From the Archives - "It's Time"

from the 1.21.02 Newsletter - this comes after just over six months as pastor at Saint John's. We were struggling to find our way and concerned if we'd ever grow again.

Mr. Odell lived down the street from the parsonage.

His first name was Odell, but being 24 and in my second appointment, and being taught some manners in life, I couldn’t bring myself to call him Odell without a courteous title.

His wife, Miss Erma Jewel, was a member of one of the three churches I was serving at the time.

Mr. Odell came to church with her, but wasn’t a member. He was among the cadre of men who gathered on the front porch of the church, shootin' the bull, smokin' like chimneys, and laughing as the "preacher" (that's what they called me, not "the" preacher, or Rev'd Jeffords, or even Johnny, just "preacher) was breaking a few speed limits trying to get to church on time haven't just finished services one and two at 9 and 10 o'clock, respectively.

Mr. Odell and Miss Erma Jewel were always there when the doors were open, and very supportive of a then single, student-pastor learning as he went through Divinity School.

Being neighbors as we were, it was not uncommon for them to check up on me, neither was it uncommon for me to go see if I could borrow a tool or something. They were on up in years, and Mr. Odell’s health was poor. He had emphysema brought on by a lifetime of smoking – a habit he couldn’t break.

Now, in middle Tennessee, the predominant church influence, especially in the country, is Church of Christ. The church you went to might say “Methodist” or “Baptist” on the sign, but the vein of Church of Christ doctrine ran deep, even in the doors of a different church with a supposedly different understanding of the Gospel.

All of which is to say, that Miss Erma Jewel, as sweet as she was, and as committed to Mr. Odell as she had been for all their lives, was convinced that unless he joined our church, he was going straight to hell.

I believed in evangelism, though not the kind of evangelism I’d later understand as truly authentic to the gospel. So in my naivete’, I decided that I’d make Mr. Odell my project. I was going to bring him to Jesus

It was a few weeks before I was going to be graduating for Vandy, and accept my first appointment back home in the Memphis Conference. It was time for me to make my move. He was over to the parsonage one day helping me by holding the ladder so that I could clean out my gutters, which is really funny, because I'm like twice his size.

The conversation, to the best of my memory, went something like this:

I’m up on the ladder. “Mr. Odell?”

“Yea, preacher,” looking up at me.

“Mr. Odell, I was looking through our church roll (not true, but a clever device to get the point I wanted across), and was surprised to see that you weren’t a member of the church.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I know that Miss Erma Jewel has been a member for such a long time (like 50 years), and I was wondering why you’ve never joined.”

With raspy, wheezy voice, he said, “Well, I tell you. I haven’t joined the church because it’s just not my time to do it yet.”

This was hardly what I was expecting.

I was certain I hear something like, “because you Methodists are to damn liberal,” or, “you don’t really baptize, you just sprinkle,” or “I just go to church because that’s where my wife goes.”

But, “It’s just not my time to do it yet?” My whole evangelism plan was shot.

I asked, “Well, when’s it going to be time?”

He said, “I don’t know, but when it is time, I’ll just know it.”

"Mr. Odell, you know Miss Erma Jewel wants you to join in the worst way, and since my last Sundays are upon us, it would be a great going away present to me. Why don’t you just come on and do it?” (In hindsight, and after years of reflection, that had to be about the dumbest, most disingenuous of approaches I could have taken.)

With firmness, he said, “Because this is my choice, and if I do it at all, it’ll be when I’m ready.”

He wasn’t mad at me. In fact, I think he was surprised that I hadn’t asked him about it much sooner, and it made me wonder if every other preacher who'd lived in that house, just down the road from his, had taken their shot.

But I figured the “I’m about to leave” strategery was magic. No such luck. And I didn’t bother him with it anymore.

Eight or nine years ago I was reading a newsletter from that church, and saw the pastor’s article about Mr. Odell. He had, in his mid 80’s, made a profession of faith and joined the Church. When the pastor asked him what took him so long, he quoted Mr. Odell as saying, “it was time.”

Well I'd be dadgum.

I remembered my conversation with him. In retrospect, I’m so glad he didn’t join when I attempted to manipulate him. See, we, who are of the body of Christ, do things not in moments of our time (chronos), but in God’s time (kairos). Had I been more attentive to him and his needs then, I would have known that.

Are you keeping time? Who’s time are you keeping? If you’re living in the world of your own agenda, you’re rarely, if ever, available for the manifestations of ‘kairotic” moments.

A few months after reading the inspiring account of Mr. Odell joining the church, I read the newsletter posting sympathy for his death. Was he hell bound had he not joined the church?

Hardly.

He was a good man who believed and lived his life well. But it offered great solace to his beloved Miss Erma Jewel.

St. John’s - let’s put down our agendas, our watches and listen…be aware of God’s time in our midst, and follow.

From the Archives - "A Letter to My Son"

This appeared in our newsletter on 9.25.01, just two weeks after 9.11. It comes in advance of our youngest child's baptism, but it carries the thread that ties the moments we celebrated his brothers' baptisms years earlier.


