Readings:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. – Mark 1:14-20
When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, ‘Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.’ But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, they said, ‘Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed. . .
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. – Genesis 19:15-17, 24-26
I am part of a lost generation
and I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
“Happiness comes from within.”
is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.– Jonathan Reed
This poem by J. Reed. Did you read it?
But what happens, if the instructions that come with the poem “All of this will come true unless we reverse it” are actually heeded. It begins: “There is hope. It is foolish to presume that my generation is apathetic . . . ”
I. Poem
Here’s what I was thinking:
We gather for worship regularly on Sunday morning, each according to our schedule. We park in the same place. We walk through the same doors and sit in the same pews, perhaps even the same spot. We get a copy of a bulletin that looks pretty much the same every Sunday. We sing from the same hymnal and you follow the same worship leaders. There is so much about what goes on here that is regular that we simply assume, like many of you did with the “poem” that it has to be done this way — that it has to be read from the top to the bottom.
We have three readings today that encourage a serious reversal. To reverse, of course means to change directions. I very much dislike encouragements or exhortations to change if I don’t know why, or if the options are arbitrary.
The implicit question is “Which direction to move in is the right one?”
The form of the reading by Jonathan Reed, suggests that this is not an easy question to answer. It’s not easy because everything about our daily patterns conspires to make it difficult to see the hope.
One answer to our question today — what is the right direction towards which we should change, is that the right direction does not come easily and when it does it springs forth hope.
II. Genesis
Our reading from Genesis offers another suggestion.
I could have chosen as readings from out tradition, a myriad of passages like the ones I chose. For example, it becomes clear with a little exploration that the first story of our Bible, the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden is not a story of conservatism — not a story of punishment because they failed to conserve the tradition — but a story of the necessity of looking forward — of moving on. God tells Noah after the flood to “Go forth from the ark.” In chapter 11 we read the myth of the tower of Babel as a warning, the desire to be comfortable, not to be stretched socially or culturally or intellectually will not work — go forth and be multicultural.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, I probably should remind you, is not a story about sex. It is a story about the failure to be multicultural, to be open to the stranger. Again, God aims to end narrow-mindedness and says to Lot and his family — don’t look back. Keep your minds set on those things you know to be good, for which you defended the stranger.
Lot’s wife is not on board however. We see that to look back is to fail.
Another answer to our question today — what is the right direction towards which we should change? — is that it will open up new horizons — horizons however which are potentially uncomfortable. Again the right direction does not come easily.
II. Mark
One more image of reversal. This one from the Gospel of Mark.
Last week we read from the end of the Gospel of Mark — the story of the women running from the empty tomb — frightened. Mark doesn’t really have a “resurrection” story. He has an empty tomb story. But this is not to suggest that Mark’s reason for telling the story of Jesus is any different than any of the other Gospel writers.
In other words Mark uses different structures to tell the same story — and if Easter is about anything, it’s about reversal. For those early Christians who cultivated an Easter story they did so to tell about the way Jesus turned their lives about. They did in order to say that this wasn’t about Jesus — it never was and it never will be — it’s about God — Easter, resurrection, is about an experience of God in our lives that changes everything.
Mark’s Easter story is not found after the tomb — but before it — the whole gospel is set up as an expression of Easter — Jesus came to Galilee and was preaching the good news saying — “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
This sentence is fodder for a full sermon — let me just note quickly that the Greek word translated repent has been burdened with exactly the opposite kind of baggage than it should carry.
Today repent means — “toe the line. Believe in the right thing. Stay the proper course.” Then it meant “turn around — rethink things — get out of the box.” For Mark, the gospel — the whole of it — is the Easter story — God is not in the distant future, or up in the sky away from us — but a real and present grace — a love that will never be locked up in a holy book, or boxed up in an institution.
This is not just about believing as in believing in Jesus and all of the thicket of doctrines that sprang up around him, but about discovering life. This discovering is what, in its best, simplest sense, we call religion — because it re-binds us. The word religion has its Latin roots in this idea. In fact our word ligament has the same root.
Another answer to our question today — what is the right direction towards which we should change? is that it is in the direction of this sense of religion — religion as that force that binds us because it sets us free.
IV.
How exactly will this look?
I have my theories — but I know that every worship leader and every institutional leader has theories about how to make it work, how to turn things around. So, I may be wrong about my ideas. That’s part of the reason we get together today to talk. This is not mine to make up. It is ours.
I do know that it will take some work. And it will take some willingness to act according to visions and dreams.
