Moving Toward Life
Joel 2.28-29; Acts 2.14-18
Second Sunday in Epiphany
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Our scriptures texts today come from two vastly different books separated chronologically by at least three centuries, the Hebrew scriptures book, Joel and the New Testament book, the Acts of the Apostles. However, the prophetic writer of Joel in around 250 BCE and the gospel writer, Luke, who also wrote the book of Acts, most likely between 70 and 90 CE, were both addressing communities in profound change. The small agrarian community of Joel had just experienced an extensive locust plague interpreted in those times as harbinger of the last days before the cataclysmic coming of the Lord. They were most likely enduring food shortages, attacks by Phoenician and Greek slave traders, and a great deal of fear for their survival. Joel’s prophetic poetry speaks to them of a past time of separation from God and then the coming of the time when God would bring abundance and would pour out God’s Spirit upon them.
 
Joel 2.28-29
After [those catastrophic times] I, [the Holy One,] will pour out my spirit upon everyone; your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days, I will also pour out my spirit on the male and female slaves.
Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 35739-35740).
 
The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is more familiar to us. It is the story we read each year on Pentecost Sunday fifty days after Easter, the story God’s gift of the Holy Spirit upon his followers, a gift promised by Jesus. The power of God’s Spirit descends on the disciples and friends of Jesus who have been waiting fearfully together in Jerusalem for what was next after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. Spiritual chaos wonderfully breaks loose as these faithful ones begin to speak the good news of Jesus to all the Jews from around the known world gathered in Jerusalem for the harvest festival of Pentecost. They are speaking in all the different languages of the visitors!  How can this be? These people must be drunk! Yet Peter begins to preach reassuring the people of God’s presence and of the saving grace of Jesus.
 
Acts 2.14-18
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, "Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren't drunk, as you suspect; after all, it's only nine o'clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. [And I would add to Peter’s list, our non-binary, gender fluid siblings will imagine the most amazing possibilities for new life.] [Upon all my people,] I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 42293-42302).
             
This weekend we celebrate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader who galvanized the hearts, minds and actions of all those working particularly for the rights of our Black sisters and brothers from 1955 to his death by assassination in April 4,1968. Standing on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in DC on a hot August day in 1963 – yes, 60 years ago this summer ­– Dr. King called us to dream big with the Spirit for justice, love and the end of racism. We still work to answer that Spirit call. In 1968 he was about to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, radically acting and hoping to end poverty in our nation. But before he could launch this movement he was assassinated. Now just shy of 60 years later Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis have answered the Spirit’s call to end poverty in our nation by launching and co-chairing the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Inspired by these spiritual leaders and change agents, how will we dream big, bigger than we have before here at Plymouth for God’s realm of justice and love in the world? The people of Joel’s time were called to God’s dreams and visions in a time of extreme change. Peter and the other disciples and friends of Jesus were called to God’s dreams and visions in a time of extreme change at Pentecost. So was Dr. King. Dr. Barber and Dr. Theoharis have been called in our times of extreme change. How will we here at Plymouth answer Spirit’s timeless call to dream God’s dreams and share God’s new visions, to prophecy for justice and love?

The pastors got an email from one of our members this weekend sharing that the reputation Plymouth has in the Interfaith Council community of Fort Council is one of action and involvement in social justice. Thanks be to God! I am so grateful for this and for all of you on the frontlines, as well as those on the frontlines of caring for our community internally through Stephen Ministry, Congregation Visitors, leading in our Christian formation programs, caring for our building and numerous other gifts of volunteer time. We do well in frontline work.

What about our soul work? I believe, it is also time to up our soul work game in growth to keep pace with Spirit. This work does not focus on numbers of people or money, though eventually that can be part of the growth. I am talking growth and transformation within where we can encounter God’s visions and dreams that deepen our worship of God and makes God’s realm visible in the lives of people individually and collectively…..by Inviting, Transforming and Sending. (To quote our mission statement!) I believe it’s time to pay more attention to Transforming, to the transformation of our hearts and souls as people of God. Not so we can navel gaze, but so that we can up our dreaming game in Inviting and Sending.

