The Inclusive Community -- Epiphany 2
Martin Luther King Day
By Charles Rush
January 20, 2002
Matthew 22: 1-10
r text this morning speaks of a profound human hope, the possibility of an inclusive community, where we all find our place. The text makes clear that means all of us-the brilliant, the witty, and the boneheads as well. That means my extended family will also be there, a great comfort to many of them. What do I mean? The following story is true. It could easily be about people related to me. The person who sent it to me suggested filing it under the category, ‘Serious Boneheads.'
Recently
a man in Michigan decided to buy a new Lincoln Navigator for $42,500. He drove
it off the lot, called up his buddy, and decided to break in his off road
vehicle, Michigan style. They got the Labrador Retrievers and the guns, headed
up to the pond to do some duck hunting. It is a particular thrill in Michigan
for boys because you get to drive your new truck right out there on the frozen
lake this time of year, which they did. They pile the dogs out of the SUV, they
get out the guns.
They
need to cut a hole in the ice to attract the ducks. One of them has taken care
of this in advance. No need for a chain saw. He pulls out a hefty stick of
dynamite with a 40 second fuse on it, illicitly obtained from a Construction
company. That ought to do the trick. They stand around for a while debating how
to ignite it. The two options seem to be set it down and run or light it and
toss. They decide that slipping while running away is too likely, so they
decide to light it and toss, which they do, an impressive heave that would have
made Brett Favre proud.
No
sooner had they released the projectile dynamite, than they remembered that
they forgot to leash the dogs. One of the Labrador Retrievers, doing what he
had been bred to do over hundreds of generations, ran after the dynamite and
picked it up, joyously panting as he lopped back toward Master. Master and
friend are now panicked. They call off the dog to no avail. Loading their
shotguns as quickly as possible, they fire at the dog.
Using
number 8 bird shot with light load, they hit the dog but only scare it. The dog
stops for a minute, looks about confused. Scared and befuddled, it runs towards
master with resolve, so Master fires a couple more shots at the dog. Now the
dog is terrified, so it runs for cover, right under the new Lincoln
Navigator, recently purchased for $42,500.
Boom
goes the dog, down goes the car, Master and friend are left to walk home,
wondering how this all came to pass. More than that, how to explain this to the
wife. They stop on the way home to report this to the insurance company. More
bad news. The agent explains, as tactfully as possible, that sinking a
vehicle in a lake by the illegal use of explosives is not covered under his
policy, and that technically he was obligated to report the willful destruction
of wild life to the Game Warden. He was last heard, muttering, “but I
have yet to make a single payment of the $42,500…” And you think your
family has problems.
All
the cool people, all the normal people, begged off the wedding feast, an even
that took weeks to plan and had days worth of banquet feasts ready to go. So
the owner said, ‘Go to the highways and by-ways, invite the poor, the
boneheaded, those who don't know enough to come in out of the rain- that my
table might be full with feasting and good fellowship.' So that, in other
words, even your Uncle Bob and your useless cousin Lily might find a place. It
is a wonderful, hopeful image, that we all have a place.
I
got to thinking about that recently in a moment of nostalgia for a simpler
time, the early days of the Civil Rights movement in our Country. I had been
reading several articles in Foreign Affairs and I had a moment of
longing for simplicity.
Though
I can no longer remember it exactly, my first spiritual awakening happened as a
small child of 5 or 6, the very early 60's in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was
listening to adults speak as racists since children back then were
strangely invisible. It was seeing Black men come asking for a fair days wage
for doing lawn service, only to be bargained down to Colored level wages by the
ladies on our block. It was hearing the not so subtle way that
African-Americans were relegated to perpetual duty in the service sector of
society. It was the many social encounters between Whites and Blacks in which
Blacks had to acknowledge a not so subtle deference to White authority and
White power.
I
believe that I had the first Black teacher in an all white school district in 4th
grade, Mrs. Fowler. Some of the neighbors thought the world had gone to hell in
a handbag. I remember this woman being on stage. Like so many of her
generation, she was over-educated, perfect diction and grammar, eloquent
handwriting, overly-professional in every way. I'm sure she felt she had to
earn every grudging point of respect that she got to the point that she did not
feel she could have ordinary human faults. She just wanted to be given a chance
to prove she could be excellent and she was. It was painful for all of us but
it had to be done- for the great contradiction at the heart of Southern
society to be exposed in all of its puss- it's violence, it's meanness.
