speech to the group and then receive evaluations from the group and the leader. One time I showed up for our meeting only to discover it was my night to give a speech for which I, obviously, had not prepared. What came to my mind, in my desperation, was an article I had recently read about Hank Aaron and the discrimination he faced in his baseball career. So, I formed my speech around that and the unfairness of it all. Received fairly good evaluations as I recall. As I grew older, my life’s circumstances brought me into real opportunities of relationships and dialogue with people of color. Growing up, literally, during the civil rights movement brought me to a place where prejudice, quite frankly, seemed very stupid to me. Yet, I understand our experiences and what we are taught play such a huge factor in our prejudices. The roots of prejudice run deep and it takes a long time and hard work to weed it out. I was struck by, and had to laugh a bit at the providence of a "The Way I See It" quote on my Starbucks coffee cup this past Thursday morning. Written by Jessica Arden Ettinger who, according to the cup, is a student at the University of Virginia, it reads, "Our prejudices arise from the fear of things we do not understand…it is our responsibility to force ourselves beyond our comfort zones and become knowledgeable about the people around us." That’s what we need to do to root out any prejudice that exists in us. That was certainly true in my own experience. In fact, I’d like to suggest a couple of resources to you from my own experience of seeking to cultivate out any roots of prejudice in me if racial prejudice remains something you struggle with. One is the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Watching the journey of the civil rights movement and the abuses heaped upon its participants and leaders will pierce your conscience. The other is a three book series on the civil rights movement written by Taylor Branch. I’m just now in the middle of it—having read the first book in the trilogy, Parting the Waters, now halfway through Pillar of Fire before finishing with At Canaan’s Edge. Both Eyes on the Prize and Branch’s trilogy will confront your prejudices, educate you on things you might not understand, take you beyond your comfort zone as you see and read about the difficult journey of civil rights. As I watch Eyes on the Prize and see video of people screaming hateful racial epithets at young men and women arriving to integrate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, or video of people pouring ketchup and mustard over three people sitting at a lunchroom counter, I can’t help but wonder, "Where are these people now and what do they think of themselves when they see this video?" What does the former sheriff of one southern town think, if he’s still alive today, when he’s reminded of his actions during that time? This sheriff who attempted to separate out from a jail cell white marchers from black marchers and when the white marchers refused to leave, this sheriff brought a black teenage girl in front of them and used a cattle prod on her until they finally segregated themselves to a separate cell. What does he think today when reminded of that incident? Those of us who are white can never fully understand the journey and feelings of a black person in America and how amazingly significant the next few days are to them, but we certainly can try…and try we must. And I recommend those two resources to you in an attempt to understand their long, hard journey. Wow! All of that to explain to you that in my life I have come to greatly admire Martin Luther King and the leadership he brought to the civil rights movement—and to America. How, in doing so, Martin Luther King communicated some essential qualities of Christian leadership. He wasn’t perfect. He had his flaws. But, it is imperfect people God uses to bring about His purposes and the journey with Martin Luther King was a remarkable one indeed. It was December 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was sitting in a section of the bus known as "no man’s land." The front of the bus was for whites only, the back of the bus for blacks only. No man’s land was a section in the middle where blacks could sit if their section in the back was full. But, should a white person come aboard and, finding the white section full, need a seat in no man’s land, any black sitting there must vacate that section. On that first day of December, 1955, three other women complied. Rosa Parks refused. She was tired and worn-out—from a day of hard work and from a lifetime of a law that blatantly said to her, "you are inferior, less of a human being." So, she refused to move and was immediately arrested. Events quickly accelerated from there, events I don’t have time to tell you about but it’s a story worth checking out for yourselves. One event that fascinates me and I do want to tell you about is the formation by the black community of the Montgomery Improvement Association and its selection of a leader. Leaders in the black community, many of them pastors, met to formulate their plans. Should the boycott continue? Could it continue or would the movement quickly lose its momentum as black passengers slowly filtered back onto the buses? A sidenote here: One of the pressures being placed on the black community by the white authority in Montgomery during the boycott was that drivers in the carpools that were formed to get people to and from work without riding the bus were being arrested for operating unlicensed taxi services! So these leaders in the black community met to discuss next steps. One key question they faced was should the names of the leaders gathered there be kept secret out of fear of reprisals from the white community, a justified fear. Raising that question prompted one of the leaders at the meeting, a man named E.D. Nixon, to stand and chastise such thinking as the act of cowards. At that critical point in the meeting, one of the new preachers in Montgomery—he’d been there just over a year—walked in late to the meeting. Hearing Nixon’s chastisement just as he walked in, the late arrival responded, "Brother Nixon, I’m not a coward. I don’t want anybody to call me a coward." Everyone turned to this young man who spoke those words. Suddenly, someone placed in nomination the name of this late arrival to serve as president of the yet-to-be-named organization that was forming. Someone seconded the motion. No other nominations were made. Perhaps the others feared the trouble and danger that lay ahead. Perhaps they recognized this newcomer had few enemies in Montgomery. Perhaps they saw something in him. Whatever the reason, this newcomer was the only one nominated to lead this group through the trouble waters ahead. Thus it was that Martin Luther King, Jr. first came to the forefront of the civil rights movement in this country. That story fascinates me because of how the mantle of leadership sometimes gets thrust upon someone. It seems to me an act of Providence, a bringing together of events in a certain time and a certain place when God says, "Now is the time, here is the place and you are the one to bring about my will." That certainly seems to be true in Scripture and Christian history. John the Baptist was called by God for a specific purpose in a particular time—to prepare the world for the coming Messiah. Paul was called by God for a specific purpose in a particular time—to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the world beyond Judaism, to the Gentiles. Martin Luther was swept up by the events of the Reformation. He had no plans to separate from the Catholic Church. He simply wanted to reform the Church. But the events of his time and place in history produced the groundswell that brought about the Reformation. Why Montgomery at that moment in 1955? It could just as easily been Birmingham, or Selma, or Atlanta, or Jackson. Why Montgomery? And why Martin Luther King? Why not Ralph Abernathy, pastor of prestigious First Baptist Church in Montgomery, or E.D. Nixon himself, a respected leader in the black community with inroads to the white community? Yet it was Montgomery in 1955 and it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who arrived providentially late to that meeting. One essential quality of Christian leaders is recognizing the providential call of God to them for a particular time and place, and for a particular cause. That recognition of God’s call to them leads to a sincere humility in great leaders. There’s little room for arrogance in God’s Kingdom. The apostle Paul, for example, doesn’t argue for more converts to his circle of followers among the factions existing in the Corinthian Church. "Hey, you followers of Peter and Apollos, come join my group over here!" No! Instead, he rebukes the church for its factions—including his followers—and points them to Jesus Christ. Or consider John the Baptist. The community is abuzz with talk about the coming Messiah and a group comes to John to inquire if he is the Messiah…or at least "the Prophet." The temptation would be great, don’t you think, to cultivate more followers, to say, "Yes, I am the Messiah," or at least, "Yes, I am the Prophet!" But not John. Instead he claims unworthiness for the lowliest of tasks. In those days of rabbis and teachers their followers would do just about anything for their teacher. One thing they would not do, however, was untie their sandals. That task was reserved for the lowliest of servants. John the Baptist not only admits to not being the Messiah, he confesses his unworthiness to even untie the Messiah’s sandals. No doubt Martin Luther King faced temptations to claim grandeur. Some might even suggest, pointing to his flaws, that he occasionally gave in to those temptations. Yet, the greater truth is that he conducted himself with great humility and pointed to others for credit. Like most social movements throughout history, the civil rights movement had several different groups and their respective leaders working for equality. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was one such organization. Roy Wilkins and the NAACP was another. There was SNCC—the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee--and their leader, John Lewis, later to become a congressman from Georgia (you’ve likely seen Lewis being interviewed following Obama’s election and will likely see him some time, somewhere on Tuesday with the inauguration). There were other groups and their leaders, all vying for a leading role in the fight for civil rights. A divided front threatened to tear apart the cause for which they struggled. Time and time again, Dr. King sought for ways to maintain harmony and a solid front. At an early prayer pilgrimage in Washington where the major issue being addressed was school desegregation, Dr. King agreed to speak about voter registration and leave the primary topic of school desegregation to Roy Wilkins, President of the NAACP. Frequently, summits for reconciliation and harmony would be held at the request of Dr. King. At the movement’s watershed event, the March on Washington in 1963, conflict arose over the text of a speech to be given by John Lewis. Meeting under the chair of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King led a discussion that brought peaceful compromise to the issue. Following the event, which, of course, culminated with Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, King and the other speakers met with President Kennedy in the Oval Office. When Kennedy greeted the group with a nod to King and a compliment for his speech, Dr. King asked Kennedy if he had heard the speech given by Walter Reuther, President of the United Auto Workers and proceeded to highlight some of the points made in that speech. Christian leaders go about their tasks with a sincere humility, born out of their awareness of God’s call in their lives and an awareness that the cause for which they work is much greater and more important than they are. And Christian leaders confront injustices in the world, challenging us towards a greater sense of God’s purpose in the world and appealing to, as Lincoln put it, the "better angels of our nature." John the Baptist, in his act of baptizing, was making a bold statement about the changing nature of God’s Kingdom for he did not baptize Gentiles only, "cleansing" them for conversion to Judaism, but baptized Jews as well, opening them up to a new thing God was doing. Paul did much the same thing when he began to preach to the Gentiles, inviting them to repent and become a part of God’s Kingdom. It’s as if they were asking, "Would you deny this to these people?" Martin Luther King brought to us a similar kind of challenge. At the heart of his non-violent methods was the determination that right would win out over wrong. He was convinced that the images of prejudice and segregation—fire hoses turned on peaceful marchers, police dogs turned loose on peaceful demonstrators—would pierce the conscience of America and eventually result in equality. It would take awhile. There would be a difficult price to pay. But, eventually, Dr. King believed, our consciences would be pierced by such images and the journey to equality would move forward. I will be thinking about all that tomorrow with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (the church office will be closed to commemorate the day), and then again with the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. However you voted, I hope you will find time to pause and reflect upon how far we have come, how we owe a debt of gratitude to Martin Luther King—and many others—for that journey, and how we bear the responsibility to see that we continue to make progress in the area of civil rights. We’re not yet at the Promised Land Dr. King so famously spoke about, but today we can see it from here. |
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