Love Overcomes Hate

Acts 9: 1-22 - April 21, 2024, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Madison 

To see a video of this sermon, click here.

Two days ago, I was standing at the spot of the deadliest attack on any Jewish community in the United States.

I was at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  

On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, the killer – a 46-year old man steeped in the hatred of Jews and Muslims and immigrants – entered the synagogue where three services were underway for the three separate congregations that used the building. 

Over the next 20 minutes, using an AR-15 rifle and three Glock .357 semi-automatic pistols, he killed 11 people and wounded seven more. Four of those killed were Holocaust survivors.

That morning, as the news started to come in on my phone, I was standing outside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where in 1963 a bomb set by hate-filled people killed four young girls – three 14-year olds and an 11-year old – as they were getting ready for the Sunday services. 

I walked across the street to a park, where there is a memorial to Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Germany and then Amsterdam who kept a diary that so many have read. She died in a concentration camp in 1945. 

 

Hatred, all around. Probably a good time to pause and a deep breath.

The story of Paul – then called Saul – that we just heard starts out as a story of hatred. He was “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” the writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us. 

 

Saul was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus. 

He was looking for people who “belonged to the Way” – followers of Jesus – so that he could bring them bound back to Jerusalem. 

He was the one who held the coats for those who stoned an early follower of Jesus, a deacon named Stephen, to death.

He was a Pharisee, one of those who held firmly to Jewish law and the place of the Temple in their lives. They saw these Jesus followers as disloyal, as rivals, as troublemakers. A young man, probably in his 20s, Saul wanted to win the favor of his group, so he went after the Jesus followers with what he himself called zeal. 

It would not be too strong to say that Saul hated these followers of the Way. Until something happened. We heard the story of the vision on the road, the temporary blindness, surely the confusion he felt as his companions led him into Damascus. 

 

Here's one way to think about this. Suddenly, hatred encountered love - and love won. 

 

It actually happens sometimes.

 

In November 2008, just a few days after the nation elected Barack Obama to be president, a group of former heads of the Ku Klux Klan and prominent neo-Nazis met secretly in a hotel room in Memphis. One of the stars of the gathering was a 19-year old named Derek Black, a student at the New College of Florida and radio show host. His father, Don Black, had created Stormfront, the Internet’s largest white nationalist site. His godfather was David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, who once had been married to his mother. 

 

Young Derek told the crowd at that hotel, “The great intellectual move to save white people started today.”

 

At college, as other students realized he was an ardent white supremacist, they began to isolate Derek. And he isolated himself. Until he got an invitation from a student name Matthew Stevenson: “What are you doing Friday night?”

 

Matthew was an Orthodox Jew – the only one at the college – so he began hosting small Shabbat dinners at his apartment. His guests were eclectic – Christians, atheists, Blacks, Hispanics. And now he was inviting the rising star of white supremacism to join them.

The Washington Post had a story about Derek and Matthew. It said: “Matthew decided his best chance to affect Derek’s thinking was not to ignore him or confront him, but simply to include him. ‘Maybe he’d never spent time with a Jewish person before,’ Matthew remembered thinking.”

 

Author Eli Saslow wrote that Matthew did this hoping that just by spending more and more time with his group, Derek would be able “to begin seeing past the stereotypes to the people and to the humanity.”

 

Derek went once. Then again. And again. A friendship began to form despite their suspicions of each other. A few other Jewish students from town joined the dinners. Derek’s views began to soften. Slowly…but steadily. 

Remember, he was a very public figure in the white nationalist movement, as was his family, so imagine the shockwaves when he posted a very public statement that included with these words: “The things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all. I am sorry for the damage done.”

 

As Rabbi Sharon Brous wrote about the Jewish students in her new book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World, “What did it take for them to open their homes, week after week, to engage in the painstaking work of stretching open another person’s heart, of humanizing themselves to a neo-Nazi, and even finding humanity in him?”

 

Love had pushed out hate.

 

Closer to home, many of you may remember the awful shooting at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek near Milwaukee in 2012 when a white supremacist entered the worship building on a Sunday morning and fatally shot six members of the congregation and wounding four others before killing himself.