Every
white person I knew had some story about some Black person they had such a deep
relationship with, that meant so much to them. But the majority of them were
just mean when it came to issues of justice, of fairness.
But
that was changing. Attitudes were changing. You heard Christians at church
struggling in Sunday School with texts about treating your neighbor as
yourself. Because Dr. King and many, many others raised these questions so
articulately, people were starting to wrestle with them and grow.
Looking
back it seemed like such a simple thing. Really White folks and Black folks had
so very much in common. All the White people in Arkansas were either Methodist,
Baptist, Pentecostal, or ‘Reprobate'. All the African-Americans were either
Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, or ‘Beyond the Pail'. It seemed like all we
had to do was just read our bibles and talk to each other. We were the
only people in our country that could actually understand what each other was
saying. That was something to build on right there. We were the only people in
the country who actually ate grits, who fried catfish or thought lima beans
were tasty.
We all
had the same simple American dreams for our families. It seemed like all we had
to do was shut up the racists, integrate our neighborhoods, integrate our
police force, integrate our political system, educate our children, open the
doors of opportunity in higher education and jobs, and things would just work
out.
I
don't want to diminish for a minute the very important progress that has taken
place in the last forty years. It has been profound and important. Racism is in
the closet. It hasn't gone away but it's like smoking… you have to go outside
to do it, and, by and large, that crowd gets smaller every year. And the
positive contributions that have been made by the flowering of African-American
achievement in all aspects of American culture has been profound.
But
that first round of Civil Rights was simpler. Just dealing with the legacy of
slavery, just up-ending the embarrassing history of Jim Crow laws that made
discrimination legal in our country, that seemed like enough.
Before
we could even get through a thorough job of atonement there, we began to
realize that there were other issues we needed to attend to also- the
embarrassing legacy of Native Americans in our country, the narrowly
circumscribed social reins on Jewish neighbors, the half-legitimate
citizenship of our Mexican migrant workers, and a richly developing
tapestry of different immigrant Latino cultures that you couldn't reduce
to one Hispanic monolith. The breadth and the shape of the inclusive community
got way more complex- more ethnic groups, different religious traditions, more
different cultural values and mores. This became very complex quickly.
And
in the last two decades, since the downfall of the Iron Curtain, the political
boundaries that limited the purview of our spiritual imagination have fallen
too. The tape on human development has fast-forwarded towards a genuine
global consciousness for the first time in our collective history. The
intimacy of our global village has descended upon us far faster than our
ability to assimilate to our new neighbors.
I dare
say four months ago, not one of us in this room could speak for more than 3
minutes extemporaneously on Afghanistan; none of us could speak for 2 minutes
on anything intelligent about Islam- that bet probably still stands; none of us
could speak for 1 minute on Militant Islam. Suddenly we were awash in
television reporting from Afghanistan. But a couple weeks ago, I saw a reporter
talking to an ordinary peasant in the countryside of Afghanistan, about the
World Trade Towers. He had never heard of them… never heard of any plane
hitting them. The countryside in the distance was being bombed by American
planes. He had no idea why. The reporter explained that Afghanistan has been
virtually blacked out for news for quite a while, but especially for the past
several months.
We
haven't yet caught up to our global village. It has become apparent, in the
past few months, that we will not be able to sustain a meaningful peace in the
next decade without bringing substantial resolution to the impasse between the
Palestinians and the Israeli's. In order to do that, we have to understand
their political and spiritual purview.
We
haven't yet caught up to our global village. As we speak, there is a
mounting tension between Pakistan and India over Kashmir and both countries are
posturing for war in a conflict that will most certainly have global
ramifications if it comes to that. Again, I dare say that any of us could speak
intelligently for more than 1 minute about what is at stake in Kashmir for both
countries, despite the fact that this region has been the subject of conflict
between them for nearly 50 years.
We
haven't yet caught up to our global village .Again, it is obvious that
Somalia could quickly become the next training center for would-be terrorists
since there is no government there, just tribal warlords that control various
regions. With effectively no economy, they can be bought cheaply. Violence is
their way of life, so terrorism would be no stretch at all. We are beginning to
see that our national security is dependent on their social stability and that
won't be achieved without some understanding of why their economy is so
woefully underdeveloped.
I
could go on and on, but the point is obvious enough to all of us here. Our
world is increasingly interdependent and a global vision of the inclusive
community must catch up with the reality the global village in which we live.