In her book, Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown, challenges those of us who aspire to be change agents in our world to move toward life by creating more possibilities. She writes "What we are all really asking…is how do we, who know the world needs to change, begin to practice being different?” [i] We know the world needs to change. We know as followers of Jesus, as seekers of truth and justice, that all creation is in a world of pain, to use an urban dictionary idiom. How do we practice being different in this world that needs healing change?

We listen. We each learn to listen to Spirit within. We learn to listen to Spirit together in community as She works in subtle ways through our frontline work inside and outside the church. Listening to God’s Holy Spirit may sound daunting to some, but I can assure you it is something we all can learn. And that each of us is consciously and unconsciously already listening. The fourth century desert father, Evagrius Ponticus, “wisely said, “If you want to know God, learn to know yourself first.”[ii] Twenty-first century author and spiritual director, Nancy L. Bieber writes, “When we avoid places in ourselves where fear dwells, we limit our knowing of ourselves and our freedom to become who we can be.”[iii] So first we listen to ourselves, our fears as well as our dreams. This is holy listening and God is with us here. This is not a mysterious, woo-woo process, it is a process of slowing down to be with our selves. To reflect, even daydream, as well as to meditate and pray. If individual fears grow overwhelming, there are many people to accompany us professionally, therapists, pastors, spiritual directors. And we accompany one another in lay pastoral care, in prayer and study groups, in coffee hour conversation. Spirit is always present guiding us. Listening to Spirit will lead us to our practices of being different so that we can BE God’s change in the world, live God’s dreams and visions.
Perhaps you are wondering about tangible ways a faith community can work to be different in our world. Let’s start with communication. We are church together in a contentious and duplicitous world. A world full of rumor, half-truths, triangulating gossip. How can we practice being different for change in this world? How do we practice more direct and transparent communication with one another when conflicts arise as a way of being different in our world? We are church together in a world where it has become okay to be harsh, even mean to one another in a disguised effort to be direct. This comes out particularly in written communication because we do not have to be face to face. How will we invite just and kind communication when times are tough in our community? Practicing different communication in our faith community would empower us to advance peace-filled communication as a difference in our world.  

We live in a changing time of involvement as we have come out of the isolation of pandemic times. We are all re-evaluating how we want to spend our time and where. I recently spoke with a member of our church who worked for Volunteers of America. She told me how volunteer patterns are changing in every non-profit agency. People want to be involved in something vital and hands-on and often commit to one event at a time, rather than a series of board or committee meetings. How do we practice transforming our ways of inviting volunteers into meaningful, community building projects that will be life-giving? The days of filling boards and committees with warm bodies are gone.

We have made a step in this direction through our Ministry Match online survey. It has been enormously helpful in starting the conversations to get people involved with their gifts in Plymouth’s programs and outreach. If you haven’t taken Ministry Match, go to plymouthucc.org/ministrymatch. It will only takes 3-5 minutes of your time and you will learn where you can best get engaged at Plymouth and how to get more information on those places of connection. Getting in engaged is also a way to do deeper into connecting within and listening to Spirit.

These are two ways to jump start deeper transformation in our community as we listen deeply to Spirit, in the quietness of our hearts, in the dialogue of study groups, here in worship, as we care for one another and fellowship together, as we serve one another and serve our neighbors in the world. Spirit is already revealing in our minds, in our imaginations and hearts, new dreams and visions for making the realm of God that Jesus preached and lived visible and viable here and now.

If we listen, we will be led! Even – especially - when we think we do not have enough people, money, resources, blah, blah, blah, I could go on and on. When we think there is not enough, our ears can be blocked to Spirit’s call and abundance. But we must keep listening! We may not see a way forward immediately, but I can assure you that listening together to God, a way will be made. Let us stop reacting against this painful, recent past that we have just all been through together in our pandemic, divisive times and be present to the fertility and fecundity of God’s emerging future for our beloved community.