 

One of those killed was Satwant Singh Kaleka, the president of the gurdwara, who died trying to protect the congregation. His son, Pardeep Kaleka – who you see in this picture - wanted to know what could drive someone to that level of hatred. He connected with Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist who had grown up in Mequon. 

 

Arno had joined the white power movement when he was 16, coming out of a dysfunctional home, living with alcoholism, reveling in violence. He was a founding member of what became the largest racist skinhead organization in the world. He described himself as a reverend in a self-declared Racial Holy War. He played in a white power rock band. He attacked anyone who was Black, Jewish and LGBTQ – anyone who wasn’t white or straight.

 

But then he began to encounter people who shook up his view of the world. He had a swastika tattooed on the middle finger of his right hand. He later wrote: “One time I was greeted by a black lady at a McDonald’s cash register with a smile as warm and unconditional as the sun. When she noticed the swastika tattoo on my finger, she said: ‘You’re a better person than that. I know that’s not who you are.’ Powerless against such compassion, I fled from her steady smile and authentic presence, never to return to that McDonald’s again.”

Other things happened. His boss – who was Jewish – did no fire him despite the swastika on his jacket. A Black coworker offered him half of his sandwich when Arno didn’t bring lunch. A lesbian supervisor treated him with unexpected kindness.

His love of music led him to the rave scene, where he found himself dancing with people of different races. They accepted him. And then he became a father. He watched his little girl at day care play with delight with a diverse group of children.  

It took time, but Arno had rejected white supremacy by the time he met Pardeep. They did not bond right away, of course. But soon they were speaking together to groups, writing a book together called The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate.

Love had once again overcome hate.

Now let’s join Ananias in Damascus. 

You could hear his anxiety about going to visit this zeal-filled persecutor of the followers of Jesus at a home on Straight Street. In his words: “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”

But Ananias took the message from Jesus to heart and went to see Saul, to bless him, to baptize him, to teach him about the Way of Jesus.

God’s love transformed Saul. Ananias willingness to reach out and embrace Saul transformed the life of those early Christians. 

I don’t want to be too simplistic about all of this. Evil does exist in our world. Evil killed people in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the gurdwara in Oak Creek, in the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Evil killed people in Israel on Oct. 7 and has killed so many in Gaza since then. 

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are surging in our nation right now.

Remember that memorial to Anne Frank in the park in Birmingham? It has these words from 15-year old Anne’s diary on March 16, 1944 – five months before the Nazis would capture her and her family: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

You and I may not be able to stop all the evil in our world. But maybe we can help transform one life and then another and then another if we open ourselves to those who seemed troubled and offer them another path. And if we can’t do that, we can at least find ways to stand with those who are suffering.

Let me go back to the people I met in Pittsburgh on Friday, six years after hate blasted its way through their house of worship. 

Peg Durachko’s husband, Rich Gottfried, was murdered at the synagogue. She said, “It was an evil attack on a sacred place, an attack from evil on goodness.”

But part of the healing process for her and the other victim’s families includes creating a new space to try to uproot antisemitism. 

Michael Bernstein – who happens to be a UW-Madison philosophy grad – now chairs the Remember. Rebuild. Renew. campaign to create an international institution dedicated to ending antisemitism through education, engagement and action. It will be on this site next to the sanctuary of the original synagogue.

And others in Pittsburgh talked about the importance of all those who surrounded them with love and care and support in the wake of that day’s tragedy. On the fence along the spot where older buildings of the synagogue once stood are 101 pieces of art submitted by student artists from across the nation in what was called the Hearts Together project.

Take a closer look at this one. “You’re not alone.” This came from a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida – the site of another mass shooting. The note with it says, “We are here for you.”

So even if we cannot always stop evil and hatred and violence, even if we cannot be Ananias for Paul or Matthew Stevenson for Derek or Pardeep for Arno, we can still reach out to those who suffer from such tragedies. It really matters.

Suzanne Shreiber, a past president of the Tree of Life Synagogue, said that in the days after their tragedy, “the city was leaning in, standing beside us, taking a breath with us.”