Dear Jack,

Son, I write this with hope that one day you’ll read it. This Sunday, your mom and I are going to do something with you that you won’t remember actually happening, except that we promise to help you know what is true about that day and what it means for your life, and for our lives, too.

We’re bringing you to the altar to celebrate a covenant, a promise. We’re going to bring you to the waters of life. We’re celebrating your baptism. What we’re doing is letting everyone within the sound of our voices know what we already know, that you, son, are God’s special child, and God’s gift to us. Mom and I, your brothers too, are so blessed to have your life wrapped up into ours. We love you so much, and we know that we’ve been given the joy and responsibility of raising you in the awareness that you are never apart from God’s loving presence and God’s grace.

All your family is going to be there in great number to celebrate this day. Your Granddaddy’s going to hold you, place water on you, and say some special words that mark you as one of God’s children. Mom and I are going to declare again that we are also God’s children. It will be a holy moment. It will be sacred. In that moment, you will be given a name – Jack Ryan Jeffords, “one of Christ’s own.”

Mom and I, even as we celebrate, know the importance of doing this. We’ve been at the altar before. We’ve been there to be baptized ourselves. We’ve been there to be married. We’ve been there to give thanks to God for the lives of family and friends who’ve died. We go there regularly to feast upon the grace of God through Jesus in Holy Communion. We go to the altar to pray. This is the holy place for us to gather for this joyous occasion.

Now Jack, your church family’s going to be there, too. Their responsibility to you is, in many ways, just as important as ours. Your church family is going to make promises about their intent to help raise you in the faith. Gathered all around will be your sisters and brothers in Christ. Within that beautiful sanctuary is gathered one family, to celebrate one Lord, through this one baptism.

As you grow up and the pressures of life start to become real to you, you’re going to have to work really hard sometimes to remember what is true about your life and faith. That’s the struggle we all face. There are times when it’s rather clear about who we are and the direction of lives guided by faith with God in the midst. But there are days when it’s not so clear.

Even as we celebrate this day I struggle with my faith and my feelings as I see what evil people can do to each other in our world. What makes it even more confusing is that sometimes people use the same God that we come before to justify their purposes. My struggle has nothing to do with whether or not God has changed. God hasn’t. It has more to do with whether or not I’m making myself completely available to God’s presence. When I’m not, it gets tough. Those are the moments when I need to be reminded of my baptism. You’ll need a reminder, too.

Sunday, Granddaddy’s going to give us a candle, and he’s going to tell us to light it every September 30, to be a living reminder that something powerful and eternal took place in your life. One day, this promise made for you by us will be yours to accept and embrace. While mom and I make plenty of decisions for you during your young life, this one’s going to be all yours. One day, you’ll be called to stake your claim in the name of the One in whose name you were baptized at the tender age of 7 weeks. And as you ponder, your family, your church family, and even our Lord cheer you on.

God bless you, my beloved son.

What if . . .

Found this at YouTube.

Don't distance yourself from what's happening a world away.



For more, go to savedarfur.org

Sojos Representin'

The Sojourners' Class at my church - well, they're just cool.

I'm the old man among them, and yet, they put up with me.

We're just starting this book, brought to the group by one of our own, who, like all the rest, struggles with the incongruity of what the Gospel compels us to do in the face of systemic evil, and the relative silence of congregations, large and small on these issues.

Sometimes that silence is of our own making.

The prevailing spirit from this class, though, as led by Gospel mandates, is that, if there is silence in the face of such issues, it won't be from them.

I'm proud of this class, but not in a "pride goeth before the fall," kinda way.

Really, its more satisfaction wrapped in thankfulness, and a little bit of awe. I really believe these folks can change the world - I feel pretty sure they're changing me.

God knows we both need it.

Irrelevant Pursuits

We all want to matter.

Don’t we?

Don’t we all somehow want to think that at the end of our days that what we’ve said, done has made a difference?

It’s a noble thought, but only if what drives our desire to matter is clear – pure.

In our worship during these days, our congregation is living with Henri Nouwen’s profound book, “In the Name of Jesus – Reflections on Christian Leadership.”

My goal is framing my homilies around Nouwen’s words are not merely to have us somehow emulate someone else’s journey.

Rather, it is to use our awareness of who Jesus is to help give form and direction to our own, especially now as we believe we're called to lead the church into gospel hospitality.

This preaching series has been quite a point of departure for me. I have observed the lectionary as a discipline for 20 years. Quite literally, I took my first appointment as Associate Pastor at Old Hickory United Methodist Church outside of Nashville, 20 years ago this June.

So to give myself permission to veer from that is not something I feared, rather it was something I ran to.

I've found it a welcomed break from texts that folks who've been with me know into my sixth year have heard me preach twice.

And while I’ll return to those prescribed scriptures at Lent, for now, using the temptation of Jesus in Matthew and the post-Easter exchange between Jesus and Peter as a guide, Fr. Nouwen’s journey helps us deal with the spiritual dis-eases of our days and offers the way to lead the church.

The most notable of those things we need to give up – the desire, if not outright lust – to be relevant. In the wilderness temptation, Nouwen contends that the true meaning of the tempter’s encounter with Jesus was to convince Jesus that he mattered, but on terms not in keeping with who he really was.