Wendell Berry gets it correct I think in a poem called “A Vision.”
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility
Category: Sermon
Easter Proclamations
Happy Easter everyone!
Last Easter that greeting meant something quite different than what it means this year. I think that is an important observation to make.
It is not that last Easter was somehow less Eastery or that this Easter is more. It means that Easter always needs to be discovered fresh. It means that if all Easter has to offer are phrases that sound joyful but ring no familiar bells, if it doesn’t hook up with us and really make a difference, we might as well go outside and enjoy Easter as Spring (whenever that arrives.)
II.
I want to take about the business of making Easter proclamations. We’ve heard it many times this morning — People have greeted you with those words. Perhaps someone has said, Christ is Risen! and you might have responded — He is risen indeed!
Tradition has it that we include some sort of Easter Proclamation like this in our Easter morning liturgy. I have included two.
The first was by a living Californian poet Ellen Bass, a poem entitled The Thing Is. The second is technically a Paschal Greeting — and it’s old. The only new thing about it is that I changed the verb from Christ IS risen to Christ HAS risen in an effort to give a sense of the classic Pauline version of resurrection — Christ has been raised by God. It’s an effort to avoid presenting resurrection as spooky resuscitation.
I hope by putting these two proclamations together to breathe the kind of life into our greetings this morning so that it is real and not spooky, to make the kind of greeting ring bells today that it could not have last Easter, to say something today that could not be made on any other Easter, 7 1/2 months after a devastation and great loss.
Even if you home was not flooded back on the 28th of August, your heart must have pounded in your chest when you read those words: “To love life, even when everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands and your throat is filled with silt.”
I think to myself as I re-read them, “How many times did grief weigh upon me like my own flesh?” And you — How many times did you have to put your face between your hands and sob? The grief being too much to bear?
The tropical heat wave a few weeks ago and the sudden melting of the snow and subsequent re-exposure of tires and propane tanks in the woods, sand-filled corn fields and permanently stalled out cars next to weeping houses brought the tropical heat wave of grief back — how can a body stand this?
And if Bass had ended her poem with the words of the Paschal greeting, that “we bear it because Christ is risen . . .” we would discard this poem as worthless — just a grim reminder of what has gone on before with no hook to the present.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t borrow the ancient words of the church fathers because she knows better. She knows that those words were generated and then subsequently issued in the form of a proclamation in order to get people to hew to the church’s official line. We aren’t looking for that — we’re looking for a new sense of life, a new sense of possibility, a deeper courage in the face of all that trash yet to pick up, all those homes yet to finish building.
II.
Here’s the story:
On Good Friday, you couldn’t bear to watch, so you left town for higher ground. All of the reminders of your past, the pictures, the rug with the story of your last cat still stained into the corner, the old woodwork that told the growing pains of generations of children measured on the door frame, the sweat and equity you put into it — all washed away that night.
Then, perhaps like the Mary’s in the first story, you came back tentatively — frightened by what you might find. And shocked by what you did see. Perhaps like Peter in the second story — you couldn’t get there fast enough — your heart was there before your self. And you burst in, unafraid. And then left, in tears.
For the disciples — Good Friday marked an end to one of the most extraordinary, one of the most solidly real, one of the most lively times of their lives. Good Friday was not just the death of a friend — it was the death of an experience, a vibratingly alive, hopefully shimmering, gliding feeling of being truly free — an experience of God. The grief of his death would have been tropical and weighed upon them like their own flesh.
Like us, like you, they too stood outside the door, or just inside it and put their heads in their hands and wept.
III.
The story according to the Gospel of Mark is the earliest story. It probably more closely tells the story of what happened. Easter Sunday morning was an experience of shock and despair. But within days, hours perhaps, something had happened.
John tells it best in two words — two words uttered with astonishment that from a place of such deep despair and grief could come love — “My dear!”
Easter was not something that happened by any other miracle than by the miracle of the discovery of love — love did not get waterlogged on August 28th. Love did not flee forever in fear on the morning of the 29th — by the afternoon in fact many were holding their friend’s and families hands in silent gestures of solidarity — it was astonishing, but they could say with Mary “My dear. . .”
They could say, Yes, I will take you. I will love you again.
So, I say again. Happy Easter. May we never have another one like it.
Peace.
March 11 — Religious Maturing
I. The Creed as rule
Some of you, no doubt, did not really need to look at the words in order to read
along with us as we recited the apostles creed. You grew up reading it. For
those of us who grew up in the UCC, different story.