Listening to the Spirit’s call we will focus on what is possible, not what is wrong. Listening we will focus on forgiveness and grace with one another. Listening we will dream holy dreams and see visions of God’s new life like Drs. King, Barber and Theoharis. We will all be prophets of holy change in a world that so needs the justice and love of God. My dear friends of God, the Holy Spirit is being poured out upon us all, now, always and forever! May we listen, pay attention, and receive Spirit’s abundance and blessings. Amen and Amen.

©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2023 and beyond. May only be reprinted with permission.

[i] adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, (AK Press, Chico, CA: 2017, 164).
[ii] Nancy L. Bieber, Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment, The Sacred Art of Finding Your Way, (Skylight Paths Publishing, Nashville, TN: 2016, 32.)
[iii] Ibid.

1 Samuel 3.1-20
2nd Sunday in Epiphany
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5 and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. 6 The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." 11 Then the LORD said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12 On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13 For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever." 15 Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son." He said, "Here I am." 17 Eli said, "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you." 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him."
19 As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
 
Traditionally, we speak of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter…. but I often find the Spirit as more of a Challenger. And Spirit comforts and challenges through the most mundane ways. This past Thursday morning as I sat drinking my coffee, waking up, checking the news and preparing to write my sermon, two news articles challenged me as I was thinking about our connection to the story of the boy, Samuel, called to be a prophet in ancient Israel. All week I had been considering the call of God to be a prophet as I chose hymns and wrote our meditative call to worship to evoke the theme of prophetic living.

The article that first gave me pause was from the Washington Post. It was titled  “For some Christians the Capital riot doesn’t change the prophecies: Trump will be president.”[i]  I knew we were deeply divided in Christianity, but I had not fully realized that there are Christians prophesying Donald Trump’s presidency, a presidency I have experienced as diametrically opposed to everything I hold dear as a Christian and an American. Religious scholar sources for this article say the people interviewed are practicing a neo-charismatic version of Christian faith that is even farther right in thinking and practice than the evangelical right wing. A Christian nationalism is conflating Christianity with patriotism. And their numbers are growing. The people interviewed were part of the crowd at the Capital on January 6th and their expressed intention in coming to the Capital was to pray that Donald Trump remain president, to show up for the prophecy they had received. Their prophets tell them that Trump is the Chosen One who will shut down an American elite class that is persecuting Christians and crushing what they believe to be Christian values. They are as passionate for their vision of justice as we are for our vision of justice. We have competing prophetic paths. It definitely feels as if the “true” word of the Lord is rare in our land, doesn’t it?

I wanted to write off these people as “kooks!” I wanted to say to myself, “They are delusional and uneducated. They have been duped by conspiracy theories. I know better, don’t I? I have a degree from Yale Divinity School. I can do proper exegesis of the scripture. I understand the ins and outs of biblical prophecy and it does not lead us to support someone proclaiming lies and misuse of power. I am ordained in the UCC! I know about true justice!” However, the Spirit challenged me with humility.  I was challenged to try and see these Christians as people, not as evil others, even as I abhorred the violent actions of the crowd these folks were with.  I was challenged to reach beneath their words to seek understanding of the true concerns of their hearts, to understand how they are my brothers and sisters in Christ, as foreign as they seem to me.

I pondered this moment, wondering, Have I just heard a word from the Lord? And I will tell you why: the word was humbling and challenging, ear-tingling if you will, and revealed to me something new and much needed that God was doing, at least within my heart. I also knew I could only participate in this change with God’s help, not on my power alone. I did not feel comfortable or triumphant. I felt fearful and confused in this revelation of my own prejudice and pride. Spirit challenged me: how would I take humble, peace-making action on this realization? My first action is to share the experience with you.

