Sermon
When I was in 2nd and 3rd grade my family lived in a suburb of Chicago called Maywood. The K-8 elementary school my brother and I went to was all black. Except us. My brother played his first year of trumpet in that school band and at the concert, another parent said to my mom, “Your boy's got good rhythm for a white boy!” My mom at first didn't understand how the woman knew which child was mom's son. Also, other kids always knew that my brother and I were siblings. I didn't understand how they knew we were related. The first time I can recall knowing I was white, was when the entire school was evacuated because there was a bomb threat. A little black girl friend of mine said she felt sorry for me because the bomb threat was from the Black Panthers and they didn't like white people. She was my friend. She, a little black girl, knew she was black because in her world the color of your skin was descriptive. Me, a little white girl, didn't really concern myself with being white because the color of my skin wasn't an adjective that people used then or now, for describing white people. White people don't often use white as an adjective.
That was the late 60's. I had no idea who or what the Black Panthers were. Bomb threats were still around when I was in high school and college, but it was almost always a ploy to stop final exams. Now, bomb threats might mean actual bombs. A threat with a gun is all too real.
Little did I know that the Black Panthers were a group that many other ethnic groups received courage and support from for their own civil struggles.
The recent documentary called Chinatown Rising, is a film by Presbyterian minister Harry Chuck and his son Josh that's a collection of interviews and current and older photos and films that Harry took when he was growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown and in school at San Francisco State. Harry's son Josh asked him one day, what he was planning to do with all of his films and photos from those days when the civil rights in Chinatown were a major struggle. The film reveals the very real struggles of our Chinese immigrants and later generations as they were faced with exclusion acts, severe racism, discrimination and slavery, that resulted in poverty, fear and much suffering. The civil rights movement was alive and well in that community too. From the film I learned that the Black Panthers were instrumental in helping the Chinese population activists organize and address grievances, and keep up the fight for their own rights, just to have access to the society that surrounded them. While my third grade class was being evacuated in Illinois, the suffering families in a city thousands of miles away were being evicted, starved, exploited, and denied employment and voting rights.
Individual and community rights and civil liberties struggles are not an American phenomenon of course. Civilizations as far back as we go have developed ways to express their wounded disenfranchised selves.
Columnist for the Korea Times, Jon Huer writes about the Psychology of Korean “Han.” He writes:
“Generally speaking, han (or won-han) is the idea that some injustice has been done to oneself. The injustice could be inflicted on the Korean people by a foreign power, on employees by their empl―permanently imprinted as injustice or unfairness. ―t is the sense of having been “wronged” by a superior agent. Naturally, the agent varies. Sometimes it is fate and fortune, sometimes it is the government, sometimes it is business, sometimes it is family roles, that exercise “unjust” power upon oneself.
Han can be an expression of grief that is generational, systemic, and imprinted. The uniqueness of han, is its depth and breadth within the individual and their community, whether that's the entire country, or a family. It is a part of the deeper cultural story.
We can only guess what our relatively young, mixed, American culture will feel in a few centuries, if we're still here. We have so many subcultures who are already learning to wear the pain of disadvantage. We celebrate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this week, knowing he would have been 91 this year. We need only to search Google or YouTube to find words and images that remind us of his work.
In 1967, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King spoke with NBC News' Sander Vanocur about the "new phase" of the struggle for "genuine equality."
What's most interesting about this video is that because it's an interview and not one of the more famous grand events with speeches and applause, it is a great listen to some of his deeper thoughts in a less flowery but no less articulate manner. The topic that day was of the New Phase of the struggle for equality. Historically it's enlightening to hear back to 1967, someone comparing that to 1957. In 2020, 1957 and 1967 seem like a long time ago. Sadly I would have expected more progress. The black struggle has not been my struggle. I didn't even know my skin was white, in 2nd grade. My friend knew her skin color. I can only hope that by now, she has benefitted from and maybe even been a part of some strong work by people like Martin Luther King, Jr. There's a blog called “Witness” that is a “black Christian collective that engages issues of religion, race, justice, and culture from a biblical perspective. We believe that the Christian message applies not only to our eternity but also to our present-day circumstances and lived reality.”