I want to take a quick look at this strange (to us) relic of our Christian
heritage and then offer a different, hopefully more helpful way to understand
the creed. I want to do all of this because creeds can stifle a living faith,
understood one way, or they can open life to the riches of maturity, of
open-mindedness and compassion, of love.
First, the apostles’ creed.
Creeds, in general were used like a mnemonic. In a non-literate age, they
served to coalesce faith communities. There was no bible to be read from at
home, there were no church newsletters. But because they knew the creed
together, they shared a bond that was regularly, sorely tried by the authorities
who were less than thrilled about these people who paid ultimate allegiance not
to the emperor, but God.
The title, Apostles’ Creed appears for the first time in a letter from a Council
in Milan to Pope Siricius (not one of the wider known popes!) in about 390: “Let
them give credit to the Creed of the Apostles, which the Roman Church has always
kept and preserved undefiled.” It’s probably no surprise that what existed at
that time was somewhat different than the creed we said today. Things change,
and that goes for scriptures and even creeds.
I make no judgment about the ability to recite creeds or not. I do sometimes
wish that I had grown up in a tradition that values memorization. I have a very
difficult time memorizing things.
I do make a judgment about the use of the apostle’s creed as a test. I have a
friend, who as a young boy attended a summer camp and was made to recite the
apostle’s creed, but because he didn’t believe what he was being asked to say,
he didn’t. As a result, the camp counselors forced him to sit alone in the
“chapel” to think about his refusal, long after the other kids had left to play.
I do make a harsh judgment about presuming that the creed contains articles of
faith that must be “accepted” for a faith to be full and mature.
How then, shall we understand the creed? and can we address the slight anxiety
we might feel as we refuse to “believe” that the creed offers an outline of what
a mature faith looks like?
II. – Creed as distributive
An adequate response to something like a creed recognizes that people centuries
ago, in responding to the God of love, did so as themselves lovers of God. They
made confessional statements which tried to express something about their
experience of being loved by and loving in return this God who brought them to
an experience of wholeness and freedom of fear. Each time those statements were
made, they were meant to express the whole of an individual’s reason for being
involved with this God of love.
So, a helpful way to think about the creed is as a series of these statements
put together by a committee. We must remember however, that they were
statements that were once first uttered by an individual. We can imagine, for
example, a Galilean Christian of the 60’s or 70’s, thirty or forty years after
Jesus’ death, saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ, Lord.” And we could imagine a
Greek Christian 100 years later saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was
conceived by the Holy Ghost.” Another hundred years later these confessional
statements were gathered to tell the story as it made sense to these church
leaders at the time.
In other words, while a creed reads like a list of things to be believed in,
that when all added up equals what you must know (or believe) in order to be a
Christian, the distributive property in mathematics, rather than the additive
one is better for trying to understand a creed. The distributive property you
may remember from primary school, states that you are distributing something as
you break it up into parts. Each of the parts of the creed, as confession, tell
a story — not about virginal birth, or about the existence of hell, but about
the victory the person doing the confesing: the experience of God is like new
life — completely unexpected, like a virgin birth. The experience of God is
like a victory over the hell hole created by the unjust power structures under
which many suffer. The list could go on — and should.
III. A Rule of Faith as Guide
The list should go on because the various rules we engage in the Christian life
are not like the rules of school, which when broken result in the end of the
conversation, but like the creeds of the church which function to encourage the
sharing of our deepest values and most important insights with each other. The
list of such important, pivotal experiences about which we could share as
members of a community of faith is vast.
Paul offers a warning in our reading this morning — Do not let the world around
you squeeze you into its own mold. For Paul the point was never to escape the
world, but always to be aware that to get swallowed up by the temptations of
that world is to miss the opportunity to live like we want to in our best
moments. To get moulded into the form of this world is to have difficulties
with the form or mould into which we would rather mature. To get moulded into
the form of this world is to lose our sense of what is decisively significant to
us when it comes to understanding our best existence.
Last week, I preached about being “spiritual but not religious” as an expression
of the wide, public need for a community that takes seriously the need to talk
about what is in fact decisively significant for our flourishing. I had a few
conversations that I wonder if you might have had, along the lines of: what
makes religion real and exciting for you? Can religion be more than the
superficial gloss it receives in the press as a place of revealed truths and
closed conversation? or can it be unafraid of the search for truth in dialogue
with others? What brings you here? What excites you about this church?
I, for one, was jazzed up by the idea that I was part of a community that tries
to find some time, out of very busy schedules, to examine what is worth
examining, to discuss what is worth arguing about and to discover, by the
guidance of my own conscience in conversation with others, truth. Not truth
with a capital T — not that once and for all truth — if such a thing exists —
but the truth which enlightens and leads forth and makes alive.
Each of us — as part of this community, if it is to be vibrant, have, at least
this responsibility to each other — to let the rule of life be a rule of life,
guiding us into a long, elusive, joyful search for wisdom and truth, to let the
rule of life, be a rule of vibrant living so that we might grow in ever more
fearless love.
To refuse or to be paralyzed by fear inhibits this conversation.
III.
Like the various confessions found in the creeds, Paul’s exhortation not to let
the world mould us after its pattern, but to evolve toward the goal of maturity
is an expression of the experience of the dynamism and vibrancy of community
free and open to truth.
Paul’s exhortation is both an warning that the grasping, groping way of so much
of the world can suck us into its realm and destroy our vitality, or as
scripture puts it lead us to death — or there is life lived as by a rule —
life which sees the other as a brother or sister, a partner in the search for
life and sounding board for the ideas and thoughts that matter.
Paul’s exhortation not to be moulded to the world, put positively is an
encouragement to let ourselves grow in love, to choose life.
So we have a choice.
We can push our way through life, selfishly and roughly jostling and elbowing
and shoving people out of the way. That leads to death.
Or we can join hands and minds and walk openly, guided by this rule of life,
delighting in those with whom we share the movements and moments of intensity.
This way leads to life.
Choose life.
Amen.
Hubert Wetemwami's Story
Our story
GOD REMAINS FAITHFUL TO US
My name is Simwerayi Hubert Wetemwami and this is my wife Batyo Helene Simwerayi. We are originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. We come from the East of Congo in a city called Goma. We have been married for 27 years we have five sons , two daughters and one grand’daughter’. While in the Congo, I worked as a banker and my wife was a teacher. I also worked as a human rights activist since 1995, reuniting families and cautioning civilians against dangers that came with the war and insecurities.
We migrated to Manchester, New Hampshire from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in October of 2002, leaving behind our seven children, the age of five to fifteen. Words cannot express what I witnessed.Men and young boys were being forced to join the army while women as well as young girls were being raped and killed even used as sex slaves.
The reason why I fled to United States is because I was attacked and almost killed by militia group. They were not found of my work as a human rights activist. I had held a meeting cautioning the youth about the country’s insecure situation. I was teaching them peaceful ways by which they could stand up for themselves and refuse being forced to join the army…That night, armed men came to my home and kicked in the door. My wife and kids were terrified and went to hide underneath their beds. The rebels’ soldiers were stomping and beating me left to right until they decide it was time to complete their mission. They were going to cut my head off with a machete. I raised my hands to the neck; they ended up scarring my hand instead. A few moments after that, I was lying unconscious and the invaders had finally left.
The war officially began in August 1996 in the Kivu Province where we lived. The war involved more than 5 neighboring countries and approximately 20 armed groups. Although the war officially ended in July 2003, people are still dying to this day due to the civil war and its aftermath. Beside this war problem, I want just to remind you that in 2001, the volcano destroyed almost the half of the town of Goma making the lives more difficult. After being beaten and many other problems, many friends urged me to find a refugee camp where I could be safe. For me, it was not an easy thing to do with my big family and also knowing how people suffered when they are in refugee camp because I had experienced it as a former Higher Commissioner of refugee employee also known as UNHCR. However we had a friend who lived in the United States who applied for a diversity lottery visa for us to come and live in the United States. The diversity visa program better known as the green card lottery provides individuals from countries with low immigrations rates to the United States with a green card. Applicants who meet eligibility requirements are entered into a random drawing. The winners are notified and after a series of interviews they may receive permanent residence in the United States. When we won we were very excited to come to the US. The whole family was getting ready to travel, but then we received the shocking news. Our friend who played the lottery for us notified us that all the expenses including our plane tickets and immigrations fees will have to come out of our own pockets. But we could not afford to pay for the whole family. So my wife and I flew to Cameroon where we had our interview at the US Consulate. Upon our arrival at the Embassy, they told us that because we were not with our children, they could join us after six years due to immigration rules. We then decided that Helene my wife could go back to the Congo to take care of our children, but our friend from America encouraged us to come together so we could work hard and save enough money to bring our children. However we soon learned that the terms of our immigration visa were different from those of refugees who are taken in charge by different agencies.
