Make them hear you

As the musical Ragtime nears its conclusion, Coalhouse Walker, Jr. has taken over banker J.P. Morgan’s elegant library where Coalhouse’s armed men are holding a white man hostage.

The story of Coalhouse opens with hope and love and a new car. The car is destroyed by white firefighters, his beloved Sarah is beaten to death by the Secret Service when she tries to plead his case for justice to a vice presidential candidate and Coalhouse goes on a murderous rampage against the firefighters who destroyed his car and his dream.

There is much else happening in the musical that dominated the 1998 Tony Awards, of course, but when we get to the library, there is a standoff with police. Booker T. Washington, a symbol of black accommodation, comes in to mediate and works out a deal. Coalhouse tells his men to let the white man leave and to change the world through the power of their words.

The song he sings - “Make Them Hear You” - could be an anthem for our moment. It is not only a plea for stories to be told but for those of us who are white to listen…to listen carefully.

Here are the words. And you can hear Brian Stokes Mitchell, who played the role of Coalhouse in the original production, sing it in this video at the Kennedy Center in 2019.

Go out and tell our story
Let it echo far and wide
Make them hear you
Make them hear you

How Justice was our battle
And how Justice was denied
Make them hear you
Make them hear you

And say to those who blame us
For the way we chose to fight,
That sometimes there are battles
That are more than black or white

And I could not put down my sword
When Justice was my right
Make them hear you

Go out and tell our story to your daughters and your sons
Make them hear you
Make them hear you

And tell them, "In our struggle,
We were not the only ones"
Make them hear you
Make them hear you

Your sword could be a sermon
Or the power of the pen
Teach every child to raise his voice
And then my brothers, then

Will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men
Make them hear you
When they hear you,

I'll be near you
Again

Today we are hearing a lot of the stories of struggles that go on, of justice denied, of justice still demanded. 

In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet Habakkuk wrote of standing on a rampart, waiting to see how God might answer his complaint. And what was his complaint? He laid it out like this:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
   and you will not save? 
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
   and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
   strife and contention arise. 
So the law becomes slack
   and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
   therefore judgement comes forth perverted. 

So God answers the prophet:

Write the vision;
   make it plain on tablets,
   so that a runner may read it. 
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
   it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
   it will surely come, it will not delay. 

Here’s a rough translation: Make them hear you.

When some 10,000 people - many from Madison’s faith communities - gathered downtown last Sunday night to march in solidarity with the principle that Black Lives Matter, we heard some of the stories of people in our community. We heard ideas of ways we could act, some directed at reimagining what a police agency could be, some calling for economic development, some calling for respect for women, for youth. 

For folks with a religious bent, Rev. Dr. Marcus Allen, pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and president of the African-American Council of Churches, set the tone for the march with a familiar verse from the prophet Micah: love justice, do kindness, walk humbly with your God. And the walk up State Street began.

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around,” LaTanya Maymon from Christ the Solid Rock Church led the crowd in singing as the walk moved towards the state Capitol. 

The crowd was being heard. But the stories do not end.

There are two stories that I read this week that particularly touched me, a white guy who grew up in very white northeast Wisconsin and who has lived all of my adult life in pretty white Madison. 

One came from another life-long resident of Wisconsin, Devon Snyder. He starts with an incident in fifth grade in his home town of Fond du Lac. He ends with an incident this past February in Madison. He calls it “The never-ending timeline of racism.”

The second came from Isaiah McKinnon, who grew up in Detroit and served as its chief of police from 1993 to 1998. He wrote in the Detroit Free Press this past week about being beaten up by four police officers for no reason when he was 14, the bigotry and threats he faced later when he joined the force, even being pulled over for driving while black when he was the chief. 

Devon Snyder and Isaiah McKinnon and so many more are making us hear their stories. And when we hear them - if we really hear them - we are changed, bit by bit. And as we change, then we need to find ways to change the structures and the systems that created the injustices we hear about. 