 

When Saul was rampaging against the early Christians, they leaned in, stood together, breathed together. When Ananias helped Saul live into his new call of love, that led to new communities where love defined their existence.  

 

So today, the challenge for us remains – how can we help love overcome hate? How can we make God’s love a reality? What can we take out from this sanctuary on this morning?]

 

As Anne Frank wrote, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Amen.

Delighting in Doubt

April 7, 2024, Christ Presbyterian Church - John 20: 24-30 

You can watch a video of the sermon here.

Good morning. My name is Thomas. I’m the one who asks questions.

 

When Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their gospels, they just gave me a passing reference. They included me in the group Jesus called to be his closest followers. Nice of them to remember me. 

 

You’d think they could have at least told a bit more about me since some people said I was the twin brother of Jesus – or maybe a twin with one of his other brothers. Oh well.

 

But John … the most beloved of Jesus’ followers … John paid attention to me in his Gospel. And you know, the things John wrote about me are probably true of a lot of followers of Jesus. They may even be true of folks sitting in this church this morning.

 

There was the time Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died. Jesus wanted to go to Bethany to visit Lazarus’ family. Little did we know that he was also going to bring Lazarus back to life. All we knew was that Bethany was two miles from Jerusalem and some people there had wanted to stone him the last time he was in the area. When Jesus said he wanted to go to Bethany, I said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

 

Now those may sound like brave words, but I just felt so committed to Jesus that I could not bear the thought of him going off alone to face people who wanted to kill him.

 

Not that I was ever afraid to ask him questions, you understand. On the night of his Last Supper, all sorts of unusual things happened. Jesus washed our feet and told us to serve others as he has served us.  He told us one of us would betray him. Us his closest followers! I could hardly believe that. 

 

He told us just as he loved us, we should love one another. Now that I understood. 

 

Then he said he was going somewhere to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. Well, I was getting confused, so I asked Jesus, “Lord, we do not where you are going. How can we know the way.” And he patiently replied, “I am the way, and the truth and the life…If you know me, you will know my Father also.” 

 

I was not the only one who asked him questions that night. Peter and Philip and others asked him questions, too. That’s the way it was with Jesus. He knew he was telling us things that were sometimes difficult to understand, that he was asking us to live in ways that were different from what we were used to.  

 

So you can understand why I didn’t feel any hesitation about asking questions about this amazing story my friends told about Jesus appearing to them after that terrible day when the Roman soldiers nailed him to a cross. I was gone that evening – maybe they asked me to go out to get the groceries, which turned out to be a bad decision on my part. 

 

Jesus’ followers had all been gathered in a room on Sunday night, not sure whether they were also marked for death. They said Jesus came right through the locked door, breathed his spirit onto them and talked with them about forgiveness. I’m not sure what was more amazing … that they saw him after he had been killed or that he was talking about forgiveness so soon after his fellow human beings had treated him so despicably.

In any case, I spent the next week sort of on the outs with my friends. “We have seen the Lord,” they kept telling me. “Yeah, right,” I kept telling them. “Unless I can put my fingers into the nail holes in his hands and my hand into the wound in his side, I’m just going to keep believing that this is all in your imaginations.”

 

So when Jesus showed up again the next Sunday night and invited me to do just that, you can imagine how shocked I was. I guess my friends were feeling a bit smug right about then.  I did feel a little sheepish for being such a skeptic. 

 

But Jesus didn’t spend any energy making me feel bad. He invited me to have a tangible experience of his presence in my life. I needed that, and Jesus was just fine with that.

 

Well, thanks for listening. I think that other guy who’s preaching here today has a few things he wants to say. So I guess I’ll give him a chance.

 

+++++

 

Well, thanks, Thomas.

 

I know a bit about doubt and faith. I suspect many of us here do.

 

As many of you know, my first career was as a journalist. It’s a profession where one of the mantras is “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

I think that Thomas would have been a good journalist. He was curious, not afraid to ask questions. 

When I added ministry to my career in journalism, people would ask how I handled that change. I said I was straddling skepticism and belief. I thought that was a pretty good place to be. I still do.

We as a church community have said we think that is a good place to be as well. When we adopted our vision statement and articulated our values last year, one of those values is Doubt + Faith. 

