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January 20, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 49:1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:4-9, John 1:29-36
“Of Mantles and Mountaintops, Lambs and Doves:
Dr. King and Us – 40 Years Going on 80”
I like to say the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death – which will be 40 years
ago this April 4 – interrupts my life – both then and now! I had never been
a church member or active participant, much less a candidate for ministry and ordination,
before that time. Julie and I had married and gone straight into the Peace
Corps, to southeastern Turkey, in 1965. In fact, Julie, the granddaughter,
daughter, niece and cousin of Missouri Synod Lutheran pastors, would not have married
a pastor! John Emerson went to Selma that spring; we only talked about it
while working on wedding and leave-taking plans. As we ended our training
in Istanbul that summer, we read about the rebellion in Watts. As we returned
home two years later, we were greeted by the burnings of Newark and Detroit.
Through old friends, we went on to spend that first year back teaching school
together in a rural part of northern Michigan. You can believe it was
dicey to circulate a gun-control petition after the first assassination that
spring – and to work for Bobby Kennedy until the next. We only had a TV
with us April 4 because Indiana University played in the Rose Bowl that year –
if anyone cares to remember how long that was! In those endless days of
reviewing Dr. King’s life and work, while parts of Chicago and so many other
cities were burning, I heard the call to seminary that I never had heard or even
imagined before. Far be it from me to match Isaiah’s claim to be called
from the womb. But it is just as much a mystery to me, perhaps to many
others, to have ended up where I am.
I just knew I wanted to make some response to Dr. King’s life – though I hasten
to say my ministry is not his fault! Dr. King himself, his life and his work
– personal, pastoral, priestly, prophetic – all that he was and is, for better and
for worse – especially his visions of World House and Beloved Community, and the
unfinished business of the Poor Peoples Campaign and Resurrection City – haunt me
to this day nearly 40 years later. Next January Dr. King would be 80 years
old. He has been dead now as long as he lived. For many he never died.
That is the first point I want to make about “mantles and mountains.”
Last Sunday we celebrated this baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan River.
It was the passing of John’s mantle of prophecy to Jesus – a prophet and more than
a prophet. In the same way Moses passed the mantle of leadership to Joshua
at the Jordan – after Moses had been to the mountaintop to catch a glimpse of the
promised land. In the same way the prophet Elijah, after his mountaintop hearing
the “still small voice,” passed the mantle and a double measure of prophetic spirit
to the younger prophet Elisha at the Jordan. Last week we heard John try
to refuse to baptize Jesus, protesting Jesus should baptize him. Jesus
assures him everyone has a place and a role to play in the unfolding purpose of
God. Even this week John is quick to point out: Jesus belongs not after
but ahead of him.
I skip a few years to add how fortunate I feel to be passing a mantle of sorts on
to George Bennett, our student associate pastor! George is an avid, inquisitive
and articulate learner both in the classroom and in the field. He has a breadth
of interest and a depth of commitment – especially in ways this congregation says
we care about – a downtown ministry and a prophetic voice. I freely confess
I hear cries of concern expressed for George and his mentor in the same terms as
for Jesus and his mentor – Dear God, do not let Jesus, do not let George, turn out
like John – the Baptist or the Auer!! George assures me all these mentees
turn out much better than their mentors!
Then we come to Dr. King. Many contended for his mantle at and since his death.
The internal politics of movements are as volatile as those of churches! In many
ways it seems we have wandered these past forty years in a wilderness of wishful
thinking: Will Dr. King return? Will he send someone else in his place?
Even a certain one of the current candidates – whose vision and speech remind us
of him? We all know how many unmeetable expectations get projected onto clergy
and religious leaders anyway – just for the mystique of the office. The pastor
in some ways becomes our “designated holy person” and personal intercessor with
God. Yet every pastor is just one more sinner among all who are baptized and
saved by grace to work out our own salvations in trembling trepidation. Pastors
are no different in form from the people; only in function.
And I would be inclined of Dr. King’s mantle to say with the venerable prophet Tina
Turner, “We don’t need another hero!” We are all called to be heroes ourselves.
Dr. King’s mantle falls on us all! We see where all the entrenched and expert
leadership has brought us. Maybe this election is less about “them” and more
about “us.” Whatever happens, whoever’s elected, our work only begins with
campaigning and voting. That’s the political part of who we are. The
prophetic part has to be taken to the streets everyday – to our homes, our workplaces,
our congregations, and our communities. (In that sense Hillary is right about
President Johnson and Dr. King: It took both an insider and an outsider, the establishment
and the movement, to pass voter rights legislation.) Our prophetic question
is: What is the moral equivalent to war? What bravery and courage does it
require of us? What risk to our comfort and complacency?
Speaking of mountaintops: Jesus is now on his way to the Transfiguration, where
he will meet up with moral mountaineers Moses and Elijah. Dr. King is now
on his way to the mountaintop moment in Memphis, of all places -- in behalf of garbage
workers, of all people! Sir Edmund Hillary’s recent death alongside our remembering
of Dr. King accentuates this connection between material accomplishment and moral
equivalency. And we note that Sir Edmund was capable of both. Following
his ascent of Mount Everest, with Serpa guide Tenzing Norgay, Hillary became as
a servant leader to Norgay’s people who lived in poverty on the mountain.
The material and the moral, the external and the internal, the means and the ends,
warns Dr. King, must be kept together. Anyone can be great, he would add,
precisely because, everyone can serve!
