Second Sunday
After the Epiphany

January 20, 2008
The Rev. David R. Hackett

My literary friend, Fred Buechner, in his book, Wishful Thinking, gives us some of his views on the topic of prophets,

“Prophet means spokesman, not fortune-teller. The one whom in their unfathomable audacity the prophets claim to speak for was the Lord and Creator of the universe. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone ever asked a prophet home for supper more than once. …The prophets were drunk on God, and in the presence of their terrible tipsiness no one was every comfortable. With a total lack of tact they roared out against phoniness and corruption wherever they found them. They were the terror of kings and priests … No prophet is on record as having asked for the job. …Like Robert Frost’s, a prophet’s quarrel with the world is deep-down a lover’s quarrel. If they didn’t love the world, they probably wouldn’t bother to tell it that it’s going to hell. They’d just let it go. Their quarrel is God’s quarrel.”

Buechner is a wonderful writer with great humor and insight.

Most prophets come to us through Holy Scripture. Rarely do we see one in modern times. But once in a great while, when we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we discover one among us. That happened in this country a half century ago. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

This weekend our nation celebrates his birthday. For too many of us, young and old, it is just another long weekend. I know that for many of the younger members of the congregation Martin Luther King, Jr. is ancient history.

But it is history that we ignore at our peril. I grew up during the “Jim Crow” days in Southern Missouri where the water fountains were marked “white” and “colored”; when “colored” folks were relegated to the balconies in movie theatres (the one in my hometown was the “Dixie” theatre). It was a time when whites rode up front and blacks sat in the back of buses; when 75 year-old African-American men were routinely called “boy” and a 7 year-old white boy like me was called “Mister David”. This was when blacks got off the sidewalk in deference to whites, when blacks couldn’t eat in a restaurant with whites, when restrooms were designated by the pigmentation of skin, and lynchings were not uncommon (the year I was born two men were lynched on the courthouse lawn of my hometown).

I remember. And we mustn’t forget who it was that changed all that. I want us to remember and rejoice in the man who is honored this weekend. Forty years seems like a long time. It is a long time. And yet it is as yesterday. 1968 was a pivotal year in American history. It was the year that shaped a generation. A year of violence of cataclysmic, catastrophic proportions; the watershed of our era. Forty years ago this April in Memphis Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. I was at Sewanee that year, finishing my first year in seminary. It was a fascinating time to be engaged in theological education. I still remember a poster in a hallway, “Off your knees and into the streets”. How well I remember marching in Atlanta in a mass of humanity numbering 100,000 at Dr. King’s funeral. I walked arm and arm with a young African-American from the red clay hills of Georgia as a sign of respect for a prophet named Martin.

When King got out of seminary in the early ‘50s he was invited to Calvary Baptist Church in Oklahoma City by their search committee. They were looking for a pastor. The chair of the committee had his reservations about this young preacher. He thought he was probably too educated for them, too academic. Dr. King preached for them. The conclusion was that he didn’t have enough “gravy”. “Gravy” is the term used in black churches for emotional preaching. And so he was not called to that congregation. Instead he went to a little church in Montgomery, Alabama, Dexter Ave. Baptist Church, where he met Mrs. Rosa Parks. And you know the rest of the story.

God had a purpose for his prophet, Martin. And it was in Montgomery that the Spirit began that work. That man, who changed our world because of his Christian beliefs, was used by the Spirit of God in a way rarely seen, and even more rarely appreciated. He called his people to respond to violence with non-violence. He challenged a nation of injustice to justice. A black preacher proclaimed the word of God in the streets of America by word and example, by standing before the powers of this world in the power of the Spirit. And so helped us all to hear, see and at last understand what Christianity is really about.

I don’t want any of us, at any age, to forget. But I know some have forgotten. Racism is very much with us today. We’d like to think that it has diminished, but not nearly as much so as one would hope. I used to think that racism had become less obvious and more subtle, but that’s not the case. We had that forcefully brought home to us a few months ago by the torture of Megan Williams in Logan County. We were shocked and dismayed by this racist brutality. We shake our heads in disbelief that something like this can still occur. But why are we surprised? If we don’t teach one another to, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, “respect the dignity of every human being”, there will be racism. The prophet’s dream is still to come true. But the Spirit of God is still at work.

Charleston, West Virginia has a lot of churches. Being a newcomer, I’m always amazed when I drive here to St. John’s by the number of churches crowded into downtown. Probably the majority of the population of the state of West Virginia is worshipping God this morning, whether in a city congregations such as this, or in a small rural country churches. But what kind of religion are we engaged in? Is it to make comfortable, or to challenge us to new understandings of God’s spirit at work in us and in our world?

Dr. King’s last Sunday sermon was preached from an Episcopal pulpit, the national cathedral in Washington, D.C. Part of what he said was this,

“One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of what we have done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power. It seems to me that I can hear the God of history saying ‘That was not enough!’ But I was hungry and ye fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.” That’s the question facing American today.”

And 40 years later that question still faces us. Perhaps even more so now.

His call is still our call: to discover new ways of bridging the gap between “us” and “them”, regardless of how you define us and them: between the haves and the have nots, between blacks and whites, between those who have power and those who are powerless, those who have justice and those who are without justice.

The mission statement of St. John’s Church says, “We reach out to the world in Christ’s name in the hope that all might find a home in God’s healing love.” I read lots of mission statements. Almost every parish has one. Having a congregation which seeks to carry out a mission statement is a rarity. One of the reasons I came here to share this transition ministry with you was your vision of the importance of diversity and inclusion. And the longer I’m with you I’m discovering more and more that you truly intend to carry out that mission. Let us pray that God will enable the vision to be a reality.

This day we remember and rejoice that God raised up a prophet named Martin. Pray and trust that God’s Spirit continues to lead us to lives of mercy, truth and justice. Amen.