It's important to talk about these various types of personal, ethnic, racial, cultural struggles in light of today's scripture. Try to situate yourself in any piece of the struggles mentioned so far. Try to place yourself in any other struggle you've had where you feel you just can't win, there's no hope on the horizon, and you can't find any reason to even try to change circumstances anymore because that's just the way things are.
And then let's hear the scripture from the prologue to the Gospel of John. I'm going to begin reading earlier than the listed portion, for more context:
We've read in past weeks that the Gospel of John begins with the Word. And then John the Baptist, Baptism of Jesus, and next on to today. After Jesus' baptism and before Jesus calls his first disciples, John the Baptist is asked to explain himself. He's asked by the authorities, who are you? They guessed, and might have expected the prophet, Elijah, or the Messiah. But they weren't expecting him to say he was nobody that they were thinking. He didn't try to be grand and take his place in all of history and be something he wasn't. He wasn't either of the one's the authorities might have expected. He was the one who POINTED to the one they were expecting him to be. He was the one crying in the wilderness. He can't say who he is without saying who Jesus is. His identity is in the relationship. He tells them that he is the one who they have heard tell about in ancient stories. And then, in the primary scripture for today, his importance is in the witness he provides. He sees Jesus and points him out for two of his own disciples. Here, “this is the Lamb of God!” This is the one I was talking about. See for yourselves. John 1-51 takes place over four days. On day 1 Jesus didn't even speak. On day 2, John calls him the lamb of God again, and those two disciples go to Jesus and when Jesus sees them he asks them the important question, a question for us. “What are you looking for?” And the next time Jesus speaks he says, again to us today even, “Come and see.”
When John the Baptist points to Jesus and says, here, right here, is the Lamb of God. I myself have seen and have testified. He is witnessing to Jesus. The first person to speak in this passage is the witness. As is often the case, the thing that will save us, will bring us hope, is not something we catch right away. Usually someone else says, there, there's the thing that will help you. The witness is the one who speaks. The one who has seen and has testified, and whose identity is in the relationship, is the one we hear first.
Studs Terkel, writer, activist in the Chicago area, wrote a book called Hope Dies Last, in which he collects thoughts of the many people who have been witnesses, who have pointed to the point of hope.
The Black Panthers were the one who spoke. They were a group who were witnesses to the struggles of not just their own cohort, but were able to then take action to help the Chinese civil rights struggles right across the bay.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the one who spoke. He was a witness to the struggles of the black community and was one to point in the direction of hope.
People and cultures and societies all over the world, having used Korea as just one distant example, were people who have spoken. They have witnessed to their own pain and found ways to build their expressions of this deep generational wound into their culture.
What are you a witness to? To what can you testify? What relationship defines your identity?
I have seen and can testify to a mother's love. I have seen and can testify to relationships of great struggle. I have seen and can testify to the wisdom of a close friend. We all have our strong and weak relationships. What are some of yours?
And more importantly for us, what is it about God, what is it about Jesus that you have seen and can testify to? It's a question we answer every time we read a prayer, every time we sing a song that pulls us in or pulls something of us out. I love the personal nature of the lyrics of songs like the Prayz band sings. I want to feel the individual side of my faith in God. And, I love the more global nature of the words of the hymns, or of the choir. As an instrumentalist, I love the wordless-ness of a melody or ensemble. Then there's the visual arts, and poetry. When “a human tells another human what it's like to be human” we are being witnesses; to what we know of love, of pain, of God, of sadness and depression or loss, of struggle, and of resilience and of community.
Jesus asks us, what are you looking for? And then, he says Come and See.
Please pray with me…..
The following are MLK quotes for the electronic or printed sermon that may refer to service, which may be the incarnation of their sense of call:
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hos”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the goo”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face th”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
19 Now this was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders[c] in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.” 22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way for the Lord.'”[d] 24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 “I baptize with[e] water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” 28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, "After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' 31 I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." 32 And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' 34 And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." 35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" 39 He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed ). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter ).