Here’s how we explained it: “We humbly approach the mysteries of faith and complexities of life through continual learning. We encourage questions and curiosity.”

When we think about so many of the stories in the Bible, so many of the things we are asked to believe about God and Jesus, even the many things we are asked to believe about how we should live as followers of Jesus, it sometimes can seem a bit overwhelming. 

I think bringing a bit of skepticism to all that is not a bad idea. It forces us to think through the things we say we believe. The danger, of course, is when we allow skepticism to turn into cynicism. 

On the other hand, I find it helpful to remember that belief really means this is not something I can prove. I can believe in an idea; I can believe in a person. The parallel danger to skepticism turning into cynicism is belief turning into just blind faith. 

One of the things I learned from a pastor who was mentor to me is the phrase, “This is what I believe, but I could be wrong.” There is a resonance to that phrase that has allowed me to listen to what others believe with what I hope is an open heart.

The wonderful author – and Presbyterian minister – Frederick Buechner wrote an essay on doubt some 30 years ago and had this memorable line:

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

And as Thomas mentioned, he was not the only one with doubts among Jesus’ followers. Remember when Mary Magdalene and the other women who had been to tomb and learned that Jesus had risen from the dead went back to tell the apostles?

Peter – among others – doubted what they said – ah, idle women’s tales - so Peter ran off to the tomb to see for himself. 

Peter’s doubts propelled him forward.  That’s what our doubts can do for us. We seek to learn more, to hear from others, to see what sense we can make of life.

Of course, sharing our doubts, our uncertainties with others can also cause a bit of tension. Keep in mind what the week must have been like for Thomas. 

His companions say they had seen Jesus and he told them he did not believe them. Yet they all stayed together in the midst of that. 

One of the things that I have come to value about life at Christ Presbyterian is how well we all stay together even though we bring a range of doubts and beliefs, of experience, of worship styles and musical preferences into this space. 

Here’s one example. There has been a movement over the last couple of decades to pay more attention to the reality that God is a being beyond any one gender. While many of us grew up thinking of God as a man and praying to God as a father, the language we use has broadened so much. 

Those of us in leadership here try to be conscious of that in our public prayers, in the lyrics of hymns, in our preaching. Yet we know that there are those among us for whom the more traditional ways of praying has deep meaning. 

We know that in churches less white than ours, the Father God language is central to an understanding of God’s care for them. We know that the fact the Jesus often called God “Father” – like he heard in Thomas’ references to Jesus’ Last Supper speech - helps inform many people’s prayers.

So here we work to hold so many traditions and styles in a place of respect. 

Here we work to make sure that people who continue to figure out what they believe have room for their questions and their doubts.

Here we hope that people who feel more anchored in their faith, in what they believe, can rejoice in that even as they recognize that others are still on a journey.

I feel so at home here because this is a place where I can straddle skepticism and belief with so many others. 

Many of you know that I grew up Catholic and the Catholic Church - and other Christian traditions - have a rich tradition of patron saints – heroes from the past who in some way are connected to a place or a profession or a cause in the present. You know – like St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland.

Well, I think if we had such a custom, Thomas would be a good patron saint for us here at Christ Presbyterian. Committed to follow the way of Jesus – even willing to stake his life on that conviction – yet always willing to ask questions, to live with doubts, to stay in community.

So thanks, Thomas, for setting an example. 

And thanks, people of Christ Presbyterian, for embracing Doubt + Faith.

Amen.

 

 

An Invitation to the Future

To see a video of this sermon at Christ Presbyterian Church, click here.

Matthew 21: 1-11 

Each Gospel writer tells the story of this day in a little different way, but they all involve cheering crowds as Jesus rides a donkey down into the city of Jerusalem. There is so much excitement, so much hope. We join in the words “Hosanna” as palms wave among us. We think of it as a great cheer.

But actually, “Hosanna” is more than a cheer. 

The Hebrew roots of the word go back to Psalm 118 and mean “please deliver us.” There were lots of expectations being put on Jesus by the crowd that day. They had heard the stories of how he healed people’s bodies and their spirits, how he restored the alienated back to the community, how he proclaimed the good news of God’s love. He indeed was coming in the name of God.

