St. Petersburg, Florida
Psalm 112: "Light shines in the darkness for the upright;
and the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.
It is good for them to be generous in lending
and to manage their affairs with justice."
Remember the March - Remember the Promise
David Brooks rightly reminds us in his article "The Ideas Behind the March", about the march on Washington in 1963, he wrote: "How close it came to not happening at all". The main challenges were timing and, primarily, the great discipline required to remain non violent. First a little history on Civil Disobedience. One of the oldest depictions of civil disobedience is in Sophocles' play Antigone, in which Antigone, one of the daughters of former King of Thebes, Oedipus, defies Creon, the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. She is not at all afraid of the death he threatens her with (and eventually carries out), but she is afraid of how her conscience will smite her if she does not do this. (Wikipedia)
Preceding King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail, in the "Call to Unity", clergymen, including the Bishop Coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, agreed that social injustices existed but argued that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not in the streets. They criticized Martin Luther King, calling him an "outsider" who causes trouble in the streets of Birmingham. Their whine reflected the traditional echo of the status quo, "it was just too much too fast". A wise man knows more than to expect "Justice" from legislatures or courts, or to expect "leadership" or "courage" from the church! To this establishment protectionist appeal, King reflected on his belief that all communities and states were interrelated. He wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider…". It was clear those clergy had a lot to learn from this upstart visionary prophet.
This statement and subsequent statements by Dr. King illustrate the essence and embodiment of how theology is done: In the flesh, in the streets and in the marketplaces, not in stone buildings with pretty windows. In this light, civil disobedience is an act of faithful adherence to a higher law: the promises we committed ourselves to in the words of our baptism and later affirmation in the midst of our communities of faith. We might be a nation of laws, but WE are a people of the promise: "We will respect the dignity of every human being" we say, "...with God’s help."
And then Jesus said, "For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted". We, you and I, have been called to a higher place yet we are humbled because we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and who have sacrificed themselves for the children of the children of the promise.
President Obama remarked last Thursday: "The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history, that we are masters of our fate. But it also teaches us the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We'll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago."
"And I believe", he continued, "that spirit is there, ...(so among other things) when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who were (or are) discriminated against and understands it as their own. That's where courage comes from, when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find we do not walk alone."
While the President can not address spiritual or religious themes while in office, Dr. King had the freedom of a prophet speaking for an entire nation without inhibition or limitation, and in that freedom he addressed not only Christians, but people of every faith, nation, race, language, and station of life as children of God - the Creator of us all.
And therein lies the call: President Obama’s call to rally a nation, a nation divided by ideology and personal and corporate greed; and our call back to the promise - to proclaim the Good News that we need not be anxious because we have chosen the better part and know that we must act as the "Word made flesh" feeding those who hunger and thirst here and now for righteousness sake so that we might have the courage to act, remembering violence is never an option, but sacrifice is.
The point here is, we are called to action, not to pious contemplation, in the face of systemic injustice. We must speak out against bigotry, selfishness, and the economic slavery of any and all people; we must vote for, and work to educate, every generation to help them become informed of, and combat the pervasiveness and destructiveness of, human greed unfettered by any sense of community obligation; and we must model generosity even to the extreme of self sacrifice for the good of those unfortunate few who have less capacity to endure the injustices of power disparity and economic maldistribution cultivated by modern life.
We are people of THE promise. As Paul writes: "Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers... Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have. Now may the God of peace, ...make you complete in everything good so that you may (have the strength to) do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (May His) Grace be with all of you." (Hebrews 13)