After our arrival, I found work as a machine operator at a factory and my wife found work as a house keeper. For the first few months, we lived at my friend’s house in Hooksett, but after saving enough money, we rented an apartment in Manchester. Things were very difficult. We worked long hours on different shifts, got very little sleep and we were always worried about our children. We both cried privately. We didn’t own a car and we were barely paying our rent, so it was hard to save money. And this was because since we arrived in the United States, we never received any assistance (We were not eligible for food stamps, medicare or other benefits)We are always active in the Christian community. One day we were at church and met Nina Glick Scheiller. Nina who is an anthropologist was doing her research on refugees and immigrants resettlement. Nina was the beginning of God’s answer to our situation .We told her about our children and she wanted to help. Our story was published in the University of New Hampshire magazine and a group started the committee of rights and Justice (CORAJ) on our behalf and found us a lawyer, the others began fund raising. Soon after that we received some bad news regarding our children. Soldiers looking for American dollars had attacked the children at their grandmother’s home after learning that the children’s parents were now living in America. We were distraught, the urgency of the situation escalated .Nina and Coraj had our children relocated to Kampala (Uganda) and our lawyer began seeking Humanitarian visas to get them to the United States faster .After hard work by many kind people, our children arrived in Boston in September 2004.
In the Congo, I was a human rights activist while my wife Helene was a teacher and involved in different activities and charities for the church. Together, we were helping those kids whose parents were killed during the war and those children whose mothers were raped and disowned by their husbands. We started a nonprofit organization called “G.O.S.D”:”The Orientation and Relief Group of the Rights and Development of the Deprived Ones” We were supporting everything from our own pockets. Since coming to America, we have kept doing what we could to support them with schooling and other needs . It’s not easy especially because there are many who are in need and we can’t afford all the expenses because we are limited financially. Recently we were blessed and bought a big space of land in the city of Goma where we are planning to build a vocation school .This would be helpful to students with different talents for , they would be able to work and provide for themselves and their parents as well. The plan is to go to school, learn and trade and the school will help them find work. And while working, a percentage of the work will help pay the teachers and also keep the school running. The students will be able to learn trades as carpentry, construction, mechanic and mostly handy work. They will learn how to build furniture and other products. The best thing is that these children will be able to receive an education for free because in the Congo, parents are in charge of paying for their children school from elementary school to college. That’s why children are street kids because their parents can’t afford sending them to school, most of them are orphans. And I am very sure that this plan will work through the Grace of God because throughout my journey what I have learned is that God remains faithful to us.
Ladies and Gentlemen, people of God, if you have the capacity to help these children receive an education, it will be greatly appreciated.
I would like to thank sincerely Pastor Peter Plagge who gave us the opportunity to speak in front of you, and also our friend Cliff Bennett who introduced us to him. On behalf of my entire family, I want to thank from my heart all the Christians from Waterbury and everybody in the audience who welcomed us with joy.
GOD BLESSES YOU AND THANK YOU ALL!
Kings' Lies
And when we arrived in the region of Jerusalem, in the month of flowers, our good emissary led and brought us inside Jerusalem. . .
And when we heard from them what they said, again we rejoiced greatly. And while we were exulting, we saw our leader and our guide; again we abounded in joy all the more.
And while we spoke mysteries, and all manner of revelations, and praises, we went in joy to Bethlehem as the blind scribes had read, not believing what they read from their books, nor Herod, the blind governor, [unseeing] of the love of the light that was born in their land, which was the light before all worlds. And they are dwelling in darkness in the world in their days.
But Herod said to us in his deceit: “When you have seen the messiah, come and tell me, that I also may go to worship him.” And because he was not worthy for the worship of the light that was born, because he was a dwelling of error, it was said to us by our guide and our light that we should not return to him, because he was not worthy to see the great light of the world, because he was totally deaf and blind to its worship. – The Revelation of the Magi 17:1, 7-9
This is a serious day, as we celebrate the birth of MLK . . . And I want to address a serious issue. It’s the issue this version of the story of the kings highlights: the question of lying. And not just lying, it’s the question of blindness to the truth. All of the actors in this story lie: king herod lies, the kings deceive.
So it’s serious stuff . . . But in the tradition of Martin Luther King’s African American church, the most serious matters, life and death, freedom and captivity are addressed in story.
So let me begin and end with stories.
This old rancher in Montana hates wearing a seat belt. One day he’s driving on the highway with his wife and sees a state patrol car behind him. He says to his wife, “Quick, take the wheel! I gotta put my seat belt on!” So she does, and right then officer pulls him over.