The challenge is to keep growing our souls. Growing our souls is the work
of the Holy Spirit. Three United States Americans now have national
holidays – Washington, Lincoln, and King. I liken them to the Father (our
mythical founder and progenitor), the Son (our sacrificial offering for
preservation of the union), and the Holy Ghost (our haunting reminder of all the
unfinished business of our liberation). The Holy Ghost always troubles us
most. There is no way for us to control or contain it. The Holy
Ghost leads far beyond all limited national interests. God says through
Isaiah to Israel, you are my servant!
It is not enough for the vision of God that we raise up just our own people and
restore just the unity of our own nation. For God gives us to be as a light
to all nations! The state of Israel struggles with that call to this
day. God knows, so should we, the people of have suffered millennia under
this continuing description of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. By taking that
role on himself, we say Jesus means to free up all others from it. In Jesus
God’s salvation, God’s liberation from every sin, every bondage, every oppression,
every death may reach to the end of the earth! To all peoples and all nations
everywhere! Every last citizen of this “World House” Dr. King says we now
face no choice but to live in, and love in -- together!
That is why Paul says here, there is no end to all that can happen in us!
Jesus gives us such free and open access to God – which means, Jesus sets us free
to be open to all God is saying and doing, all God is still creating and revealing
– all the complexity, all the diversity -- all the ways God is still making
all things new! Evidence of Jesus as the Risen Christ -- who is the Holy Ghost,
the Holy Spirit, leading wherever God will – lies in the liberation of our own lives
and own loves! We don’t need anything else, argues Paul. We have the
assurance that love is stronger even than death! God never quits, never gives
up on us or forgets us!
We are free even to be as gentle as lambs among wolves and as doves – for Jesus
is God’s own Passover Lamb of Liberation embodying God’s love for all.
The way of the lamb and the dove is the way of nonviolent resistance. Once
we love others as freely and fully as Jesus does, how can we mean to do any violence
to them? According to the examples of Jesus, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez,
Martin Luther King -- the Holy Spirit, advocates for us when we are hauled up before
judges! The Spirit is our Resistance Counselor -- taking our case because
we have born loving witness of nonviolent direct action to our faith that God is
bringing justice and peace to bear among every nation and people. Dr. and
Mrs. King knew the Spirit of nonviolence well. It inspired their whole life
and work. Where is our will to follow them there? Where is the witness
of faith communities and their leaders? As always I ask first of myself.
Where are we, where am I, actively, openly opposing state violence, repression,
and war?
Dr. King wrote while imprisoned in the Birmingham, AL, City Jail -- so often the
church is a “weak and ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.” Think about
it. So often in our timid times church is “arch-supporter of the status quo.
Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the
average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of
things as they are.” Whereas at the memorial for our sister Shirley Gorman
-- who wrote so many letters of protest to the editor that she had to use the names
of friends to get them all in – we quoted appreciatively resistance counselor/ theologian
of the sixties, William Stringfellow – “The curse of being Christian is eternal
dissatisfaction with things as they are.” My intent in remembering Dr.
King is not to leave you or me feeling all guilty and defensive. That is
no way of producing anything positive. But neither is hiding our heads in
the sands of self-serving sanctimoniousness. I only want us to remember,
there is another way! The mere “absence of tension” is no substitute for
the “presence of justice” in us.
Tomorrow night I’ll be bringing to Church Council a working proposal called “YEAR
41of Dr. King’s Death: Wilderness or Promised Land?” The goal is to celebrate
publicly the full range of Dr. King’s thought and action – from civil rights for
a specific community, to human rights for all peoples everywhere – even as Isaiah
calls Israel from being enlightened itself to enlightening all the nations.
I am asking us to stimulate a year – from the 40th anniversary of his
death this April 4 to the 80th anniversary of his birth next January – of active
attention among congregations and community groups to Dr. King’s haunting question
of his last book – Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Wilderness
or promised land? Ignorance and isolation, or inclusiveness and interdependence?
Gated community and walled borders, or “world house?” We would hold periodic
active events and reflective conversations – such as a weekend in April, a weekend
of Artown, a weekend perhaps of Children’s Sabbath – especially around issues of
justice and new life for immigrants – but around the issues of fear and exclusion
keeping any of us apart from each other.
I also have a proposal for doing some organizing together to call for an end to
the war as we approach the fifth anniversary March 19. Please come out to
Council. We need all minds and hearts, perspectives and passions on these
proposals. Dr. King belongs to us all. Each one of us finds him and
follows him as we will. All together, especially as people of faith in this
one who was “Reverend” before he was “Doctor,” we remember and redeem his life and
death of which we are continuing parts. His life and work for justice and
liberation express an abiding faith – 1) that the biblical God of Isaiah and John
the Baptist promises and empowers freedom and equality; and 2) that Jesus and the
early church embody God in nonviolent resistance to imperial invasion and onerous
occupation.
Dr. King preached repeatedly that faith alone can make any possible sense of the
spilling of black blood, sweat and tears into our common soil. For it is the
self-offering of God’s long-suffering love for the redemption of our common soul.
Even now Dr. King calls us to redemption through repentance, reparation, renewal
of all right relations. Dr. King still speaks to the heart of who we are –
and are becoming! But with warning, these 40 years of wilderness later --
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted
with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life
and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still
the thief of time. . . . We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or
violent coannihilation. This may well be our last chance to choose between
chaos and community.”
Amen.
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