 

There were a lot more people in Jerusalem that day than just the crowd cheering on Jesus. It was the season of Passover and people came from all over the known world to be in Jerusalem, to come to the temple. And Jerusalem - whose name emerged from words meaning the abode of peace, - was anything but peaceful, then or now. 

 

According to historians, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. It is divided today between Israelis and Palestinians, reflecting the deep divisions throughout that land. 

Our reading today ended with these words: “When he entered, the whole city was in turmoil.” The Gospel according to Mark has him briefly entering the Temple, foreshadowing the turning over of the money-changers tables in the days ahead. 

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus after he enters Jerusalem, he calls it “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” He wants to gather it like a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

 

In the midst of the turmoil, in the midst of generations of conflict past, present and to come, he held out hope for the city, hope for a humanity often torn by conflict that is fueled by hatred.

 

He entered in triumph but he was worried about the future – for humanity, for the city, for himself. And seeing beyond this week, he had glimpses of the brightness that would come with Easter. 

I think we tend to group all of the crowds in the various stories of Holy Week into one undifferentiated mass. I don’t think that is fair to this crowd on Palm Sunday. 

 

Look, we say, by the end of the week, they had turned on him, calling for his crucifixion. Yet there were so many people in Jerusalem, it is quite possible there were some very distinct crowds. 

 

Think of demonstrations we see in our nation’s capital – one day it is anti-abortion protesters, the next day it is pro-choice advocates. They are hardly the same crowd of people.

 

Besides, there are other traditions in Jerusalem during the Passover season that maybe offer us a key into how we might look at the crowds, the temple, the tensions - and find a way into the future.

 

Rabbi Sharon Brous, a wonderful voice who stands at the intersection of faith and justice in our country, tells of one of those traditions in her new book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.

 

She discovered it in what she described as “a Rabbinic teaching buried deep in a third-century Jewish legal compendium.” It is mostly about the measurements of the temple in Jerusalem finished in the century just before Jesus by Herod the Great – the one who was ruler of Judea when Jesus was born. But there is this one brief section that describes what the pilgrims to Jerusalem did when they arrived at the temple.

 

It's short. Here are the actual words from what is known as the Mishna Middot (mid’- dot)

 

“All who entered the Temple Mount entered by the right and went round [to the right] and went out by the left, save for one to whom something had happened, who entered and went round to the left. 

 

“[He was asked]: ‘Why do you go round to the left?’ [If he answered] ‘Because I am a mourner,’ [they said to him], ‘May He who dwells in this house comfort you.’

 

“[If he answered] ‘Because I am excommunicated’ [they said]: ‘May He who dwells in this house inspire them to draw you near again.’ ”

 

Rabbi Sharon extends that a bit further. When we are hurting, she writes, we step against the current. We know that feeling. In her words, “Every person who passed the brokenhearted would stop and ask, ‘What happened to you?’ 

“’I lost my mother,’ the bereaved would answer. ‘I miss her so much.’

 

“Or perhaps, ‘My husband just left.’ Or ‘I found a lump.’ Or ‘Our son is sick.’ Or ‘I just feel so lost.’”

 

“And those who walked from right to left – each one of them – would look into the eyes of the ill, the bereft, and the bereaved. ‘May God comfort you,’ they would say, one by one. ‘May you be wrapped in the embrace of this community.’”

What a great image. What a great reality for the people who came to the Temple. What a great reminder for us when we encounter someone in the midst of difficulties. 

 

“What is happening to you?” we might ask. “Why does your heart ache?” And then we listen. And we let them know that the community is around them.

 

Rabbi Chai Levy from a Jewish congregation in Berkeley wrote of this ritual: “The rabbis understood that those who experienced suffering or loss, those who have been shunned, and caregivers to the sick needed some emotional support.” 

 

And he asks: “How might we apply this idea to this time? How might we create similar ways to give and receive compassion and support and to acknowledge the grief, the losses, and the mental health crises experienced by so many this past year?”

 

And I might add, how can we amplify our hosannas – that plea for God to deliver us – to embrace those around us?

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the crowd was with him. They knew that he had restored the alienated back to the community.  There were people with him throughout the week to come. They were looking out for him as well. 

 

They gathered with him at table, prayed with him in the garden. Simon from the North African city of Cyrene helped Jesus carry the cross. Luke writes in his Gospel that as Jesus and Simon went up the hill with the cross, “A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.”  

 

Even as he was hanging on the cross, his closest followers were below and a criminal on the cross next to him reached out in admiration. And one of the Pharisees – Joseph of Arimathea – provided the place for Jesus’ burial. 

 

When we are hurting, we need a community around us. So many of you here know that, you have experienced it. So many of you here have been that community for people who need someone to care about them in the midst of hard times.

 

I surely know how important it has been to me. Whether it was disorientation from a broken relationship, support during a time of financial hardship, care in the midst of a health issue or embraces during times of grief, it was the community that sustained me. It was the people walking to the right that noticed I was walking to the left. 

 

When I think about Palm Sunday, about Jesus riding into Jerusalem, I think about it as the beginning of Holy Week. That’s a pretty common way to approach it. But I think the story takes us beyond the next seven days. 

 

I think the stories of Jesus, the stories of the people circling around the Temple, the stories of Jesus’ friends caring for him even as he cared for them, the willingness of Jesus to put his life on the line to challenge injustice all become invitations to us for our future.

 

We called our sermon series this Lent “come and see,” picking up on that phrase that occurs so often in the Gospels. Sometimes it was Jesus inviting people to see what he has to offer. Other times, people he encountered invited the ones they know to come and see Jesus. 

 

Our quest for Jesus does not end with Easter. And that’s why we end the series today thinking about what we are invited to do in the future.

It starts with each of us, of course. We have pondered how we might follow Jesus, what the risks are in doing that, how we seek justice and truth, where we might find healing. I hope there have been glimmers of insight for you on this journey.

 

But thinking about the future also involves us as a congregation. We spent a lot of time last year crafting a vision of who we are and the values that we hold. 

 

We say that “Christ Presbyterian Church envisions a world that is loving and inclusive. We unite with God to be a worshiping community without barriers, a sanctuary for all. We seek to follow Jesus by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.”

We say that the things we value are 

• extending God’s love, 
• holding doubt plus faith together, 
• working to create a beloved community out of the diversity of thought, worship and experience among us, 
• tending to our spiritual health, 
• working for a more just world and 
• caring for the earth on which we and our descendants live.  

Let me suggest that the work we as a congregation have done on this is our invitation to the future. 

 

It is something we can continue to celebrate on a day like this with joyful music and vibrant palm branches. 

 

It is an invitation that we can carry with us through this week that has the hardest stories of Jesus’ life and that we can carry together in the hardest times in our lives. 

And just as on Palm Sunday, Jesus got glimpses of the rising sun beyond Good Friday, we can put our trust in God’s love, in the Jesus as the Light of the World, in the Holy Spirit as energizing force that connects us all.

 

“Please deliver us,” the people cried out as Jesus rode by.

 

“Why does your heart ache?” the people in the Temple asked those passing by in sorrow.

 

“May you be wrapped in the embrace of this community,” they hear in the midst of their sorrow.

 

I will gather you like a hen gathers her brood under her wings, Jesus tells us all.

 

May it be so. May it be so.

Beloved

To see a video of this sermon, click here.

Jan. 14, 2024 – Christ Presbyterian Church

Luke 3: 7-21

It was a little over 60 years ago when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and talked about the dream he had. This is the weekend when that speech shows up in many places. I am sure many of you are familiar with it.

 

But I’ll bet not many of you are not familiar with Gordon Gundrum, known by his nickname “Gunny.” 

He was the National Park Ranger standing next to King at the Lincoln Memorial. You can see him in this picture – a rare white guy on a platform with lots of Black folks. 

I want to tell you a bit of his story because I think it can make a connection to the Gospel reading we just heard and to things we might do in our lives as we look at ways to follow Jesus. 

As Dr. King walked up to the podium, Gundrum realized that the microphones were aimed too high for a person of King’s 5-feet, seven-inches height. So he reached in and lowered each of the mics as King prepared to speak. 

 

Gunny Gundrum was 25 years old and had little familiarity with the diverse world that was now all around him.

 

Jonathan Eig, who just wrote an amazing biography of King, had a conversation with author David Maraniss last September at the Cap Times Idea Fest. He talked about getting to know Gundrum in his research for the book.

 

Eig said that Gunny “was very comfortable with the n-word.” He was from a big family from a rural community near Albany, N.Y. He told Eig he didn’t think of himself as prejudiced, but then again, he never met a Black person while he was growing up.

 

He learned more about prejudice in the Marines when he realized that he and his Black bunkmate could not go to the same restaurants near Paris Island in South Carolina. 

And he was not exactly culturally hip. When he saw a Black man with a beard approaching the stage at the Lincoln Memorial without making eye contact, Gunny stopped him and asked him for his pass, which the man said he had left in his hotel room. It was the famous singer, Sammy Davis, Jr. Gunny had not recognized him.

 

Now here Gunny was, standing next to, guarding, perhaps the most famous Black man in America at the time. King began speaking, quietly in that preacherly style he had. Gunny still worried that the mics were too low. King talked on. Finally, Gunny could not stop himself. He reached in front of King and lowered the microphones one more time. 

 

You can see his hand again reaching in front of King on this picture. He was amplifying King’s message to the crowd, to the world. A small act but symbolically a good lesson for all of us.

 

The speech took off. “I have a dream.” “Let freedom ring.” “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” 

 

The crowd roared as King stepped away from the podium. And Gunny stepped right in front of him as they left the stage, making his body a shield for King.

 

Even though he was more focused on the crowd than on the speech, it still had a big impact on Gunny. Fifty years later, he told his hometown newspaper, “I took away from that day and that speech some idea of what the world should be and what we should all strive for.” 

 

He later became a New York State Police officer, and he told a reporter for the NBC Today Show, “Through what I learned that day, I think it made me a better policeman, a more fair policeman and I tried to practice that always.”

 

As Jonathan Eig thought about those moments when Gundrum wanted to make sure that King’s voice was amplified to the crowd, to the world that was watching, Eig told David Maraniss, “what I realized is that that was an act of love from Gunny, it's exactly the kind of Christian love that King talked about all the time.”

 

It was also the kind of love that John the Baptist and Jesus talked about.

 

It’s not that John sounds very cuddly at the beginning of today’s Gospel passage. “You brood of vipers,” he says to the crowd. We hardly ever say that to you here. It’s the kind of rhetoric we are more likely to hear in today’s political debates, but here it is in the Gospel.

Once John has the crowd’s attention, he goes all apocalyptic on them, describing God’s judgment in pretty vivid and unsettling terms. 

The crowd’s response? “What, then, should we do?” 

 

I can imagine that the crowd listening to Martin Luther King 50 years ago had the same question. 

 

I imagine that many of us here today when we look at all the issues facing our world, indeed all the issues facing our own individual and family lives, have the same question.

 

John offers some very concrete ideas to his crowd – share what you have, don’t get greedy, don’t extort money from others or make false accusations. As those who have studied the Gospel according to Luke note, justice is a recurring theme in his writings.

 

The song of Mary before Jesus’ birth – what we call The Magnificat – calls for justice for the poor.  After Jesus’s baptism that we heard about today, Luke tells the story of Jesus going into the desert for 40 days, then going to his home synagogue in Nazareth where he gives what amounts to his inaugural address based on the prophet Isaiah: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

Do you hear the echoes of that in John’s message? Do you hear echoes from that in the life and words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

 

Then our Gospel story takes a hard turn. John points toward Jesus, amplifying the message that is to come. And it costs John his life. Before Luke gets to the baptism of Jesus, the Gospel writer tells us of John’s imprisonment. It’s as if he is saying, John’s work is done, now Jesus’ work is beginning.

 

And for Jesus to begin his work, he needs to stop and pray before he emerges from the waters of baptism and then God’s Spirit bursts on the scene: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

 

What then, are we to do?

 

Well, prayer is not a bad place to begin. No matter how we have tried to live out Jesus’ message in the past, taking time to pray provides an opportunity to assess and reassess whether what we have done still makes sense and whether what we might do now provides us a path forward.