I find echoes of my experience in the story we heard just minutes ago about the boy Samuel and his first experience with hearing the word of the God. It seems the call to prophetic living is humbling and challenging and it cannot be silenced. It must be shared with others. Remember how the narrator begins our story saying that as Samuel was growing up, “The word of the Lord was rare.” “Vision was not widespread.” At this time there was no king or president in Israel. The priest, as prophetic presence, helped govern and lead the people because professionally, and one would hope personally, he was a channel between the human world and the Holy One. However, in the time of Samuel, Israel was being divided by greedy and power-mongering leadership. Sound familiar?

So, when Samuel humbly accepts the call to hear God’s word, he gets an ear-tingling, earful! The Lord gives him a prophecy condemning Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, younger priests who have been abusing their priestly power. These two are exploiting and seducing women who come to the temple to pray. They are confiscating the best cuts of sacrificial meat before the sacrifices are complete, thus, robbing the people of the expensive cuts of meat they have purchased to complete obligatory religious rituals. They are ignoring the warnings of their old father, Eli, who is trying to correct their immoral behavior.  Thus, Samuel is given his first prophetic word from God, both painful and important. He knows it could get him into trouble. He only fearfully delivers it to his mentor and teacher, Eli, after much cajoling. “Your priestly house is ending,” says Samuel, “God is doing a new thing!”

What are new, ear-tingling thing is God doing that we are we called to hear as this committed community of faith? God is calling! And like Samuel discovered, the call will not necessarily be comfortable. It will be humbling. It will be a bit scary, maybe more than a bit, and outside our comfort zone. It may get us into trouble, good trouble in the words of the late senator from Georgia, John Lewis. UCC pastor, Donna Schaper, comments in an exegetical essay, on the story’s revelation that what God is going to do will make “both ears tingle.” She writes, “Since I hate sermons that make us have to be more heroic than we really are, I say…. Let one ear tingle with fear…Fear is spiritually legitimate….But listen now with the other ear…. Let it tingle too.”[ii]

Spirit’s ear-tingling challenge to me asked me to admit that it is harder for me to love these white Christians who are so very different from me than it is to love people of other faiths. There is my prophetic living challenge…how far can I live into God’s love….not condoning acts of injustice or violence…but extending my compassion, opening my heart to what I preach….that God’s love extends over all of us. And what actions will I take to extend God’s love to those so very different from me? I am asking for the courage to live into those answers as they come.

Now you may be saying to yourself…that is all very well for Samuel he was after all serving in the temple. Like you ministerial types, didn’t he sign up to hear God’s word and act on it? I’m just a regular person, not a prophet in training. And I say back to you…are you committed to the love and justice that was modeled by Jesus in his life, death and resurrection? Are you committed to – or at least concerned about - feeding the hungry, helping the homeless find a home, welcoming the immigrant, praying for peace, caring for the sick in body, mind or soul, nurturing the children and youth, being a voice for the voiceless, loving those cast out and cast down by our culture, saving our world from environmental disaster and global warming? Any of the above? If so, then I believe you are called to be a prophetic presence for God’s justice and love in our times. And I believe you are called to listen as attentively, as carefully as you can! What is making at least one ear tingle with fear? And the other with a new possibility?

The call comes at mundane moments. When we are just lying in our bed before sleep, musing over the day. Or drinking our first cup of morning coffee. We have an unexpected thought. A preposterous idea. Are you listening?

The second news article that challenged me on Thursday morning came from NPR. It seems that there is a restaurant in California run by an award-winning chef,[iii] of Top Chef TV fame. Though it is well-known, it is still struggling in the midst of pandemic as they downsize their business into predominantly take-out orders. One day not long ago they received an online breakfast order, paid for, with a message saying, “This order will not be picked up by the person ordering it. Please make sure that it goes to someone who needs a meal.” The chef who owns the restaurant was so moved that she posted the order message on Facebook. Within a few minutes, another order came into the restaurant, paid for, and with the same message. And another. And another. By now the restaurant has received almost 250 orders for food that is paid for by someone who will not pick it up and who wants the meal given to someone in need. This influx of orders is helping the chef pay her employees and helping others in her community not even connected to her business. Who started this? A teacher in Texas. Not a hugely rich, powerful person, but an “ordinary” teacher. And the love has come back around because someone, after discovering this teacher’s gift to the restaurant, went onto Amazon and saw her wish list of supplies for her classroom. That someone paid for all those supplies helping children they had never met.

A word from the Lord! A delightful new way of working together for the good of people! What if we as a country took this system of paying it forward and helping others as our primary way of working instead of being crippled by greed, selfishness and the lust for power over other people? Would we be as divided as we are now? Would we be better able to see and love and relate to those who now seem “other” as brothers and sisters?

Listen! The word of the Lord is always present! Our ears can always be tingling with the God’s word of justice and love! Listen! Follow. Act in Love. Amen


[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/01/14/prophets-apostles-christian-prophesy-trump-won-biden-capitol/
[ii] Donna Schaper, “Pastoral Essay”, 1 Samuel 3.1-20, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Feasting on the Word” Year B, Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 2008, 246
[iii] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956705067/texas-customers-call-in-order-helps-la-restaurant-pay-it-forward

1 Corinthians 1.1-10
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado

My friends, this is a hard time for our nation. We live in an era when our beliefs have been shaken…that we do hold one another accountable for just and moral actions…that we do judge one another by the content of our character…that our nation’s leaders do act from a sense of integrity…that our nation itself does stand together…that we will come together as one people to tackle seemingly intractable challenges like global warming.

That is one of the reasons I give thanks to God always for you, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. Because when I read and hear and see the disgrace of impeachment, I remember that you are faithful, that God is faithful, and that you have gifts and graces have been strewn upon you in a truly extravagant manner…that you strive to be the Beloved Community. And that like a virus, Beloved Community is something you can catch if you’re not careful.

It’s a virus that lives not on the unwashed hands, but rather dwells in the swelling hearts of people like you. It’s not a virus you can catch with a handshake, but by opening your heart and your mind to something new. It’s not a virus that is transmitted by casual contact with other people, but rather is spread wherever love, beauty, awe, and grace are lived out. It is not a virus limited to one demographic sector: it spreads among Gen X and Boomers and Gen Y and the Greatest Generation whenever we break down walls and build bridges instead. It’s not a virus that is contained within any religious or ethnic group or gender: it is spread by reaching beyond oneself and beyond self-interest and radical individualism and beyond nationalism or chauvinism or racism.

None of us is fully inoculated against this virus that Dr. King called the Beloved Community, using the phrase of philosopher Josiah Royce. And I hate to tell you, but you have been exposed to that virus, which is sometimes a little hard to catch, and even harder to get rid of. You see, Jesus had the virus, and every time you come to the communion table, every time you are the recipient of God’s grace, when you received the gift of baptism as a new person, when you were given the gift of life itself – then my friends, you were exposed to the virus. And like any virus, the more you are exposed, the greater the chances that you will contract it and manifest the Beloved Community.

I am grateful for you, because you are not only living with that virus, you are a carrier, and I know that some of you are spreading that virus every time you lend a listening ear, act for justice, do a simple kindness, share something of yourself.

Beloved Community is the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. Beloved Community is where creation’s wealth is preserved and shared; where racism, bigotry, and prejudice are eradicated; where fear and intimidation are replaced by faith and love; where nations use nonviolent means to resolve their conflicts; where we see and live into the unity of humankind and creation. Beloved Community is grounded in nonviolence on a personal level, and group level, and on a societal level. In 1957, Dr. King wrote, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation.” Those of us who remember the fall of Apartheid in South Africa and the profound witness and work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu know that truth and reconciliation are the only viable alternatives to falsity and further violence.

