Sunday, January 19, 2025
1.
If Dr. King were alive today, at the height of his spiritual and intellectual influence, he would not be traveling to Washington to attend an Inauguration Ball. He wouldn’t be hobnobbing in black tie with the billionaires who run Tesla and Amazon and Facebook. If Dr. King were alive today, at the height of his spiritual and intellectual influence, he’d probably be flying to Tel Aviv or Gaza to hold leaders there accountable for their ceasefire promises. If he were alive today, he might be organizing sit-ins at ICE offices, maybe airports, all over the country, blocking the doors or jamming the tarmac, every time agents set out to deport a refugee seeking shelter and safety in America. If Dr. King were alive today, he might be in New Orleans with the families who lost loved ones on New Year’s Eve, or in Los Angeles with the communities whose homes and churches have burned to the ground this month, or in a state capitol somewhere fighting for a ban on assault weapons in our streets. He would not be in Washington tomorrow, Dr. King, not for a ball or a parade anyway; we know that. He’d be risking his own safety, his own reputation even, to comfort the afflicted with grace, and then to afflict the comfortable with the gospel of love. He lived just 39 years among us. And this is how he lived them: comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable. And his memory will forever be a blessing to us all.
But the ironies this weekend are more than simply obvious; they’re heartbreaking. That tomorrow we inaugurate an American President who has (in no particular order) openly mocked the disabled, gladly abused women and lied about it, refused to rent New York apartments to people of color, called for the death penalty for innocent black teens, celebrated police brutality in Minneapolis and elsewhere, conspired with foreign leaders to tilt American elections in his own favor, and…and…conspired with white supremacists and Christian nationalists to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in an election he clearly lost. I say these things out loud not so much for us this morning, because you know and I know, but for those who come after us.
In my heart, friends, I would like to offer to you all a word of consolation this morning, maybe even a confident word of reassurance. I’d like to lean on the gravitas of this pulpit and speak from the richness of Christian tradition, and I’d like to tell you that all will be well, that everything will work out alright. For you and me, for America, for the planet. I’d like very much to preach a gospel of prosperity for all who believe, a message of grace that protects us from our own mistakes and the mistakes of countless others. And I’d like to say—how I’d like to say—that God will make sure it all turns out for us in the end, that God won’t let bad things happen to good people. This week, this month, this year.
But that wouldn’t be faithful, friends, not to the world we’re living in and not to the gospel we treasure in our hearts and receive from the many friends of Jesus. For the promise of his gospel is not that it all turns out well for us in the end. And I say this carefully, even tenderly, I hope. The promise of the gospel is not that it all turns out well for us. If that were so, Gaza would be free and the Holy Land would be holy for all. If that were so, bigotry would be no more and George Floyd and Michael Brown still running the streets with their friends. If that were so, we could pray our way out of the next climate catastrophe. If things always worked out for the faithful, for the weak, for the beloved, then God would be powerful: all-powerful, capable and determined to do anything at any time to heal broken peoples and turn the tide of history toward justice. A mighty god. To be honest, many would prefer a god whose power is unrivaled, a god whose strength is unquestioned, a god who pulls all the strings and does whatever He or She pleases. I get it. A mighty god. I wake up a lot of mornings wishing for that kind of god in my life, in my world. A god who just makes things right. Who always wins in the end.
2.
So Paul says, in Second Corinthians, that Love sets our hearts ablaze so that we might shed light on the knowledge of God’s glory in Jesus. And we shine not through our invincibility, not through our great accomplishments, and not because faith makes us smart and great either. We shine because we are loved. We are perfectly imperfect and we are loved. We are prone to stumbling and bumbling and we are loved. We are “cracked pots made of earth and clay” and we are loved. And so it is—beloved—that we might shed light upon the forgotten peoples of our cities. And so it is that we might shed light where darkness frightens friends and neighbors. And so it is that we might shed light and grace and hope where we wander and work. Because God is love and we are loved and honored and redeemed and renewed by God’s love over and over and over again. The same love that makes the world go round. The same love the melts the snow in springtime. The same love that bears the swallows home again for summer.
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about doubt, and the central (even essential) place of doubt in a faithful life. And I do look at the world these days, at my country these days, and the commitments that mean the most to me—and I have all kinds of doubts about where we go from here and who gets hurt now, and why it has to happen that way. I have doubts about God’s capacity to meet so much despair with meaningful engagement and purposeful redemption. These doubts are real for me. If I’m honest.
But my friends, I have no doubt, zero doubt, that God is love. Of this I am, at least, not only convinced but gladdened to the point of joy and the deepest kind of gratitude. For this I am willing to serve, and risk, and offer my every breath. God is love. Love offering peace to enemies, the possibility of reconciliation beyond the madness of war. Love inviting the lonely and lost to a table of plenty, to a feast of mercy. Love meeting cruelty and misery with compassion, and never, ever exhausted in caring for us and hoping with us and believing in us. Because God is love and we are loved—every one of us, loved beyond imagining—because God is love and we are loved, we shine, you and I; we shine like the sun in a world of shadow and darkness. And believe me, our shining is more important, more urgent than ever before.
3.