When Mary learned that she was pregnant with Jesus, she sang about how God “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” and “brought the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.”  And when Jesus spoke to the crowds on a mount overlooking the Sea of Galilee, he told them, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” He said those who hear his words - and act on them - will be like those who build their house on a solid rock.

So we are called to hear the stories and to act on them.

Telling the stories is not always easy. There is a jolt at the end of Ragtime after Coalhouse sings that magnificent anthem. He leaves the elegant library with the promise of a peaceful surrender, only to be gunned down by the police waiting outside. Yet his story lives on, just as the stories of Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Fred Hampton and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and yes, George Floyd, live on.

Larry Fitzgerald has been a stellar wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals football team since 2004. He grew up in Minneapolis and last Sunday, had an essay in the sports section of The New York Times about the pain he now sees in what he calls the city that “taught me about love.” 

He ends it this way, with a plea that we listen to one another, that we indeed hear the stories Coalhouse Walker sang about:

“George Floyd, in your final gasps for breath, we hear you.

“Breonna Taylor, in your besieged home, we hear you

“Ahmaud Arbery, as your footsteps pounded the ground, running for your life, we hear you.

“Victims of violence, poverty and injustice, we hear you.

“Communities and lives torn apart by riots, we hear you.

“People of privilege learning a better way, we hear you.

“Mothers and fathers of every race doing the best you can to teach your children to love and not hate, we hear you.

“May God give us all ears to hear so that the cries of the unheard are never again compelled to scream in desperation.”

May it be so.

Light through the cracks

June 7, 2020, Edgerton Congregational UCC

Genesis 1: 1-5; Matthew 28: 16-20

(You can find a video version of this here as part of the whole service at Edgerton Congregational UCC.)

In the beginning…there was chaos…there was darkness.

That’s how the book of Genesis begins, the first words of the Bible. That was so long ago. And yet, chaos…darkness - they seem so much a part of life on this day as well, don’t they?

And then a wind from God’s breath, God’s spirit - swept over the waters. 

“Let there be light,” God said. And there was light. And it was good.

In 2008, Canadian composer and poet and singer named Leonard Cohen was doing a concert in London. He sang a song that he had written some 20 years earlier - a song it had actually taken him a full decade to write.

You may know Cohen from one of his hits in the 1960s - “Suzanne.” He is more well know today for the song “Halleluiah.” But this song that caught my attention is called “Anthem.”

 As he introduced it to his audience in London, he said, “We are so privileged to be able gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos.”

There are those words again - darkness and chaos.

It seems like that’s what it is like for many of us today. Just like it was in the beginning, there is chaos, there is darkness. Yet we are so privileged to be able to gather together this morning, even if it is at a distance connected through Facebook. 

“The birds they sang
At the break of day,” Cohen’s song began.
“Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be.”

But soon he gets to the chorus that can frame this morning’s reflection.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

And God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.

And it’s the cracks where the light breaks through.

In a video at Cohen’s performance in London, there’s a scene of a cloudy grey sky with a slim crack in the clouds where the sunlight shines through. 

There’s a landscape with a narrow canyon and as the camera moves forward, it opens to a sunlit waterfall touched by a rainbow.

“There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

When John was writing his Gospel, his account of the life and message of Jesus, he begins with these words: “In the beginning…was the Word.”  Then he writes what came into being in that Word was life and “the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

“There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

I invite you to think with me for a moment about the places of darkness we live with right now. 

It may be a darkness in your personal life - the death of a loved one, an illness, a relationship that is shattering, economic hardship, a deep sense of uncertainty about the future. 

It may be the darkness we see in the world around us - a pandemic that threatens life and livelihood. Pandemonium that disrupts the normal order of life. The murder of a black man on the streets of Minneapolis, the daily threats to people of color in our world, our own anxieties about how we relate to one another - to those we love and to those we fear.

There are no shortages of places of darkness.  But the more important question for us is where are the cracks that can let the light get in?

They are not always easy to find. Sometimes they surprise us - the clouds breaking apart, the waterfall just around the corner of the dark canyon. But we need to keep our eyes open for them when they are not so obvious.

