Social Principle: The Social Community

3^rd Sunday after Epiphany - January 25, 2009

Kingswood UMC - Buffalo Grove IL 60089

Texts: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62; Mark 1:14-20

Well!!! It has been a week, hasn’t it? Starting with the amazing message that Dr. Will brought last Sunday, continuing with all of the media coverage of Martin Luther King Day on Monday and then the inauguration on Tuesday, we’ve been immersed in history and hype and hope for several days ... suggesting that as a nation we’ve somehow turned a corner with the choice and installation of Barack Obama as President.

But which corner we’ve turned isn’t exactly clear. Is this a sign that racial reconciliation has finally come ... or is it just a beginning? Or is the corner more about generational change in the nation ... or in black politics? Perhaps it is more simply a change in style ... more transparency and technology. Or is there a more substantive change happening? Or maybe it is just the pendulum swinging ... from Republican leadership to Democratic. Whatever change it is upon which we focus, we have to say that the changes reflected in this election are not so much about our personal and individual agendas or preferences but have implications for and are an expression of the social community .... the systems that knit us together and shape our lives based on our membership in various cultural, demographic, economic and political groups. It reflects and will impact The Social Community at many levels..

The Social Principles topic for today is The Social Community and begins with this statement: The rights and privileges a society bestows upon or withholds from those who comprise it indicate the relative esteem in which that society holds particular persons and groups of persons. We affirm all persons as equally valuable in the sight of God. We therefore work toward societies in which each person’s value is recognized, maintained, and strengthened. We support the basic rights of all persons to equal access to housing, education, communication, employment, medical care, legal redress for grievances, and physical protection. We deplore acts of hate or violence against groups or persons based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or economic status. And then there are 20 topics covered ... from the rights of racial and ethnic persons and other vulnerable groups, through population, food and health concerns, and quality of life and opportunity concerns in regions and sectors of the country, to media and technology topics. As with all of these statements of Social Principles, there are far too many topics identified to cover in a single sermon or sermon series or season. But as you look at that paragraph on your hand out, I want to underscore the declaration at the beginning of the third sentence: We therefore work toward societies ..... that reflect the previously stated truths.

And so as United Methodists we are called to be engaged in the work of creating just and equitable social communities locally and globally. As many of us were reminded on Thursday night at the Church Council meeting ... the purpose of the church includes the transformation of the world. We don’t gather as God’s people to meet only our own needs but also to discern God’s purpose in the world and support one another as we engage that world. That call is grounded in the Biblical call. We hear it in our scriptures today ... Jonah is called by God to bring a word of warning to the Ninevites who were in big trouble. And Jesus, seemingly in response to the arrest of John, begins to call disciples into a community which will share in the work of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Ordinary fishermen Simon and Andrew, and brothers James and John, are called to join in this community and this work of bringing God’s word of grace to a world in big trouble.

Of course, the responses of Jonah and the fishermen are quite different. If you remember the whole story of Jonah ... his first response to God’s call upon him to go to Ninevah was to run the other way. Ninevah was a hell hole in his mind ... they - the Ninevites - had no right to hear the word of God ... and he wasn’t about to risk his life and limb to go there. But running the other way landed him in the sea ... thrown overboard by the sailors who figured out he was in trouble with God, swallowed by a big fish, and then thrown up on the beach only to hear God’s call again. His trip to Ninevah .... which, by the way, was the city that we now call Mosul in Iraq ... had results. Much to his consternation, the king and the people got it ... that they were about to be destroyed by God because of the violent and hedonistic behaviors in every sector of their society. And they changed .... in the hope that God would change God’s mind, too. And God did. The people were saved .... and Jonah grumbled!!!

Sometimes we’re a little too much like Jonah ... reluctant to put ourselves at risk for a purpose or people we don’t like or care about ... and then full of grumbles when God’s mercy rules the day.

The disciples that Jesus calls aren’t so reluctant ... they immediately leave their own agenda behind and take up with him. But they are slow in other ways, too. It takes them some time and a deepening relationship with Jesus, to experience and live into the kingdom that Jesus proclaims. They don’t run the other way, but they’re continually astounded at the radical nature of what Jesus is doing ... eating with sinners, hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, healing and feeding and teaching and praying his way toward the new community, the Kingdom of God.

Whether we are more like Jonah ... running the other way ... or more like the first disciples ... quick to join up but not so sure what we’ve signed on for ... the call is real and uncomfortable and risky. Taken together, these two stories of call show us that discipleship entails a reorientation of life .. in social relations, in vocation, in public power ... life made new by the rule of God. We are called, you and I are called to work toward societies where God’s mercy and great and generous and love for all people is known in the social relations, systems and structures which order it. As our case example today I want to lift up a number of people who answered that call in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's in this country.

In the past week we’ve heard a lot about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African American men and women who risked their lives and sometimes lost them, to challenge the injustice of segregation and institutionalized racism. And it is right that the stories of black leadership and courage lead and shape the history of this movement. But it is not only a story of black people who overcame .... though it is most certainly that. But this change in our social community also involved the witness, work and transformation of the white community for this injustice to be made right. And so I want to tell you about some of the persons – black and white – that God called out of their daily lives to do this work.

To do that, we’ll be using the work of Pamela Chatterton-Purdy. Ms. Chatteron-Purdy is an artist whose show, Icons of the Civil Rights Movement, chronicles the ordinary people who risked danger and death to break the grip of institutionalized racism. She and her husband ... a retired United Methodist minister, now reside in Harwich Port MA, on Cape Cod. Pamela became interested in the causes and concerns of Civil Rights when she worked as one of two white people among 150 employees of Ebony magazine in Chicago in 1963. She thought she knew what it must be like to be a minority in society, like her black co-workers, until one of her co-workers asked her to make a call to a real estate agent about an apartment. She learned that "sounding white" would make the difference on whether even an appointment could be made. Later, she and her husband became both biological and adoptive parents ... raising their two daughters and an African American son and an Amerasian child of a Vietnamese mother and a black American soldier. She said she had no idea at the time of how adopting black and mixed-race children would make them such a lighting rod for prejudice. These experiences have led to her interest in the Civil Rights movement. A recent trip with 100 high school students to all the milestones of the Civil Rights Movement inspired her to create the icons that I want to share with you now. I’ve selected only a few from the 16 that make up this work.

Let’s begin with the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who was a Baptist minister and civil right activist in Birmingham, Alabama in the 50's and 60's. Early on Christmas Day 1956 .. soon after the Supreme Court had ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional ... dynamite was placed under Rev. Shuttlesworth’s bedroom window. The house was destroyed but he and his family were uninjured. A police officer who saw Shuttlesworth emerge unscathed from the ruins warned him to get out of town as quick as possible. Rev. Shuttlesworth replied: "I wasn’t saved to run." The next day he led a group that integrated Birmingham’s busses ... and 21 persons were arrested. The next year, he and his wife were hospitalized after they were beaten with chains and baseball bats when they tried to register their children in the all white school. He told the doctor who treated them that "The Lord knew I was going to live in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head." It was Shuttlesworth who asked Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Birmingham in 1963. He had been working with the city leaders toward a peaceful abandonment of segregation but saw that they wouldn’t meet their commitments without some pressure.

Thousands participated in the demonstrations ... and many were arrested. It was in the Birmingham jail in April that Dr. King wrote the famous letter to his colleagues ... clergy across the country ... encouraging them to stand in solidarity with the people of Birmingham. After being released on bail, King met with planners and asked who would be willing to march with him .. and possibly be arrested .. the next day.

To the surprise and amusement of many, a group of children stood up. They were politely thanked and invited to sit down. But they refused to sit ... and though most of the adults opposed their participation, one argued on their behalf. " Are they too young to go to segregated schools? Are they too young to be kept out of amusement parks? Are they too young to be refused a hamburger in a restaurant?" "No," came the response. "Then they are not too young to want their freedom!" That night it was decided that any child old enough to join a church was old enough to march.

It was the decision to allow children to be part of the demonstrations that made the difference. On May 3, after thousands of children, teens and college students had already marched and been arrested, the police commissioner, "Bull" Conner, used police dogs and fire hoses on the peacefully demonstrating children in the city park. It was those pictures sent around the nation that profoundly affected the attitude of the American public toward the civil rights struggle.

In the next year, June of 1964, the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Philadelphia Mississippi was burned to the ground to prevent the church being used as a "Freedom School." Standing amid the ruins were the three young civil rights workers who had hoped to form that school: Andrew Goodman, a 24 year old social worker from New York City, James Chaney, the local son of a domestic worker, and Michael Schwerner, an anthropology student who had arrived that day to spend the summer working on the school. They left the scene of the fire and were arrested for speeding and arson ... then suddenly released from jail at 10pm and ordered out of town. They had not gone far when the Deputy stopped them again ... and the accompanying members of the Klan took them out one by one and shot them at point blank range, burned and hid their car and buried them under an earthen dam. Again, the nation was jolted into awareness. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered an FBI investigation.

The Rev. James Reeb was a Unitarian minister living in Boston with his wife and 4 children in 1965 when he responded to Martin Luther King’s call to clergy from around the country to join him for the march from Selma

to Montgomery, Alabama. On his first night in Selma, Reeb was attacked by pipe wielding white men and died 2 days later.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was also in Selma that day.

One of the most influential religious leaders in the 20^th century, his voice was respected by both Jews and Christians. He had lost most of his family in Poland and arrived in the US in 1940. Having endured persecution under the Nazis, he became a powerful voice for spiritual renewal and social change. Linking spirituality and social activism he challenged Jews and Christians to become God’s partners in the creation of a just and compassionate world. He received a telegram from King just two days before the March from Selma inviting him to join. He was welcomed as one of the leaders in the front row of marchers. He later reflected on the significance of that day: For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

And then there was Viola. At age 36, with 5 children at home, Viola Liuzzo was an extraordinary person. One of the few white members of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, she watched the news from Selma at home with her husband. The pictures of the brutal attack on the peaceful protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge – later to be known as Bloody Sunday – shook her to the core. And a few days later, when news of the murder of clergyman James Reeb became known, she got into her car and drove to Selma alone. She used her car to shuttle marchers back and forth between Selma and Montgomery. At first she was a stranger to the organizers, but she became known as a tireless and cheerful worker. "Her energy, enthusiasm and compassion were contagious and put many of us to shame," commented a priest from Chicago who had been on the March.

On March 25 she left Selma to head back to Montgomery to pick up another carload of marchers. Riding with her was a young black man ... LeRoy Moton ... to assist her in the late night drive. On a lonely stretch of highway about 20 miles out of town, her car was followed by Klansmen who had spotted her Olds with a Michigan place and a black man in the car with her. They chased her ... pulled up alongside ... and one of the men leaned out of the speeding car and fired his pistol twice. Viola was killed ... Moton, covered in blood, was left for dead. The local jury found the men who shot her not guilty of her murder. But the US Justice Department brought charges and they were eventually convicted.

Our last picture isn’t a worker ... just a black kid from Chicago who went to visit relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. Emmett Louis Till was 14 years old and had grown up in a working class section of Chicago ... was bold and self-assured ... and didn’t understand the timid attitude of his Southern cousins toward whites. In the way of teenage boys, they dared him to speak to the woman running the cash register in a store and he was murdered a few days later for what was called his disrespect of a white woman. His body had been brutalized and dumped in the river with a cotton gin wired around his neck. His mother had his body brought back to Chicago and insisted on an open-casket funeral "for the whole world to see what they did to my boy." Even children were not immune to the violence and suffering that racism inflicted on so many.

8 years later, when Emmett Till would have been 22 years old and beginning his adult life, his death and his mother’s witness ... along with that of many others ... must have been in the mind of Dr. King on August 28, 1963 when he gave what as become known as the I Have a Dream Speech. We’ve heard it quoted many times this week ... but one phrase speaks to our theme of the call to solidarity today: So I say to you, my friends, that I still have a dream ... that one day, down in Alabama, little black boys and girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers ... and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants – will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

I don’t believe that the election of Barack Obama signals that the Civil Rights struggle is over, only that if we stand in solidarity with those in trouble and in need it will make a difference in our lives, in theirs, and in the world. It is our call as Christians and as the people of God. And whether we see the changes in our day or sometime in the future, we are called to bring the word of God’s justice and mercy and love not only to all whom we meet but into the structures and systems of our society.

Please turn to hymn #519 ... and join me in prayer. This hymn ... Lift Every Voice and Sing ... is termed the "national anthem" of the African American church. Rev. Joseph Lowery offered the benediction at the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday, and he began his prayer with the third verse. Let us PRAY it ... not sing ... let us pray it together, now.