She walks up to the car and says to the rancher, “Say, I noticed you weren’t wearing your seat belt.”
The rancher says, “I was too, but you don’t have to take my word for it. My wife here is a good Christian woman, ask her. She’ll tell you the truth. She doesn’t lie about anything.”
The cop says to the wife, “So? How about it, ma’am?”
And the wife says, “I’ve been married to Buck for twenty years, officer, and one thing I’ve learned in all that time is this: You never argue with him when he’s drunk.”
We laugh at the joke because we see freedom comes to the wife precisely when she tells truth to power. You could imagine this wife to be one of the nearly 1/3 of women in the US who have reported being abused by a mate. We laugh because freedom is so precious, that it will come as it will, unexpectedly, and blessedly. We laugh for relief because we know the reality is grimmer.
The wife counters a lie with the truth and is saved.
Not to belittle the question of alcoholism or drinking while driving, I tell the joke only because it reveals a basic, simple point that I think Martin Luther King Jr., might offer to us today, having just read this version of the gospel story of the visit of the magi to Jerusalem, the capital city — the seat of the Roman Empire in Judea: there are lies, and then there are lies. This is a story today about the valid difference.
This is a story, as so many of the stories of the gospels, challenge of “speaking truth to power,” as the American Quakers first put it in a 1955 pamphlet by that title attempting to reorient the US approach to the Cold War. Speaking truth to power requires the same sort of creative wit that the wife in the joke came up with so quickly — a wit and a strength that can counter a lie with a different sort of lie.
II.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated . . . no longer speaking merely about race relations. On the day he was assassinated, he was in Memphis to lead a sanitation workers’ strike. In the months ahead, he was planning a Poor People’s Campaign to march on Washington.
Dr. King knew that the struggle for racial justice would be profoundly difficult even after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. He was under no illusion about the lies people would tell to maintain their ill gotten hold on power.
But he also knew that equality for African Americans could not be achieved by attention to race alone. Against the advice of many of his closest allies, he spoke out against the Vietnam War — it would do us no good. It would only add hatred to hatred . . . The obstacles to the dream of justice, justice that went to the root of human behavior were enormous. Those who benefited from these injustices, from war, from poverty, from racism, would not easily stop. Their lies would mount up. King understood herod’s lies.
But King also would understand the the Magi. Some occasions call for lies.
By now the kings have left Bethlehem for the East. They have not done as promised. They broke the ninth commandment and did not return with the news to Herod.
Biblical literalists have a hard time with this. They suggest that perhaps we can excuse them because they were not Jewish and wouldn’t understood that tradition. Which is, of course, hogwash. There is no society on earth that tolerates lying.
And yet — There is a lie that is required. It is the lie for freedom.
Homi Baugh . . .
The morning of the first day after his purchase David Wharton walked over to where Nehemia was standing and said, “Now you are going back to work, you understand. You are going to pick four hundred pounds of cotton today.”
“Wal Massa, dat’s aw right.” answered Nehemia, “but ef Ah meks you laff, won’ you lemme off fo’ terday?”
“Well,” said David Wharton, who had never been known to laugh, “if you make me laugh, I won’t only let you off for today, but I’ll give you your freedom.”
“Ah decla’, Boss,” said Nehemia, “you sho’ is a good-lookin’ man.”
“I am sorry I can’t say the same thing about you,” retorted David Wharton.
“Oh, yes, Boss, yuh could, “Nehemiah laughed out, “yuh could, if yuh told ez big a lie ez Ah did.”
David Wharton could not help laughing at this; he laughed before he thought. Nehemiah got his freedom.”
Value judgments. Is one thing better than another, is one course of action preferable over another?
Of course we live in a day when we are obliged to be tolerant and respectful of other people’s ways.
What this had meant for a good many Christians, on both sides of the evangelical divide is that the art of the good lie had been lost.
Why, essentially because we have been taught that religion is a non rational enterprise.
In a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on December 18, 1963, Dr. King concludes by suggesting with tongue in cheek, the formation of a new organization — The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Dr. King notes that there are certain maladjustments that he is proud to honor and claim. He does so, because, as he notes of one such maladjusted thinker, “Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself.”
In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality. I am convinced of this because I believe Carlyle is right. “No lie can live forever.” I am convinced of this because I believe William Cullen Bryant is right. “Truth pressed to earth will rise again.” I am convinced of this because I think James Russell Lowell is right. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own.” Somehow with this faith, we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new life into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This will be a great day. This will be the day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!”
Let those with ears to hear, listen.