There have been no shortage of cracks where light gets in at our hospitals over the past few months where medical staff not only work to heal bodies but to help people connect across the very real barriers that keep them apart.

In the midst of the chaos on the streets in the last two weeks, over and over there have been places where light has broken in as people protect one another from harm and deter others from inflicting damage to property. Not all of them were successful - there is still darkness, yet the darkness could not overcome those moments of light.

Cracks have let the light shine on the racial injustices, the manifestations of hatred in our nation.

And we have seen people sharing the stimulus payments they got from the government, getting food to people who need it, helping with child care, do all manner of things to help each other survive the impact of this pandemic.

And don’t sell short those places where light shines through in very simple ways - with prayers for each other, with notes of encouragement sent, with a phone call to just check in.

As we notice those cracks, perhaps we can widen them just a bit more, let a little more of the light get in to our lives and to the lives of those around us.

You may have noticed that a theme in the early part of our worship today is that of the Trinity. Even though that notion of Trinity is one of the distinctive marks of Christianity, it is also one of the most confusing and - over history - and one of the most contentious. I don’t intend to replay either the theology or the controversies over the Trinity today. But I would like to stay with the image of light as I offer one way of thinking about the multiple dimensions of God.

This was an image used by some of the earliest Christian writers. It’s pretty simple.

Think of the sun, the source of light.

Think of the beam of light coming from the sun down to the earth. 

Think of how that light not only illumines the area around it but warms it as well.

All one light but functioning in three distinctive ways.

And God said, let there be light.

The Word was the light of all people.

On Pentecost, the light of the Spirit filled the room and propelled Jesus’ followers out into the world.

That takes us to that short second scripture reading we had today from the Gospel according to Matthew, a reading where the words “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” helped shape Christians’ idea of God as Trinity.

Jesus 11 closest followers - Judas was gone by this time - went up the mountain with him. It is after the Resurrection. They have gone through the grief of his death, the amazement of him being among them in a new way. They have walked with him, eaten with him, listened to him. 

First, notice this line - “they worshipped and they doubted.”

Really? They still doubted? And yet they worshipped him?

Doesn’t that sound like just about every gathering of Christians on any given day? We gather to worship. We come with our doubts. Maybe there will be cracks where a bit of light will break through. But we never really figure out this whole God thing, this Creator, Jesus, Spirit thing, this Trinity thing. And that’s OK. We are in good company with the people who knew Jesus best.

It’s the end of this passage that I really want to focus on, though. It’s Jesus talking to the eleven - and to us.

Teach people my message, people everywhere, he said.

I don’t think he was talking about adult ed classes here. I don’t think he was talking about missionaries inserting themselves into cultures they do not understand and forcing people to be baptized - things Christians have done far too often over the centuries, including the way we treated the tribal people of our land. 

Thomas Long, one of the wonderful preachers of our era, says when Jesus was sending out his followers to take on what seemed like an impossible task: “Go into all the world and cure cancer, clean up the environment, evangelize the unbelievers and, while you are at it, establish world peace.”

I think Jesus’ message was both simpler than that and harder than that.

What was Jesus’ message? What was his command?

Well, there was the long version is that section of the Gospel of Matthew we call the Sermon on the Mount. It’s worth reading every now and then.

There is the vivid example he gave his followers at the Last Supper when he washed their feet. “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Ah, so being a teacher means serving.

And then there words that are crystal clear at that same Last Supper: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Now he is about to leave his small band of followers. He sets out the words used across the centuries for baptism. They should baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

When we were baptized with those words, we were commissioned follow the way of Jesus. But in the process, whether water was dabbled on our heads or we were plunged into a pool, we were immersed in the whole being of God - a God who creates, who redeems, who sustains. We were not left powerless. God’s light now breaks into our lives.

That takes us to the last words of Jesus on our earth. 

“Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Can there be a better message in a time when chaos and darkness seem to be dominating our lives? 

At the very beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, he calls Jesus “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.” Matthew ends with the same idea - God is with us.

Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but the light of God. Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but the love of God.

Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but a path to serve and love each other.

Let’s watch for those cracks. Let’s let the light in. 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in