Just Us?

November 9, 2008
Matthew 25:31-45; Amos 5:21-24
I don’t know if y’all realize this yet, but there was an election last week. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.
I mention this only because, well, I haven’t said a word from this pulpit about the elections – other than “vote early and vote often” – and I wanted y’all to be reassured that I have actually been reading the news and paying a little bit of attention.
Looking back at the past couple of months of worship here, I think the only direct references to partisan politics have been in reading Psalm 146 on a couple of occasions and reminding ourselves not to put our trust in princes, in mortals whose flesh is like grass and whose plans vanish with their final breath, but instead to trust in the sovereign God of history.
So, with most of the votes counted and most of the contests settled, I’m not going to shift from that scriptural advice on leadership.
Nevertheless, I do not want to suggest, and I do not believe that scripture suggests, that history doesn’t matter, that what we choose to do with this time that has been given us makes no difference.
Scripture does not describe a God indifferent to human history, but rather a God deeply engaged and involved with that history.
Thus, scripture does not invite human indifference to our own history either, but rather a faithful engagement with it.
And through it all, scripture describes an arc of history that bends toward justice, because it describes a God deeply concerned with injustice and a people struggling under the weight of oppression and injustice trying – in fits and starts to be sure – but trying nonetheless to discern and respond to God’s call to right was is wrong, to relieve the burdens of oppression, to set the captives free, to preach good news to the poor and new sight to the blind.
No single election, as I have said many times, will bring all of that about. No single candidate nor elected official will bring about the coming of the kingdom of God. It did not happen in the times that scripture reports, and it will not happen in our time either.
But we, the people of God, can and must participate in the inbreaking of that kingdom in the world in our time.
You see, if scripture is about anything at all, if the story of Jesus is about anything at all, if the history of the church is about anything at all, it is about more than just us – just you and me and our private and personal concerns, our own suffering, our own fear. Oh, that is part of the story, to be sure, but it is only one part of it. The story, you see, is not about just us; it is about justice – for all of God’s children.
Sometimes that story of the journey toward justice plays out on the grand stage of history, on the front pages, and, yes, in the politics of a people.
Last week’s election was such a moment. Whatever your partisan position, the election of the first African-American to the highest office in the land is such a moment. The gracious remarks of President Bush and Senator McCain underscore that, while many Americans will fairly and faithfully disagree with President Obama’s policies, people of good will across party lines recognize that Obama’s election says something profound and good about the long and unfinished journey of America to become a more perfect union. The hands that picked the cotton picked the president; the feet that marched for freedom stood in lines to cast the ballot.
But scripture also reminds us that the story of the long arc of justice unfolds in endless small stories, in moments when the least of these is either treated with mercy and compassion, love and justice, or not.
As a Southerner, born in Alabama when it was governed by Jim Crow laws, I found myself, Tuesday evening, thinking back to my growing up in the South.
I thought about the neighbors we had in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I was born. We lived, literally, on the dividing line between white and black Tuscaloosa. My parents became friends with the folks who lived right across the street from us, and when my mom needed to get to Birmingham one day to pick up our car that had broken down there she asked the woman across the street if she might catch a ride when her husband went to Birmingham the next day for the Alabama Black Teachers Association meeting. The woman refused to discuss it, and said that her husband would have to speak with my dad about it. After some discussion, the neighbor agreed to give my mom a ride provided she sit in the back seat of the car so that anyone who saw them would think he was a chauffeur.
I thought about those neighbors this week.
I thought about Northside Junior High School, which I entered in the seventh grade as part of the 90+ percent white student body and left after the ninth grade as part of the approximately 50-50 black/white student body. More to the point, I thought about Sterling Brownlow, a kid I played basketball with. Sterling was part of the large contingent of African-American students bussed in from across the river in downtown Chattanooga, a distance akin to being bussed from Capitol Hill to Arlington. I sat with him and his wife at our 25th high school reunion a few years back and, for the first time, asked him what it was like suddenly being removed from the neighborhood school he’d gone to and shipped to what had been predominantly white schools.