When you read about or watch the impeachment hearings this week, I would ask you to remember something: that you have been exposed to a virus. Carrying that virus determines how you spend your money, how you think and feel, how you spend your weekends, how you vote, how you raise your children and treat your elders, how you exist as a gifted soul in God’s world. I give thanks for you. And as you watch the rancorous debate, and as you hear truths and falsehoods unfold, remember that you have been exposed to a virus that has changed you into someone who is not susceptible to the cancer of hatred. Carrying that virus means that you will not hate anyone and that you will work for reconciliation.

In an article in The Christian Century in 1966, Dr. King wrote, “I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end of that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community.”

The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed and the Beloved Community that Dr. King espoused are not fully realized…I don’t have to tell you that, you see the evidence every day. But a virus is not visible to the naked eye. It is within us and among us. It is passed to others by love and reconciliation. I give thanks for you, Plymouth, because I have witnessed your love and your faith, and you give me hope for the Beloved Community. Keep on keeping on!

I leave you with a short visual meditation on the March on Washington in 1963…may it spread the virus.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

John 2.1-11
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

I spent much of the day on Thursday reading a volume of sermons by an eminent mid-century theologian. And though these sermons were written 50 or 60 years in the past, there is still a freshness and relevance to them. And that is unfortunate in some ways, because the moral and religious failings these sermons address are still with us.
​
When we celebrate Martin Luther King Day tomorrow, most of us in America will think of Dr. King as a great civil rights leader, which to be sure, he was. But that is not all he was.

Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at Stanford, writes, “The world saw him as a marching protest leader, but Martin Luther King, Jr., was first and foremost a preacher. ‘In the quiet recesses of my heart,’ he once remarked, ‘I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher.’” [1] And we know that Dr. King was a great preacher, but when you begin to read his sermons, you come to an understanding of the theology and the faith that informed who he was as a leader. 

“As a young man with most of my life ahead of me,” King proclaimed, “I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow…. I’m not going to put my ultimate faith in the little gods that can be destroyed in an atomic age, but the God who has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home.” [2] No one knew that King would not grow past middle age before being killed by an assassin’s bullet.

The other thing that was new for me was to understand his theological progressivism. I knew, of course, that he was steeped in the experience of the African-American church and its commitment to social and economic justice, but when you read Dr. King’s sermons, you learn that it really was about justice…not “just us.” His concern was not only for African-Americans, but for all people. Dr. King was also shaped by Colgate Rochester Divinity School, where a half century earlier the theology of the Social Gospel was enunciated most clearly by Walter Rauschenbusch, standing as a counterpoise to fundamentalism, and in many ways, King was the transmitter of the Social Gospel in the mid 20th century.

Like progressive Christians now, King identified a “widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But,” King writes, “there is no fundamental issue between the two.” [3] He was in no way a biblical literalist; in fact, many white Evangelical preachers in the South who stood against the civil rights struggle were literalists who used the Bible as a bludgeon, rather than as a source of grace and light. 

King speaks in his sermons against materialism and in favor of a lived faith. “It’s possible to affirm the existence of God with your lips and deny his existence with your life,” King claimed. “We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live our lives like he never existed.” [4] You probably aren’t going to hear that quote on the news tomorrow, because it’s “too religious” for our secular society. But if you don’t understand Dr. King’s faith, you cannot understand Dr. King in any deep and meaningful way.

“We just became so involved in getting our big bank accounts,” King preached, “that we unconsciously forgot about God – we didn’t mean to do it. We became so involved in getting our nice, luxurious cars, and they’re very nice, but we became so involved in it that it became much more convenient to ride out to the beach on a Sunday afternoon than to come to church that morning. It was an unconscious thing – we didn’t mean to do it. We became so involved and fascinated by the intricacies of television that we found it a little more convenient to stay at home than to come to church. It was an unconscious thing – we didn’t mean to do it.” [5] Thank God his parishioners didn’t have the temptations of the internet, Netflix, and skiing! Seriously, he was calling his congregation out to remind them of what it means to be faithful. In another sermon he claimed, “You are more concerned about making a living than making a life.” [6] Think of the contrast between Dr. King’s theology and today’s “prosperity gospel.”

