Deadly Preaching

Luke 4:14-30

“Deadly Preaching”

15 January 2017 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            On the evening of April 4^th, 1968 a 39 year-old man was assassinated while standing on the balcony just outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The echoes of that gunshot rings loudly in America’s soul.

            Because he was a preacher’s kid, Martin Luther King Jr. regularly attended, sometimes reluctantly. Like most of us he had a time of questioning his faith and beliefs. Eventually his faith found a second wind. A strong wind it was as he decided, just prior to his senior year at Morehouse College, to enter full time ministry. For him, the church offered the best way to satisfy his inner hunger to serve humanity with sermons that would be a force for ideas including societal change.

            In 1954, at the young age of 24, King was called as the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. God called the right man to the right place at the right time.

            In March of 1955, 15 year-old Claudette Colvin refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, breaking the law at the time. On Thursday, December 1^st 1955, four days after attending a meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist discussing the murder of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks also refused to give up her seat to a white person.

            King and others sprung into action and three days later at black churches around the city announced a boycott of the Montgomery buses starting the next day until treatment of blacks improved and the seating dividing line was fixed rather than something the driver could change as he saw fit. The boycott lasted 385 days. This thrust King into the role as a leader in the fight for civil rights in America. With that role came backlash, to include a bombing of his home less than two months later.

            Despite the looming threat of death, multiple arrests and countless nights in jail, extended time away from his family, and the doubt we would all experience in a similar situation, King never backed down from his new calling as prophet to America on the sin of racism.

            Meanwhile, a young man attending college in Nashville was invited to attend workshops on non-violent resistance in the basement of Clark Memorial United Methodist Church. Those classes made such an impression that John Lewis never struck back against his oppressors and still practices the techniques he learned those many decades ago.

            After these seminars, Lewis helped to organize the sit in campaign in Nashville where blacks would go into segregated restaurants and peacefully order a meal. They never received their orders, instead they were typically delivered a beating or the cold snap of handcuffs as they were carried away by the police.

            In 1960, Lewis was invited to be one of the initial Freedom Riders where 7 whites and 6 blacks committed to riding from Washington, DC to New Orleans together, fully integrated. Needless to say, it was not the safest travel option for such a group. Their journey began on May 4^th, 1961. After making it through Virginia and North Carolina with relative ease, the stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina marked the first physical attack but was just a prelude to future stops.

            On May 14^th, Mothers Day, the bus was attacked by a mob who set the bus ablaze and held the doors shut to burn the riders alive. They failed in that attempt so they began to beat the riders as they escaped the bus, a lone highway patrolman’s warning shots preventing the beating from turning deadly. The Kennedy administration took notice.

            None of this deterred John Lewis. Two years later, in 1963, he was the youngest of the civil rights leaders organizing the march on Washington, DC where MLK delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Then, in 1965 John Lewis stood his ground on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in what is now known as “Bloody Sunday.” He and other marchers stopped to pray in the face of police officers. For his stand that day, he was awarded a fractured skull at the hands of the Alabama State Police. You can still see the scars on his face today.

            A young man received a call and commission from God to go and preach God’s word to the world regardless of the cost. He was a devout believer, attending synagogue regularly even being invited to read Scripture and deliver a message. One Sunday he read a passage from Isaiah about how God’s Spirit had come upon Isaiah to bring good news to the down and out of the world to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed.

            This young man wasn’t from a famous family, his parents had no wealth, he wasn’t a trained teacher of the law or Scripture. So, the congregation was amazed at the teaching and grace that poured from his mouth. It was a nice surprise to hear an uneducated carpenter from a one camel town speak with such presence and eloquence. When those we deem unworthy speak truth to power, it makes quite an impression.

            Then, this young upstart preacher states the good news he just proclaimed wasn’t exclusively for them, it was for everyone. Even those deemed unworthy of friendship, compassion, respect, and love. Even more, he was telling them that he is being sent from their congregation to the very people they despised. Without condemnation, he was expanding the target population of their faith to everyone.

            And. They. Didn’t. Like. It. At. All.

            They congregation quickly turned on this preacher and attempted to lynch him. Jesus didn’t condemn his congregation. The congregation rejected Jesus because he preached inclusion.

            The Gospel has a way of unsettling people’s plans and ideas. For those in power, the idea of sharing power is hard to take. Sometimes so much so that people will maim and kill to maintain their grip on power. Many times it isn’t so much the people resisting the power shift as much as the structural inertia of oppression driving the status quo.

            The church is called to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, help the blind see, and free the world from oppression. Regardless the beliefs of those to whom we are called to serve. When I say the church, that means every person in here today, reading this sermon on the internet or listening to the online podcast. We don’t get to say, that’s not my job.

            Just as the Body of Christ is made up of different parts, our individual part in living out God’s plan will differ. We all receive different gifts to bring Christ’s message to the world. We owe it to each other to not only help each other discern our part in this call, but to support each other in serving Christ as he has called us.

            As we go forth striving to be such a church, let the words of John Legend and Common serve as a reminder of our call to respond to Isaiah and Christ’s words:

Hands to the Heavens, no man, no weapon
Formed against, yes glory is destined
Every day women and men become legends
Sins that go against our skin become blessings
The movement is a rhythm to us
Freedom is like religion to us
Justice is juxtaposition in us
Justice for all just ain't specific enough
One son died, his spirit is revisitin' us
Truant livin' livin' in us, resistance is us

Selma's now for every man, woman and child
Even Jesus got his crown in front of a crowd
They marched with the torch, we gon' run with it now
Never look back, we done gone hundreds of miles
From dark roads he rose, to become a hero
Facin' the league of justice, his power was the people
Enemy is lethal, a king became regal
Saw the face of Jim Crow under a bald eagle
The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful
We sing, our music is the cuts that we bleed through
Somewhere in the dream we had an epiphany
Now we right the wrongs in history
No one can win the war individually
It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people's energy
Welcome to the story we call victory
Comin' of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory