Quick to Listen

Aug. 29, 2021, Zwingli UCC, Mt. Vernon

James 1: 17-27; Mark 7: 1-8 

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

 

Did you notice these words in the letter from James?

 

“My beloved, let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

It seems to me those must have been important words for the people James was writing to in the late First Century. There must have been some issues around how people spoke and how angry they were  getting. It seems to me they also are important words for us living in the first quarter of the 21^st Century.

 

Let me tell you a story.

One of the things I do on occasion is help lead groups for an organization called the Local Voices Network. We bring together about a half dozen people to talk about what they like and what concerns them in our communities. Along the way, we try to bring in voices that might differ from the group seated around the table.

 

In May of 2019, I gathered a group of Madison-area Muslim residents for one of these conversations. I thought I could predict what they would be saying. And yes, I was right about some of those expectations. But because I listened – that was my job after all – I also learned some new things.

 

As we approach the 20^th anniversary of the horrible events of Sept. 11, I think one piece of that conversation is worth recalling. In fact, as we witness what is happening right now in Afghanistan, it makes this even more timely. I am worried about the experiences our Muslim neighbors might be facing in our country in the weeks ahead.

 

Surely, on Sept. 11, Muslims in this country became an immediate target. Too many people were unwilling to be quick to listen, to be slow to speak or to think before they acted.

 

In my group, one of the participants – his name is Awais (Avais)– talked about being a junior in high school in Kenosha on that Sept. 11. He was one of just a handful of Muslims at Bradford High. Word spread quickly that day about the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, on the Pentagon, about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. 

 

Awais said, “I remember being a scared teenager who was sincerely frightened…I remember walking through the halls just really scared. I mean, it was a moment where I wasn’t sure how people were looking at me, what people would say to me.”

 

His fear made a lot of sense to me. Many Muslims were verbally and even physically assaulted that day and in the days afterwards, even though they had nothing to do with the attacks, even though they did not share the distorted views of Islam held by al-Qaeda and other terrorists. 

 

I kept listening.

 

Awais talked about how surprised he was that people would come up to him to tell him that they supported him, even that they loved him. Some were friends, so that was not so surprising, but others he barely knew.

And some, as he put it, “were people who, if we're being completely honest here, the way they looked, they fit that stereotype of who you would expect react the opposite way.”

 

He talked about one student in particular, someone he did not know really well.  The way Awais described him, this young white man “drove an old ratty pickup truck, almost always wore cutoff sleeveless t-shirts, even in the winter, played football, was a little country.” And then this guy walks up to the frightened Awais and says,  "Awais, if anyone messes with you, I got you." 

 

Two stereotypes went right out the window. Listening has a way of doing that.

 

One other quick story from that conversation. At the end, I asked the group if they had any particular message they would like public officials to hear from them. I figured they would say something about acting against hate crimes, tackling religious discrimination. 

Do you know what the first issue they raised was?

“Fix the roads.”

Ah, something we all share in common.

 

Let me go back to that letter from James. 

 

Be quick to listen, slow to speak.

 

Got it. We could all practice that idea of taking a breath before we blurt out whatever wise words we think we have to offer.

 

But then there is being slow to anger.

Yes, patience is a virtue. Letting your anger rip against those you love, those you work with is a recipe for trouble. But there are some things that should make us angry. Setting off a suicide bomb in the middle of a desperate crowd at the Kabul airport is one of those things that should make us angry, even if there is nothing we can immediately do about it.

 

But James pairs that advice about being slow to anger with another piece of advice – be doers of the word, not just hearers of the word. 

 

One of my favorite authors is someone who lives in Madison. His name is Parker Palmer and he is a wise voice about many things. About a decade ago, he wrote a book called Healing the Heart of Democracy. In it, he described two virtues we need in our era. One is chutzpah, the other is humility.

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word for nonconformist but gutsy advocacy. Parker uses it in the sense of “having a voice that needs to be heard and the right to speak it.” 

 

But it shares top billing with humility, which Parker says means “accepting the fact that my truth is always partial and may not be true at all.”

 

It’s that combination of being able to listen – that’s the humility – and then being able to act on what we learn – that’s the chutzpah.

 

A few years ago, I was at a conference of journalists who cover religion. One of the panels was called “Atheism Revisited” and on the panel was Wendy Kaminer, a significant atheist voice in our nation.  I wound up waiting at the airport with her and her husband, making an interesting trio – a Christian minister and two advocates from a group that defends the interests of atheists, agnostics, humanists and others who do not embrace religion as I know it. 

 

As I chatted with Wendy, I told her I appreciated her presentation and her perspective on the panel. I quoted one of my mentors whose words had become a sort of mantra for me: “Here’s what I believe – but I could be wrong.”

Wendy smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.” Then there was a pause. “You could be wrong.”

She was teasing, of course. But it was a vivid reminder that as we engage in conversations about politics or religion or any other hot-button topic, we would do well to embrace a spirit of humility – a willingness to listen and learn.

 

Let me ask you take a few moments right now to think about the places where listening might be useful in your life. 

 

What are the issues you care deeply about but find yourself in conflict with a family member, a neighbor, a friend, a co-worker? Are there ways you could be a better listener? I don’t mean agreeing with them. I simply mean learning a bit more about why they have the views they have.

I’m not asking you to say them out loud. I’m simply asking you in a moment of quiet to think of where these hot buttons are in your life. 

 

Pause

 

I know, it’s hard to come up with the right way to approach this. Some wise people I know say one of the best things is to ask questions – honest questions, not “I’m-going-to-trip-you-up” questions.  You could ask, “Could you tell me why you think that?” Or you could ask, “There must be something in what you believe that leads you to that. Could you explain that to me?”

 

It turns out that Jesus faced a fair number of people who disagreed with him and with his message. We met a few of them in our Gospel reading today.

 

The scribes and the Pharisees get into this whole thing about washing hands. Yes – I know this has an odd resonance in our pandemic era. But this was not really a discussion about public health. It’s not a good idea to say “I don’t need to wash my hands…or wear a mask…because Jesus said it does not matter.” That’s not what this was about.

 

Listen again to their question:

 

“Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  

 

Here’s the thing. There was nothing in the Hebrew scriptures, with all their many rules, that required people to wash their hands before they ate. There was, however, a law that priests had to wash their hands before eating holy meat from the sacrifices in the temple. And the Pharisees argued that all Jews should be as holy as the priests and therefore should wash their hands before they ate.

Good public health practice? Sure. But what Jesus was objecting to was making following the rituals the test of one’s faithfulness to God rather than the way one lives their lives, the way Isaiah said that people honor God with their lips while their hearts are far from God.

 

If the people in Jesus’ time - if we in our time - truly listened, we would hear that the measure of our faithfulness to God has to do with loving justice, doing mercy, walking humbly with our God. We would hear that the measure of our faithfulness to God is doing what James wrote about “caring for the orphans and widows” – in other words, looking out for those in need, perhaps for the refugees coming to our nation right now.

 

There’s a lot in all this that seem like a swirl of contractions – be slow to listen but get out there and act. Be slow to anger but act against the injustices in our world.

 

Part of our task, I’d suggest, is to be attentive to each part of that. Take time to listen, seek to understand but don’t let that paralyze from acting on the messages of Jesus. Don’t let the anger of the moment lead you to do something destructive to relationships but don’t retreat into a passivity that means the cause of the anger goes unaddressed.

 

In a few minutes, we are going to have a chance to share bread and cup in communion. This is a wonderfully tangible symbol of the life we share. 

 

It is a reminder that for us, being in community has dimensions beyond the fractures of everyday life. 

 

It is a reminder that within our Christian tradition, among the ways that we can sort out the tensions between listening and acting, between anger and response, is in prayer and in community with one another.

 

We, after all, cannot do this on our own. We need God’s grace.

 

And here’s the good news – God’s grace abounds for each and every one of us.

Amen.

Solar Power at Dawn

July 28, 2021, Orchard Ridge UCC - Mark 1: 32-38

(You can see a video starting with the Gospel reading and the sermon here.)

My friend Charlie is a doctor in the Intensive Care Unit at one of our local hospitals, His specialty is respiratory illnesses. So as COVID-19 cases began filling up the beds in the ICU, he was in the center of the storm.

 

As Mark said of life in Jesus’ times, “That evening, after the sun was down, they brought sick and evil-afflicted people to him, the whole city lined up at his door!”

 

That’s the way it was in our hospitals as the pandemic was hitting its peak. That’s the way it still is in hospitals in southwestern Missouri or in Mexico or in Malaysia. They are bringing in the sick and medical workers around the world are trying to cure them.

 

Over the past year, people here have had to care for aging parents or for friends, for young children bored with staying home and attending school on a computer. Teachers have had to figure out new ways to teach when their students were not in the classroom. We have all had to figure out how to cope with disease, with life-changes – and then with the stark realities of racial disparities and political polarization that have deeply affected all of our lives.

 

I think we can probably identify with Jesus wanting to get away before dawn that morning in the Gospel story. Or with the desire of the character in the Cat Stevens song that Jim sang: “I left my folk and friends / With the aim to clear my mind out.”

 

Oh – excuse me a moment. I think my phone is running low on power and I need to plug it in… 

 

There. Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah – lots of people have gotten slammed physically, emotionally, spiritually over the last year plus. I think like Jesus that evening in Capernaum, like Charlie in the ICU, like so many of us at so many points along the way, we have been feeling like our batteries have run down. 

It turns out, it is a lot easier to recharge my phone than to recharge our lives. 

 

Yet that’s the Re-word for today – recharge.

 

In some ways, recharging our bodies is not the hard part if we take the time and the care to do that. You know the litany – get enough sleep, take a nap, eat good food, take a walk or a bike ride, or – if you are really ambitious – a run. We can help our bodies heal and regain the energy we need to go on.

 

But tending our spirits, recharging our souls – that’s trickier.

 

Even when Jesus tried to do that, the crowds were after him again.

 

“While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayed. Simon and those with him went looking for him. They found him and said, ‘Everybody's looking for you.’ " 

 

Just when we think we have gotten past the pandemic, COVID cases bump up around this nation and even more so around the world. We are waiting for the dawn, but it is still dark.

Just when we think we are making progress on creating a more just and inclusive society, there is another reminder that we have a long ways to go. We are waiting for the dawn but it is still dark.

 

Just when we think we are breaking down the barriers that keep people apart – barriers of religion or politics or heritage – we notice that new walls have gone up and they seem higher than ever. We are waiting for the dawn but it is still dark.

 

Let me take you out under a starlit sky. Maybe it is not as dark as it appears.

This picture was taken by a photographer named Bryan Hansel, who lives in Minnesota  on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It’s a photo from the Bad Lands in South Dakota that he took in 2013. It is a photo rich with meaning for me.

 

Many years ago – it was in the summer of 1977 – and I was on a retreat, wondering about how I knew God, whether God knew me, whether God even existed, what exactly God was anyway. 

 

One very clear night, I was sitting under a tree not unlike the one in this photo – although it was summer and the tree had its leaves. But beyond the leaves were the stars – a whole universe of stars. There were not intellectual answers to my questions in that moment, and yet there was a sense of the breadth of the divine above me, around me, within me. 

 

In the darkness of that night, my spirit felt transported – you might even say recharged.

 

But it was still night. While I love the stars in this picture, I also love that dawn is emerging on the horizon. Something new is emerging. And with that – at least for me who is definitely a morning person – is a new sense of energy. 

 

As Cynthia Reynolds wrote in her poem that we heard at the beginning of worship today, “This morning is new and so am I.”

 

And then there is the tree.

 

Kerry McLeish is a spiritual director who works with those who are weary or exhausted. She writes about how in her times of exhaustion, she finds that being in nature helps sustain her emotionally – especially when she can spend time with trees. Here’s what she wrote:

“There was something about their solidity, their rootedness, their age. They had been here before I was and would still be standing long after I was not. I was comforted thinking about how they went through seasons and weathered the effects of those seasons.”

 

For me, the tree was a place I could lean against, a place where I could be reminded of how our lives are both deeply rooted and stretching ever outward. And the branches remind me that after I stand in awe of the stars, am energized by the dawn, steadied by the tree, I can now reach out to what needs attention around me.

There is an ebb and flow to this, after all. There was for Jesus and there is for us as well. 

 

Listen again to the end of the Gospel story. Jesus was praying in that time as dawn was approaching. The word prayer in there is an important one, I think. Jesus was putting himself in that space where he could connect with God, where’s God’s love and energy could recharge his spirit. 

And then his followers showed up. "Everybody's looking for you," they said. And Jesus replied, "Let's go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. This is why I've come."

 

He was not about to get stuck in one place. He was not about to ignore the needs of those around him or his mission that he articulated in the Gospel according to Luke just before Luke tells this same story. That mission? “To bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

 

Let me leave you then with some questions. I’ll pause for moment after each one to give you time to ponder. You will know the answers that make the most sense to you.

 

Where in your life is your energy running low? 

 

What batteries do you need to recharge in your own being? 

Sometimes, unplugging is a way to get some rest and renewal. But then we need to plug in if we are going to be recharged. 

 

Where to you get your energy renewed?

 

What can help you move forward with your life and with the way you see your mission in our world? 

 

Do you remember the poet Amanda Gorman, who inspired so many people with “The Hill We Climb” that she read at the presidential inauguration last January? 

 

She helped take our spirits to, in her words, “find light in this never-ending shade.” 

 

“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,” she said,

“and the norms and notions of what “just” is 

isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.”

 

And much like Jesus told his closest followers that now that he was recharged, it was time to move on, not to get stuck with what just was, Gorman called the nation – and us – to let that energy of the dawn carry us forward.

 

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, 

but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, 

we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

 

It is important to find those places where we can rest our spirits. 

It is important that we find ways to recharge our spirits.

 

And it is important then for us to let that fresh energy carry us on to help those closest to us and those in our wider world reach their full potential as well.

 

Hmm… I think my phone is recharged now. 

 

It’s time for us to let God’s Spirit recharge us. We can end with a song that  carries on our theme of new energy in the morning, a song filled with energy and hope. It’s “I Woke Up This Morning” is a song with deep roots in the African-American tradition and it was adapted during the civil rights movement to say “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom.” But for today, let’s use the traditional “stayed on Jesus.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dissent Within, Dissent Without

 

April 11, 2021, Zwingli UCC, Monticello

John 20:19-31

(Here's a video of the sermon during the service.)

 

I suppose one lesson from today’s Gospel about Thomas missing the first appearance of Jesus after the Resurrection is that when you are hanging out with the Jesus gang, maybe let somebody else go out for the groceries – or whatever it was that Thomas was doing that evening.

 

I think there’s a more important lesson, though. It is how a community holds together in the midst of disagreement. That’s a vital lesson for our time.

This was not a minor disagreement. Jesus’ followers said they had seen the Lord. Thomas said, “I don’t believe you,” Fake news, in other words. He might as well have called their leader, ”Lyin’ Peter.”  

 

Calling somebody a liar is usually not a good way to stay in good graces with your friends. Yet there Thomas was, still with them a week later, when Jesus stopped by for another visit.

 

In a somewhat different version of the Gospel - this one featuring Winnie the Poor and Eyore. 

 

There was a picture making the rounds a while ago of a dejected Eyore – you know, the gloomy donkey with the poor self-image – and Winnie the Poor – the bear of very little brain. They appear to have had a bit of a falling out.

Winnie looks quizzically at Eyore, who is saying, “It’s OK, we’ll still have lunch with you.”

 

I can kind of hear Jesus’ followers saying that to Thomas. Somehow, they kept him in the group even when he challenged their understanding of what was happening in their world. They kept him there for a whole week in the midst of what surely were some very strained conversations.  

 

So we know this. From the very first days, there were disagreements among the followers of Jesus. 

 

There were disagreements between the group gathered around John and the group gathered around Thomas – which may have something to do with how Thomas is portrayed in the Gospel according to John.

 

There were disagreements in that secret place where they gathered after Jesus’ execution and there were disagreements as the way of Jesus began to spread – disagreements among Paul and James and Peter that around the year 50 AD led to a gathering of Christians in Jerusalem to try to sort things out – and they did – at least for that moment, according to the New Testament book The Acts of the Apostles.

 

Centuries later, disagreements among Christians would lead to some bloody wars – including  the battle that took the life of Ulrich Zwingli in 1531. His name lives on in this congregation. 

 

Today, it still common for Christians to want to exclude those who think differently, they don’t want them to have the right to call themselves followers of Jesus. It happens on both sides of the theological and religious divides of our day.

 

That’s why I think the Gospel story of this week is so important. It’s important for us in church world and it’s important in a society where political divisions are fracturing us in really serious and occasionally violent ways.

 

In that first week, when Thomas challenged the others on the most fundamental reality of their lives – whether Jesus was still in their midst – they managed to hang together.  I’m not exactly sure how they managed to do that. God’s grace, Jesus’ teaching – those things may have helped. But they showed the rest of us that it can be done.

 

Here’s a story from a few weeks ago from Grand Marais, Minnesota. A photographer there had captured a picture of the night sky that showed 60 satellites in low-earth orbit that had been launched by Tesla developer Elan Musk. 

 

The photographer hates the way these satellites are affecting our view of the stars in the night sky and he posted his feelings on Facebook. Others disagreed, of course, and the debate was on.

 

When one person posted a brief but sharp reply, the photographer answered: “When I see you in person sometime, we can talk about it.” Now that’s a novel idea – face-to-face conversation instead of barbs thrown on Facebook.

But his friend was not done yet. So the photographer replied again: “Hi, Jerry, next time we see each other in person let's talk about it.” He kept lowering the temperature of the conversation – and while the other comments reflected varying viewpoints, they stayed civil. 

 

I’m not sure how civil the conversations among the apostles were as they faced off with Thomas during that week. Peter was pretty impetuous, after all. Thomas had a long history in the group of being a dissenter. But I like to think they took time to talk, not just to throw barbs at each other.

 

A few years after this face-off among the apostles, Jesus’ brother, James, wrote a letter to the early Christian community that caught the spirit they were striving for. 

 

“You must understand this, my beloved,” James wrote. “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”

 

I’ve got a bumper sticker on my car – only one bumper sticker – that I think can also help when everyone locks into the certainty that they are right.

 

“It’s not that simple…” it says.

 

We get so reduced to catch phrases in our time. Most of the issues we get into arguments about – let’s say immigration or guns or racial divides – are nowhere near as simple as both we and those we disagree with make them out to be. Sometimes we just need to stop and hear what the other person is saying, ask they why they believe what they believe, grant that maybe neither of us has the conclusive proof.

 

Thomas wanted that conclusive proof. All that the rest of the apostles could offer was their own version of what they experienced. They existed in that place of uncertainty – and no one could really convince the other until Jesus’ next visit. They just had to live with complexity for a week.

 

Here’s another phrase that I try to live by. I learned it from a pastor who taught me a lot about life. He had strong opinions about many things, but he was always willing to add this phrase: “Well, I could be wrong.”

 

It’s a reminder to me to listen to what those who disagree with me are saying, to seek the underlying principles that have led them to their conclusions, to question whether the way I prefer is really the only way - or even the best way. 

 

Here’s another important part of that “I-might-be-wrong” phrase. It’s not one that I impose you on, as in “You might be wrong.” Yes, you might be wrong, but let’s keep working on understanding the different ways we see the world. And if you are not willing to do that, well, then at some point I have to shake the dust off my feet and move on.

It’s a kind of humility that goes a long ways in the midst of a disagreement. I’m not sure Thomas was ever willing to say, “Well, I could be wrong,” but the rest of the apostles gave him the time and the space to wrestle with his doubts.

 

Maybe they had also learned something from Jesus about forgiveness. He, after all, frequently shook his head at the ways his followers misunderstood what he was trying to say. Yet over and over, in the words he said and in the actions he took, he put forgiving others as we ourselves hope to be forgiven as a central teaching. Perhaps those followers gathered with Thomas were remembering that as well

Today’s  issues do have moral dimensions that we hear in our ancient scriptures and in our contemporary reflections. When there is sharp economic inequality, we can hear the thundering of the Jewish prophets. 

 

When there is indifference to what is happening to our climate and its effect on our planet, we can hear repeated Biblical exhortations to care for creation. 

 

When people’s race or ethnicity is thrown at them to oppress them or lock them out of the opportunities of our society, we can hear the words of how we are all made in God’s image and how we are all one in Christ.

 

You know the issues – gun violence, health care, immigration, poverty, violence against women.