I also discovered a short sentence that hit me like a rock. I want you to listen to this sentence and don’t think about the situation in the late 1950s…I want you to think about what it means today. “Social problems and racism in particular are moral and spiritual problems that create political and economic consequences.” Listen to that again: “Social problems and racism in particular are moral and spiritual problems that create political and economic consequences.” [7]

That we have a president whose administration imprisons children on our border…that is a moral and a spiritual problem: his and ours. That we have a shut-down government denying work to federal employees and contractors…that is a moral and a spiritual problem: his and ours. That we are witnessing a rise in hate crimes…that is a moral and a spiritual problem: his and ours. Do we have a moral and spiritual problem to address in this country? 

Dr. King said, “One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. The two are incompatible.” We call the worship of false gods idolatry, and it is a violation of the first commandment. Can you say “America First” and call yourself a Christian? 

The economic and political consequences that we live with today are the manifestation, the consequence, the result of the undealt-with moral and spiritual problems that haunt this nation. We need to deal with our national obsession with material things, with the avarice that drives our economy, with ongoing racism that eats away at our nation. These are moral and spiritual problems.
And one of the consequences that Dr. King didn’t live to see is that we are killing God’s planet as well as God’s people. We need a church that is willing to speak out as the conscience of our society, and we need a government willing to get tough, work across the aisle, and make hard choices that address the moral and spiritual problems that cause such suffering. “The church must be reminded,” King preached, “that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” [8] Congregations like ours must claim that mantle, but it means we need to focus not just on charity, but on the work of systemic justice, as we are doing on the border, with our police, with affordable housing. 

One of the things that Dr. King knew and experienced is that doing the work of social justice requires risks and is incredibly taxing. It exhausts those who stand up for the oppressed. And he knew in the depths of his soul that his faith in God was what gave him and the movement the kind of spiritual resiliency that made change in the long term possible. Without roots extending deep into the soil of faith, the tree of social justice will wither and blow over in a strong wind.
 
When Mary tells her son that the wine has run out, Jesus says to his mother, “My time has not yet come.” In other words, his time to die is not yet arrived. But then he asks the steward to bring the jars and fill them with water. And he changes them into wine.

Jesus shows up at just the right moment, and even though time seems out of joint to him, he proceeds because he sees what is needed: the people need to taste and see that God is good. Sometimes situations call forth leaders who are needed in the moment, and I sense that God called Martin Luther King, Jr., into the moment when America needed him most. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a mystic, scholar, and activist said, “The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.” The man had incredible gifts, talents and abilities that were ripe for that Kairos moment of American in the 1950s and 60s. He was not Jesus turning water into wine, but he was a prophet, showing this nation and the world a third way, a nonviolent path toward spiritual, moral, and social transformation.

Who will turn water into wine for our nation today? 

There is much we can do today as the heirs of Dr. King’s spiritual legacy. We can use our faith as our bedrock as we lift our voices to speak out against racism, police violence, white nationalism, jingoism, economic injustice, and unjust immigration policy. But we need to lift every voice and sing…we need to stand up and let our voices be heard, in the halls of Congress, in the voting booth, in the public square.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him. O fear the Lord, you, his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.” [9]

Amen.

Notes:

1.  Clayborne Carson, and Peter Holloran ed., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons on Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (NY: Warner, 1998) from the introduction.
2.   MLK, “Recovering Lost Values,” in Carson and Holloran, op. cit., p. 17
3.   Martin Luther King, Jr., “Three Essays on Religion,” held in Chester, PA.
4.   MLK, “Recovering Lost Values,” in Carson and Holloran, op. cit., p. 15
5.   Ibid.
6.   MLK, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” Carson and Holloran, op. cit. p. 28
7.   Ibid., p 22.
8.   MLK: “A Knock at Midnight,” in Carson and Holloran, op. cit., p.72.
9.   Ps. 34.8-9

© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.