“Some
years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of
suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this
one: "A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to
live together." This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited
a large house, a great "world house" in which we have to live
together–black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic
and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu–a family unduly separated in ideas, culture
and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow
to live with each other in peace”.[1]The
spiritual vision isn't gone, it is just much bigger than we originally
conceived it.
We need not despair over the scope of the mission ahead,
just because it seems so far away at the moment. There are two things that we
must do. The first is prayer. Our generation will be one remembered for
it's prayer for a genuine world community that we will evolve into in the
fullness of time. We will be the people that see the future, that pray for the
vision, and that is important.
I was reminded of that this week. I had coffee a couple
days ago with a Lutheran pastor from Leipzig Germany. He was my age, grew up in
Communist East Germany. He had never been to the U.S. but his daughter is an Au
Pere for Joy and Larry Rock and his daughter hooked us up.
When I was child, we had just passed through the Cuban
missle crisis, the Communist world and the Free world were probably as far
apart and as tense as they would get. I used to pray as a child for an end to
the impasse. We prayed about that through all of my youth. I prayed about that
after college, got involved in some groups, went to Washington several times. I
shared this with the pastor. You know what he said? He said, ‘I was praying
too. We all were praying for a peaceful resolution to the impasse.'
For years, it seemed like nothing was changing. For years
and years, it seemed like we were destined to live in a divided world for our
lifetime. I asked him how the change happened. And this gets me to the second
thing that we must do, in addition to prayer.
He said that tensions were mounting in Eastern Germany
focused on a protest over the Berlin Wall. All manner of different groups
suddenly blossomed to demand it be torn down. Even though the Church was weak
in Eastern Germany under Communism, the pastors ended up playing a critical
role of organizing all these disparate groups because they were the only people
that everyone trusted.
Meanwhile the Stazi, the Communist secret police, were
gearing up to handle this protest, quell a great riot and re-establish order
after it was over. The ministers met, concerned over the potential violence
that could happen. They implemented something that they learned from Dr. King.
They handed out candles to all the protesters for an evening vigil. They spoke
to the people before the protest about the importance of remaining calm and
non-violent. Then they walked. They walked towards the Berlin wall. They walked
right up to the police that were standing in a line in front of the Wall. And
they walked right through.
Later, when they asked the Stazi why they let them pass.
You know what they said? They said, “We were prepared for 10 different
scenario's. But Ministers leading the people with candles was not one of them.”
We pray, we pray, and one day, in the fullness of time,
things come together and the whole world changes. God is still in the business
of change.
Dr. King, Mohandas Gandhi, and all the early protestors
in the Civil Rights movement, made a creative spiritual leap forward. They had
the teachings of Jesus to point them in a direction, but they took those
teachings and creatively showed us another way forward, a guide for our future.
They showed us the way of non-violent resistance. One thing they don't teach
the kids in school is just how important the Church was in developing
non-violent resistance. It did not come naturally. It was a disposition that
was very difficult to maintain in the midst of firehoses, dogs, and racists
screaming obscenities.
What the schools neglect to tell the children is that
before those marches took place, the people involved in them went to church
services that lasted a long time. They went to many lectures bracing the people
for what they would endure, training them how to respond, how to maintain their
spiritual discipline, their spiritual composure. They were very clear about the
high personal costs. They were trained, schooled in the Church.
It will be the way forward. Terrorism won't work. It
won't win any gains for long term settlement. But I read an article a few weeks
ago, it might have been in the New York Times. It was written by an Israeli
journalist on a small, fledgling peace movement in the West Bank. It described
non-violent protest that was broken up by the Israeli army. The author said
this. The Israeli Army is far more afraid of these protestors than they are
of terrorists because they know that these protestors will win eventually.
As long as it is a contest of arms, the Israeli's have the upper hand. Non-violent
protest puts matters before the Court of World Opinion. It lays a moral claim
on our conscience. And a just claim of conscience erodes the will to
oppression. The long arc of human history bends toward justice. It is
not inevitable but God is pulling us in that direction. Sometimes because of
ourselves, sometimes in spite of ourselves, sometimes because there is no other
option, we will eventually become the inclusive community, the just community.
Let us so pray and act that we might be part of the solution rather than part
of the problem.
Amen.
[1] See the
resource at
http://www.forusa.org/nonviolence/MLK_WorldHouse.html
© 2002 .
All rights reserved