Staying Power
sermon by Alan Taylor
delivered January 16, 2000
at the Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church

First Reading: from A Strange Freedom, Howard Thurman

It was above the timberline. The steady march of the forest had stopped as if some invisible barrier had been erected beyond which no trees dared move even in single file. Beyond was barrenness, sheer rocks, snow patches and strong untrammeled winds. Here and there were short tufts of evergreen bushes that had somehow managed to survive. They were not lush, they lacked the kind of grace of the vegetation below the timberline, but they were alive and hardy. These were not ordinary shrubs… They were growing as vines along the ground, and what seemed to be patches of stunted shrubs were rows of branches of growing, developing trees. What must have been the tortuous frustration and the stubborn battle that had finally resulted in the strange phenomenon! It is as if the tree had said, "I am destined to reach for the skies and embrace in my arms the wind, the rain, the snow and the sun, singing my song of joy to all the heavens. But this I cannot do. I have taken root beyond the timberline, and yet I do not want to die. I must not die. I shall make a careful survey of my situation and work out a method, a way of life, that will yield growth and development for me despite the contradictions under which I must eke out my days. In the end I may not look like the other trees, I may not be what all that is within me cries out to be. But I will not give up. I will use to the full every resource in me and about me to answer life with life. In so doing, I shall affirm that this is the kind of universe that sustains, upon demand, the life that is in it." I wonder if I dare to act even as the tree acts. I wonder!

Second Reading: from "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr.

I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: 'All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.' Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this

generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of (people) willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always rope to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

Sermon:

How many of you remember the moment you learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.? I guess you could say that I was in North Carolina, but more accurately I was in my mother's womb, seven months into her pregnancy. So I don't remember. But I do remember the story of the minister who inspired me to go into ministry. His name is Rob Eller-Isaacs. He was a teenager in 1968, growing up in Chicago, Hyde Park—one of the most urban areas in America. Rob has Jewish background, and earlier in his childhood he sang in an interfaith children’s choir that was held at the historic First Unitarian Church of Chicago, renowned for its social action projects in the ‘60s. When the news reached Rob on that fateful day in April, he wandered outside, ran into a friend who had also just heard the news. With tears of rage, despair, and helplessness, these two adolescents walked their neighborhood, and almost without thinking, entered the church in which they sang as youngsters and had given them hope that King’s dream and vision was possible. No one was in the building. Rob and his friend climbed up into the bell tower, and started ringing. The bell in that church was quite heavy and it took considerable strength to pull the rope and ring the bell. When one of them was exhausted from the work, the other would take over. For what must have seemed an eternity, the two boys, in their grief and confusion, simply rang that bell until they just couldn’t do it any more. When they descended the bell tower, they found the church full of people, who like them didn’t know what to do and where to go when hearing of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. As the church bells rang, people of all colors came into the sanctuary to weep, to mourn, and to comfort one another that their greatest hero was murdered.

I might not be remembering all the details of Rob’s story correctly, but I do know, that every year as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rob’s story inspires me to remember King’s extraordinary vision. Most people remember King for taking leadership in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. also was an influential peace activist. Upon receiving the Nobel Peace prize, he said in his acceptance speech:

On that fateful day, as the bells rung from the tower of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago and people gathered within its walls to grieve and comfort one another, there were far different reactions all over the country. In Kansas City, a former parishioner of mine in Littleton told me he watched people come out of their homes and dance in the street. Many people were jubilant that the man responsible for the furthering of human civil rights within America was now dead. When John shared with me this story, I was shocked. I naively thought, that because we celebrate King’s memory today, that he had captured the nation’s soul. I share this story to remind us how fearful and how hateful human beings can be.

I am curious, how many of you know for whom the county we are worshipping in is named? That a large number of us are unaware of the namesake of King county in which both Woodinville and Seattle are in, attests to the need for us to talk with our children and our friends about Martin’s life and dream. This week, we celebrate the life and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. because he refused to be silent about the injustices and oppression around him. He courageously advocated for a society without racism. His message gave hope and purpose to people of all colors who had their backs against the wall, people who are like the trees above the timberline. He was a Baptist minister who found the basis for the Christian religion to be far from what many Christians were practicing. He preached love—not just kindness or good feelings, but the love that manifests in actions. He put his own life on the line, getting arrested during acts of non-violent civil disobedience, as he demanded that America wake up and face its widespread oppression. While in jail, he received a letter from another Christian who told him, "The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Martin knew that the teachings of Christ come to earth just as quickly as people of faith take those teachings to heart and manifest them in their actions. He was well versed in Gandhi’s understanding of the truth force, that the individual can make a difference in the world by staying true to one’s deepest convictions. He called on our nation to stop waiting and stop being silent in the face of oppression—for those non-actions simply enable and tacitly promote oppression. And he convinced enough people to make constructive use of their time, such that hundreds of thousands of people marched with him, supported his vision, and saw to it that oppression be addressed in the here and now. In a word, he made his dream the dream of much of the nation.

