“King’s Call; Our Call”
Psalm 139 1 Samuel 3:1-10 John 1:43-51
Second Sunday after Epiphany January 15, 2012
Reverend Deb Davis First Congregational UCC
Will you pray with me? Eternal God in the reading of scripture, may your word be heard. In the meditation of our hearts, may your word be known. And in the faithfulness of our lives, may your word be lived. Amen.
Had he lived … the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would today … celebrate his 83rd birthday.
That startles me … and perhaps it startles you …… startles me to think about how young he was when he was killed on that hotel balcony in Memphis … startles me to think how... had he lived … we might still be graced with his wisdom.
King was killed before he was 40 … and yet as the Reverend William Sloan Coffin once said about him: “Until the very end of American history … this nation will never again be the same because of him.”
In a many different ways … in many different sermons and speeches … King told us our lives should be governed by our dreams … and not by our fears … that we should take heed of this Psalm that we heard as a part of our Call to Worship this morning … this psalm that says we are precious … lovingly made … known by name to our God.
And what this psalm implies, of course, what the Baptist preacher King understood … is that all human beings are so loved … are so known … to our creator. This is a psalm that encourages us not to look out and up for clues to who we are and how we should live … but rather to look down and in … and to know with such certainty that we are precious and we are loved … that we can let go of our fear … that we can dare to follow the call of our God … because of that very assurance that God has made us … knows us …loves us … is with us … whatever comes.
King’s message to our nation was much deeper than, “Let’s just all get along” … rather he challenged us to go to the depth of this psalm … to embrace the same thought that is expressed in the words of the Apostle Paul … “In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no bond or free … rather we are one body … one beloved creation … together and individually … precious.”
A couple of Sunday’s before Christmas … Anna Armstrong provided our Youth Storytime during worship … as if you will recall in the midst of that time she turned to me and asked me how I thought Jesus was able to do what he did.
And my response to her was that he was able to do what he did … to live out the call of his God in the same way we are … by taking one step …and then another … until we are walking with purpose.
I do believe that to be true … for Jesus and for all of us … because we are all called by God to basically the same thing: to live a life of service to others … through the doing of justice in the world … holding onto the very deep understanding that all human beings are equally loved and equally valued by God.
So know this day … you are being called … called to life-giving action … action that might challenge your values and your status quo … action that might take you to a new place … action that might force you to face your deepest fear. You are being called to take a step … and then another … and then another.
Dr. Thomas E. Sagendorf First Congregational UCC
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
We pray these words every Sunday, many times not thinking about what we are saying. But do you realize how radical these words are? Think about it!
And, further, how is this petition to come about? Out of thin air? Like a bolt of lightening? Something that we just sit and watch?
These words are part of a prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. But, why did Jesus come to live among us, anyway? If you took a survey of all the churches in Angola, you’d probably get a number of answers to this question.
A predominant answer would be that Jesus came to save sinners. This is certainly a legitimate response, well supported by many passages of scripture.
But I choose to follow a different path on this question. One that also is very biblical
In Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 1, Verse 14, the Gospel writer says this. “Now after John (the Baptizer) was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.” Other translations say, “The Kingdom of God is fulfilled.”
It is my understanding that Jesus came to proclaim and inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Or, if you prefer, the “Reign of God,” or “the New Age.”
AND, TO CONFRONT THE POWERS OF EVIL!
And what does this “Reign of God” look like? We can get at least a hint by reading the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7); or, the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46); or Mary’s “Magnificat” which she said at the home of her cousin, Elizabeth (Luke 1:46-55).
This is the meaning of the petition, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And, if this kind of New Age is to come about, it will take a commitment of hands, feet, voices, and sometimes even enormous risks. Not only by someone else but by folks like us.
Jesus is not looking for spectators. Spectators are a dime a dozen. Instead, he’s looking for disciples.”
Nobody in our time better understood and demonstrated this perspective] than Dr. Martin Luther King.
I first encountered Dr. King on the March from Selma to Montgomery, AL. A small group of peaceful marchers were setting out to march from Selma to the State Capitol to raise the issue of voting rights in Alabama. They were unarmed. They were met on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma by state troopers with dogs, clubs, whips, and tear gas. They were beaten and driven back.
The entire event was televised, and our nation was appalled by what they saw.
I was then a senior in seminary, and the seminary community decided to send eighth students and two professors to join the march. We met up with the marchers outside Montgomery.
As we were being organized to march into the city and up to the State Capitol at a compound called St. Judes, we were being circled by people driving pickup trucks flying the Confederate flag and pointing shotguns at us.
We marched, six abreast, singing as we walked. I knew, at least for that time, that I was standing in the Kingdom of God.
When we arrived at a place in front of the State Capitol (where the racist George Wallace was Governor), we noticed National Guardsmen on street corners and building roofs, all armed with rifles. On one shoulder was a patch bearing the American flag; on the other was a patch bearing the Confederate flag.
Were these rifles meant for us?
There were many speakers on the Capitol steps, but when Dr. King came to the mike, there was a hush. It was, for me, like hearing the very voice of God.
After the March, we headed into the night, hoping to get out of Alabama before we found lodging. North of Birmingham, we were followed in a driving rain by a station wagon with all its windows (except the driver’s) covered with brown paper. No other cars on the road.
We were quite certain that this was the KKK and that they didn’t shoot us because there were three cars in our caravan.
This was an instance of hands, feet, voices, and enormous risks confronting the powers of evil—in this instance, brutal racism.
In August of the same year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law with Dr. King standing at his side.
The second time I encountered Dr. King was in April 1967, in a New York March against the War in Vietnam. The march began in Central Park and was said to have gathered at least 400,000 people.
It would seem that marching in such a throng on the streets of Manhattan would be a relatively safe thing to do. But it wasn’t. Along the route people who supported the war took to dropping objects like bags of sugar or flower down upon the heads of the marchers. Being hit with such an object could easily mean serious injury. Or even death.
As in Montgomery, the voice of Dr. King was like listening to the voice of God. And, again, it was an instance of hands, feet, voices, and enormous risk, confronting the powers of evil—in this instance the lunacy of war making as a function of national policy.
The third time I encountered Dr. King was in Cleveland in 1968 in a room as small as Pastor Deb’s office. There a small group of us was strategizing about how to combat the abuse of police power and to get adequate food into poor sections of the City, especially the Hough neighborhoods that had been decimated by fire.
In that meeting, I was most impressed by the Martin Luther King I saw. No booming voice. No attempt to take over the agenda. Just a Baptist preacher with a soft, gentle demeanor.
It was soon after this meeting—April 4, 1968—that Judie and I were eating in a favorite Cleveland restaurant when the terrible news came. Dr. King had been assassinated in Memphis, an act of unconscionable cowardice and brutality.
But this awful event didn’t kill the vision, or the New Age, or the quest for peace and social and economic justice. Not at all.
A PROPHET NAMED DR. MARTIN LUTHER KIND HAD PLOWED THE FIELDS. AND WHAT HE TURNED UP GAVE US A NEW GLIMPSE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD…THE REIGN OF GOD.
WHAT WE SAW WAS AWESOME! TRULY AWESOME!
As Pastor Deb said earlier, Dr King died way too soon. But now it is up to us to pick up the traces and continue the work that this man of God began.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
If we don’t take up the march, the dream, the irrevocable commitment—with hands, feet, voices, and (sometimes) enormous risks, who then will do it for us?
