A Sermon Preached by
Rob Lee
January 17th, 2016
Martin
Luther King Celebration, First Baptist Church on Garfield Street
I
remember growing up in Sunday School singing that famous Sunday School hymn,
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let
it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” I want you to hold that song in your heart
as we hear God’s word today from Eugene H. Peterson’s the Message, in Genesis
the 1st chapter, verses 26-28, and 31a.
“God
spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature
so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the
cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of
Earth.” God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s
nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce!
Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the
air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”… God looked over
everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!"
Will
you pray with me?
God of
our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us this far on
the way; Thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in
the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee, shadowed
beneath thy hand, may we ever stand, true to our God, true to our native land.
Amen
Have
you ever been so close to God that you could reach out your hand and touch the
Spirit that binds us all together? Have you ever been to a place or with a
person whose presence brings you close to the Divine in ways you had never
expected or thought possible? I want to spend my time tonight talking about two
people in my life who have given me a dream for a beloved community. One of
them is part of the Church Triumphant looking down on us today, and the other
is sitting in this very room.
My first encounter with race came
before I even hit preschool. My parents had hired a babysitter to look after me
while they worked. Janie Bowman was a lady 60 years my senior, but nonetheless
we bonded and I tried to emulate her in every way, down to trying to limp like
her and follow her around incessantly. But as I grew I noticed something that
bothered me, Janie refused to drink out of the same glasses that my family did.
She would insist on bringing hers from home because that was the culture in
which she had lived for so long. We were separated by the deep chasm of race.
Janie would always remind me we were different, until one day in desperation I
screamed, “We aren’t different, you aren’t different from me.” I don’t tell
this story to say that I’ve always known from an early age about the
intricacies of the racial divide. But what I do say is that for me, Janie was
part of what we at the Divinity School at Duke call Imago Dei, the image of
God. For me, my conceptions of faith and how to treat people at my earliest age
comes from Janie Bowman who joined the Church triumphant some years ago.
The other lady I have in mind is a
lady we know as Sister Bertha Hamilton. A faithful saint, I am confident I am
closest to God in those moments I am with her. For in her actions and in her
speech, she shows us that we are all irreplaceable icons of a loving and living
God. That is what I am here to say
today: We are all created in the image of God, and we all deserve to be treated
as such.
Did you hear the text I read
earlier? God created us in God’s image! All of us, there was no stipulation
that said one race had the image of God over the other! God intended for the
image of God to be in all of us, and completes that by the power of the Spirit
that resides in our very souls. When we turned away and our loved failed in the
first sin and every time we have sinned since, we see that we have damaged the
image of God. We have hurt ourselves and others for the sake of preserving what
we think is best for society. And that is when God weeps.
You see when the world says black
lives don’t matter God says they do matter. When persons committed to
preserving and protecting public trust gun down or choke black men, God weeps. When
children like Tamir Rice are gunned down, God’s heart breaks. When races
perpetrate violence against one another because of social location, religion,
or socioeconomic status we damage the image that God intended for us to be. But
as the prophet Malachi said, God will stand as refiner’s fire and fuller’s
soap, God will purify the descendants of Levi and make them worthy to present
sacrifices to the Lord. If the people of God don’t stand up to stop the racist,
sexist and homophobic overtures being taken by governments and persons of
privilege then the stones are going to start crying out.
You see there’s a reason Esther had
to hear from Mordecai that she was meant for such a time as this. Because
Esther, out of fear had become blind to the suffering of the people. Have we
become blind to the suffering of people? Have we forgotten the image of God
that was instilled in people like Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland,
Jonathan Ferrell, and countless others? For if we start seeing racism as the
grievous sin that it is, something that God doesn’t intend for us, then we can
no longer sit back and do nothing.
We must be people who look in the
faces of those who have been hurt by racism and say, “You were created good, so
very good, in the image of God, in fact.” And then we must combat that racism
at its source and begin to fight the bonds that have held African Americans for
far too long. We must say to the world that the church says black lives matter,
and we must back up our words with actions.
We must adapt the words of Dr. King that
suggest that if we want to dream about the New Jerusalem or the promises God
has for us, we have to start with the new New York, the new Los Angeles, the
new Memphis Tennessee, dare I say the new Statesville. For in these trying
times for race relations we see tokens of trust that God is not done with us
yet. God has not brought us this far to leave us here alone.
You
know it is a bit peculiar for me to be speaking at this worship service this
night. Years ago in the 19th century at Arlington Plantation my
family owned slaves; in that time my family fought to keep this nation
separated on the basis of race. I tell you this not out of asking for pity for
the ignorance of my ancestors, but because I believe we might be acting out
part of Dr. King’s very dream this evening. In that iconic speech in the shadow
of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King proclaimed, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood.”
I can think of no better table for
you and I to be seated at than at this table, the table of grace. The table
where there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no Catholic or Protestant, a
table where black people and white people are equal not because of the color of
their skin but because of the love that God has for everyone. Let me say that again
church, we are bound together not because of race but because of love. And it
is in that love that we must create a space and place for grace on both sides
of the racial divide.
The white people of this country
need to start creating spaces for minority voices to speak the reality of their
lives to us. For me, I have not learned what it means to have white privilege
from the persons of power in white pulpits or persons in public trust. I’ve
learned what it means to celebrate the diversity of this community from people
like Janie and Sister Bertha. They have shown me that dignity and respect for
all people is paramount in our time and place. We must say at the top of our
lungs, “Dr. King had a dream and I have a dream too!” I want us to scream at
the top of our lungs, “Black lives matter.” For if God created us all in God’s
image then we are all good, we are all so very good.
So where does that leave us
realistically? We need to channel the late, great, Reverend J.C. Harris, who
preached social justice and racial equality from this pulpit for 50 years. We
need to be imitators of him, Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and the countless sung and
unsung heroes of the American Civil Rights Movement. We need to be people who
proclaim the glory of God’s hope of reconciliation.
I want you to turn to your neighbor
and say, “You were created good.” I want you to turn to your neighbor and say,
“You matter,” because in the end, we’re all in this together. Because we have a
light, a light for the nations, a hope for the people, because all of us, red
and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight. And if we have a
light, why don’t we share it just one more time together, “This little light of
mine, I’m gonna let it shine, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,
this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine,
let it shine!.”
AMEN.
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