He said, “we were scared. I’d only been across the river once or twice in my life at that point, and we heard all kinds of stories about what would happen to us.”
I thought about Sterling this week.
I thought about the Northside Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga where I grew up. When I was about Martin’s age – an early adolescent – our choir director had established connections with the music program at the Seventh Day Adventist college in Chattanooga. Good Adventists worship on Saturday, which freed these voice majors to sing with our choir on Sundays. There was one young African-American man, Jesse, who frequently sang solos for us. He had a beautiful voice and a striking “stage presence.” His singing brought some of the rarest of Presbyterian worship responses: clapping. One Sunday Jesse came to worship with us, but not to sing. He sat in the pews that morning, and, by chance, happened to sit in the pew where some member of the church typically sat. I happened to be standing near the back of the sanctuary when the woman in whose place Jesse was sitting, stomped out the door muttering about “that boy sitting in my place.”
I thought about Jesse this week.
None of those stories will be written large in the history of American racial politics, but the stories of the least of these sisters and brothers are our stories, too. For whatever is done to those who live their lives in history’s shadows is done also to Christ.
I thought, also, about all the good church folks in the white mainline churches in those days who disagreed with racism, but found discussion of it in church to be disagreeable, to be too political. But when the status quo is unjust the failure to address it – no matter how uncomfortable addressing it may make us – the failure to address it condemns us all.
“When I was hungry, you did not offer me food … when I was scared to get on the bus you did not offer me comfort … when I was treated rudely in a house of worship you did not speak up for me … when I was in danger on the country highways you did not risk your safety for my dignity.”
Dr. King’s Letter from the Birmingham City Jail was addressed to the church and its leaders. His words still ring true:
There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
In fact, though my heart soared watching the Obama family astride the stage of history in Chicago’s Grant Park Tuesday evening, my heart broke as I watched the election returns on California’s Proposition 8 show that, despite our progress as a people, bigotry is alive and well. And in the aftermath of that defeat, I have heard people, young and not so young, whose disappointment with the church has turned to outright disgust as leaders working in the name of Christ led the way in inscribing injustice in the law in yet another state.
You see, working for justice is not optional for Christians. It is who we become when we are baptized into Christ Jesus – we become the body of Christ in the world, his hands reaching out to help those in need, his feet walking the long dusty road toward justice, his heart defining justice always in terms of love and mercy and compassion for those who are history’s victims.
Such work in the world is inherently political because it has to do with the way we order life in the city, the polis, and it always involves power. As Frederick Douglas observed, “power concedes nothing without a fight,” and an unjust status quo always favors those who have power. But the redistribution of social power is not the work of any single political party or philosophy.
When God calls us to let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream, scripture does not specify the plumbing. There will be good and faithful ideas from left and from right and from in between, from those who call themselves Republicans, from those who call themselves Democrats and from those who claim no party – all simply seeking the most effective ways to let those streams run clear.
The measure of our politics, and of the church’s engagement, must not be secular partisanship, but rather spiritual discernment. What is justice? Matthew 25 paints a clear picture: justice in scripture is concerned with sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it to them. It is never perfect and complete, but is rather the journey of faithful living.
To those who are hungry belongs something to eat. To those who thirst belongs clean water. To those who are homeless belongs shelter. To those who huddle cold against winter’s chill belongs warm clothing. To those who are sick and without healthcare coverage belongs healing and compassion. To those who are held in prisons belongs justice. To those who are unemployed belongs an economic system that is fair. To those who love belongs the right to have that love recognized by civil society and by a church that recognizes that God has created us all equal and loves us all. To those whose lives are disrupted and devastated by violence belongs peace. To those who are voiceless and powerless belongs a seat at the tables where decisions are made.
To each and every one of us belongs a seat at the table that is set for us in the center of the beloved community toward which we journey with every step we take toward justice. May God guide our feet in the paths of righteousness, toward a highway of justice, in the ways of peace. Amen.