 

I think that works both in our personal lives - and in how we choose to respond to the needs of those around us. Among the many messages Jesus gave us, stopping to pray was an action he often took.

 

Another thing we might do is remember that word “beloved.”

Yes, the Gospels tell of Jesus as God’s Beloved One in a very special way. But Jesus is not the only one beloved by God. 

 

So was John the Baptist. So are the people who have followed Jesus across the centuries. So are the Jewish people who proceeded Jesus and were known as God’s Chosen People. And so are we.

 

That sense of know that God’s love is with us – always – can carry us through some pretty hard times.

Just look at the things that happened in the months right after Dr. King told the nation about his dream. Four little girls were killed when white supremacists bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama. President Kennedy was assassinated. The Black leadership in the struggle for racial justice began to fracture.

 

Dr. King knew what it felt like to be discouraged. Yet he pressed on. He had a sense of being one of God’s beloved ones, even when he recognized his own shortcomings and faced his own discouragements.

 

And still, Dr. King held out the vision of what he and others called the beloved community. There’s that word “beloved” again.

 

One of the people who went to that March on Washington in 1963 was Francine Yaeger, a 19-year-old Black woman from Chicago who took a train to DC for the March. She got a glimpse of that beloved community. Jonathan Eig, the author of that King biography, wrote this about her:

 

“As she got off the train and began walking in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, she saw young people toting luggage for old people, daddies with their daughters on their shoulders, and mothers pushing babies in strollers. While people called Black people ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ and said ‘Good morning’ and ‘How are you?’ Everywhere, it seemed, guitars were strumming.”

Francine said to her best friend who had traveled to DC with her: “Florestine, this is what heaven’s gonna be like when we get there.”

 

But here’s another look at what the beloved community can be. It comes from Dr. Luther E. Smith Jr., a scholar of the works of Black theologian Howard Thurman, whose writings had a big influence on Dr. King. Smith spoke in 2019 at a conference on Thurman’s life and work that was held at Upper House here in Madison.

 

For Smith, living in the beloved community is not always such an idyllic place. 

 

He told about visiting a place that served people without homes in North Carolina. 

 

“So, it’s the homeless,” he said, “with all the aromas you get from people who have been living on the street. And some obvious signs of mental illness … But what I saw in that place was … an area for clothing with racks separating the clothing as if you walked into a department store. There was a place over here to help people deal with their disability benefits and other kinds of need they would have in terms of medical care. 

 

“There was artwork that many of them had drawn and their poetry as an expression of beauty that had come through them. I go into the living room and there are tables with tablecloths and china and they are being served four and five helpings of food.”

 

Smith said, “I felt that I had entered the realm of God. This was for me an experience of beloved community. Were there people still there addicted to drugs? Yes. Were some of the people serving wondering, could these people be doing better than they are? Probably yes. Do some of the homeless speak rough to one another? Yes.”

 

He concluded, “I would say that if we found ourselves requiring an understanding of the beloved community stripped of these dimensions of life, we’re always going to be disappointed in the picture of beloved community.”

I think John the Baptist understood that but still called people to be their better selves.

I think Jesus understood that, but still asked us to do the hard things that seem to go against our nature, like forgiving without limit and loving our enemies.

I think Martin Luther King understood that, knowing that it would take hard work, sacrifices, even death to bring that dream closer to reality. 

 

Across the centuries that people taken from Africa and sold as slaves in this country have been here, they have held out hope for freedom, for justice, for dignity. Their hopes and their persistence have been captured in a beautiful hymn that is often sung on this weekend. It’s called “Life Every Voice and Sing.” 

 

Today, we can sing it in solidarity with all those who are God’s beloved ones who have struggled across their lives while never giving up their dreams, the dream that Dr. King held out to us as a challenge 60 years ago.

 

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.

 

Gunny Gundrum took a small action to help Dr. King amplify that dream. We, too, can find ways to amplify the words, the hopes, the dreams for justice of those living on the margins in our time. 

 

So let us join together in singing this hymn. (This version is from Kirk Franklin.)