 

I hope those of us who call ourselves Christians can help add a moral dimension to the political dialogue while recognizing that there is room for many different approaches.

One of the things that attracted me to the UCC 21 years ago was its willingness to wrestle with the tough issues of religion and society, respecting and even encouraging disagreement from individuals and congregations without giving ground on its willingness to speak out on those issues.

 

Peter was never shy about speaking out, of course. Thomas stood his ground even when all his friends must have wondered where his loyalty was. Peter stayed connected to the Temple and to his Jewish faith even when the Temple leaders challenged and threatened him. Thomas stayed connected to the closest followers of Jesus and eventually had his own experience with the risen Christ to reinforce his belief. 

 

For us, I hope we can take from these stories the value of working our way through the tough issues of our day 

  without demonizing one another, 

  without excluding those who disagree with us, 

  without shying away from taking a stand, 

  but doing so in a way that respects the patchwork quilt of experiences and viewpoints that make up our church and our society.

 

If we can do that, if we can reflect the best of that early group of Jesus’ followers – as contentious as they could be, yet staying together in their commitment to follow the way of Jesus as best they could.

May it be so.
Amen.

 

A dream, waking up and rebuilding

Here is a link to the Jan. 17, 2021 service at Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ in Madison, WI, where this sermon was part of the service. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day at the end of August in 1963, looking at a peaceful crowd of a quarter of a million people who stretched down the National Mall towards the Washington Monument. 

The crowd was getting tired and restless after listening to speech after speech. King was the last speaker on this extraordinary day. He had worked hard on this speech and he was getting some good responses, but he could sense the crowd drifting as he realized that he was about to head into what he considered the lamest section of the speech. 

 

He began to go off script. Behind him, singer Mahalia Jackson shouted out, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin.”

He had preached about the dream at the end of June in Detroit, then again in Chicago. He reached back into his repertoire and began. Here are a few of those lines that are so familiar to us now:

“Even though we still face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

 

“I have a dream that one day that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. 

 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream.”

 

In this first month of 2021, I think we all have dreams of what could be - a world of justice, of fairness, of healing for humanity and for the earth on which we live. We hold those dreams even after the traumas of the last year, of the last week. Those dreams matter. They help us keep moving forward. As poet Langston Hughes wrote:

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken -winged bird
That cannot fly

 

So indeed the dream that Dr. King sketched out on that day in DC many years ago is a dream that still lives, that we still hold fast to, because we surely are not there yet.

 

The Jewish people in exile in Babylon 25 centuries ago had dreams of returning to Jerusalem, that beautiful city that  had anchored their ancestors. They had wept at the waters of the rivers in Babylon, but they still clung to the hope of restoring what had been lost.

Then along came the Persian king, Cyrus, who told them they could go back home. When they got there, they discovered home was no longer the beautiful city of their memories. 

 

Their dreams clashed with the reality of a destroyed temple, crumbled city walls and burned city gates. They faced opposition from their fellow Jews who had remained in the city. 

Ezra, as we heard today, went to work rebuilding the temple - a temple that would last through the time of Jesus until the Romans destroyed it in the year 70.  But they had to rebuild the temple in the face of political opposition trying to frustrate the effort. Does any of this sound familiar today?

 

Then Nehemiah arrived to rebuild the city gates and walls, to restore both pride and security to the city. But, as the text said, the city officials were worried about losing their own power and were “displeased greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.” Hmmm... But the people stood with Nehemiah and said, “Let us start building.”

 

They were turning the dream into a reality. They did not stay at rest letting the dreams float through their minds. Nor did they let those prevail who would resist change, who would stand in the way of the welfare of the people.

 

We are seeing that resistance to change on steroids at the moment in our country. So the lessons of Ezra and Nehemiah, the words of Martin Luther King resonate in our lives right now. 

One of the other speakers at that 1963 March of Washington was John Lewis. He was 23 years old then, the leader of Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, already a veteran of beatings and jailings as he demonstrated for civil rights across the South. He was also deeply grounded in the Gospel ethic of revolutionary love. 
 
While he shared King’s dream, he also sought to wake up America to the action that was needed. Listen for the echo of Ezra and Nehemiah in these last words of his speech that day:

 

“If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington.  We will march through the South; through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham. 