But Paul knows that this kind of faith, this kind of discipleship will not be universally appreciated. This kind of faith, this kind of discipleship will not be consistently effective. Again God is much less interested in our success than our loving, much less concerned with our victories than our service.
And Dr. King, of all people, Dr. King knew this so well. To love as Jesus loves is to know both fragility and even failure. To practice nonviolence without malice is to face disappointment, and even distress. To embody and embrace ‘ahimsa’ (as Gandhi believed) or ‘agape’ (as the Gospels do) is to face cruelty and ridicule. The world celebrates muscle and magic. Jesus promises mercy and grace. And there’s a difference. Christianity is all about that difference.
So Paul says: “We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned.” So, church, I can’t promise you a gospel of prosperity, or a spirituality of greatness, or even a life of Christ-like achievements. And God’s not interested in all that anyway. But I can tell you this. Whatever happens in your loving, whatever comes of your kindness, whatever good we do together and whatever disappointments we suffer, God is love, and that love is never, ever, ever withheld. So “we focus on the things we cannot see.” We receive this gift, this love that none can take, that none can diminish. And we follow the example of Love’s troubadour, dance to the steps of the Lord of the Dance. That’s what we do.
I spent two very special days in Florida this week, visiting and studying with my colleagues Laila and Ghassan Manasra. Palestinian peacemakers. Muslim mystics. Fearless friends. Ghassan’s been here to visit us in Durham a couple of times over the past year and a half. And Laila and Ghassan have moved their family of sixteen to Florida—four generations of Manasras under a single roof in Sarasota—because of the violence they’ve experienced over the past twenty years in Israel and Jerusalem. Because of threats to their family. Because one son was beaten within a breath of his life by radical Muslim fundamentalists. Because Jewish friends no longer answer their calls.
And sitting with the two of them at their table this week, praying with them as a half-dozen grandchildren scurried around the house, reading scripture and poetry and conjuring projects for peace—I was reminded that they too have devoted their entire lives to a God who does not and will not promise them prosperity and greatness. A God who can’t protect their family from physical violence and cruelty. They devote every day, every prayer, every conversation to a God who is meek and vulnerable, kind and gentle, willing to suffer for love, for justice, for peace.
Laila and Ghassan have been “cracked and chipped” as so many of their contemporaries have been—in service to God’s love, in dedication to God’s mercy. And they go on doing it. Not because God’s power overwhelms them, and not because God’s wrath frightens them, but because God’s love makes their hearts glad and their spirits strong. Laila and Ghassan have sacrificed almost everything familiar, their homeland, culture and friends, for a God who is only, and always, and forever Love. No guarantees of success. More than a few doubts and worries along the way. But Love endures, always; Love endures. The love that has protected their souls from cynicism, the grace that has softened their spirits in hard times, the mercy that guides their weary hearts through a maze of human cruelty, war and even madness. God’s love turns out to be its own strange and resilient kind of power: not the power to defeat armies, not the power to make millions, and not even the power to make everything turn out right. But the power to love and pray, to forgive and believe, to keep the human heart tender and open to friend and foe alike.
4.
I imagine many of you have listened to Dr. King’s last sermon in Memphis, the night before he was shot and killed, or maybe you’ve read it, the text. How he stands in the midst of his people that night, weary and ragged in every way. How he looks out at his congregation of activists and dreamers and believers, and says that he can (just the same) see the promised land. From where he’s standing. Though he knows he may not get there. Though he senses danger and violence and even anticipates his own death in the hours to come. And in that moment, in that sermon, in Dr. King’s voice—it’s possible to hear other voices. Harriet Tubman, for one. Sojourner Truth. W.E.B. Du Bois. Malcolm X. Frederick Douglass. So many voices.
How is it, then, that a 39 year-old peacemaker can claim victory, can celebrate Love’s triumph—in the hour of his defeat, even his demise? And I wonder if this isn’t precisely where Martin Luther King, Jr. reveals to us the faith—even the Christian faith—that really and truly sets us free. For we do not love to be great, and we do not organize to be victorious, and we do not serve to be lauded and congratulated and revered by our peers. We love because God has first loved us. We love and organize and serve because Love alone reveals the heart of the matter, the face of God, the reason for our being and the future we anticipate for our neighbors, for the nations and for every child on the face of the earth.
And though we be cracked and chipped in the process, and though we be persecuted for our advocacy and loving, and though we be mocked and targeted and (who knows in this new administration) maybe even locked up for our compassion, we can do nothing else. For God is Love. And we have been claimed and named by that Love. In that Love alone is our salvation. And the hope of planet earth.
So get a good night’s sleep. Shovel some snow in the morning. Say your prayers for the frightened ones, for the vulnerable, for the prophets of peace. Watch the inauguration tomorrow if you have to. And then thank God for the love, for the love, for the love that makes the world go round. Decide to do something (just something, one thing) tomorrow that shines with grace and compassion. Write a letter to your senator. Join me for our vigil Tuesday in Manchester. Sign up for next weekend’s nonviolence training. Thank God for the love that makes the world go round. Because that’s the thing, that’s the thing that’s going get us through this week and all the weeks to come.
Amen and Ashe.