God help each of us, when our lust for relevance gets in the way of our call. And what is that call? To walk in the way of the Servant, “who, though in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death on a cross – so that, at his name every knee should bow, and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.” (Philippians 2 paraphrase)

Martin's Asking - Do You Still Dream?

Eboni is my secretary. She is a dear soul and she loves her Lord.
At staff meeting last week, when asked what we might be doing on the MLK holiday, while most of us talked about doing nothing, or catching up on errands, her response struck us dumb.

"My friend and I always go somewhere that we wouldn't be able to if it were not for Dr. King."

She dreams, still.
If you've not seen the "I Have a Dream" speech in it's entirety. Here's your chance. Here's one of the good reasons YouTube and Google exist.
Watch the man who takes the podium transform into the prophet who preaches as the Holy Spirit validates and confirms both his call and message. When that happens, the truth must come out, for if he didn't, the very stones of the Memorial on whose steps this speech is given would cry out.
I tell you, if this doesn't get you still, you need to check your pulse.
And, the question remains - do you dream?

But if you want the most prophetic of King's words, it came a few months earlier, from a jail in Alabama. If you fancy yourself of person of faith, who cares about what happens to any group marginalized as "the other," or "them," read this at your peril, because he's addressing this to folks who would prefer to be popular and liked than on the side of justice, that is, the side of God.
LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL*
April 16, 1963
MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
------- *AUTHOR'S NOTE: This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to. leave me. Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication. -------
I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. 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. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self- purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro .leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants --- for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttles worth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic with with-drawl program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved South land been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken .in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor. will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal .law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I- it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's anti religious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to 6e solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best- known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black- nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or. unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle---have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.
But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative .critics who can always find. something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who 'has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of Rio shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader era; an too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious. irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Walleye gave a clarion call for defiance and .hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great- grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if .you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have exercised a .degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They viii be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us. all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

What would MLK have said about Iraq? Are you kidding me? Really. Listen to this sermon preached in 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church on the war in Vietnam.

And finally, MLK's mountaintop speech, preached in Memphis, not too far from where I work and labor in the vineyard of the Lord everyday. And when was this? 39 years ago, people. It seems we are always a few years either side of our best selves, or our worst. Click this link for the full text of that last speech given on April 3, 1968. The audio player will play the speech in full. If you've never heard this speech in full, you owe to yourself to take the time and hear what the issues were that brought MLK to Memphis in the first place.
There were violent storms in Memphis that night, and you'll hear the thunder - I'm left to wonder, though, if the thunder was not God's "Amen" to what God's prophet was saying that night.
So, do you? Do you dream, still?

"Imago Dei" - Homily for Baptism of the Lord, January 7, 2007

My homily for last week, posted on our church website, click here.

Leftovers and a Few Fresh Servings

Some scattered thoughts left over from '06, and comments on what has been an extraordinary first week in '07 -

• + How was my holiday? What holiday? With Kristy working full time, we only had a couple of days off, so I worked more during a time I usually take apart. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - the season just had a very different rhythm to it than my past Christmas seasons. I even preached on what is traditionally an "associate" Sunday. And it was really o.k.
  
• + Last week, on like the 4th day of Christmas, I'm picking up my middle child from his cousins' house in Collierville, where he basically lived for the whole his holiday break. He's 11, and the spittin' image of my brother, in more ways than I can count, and he says to me, "Dad, do you know what I want for Easter?" He didn't get to tell me - I think it was that "don't go there" stare I gave him back. And then it occurred to me - our children have always received gifts, and often in abundance, but we have not instilled in them the desire to give them. Note for '07, that's something I've got to work on.
• + When I was growing up, my Dad would never ask for anything during holiday time. And even now as an adult, I find he's still among the hardest of people to buy for. "Oh, I don't need anything, just your company." Now, when I was little, I used to think he's nuts because I had the Sears Wishbook dog-eared, cross-referenced, and strategically displayed on the table for any eyes desiring to know what their loving son wanted for Christmas. But I get it now. I've come to realize that the gift of time together, or even the quite of an afternoon is not a bad gift. Often it is a treasure in itself.
• + I've been asked if my opposition to the death penalty applies to Saddam Hussein. Yes - because you can kill someone, doesn't mean you should, even if the guy is bad, maybe especially if he is.
  
• + In the world of the bizarre - on the same day last week, the cable news network I watch covered three stories simultaneously - the execution of Saddam, the death of the 38th President of the United States, and the death of the Godfather of Soul. This may well be a sign of the apocalypse.
• + Or, maybe this is - our President, it appears, is going to send up thousands of more troops to Iraq against the counsel of his Generals, the Iraq Study Group, and a disgruntled American populous - who now see this FUBAR'd debacle for what it is. Oh, yes, I've got KO on this one - stand back and hold on to something -
  

• + As of yesterday, the second in line of succession to the Presidency is a woman. Who'd a thunk it?
• + My list of resolutions for '07 looks strangely familiar. Why is that? Oh, that's right, they're the one's for '06, '05, '04 . . . what's that quote about insanity? It's doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result. Maybe time for something different - please.