 

“But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.  By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy.  

 

“We must say: “Wake up America!  Wake up!”  For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient.”

 

We need dreams to inspire our actions. 
We need to wake up to begin turning those dreams into reality. 
And then we need to get about the work of rebuilding. 

That is hard work. 

 

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity UCC in Chicago, preached about Nehemiah on the Sunday after the November election. He noted the disputes from the Biblical era and the disputes in our nation in this era. He looked at what Nehemiah did when he was challenged by the leaders. 
 
Nehemiah did not cuss out the leaders, Moss noted.  He did not post responses on Facebook or Instagram. First he prayed, seeking the spiritual strength to move forward. 

 

As Moss put it:  “Nehemiah recognizes the courage it takes to just to start rebuilding the wall even though people are discouraged.  Sometimes the greatest challenge is to begin.  You have to have the courage to begin.”

 

Last week Sage Walker struck a similar theme during our worship service when she talked about a sign in her third-grade classroom that still inspires her work for a better world: “It’s not about winning the race. It’s about having the courage to start.” 

 

Sage reminded us, “If you are brave enough to actually get in there and do something hard, you might find out you can do hard things.”

 

Remember those lines from poet John O’Donohue that Susan Watson read at the beginning of our service today? 

 

        May I have the courage today 

        To live the life I would love

        To postpone my dream no longer

        But do at last what I came here for

        And waste my heart on fear no more.

 

In the midst of the violence of recent days and the threats over the next few days, fear is a reality. Courage has become unusually important in our lives. We may not be on the front lines, but we all have roles to play in shaping our society as a place that might reflect God’s dreams.

 

So as we hold our dreams, come awake and look to rebuild our lives, our community, our nation after the pandemics of COVID and racism, what might we do?

 

Let’s start with that sense of spiritual depth that matters for a community like ours. We have a richness of spiritual resources available to us - the sacred stories of scripture, the inspiration of music, the silence in a time of meditation, the encouragement we give to one another. From those places, we can find the courage we need.

 

Then we need to focus on the tasks that match our skills and our resources. No one of us alone nor this church community alone can rebuild every part of the world. We can be part of the larger effort and make differences in the places close to us.

 

Otis Moss noted that Nehemiah did not have expectation that the rebuilding of Jerusalem would be finished in his lifetime. But he organized the people so the work could go on. He knew his opposition was organized so he knew he had to organize even better.

 

Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama - a hero to many of us - says you start by proximity, by finding ways to be personally connected to the people who are the most vulnerable. That means a willingness to do inconvenient and uncomfortable things, to go to places that are unfamiliar to us. And then there is hope. Not optimism, but hope rooted in faith and lived out in love.

 

As Bryan Stevenson told radio interviewer Krista Tippett last month, “Hopelessness is the enemy of justice. If we allow ourselves to become hopeless, we become part of the problem…There’s no neutral place. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists.”

 

The folks gathered at the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963 to knew something about not giving up hope. They knew about organizing to make the world a place bending toward justice. They knew their ancestors had not seen the changes they had hoped for but had passed on the commitment from generation to generation. 

The people there in 1963 were there with full knowledge of what the dark past had taught them - a past of injustice, of oppression and terror and lynchings.

 

They also knew the hope of the present on that day, facing a rising sun as they marched just as John Lewis had called them to do - with a spirit of love and a spirit of dignity that would change the nation.

 

They knew that they - and we - would have to march on stony roads. 

They knew that they - and we - could sometimes feel that hope unborn had died.

 

But they also knew from the stories of the past and the promises of God’s presence with them on the way that they would march on ‘til victory was won.

 

    If those words sound familiar, they are among the lyrics of the great poem written by James Weldon Johnson along with music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson to celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln in 1900.  

 

Now, 120 years later, that song still gives hope and inspiration to Black folks in our nation - and to us - as we join them in holding on to the dream, waking up to the injustices around us and rebuilding our lives and our nation until “now we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.”

 

Listen with me to this somewhat shorter version of the song, released last July 4 by Gospel singer Kirk Franklin. 

 

Watch for both the joy and the determination as we carry ourselves forward into the challenges of our time.

 

“Lift Every Voice and Sing”