We have made progress, even though prejudice and economic disparity run rampant in our society. David Massengill, a folk singer has this to share:

In nineteen hundred and sixty-three

In my hometown, Bristol, Tennessee

I was sitting on my mother's knee

Watching Amos and Andy on T.V.

Amos was Santa Claus on Christmas Eve

A little girl was tugging at his sleeve

Saying, "Can I have a doll my own color, please?"

He said, "Honey, you can make believe."

Massengill then tells the story how just then the mayor is on the phone. Listening in on his father’s conversation, the mayor says "The Freedom Riders are on their way. We must stop them because they want to disobey our laws and de-segregate our schools. There is talk about much of the civil rights movement. At the end of the song:

The Ku Klux Klan is still around

With a permit to march in my home town

But only on Virginia's ground

The Tennessee side turned them down

Sheriff stood there with his deputies

Ostensibly to keep the peace

But he made us this guarantee

"By god, they'll not march into Tennessee."

The network cameras were triple-tiered

We laughed and cried, we hooted and jeered

But mostly we stood there unfeared

'Til the Ku Klux Klan disappeared

In some far-off distant dawn

When a black is President and not a pawn

Will they burn crosses on the White House lawn

And talk of all those days bygone

Last Christmas Eve at the K-Mart store

A white family there, they was dirt poor

Father said, "Kids, pick one toy, no more

Even though we can ill-afford"

I watched his son choose a basketball

The oldest girl a creosole shawl

The littlest girl chose a black-skinned doll

And she held it to her chest in awe

I watched to see how they'd react

Since they were white and the doll was black

But the mom and dad were matter-of-fact

They just checked to see if the doll was cracked.

Carter Heyward, a theologian who came of age during the civil rights movement, writes: Three decades later some folks, including lots of "60s people," deride that moment in our recent past as a poignant one of dreams that either could never have been realized ("the Age of Aquarius") or already have (as if racism were a thing of the past). This repudiation is either a dismissal of the power of a dream or the failure to make connections between what was achieved during that turbulent decade and what was not. For people who lived during this period or who have met it mainly through media and oral tradition to disavow the 60s as hopelessly idealistic and cuturally chaotic or as a long ago time which is no longer ours is to turn away from a wellspring of our most sacred power to participate in shaping our own historical moment.

I am unsure, here in Woodinville, how we, in a largely white and wealthy community, embrace the dream of overcoming oppression. It's hard. It's difficult. When churches talk about it, the message is often about the oppression we all suffer. There are the psychological and cultural realities that oppress all of us, but it must not be forgotten that we who are privileged with creature comforts and high tech toys have a harsh reality to address--whether we as human beings are perpetuating the oppression of other human beings by the way we choose to live. It is easy to forget, in our isolated world, here on the north end of the eastside, that people not that far away are going hungry, are struggling. Some are turning to drugs and violence, others become disillusioned lost souls, and the majority, I believe, in their struggle, live in dignity, daring to act like the trees above the timberline.

Adrienne Rich, lesbian African American poet, wrote in the spirit of King:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:

So much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age,

perversely, with no extraordinary power,

reconstitute the world.

To dream, to courageously imagine a world free of oppression, this takes staying power. I ask, reflecting on Adrienne Rich's words. Is your heart moved by all you cannot save? Are you willing to face what has been destroyed? Know that you are not alone in confronting times of despair, helplessness, and confusion. And know that you and I, with no extraordinary power, but by acting with integrity on our commitment to solidarity, we contribute to the reconstituting of the world.

In closing, I ask that this week you allow the words of Martin Luther King Jr to open your heart to the great work that is yet before us. From the Speech at the Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963:

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

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that 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!"

Blessed be. Amen.