God of the living word, give us the faith to receive your message, the wisdom to know what it means, and the courage to put it into practice. Amen.
May the light of the world be known, worshiped and obeyed to the ends of the earth. Amen.
If we have a chance to meet Jesus face to face, and if we are allowed to ask ONE question of him, what would that question be? Imagine: we stand in the sandals of the disciples. The buzz has gotten around--that this fellow, the one we call Jesus, is the true Messiah.
One day, we catch sight of Jesus and eagerly follow him down the road.
Suddenly Jesus abruptly stops and turns around. He looks us straight in the eye. “What are you looking for?” he says.
This is our long-awaited chance. They say he is the Messiah or, as one of our friends defines him, “the lamb of God.” Jesus turns to us, directly asks us a question--“What are you looking for?”-- and we freeze.
We have been confused our entire lives about all kinds of matters, creation and evolution, about salvation and judgment, about heaven and earth, and about bread and wine. We want more clear answers, we yearn to know how injustice can prevail on God’s good earth. And here at the sacred altar, at the communion rail, by the way, what’s really going on? Is it really Jesus we are eating or are the bread and wine just a symbol?
Now here is Jesus is asking us the most basic question in life, “What are you looking for?”
And all we can blurt out is, “Um, where are you staying?”
A little card given to me by a friend sits on my desk. The card has a cartoon drawing of two characters looking down what seems to be an endless pit.
The words on the card say, “Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything.”
What are we really looking for? The meaning of all life. The answer to the unanswerable questions of the universe. Who knows, maybe there’s just no basis for anything.
“But, where are you staying, Jesus?”
About fifty years ago, a group of southern clergymen of a spectrum of denominations and faiths believe they have answers to some very basic questions of peace and justice. In a letter to their community, they call for calm minds. They appeal for law, order and common sense.
People from far away are coming into towns throughout the South and organizing civil rights protests. The Birmingham clergy call for calm.
“We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified,” the Church leaders say in their letter.
Two of the signers are Bishops of the Episcopal Church in Alabama. Other signers are the local Bishop of the Methodist Church, the Moderator of the local Presbyterian Church, and a well-respected Rabbi of the Jewish faith.
On the other hand, one of the protest leaders is also a clergyman—a visitor from the neighboring state of Georgia. Arrested and imprisoned, the young clergyman, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. finds a pencil and a few scraps of paper and pencil and writes to his colleagues what we know today as “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“My dear fellow clergymen, while confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities unwise and untimely. Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”
Here, today, we all have some distance from 1963, but we must never forget what good folks can do to one another. While our children and young adults have no personal recollection of those years of anger and fear, separation and recrimination, their elders, and the history books, can inform. In our pews this morning are friends who know firsthand the pain of that era. We will never forget what good people can do to one another, and we will always seek to know how we may be more neighborly in a hurting world.
“Where are you staying, Jesus?” Maybe this question is fitting.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King writes in his jail cell. “Just as the prophets of the eighth century BC left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own hometown,” King says in his letter.
“For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait.’ Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say ‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will, and drown your sisters and brother at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers and sisters smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentment; when you know forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’ then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait,” King writes.
“Was not Jesus an extremist for love:’Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice: ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ Was not Martin Luther an extremist for activism: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.’ And Abraham Lincoln, in pragmatism: ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ And Thomas Jefferson, in declaration: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
So, Jesus, where are you staying?
The answer might offer hope when our despair feels bitter and freedom when our imprisonment feels intolerable. The place of Jesus will nourish, sustain and raise us up to be a better people.
An Eastern spiritual master is approached by a novice student. The novice asks the master, “What action shall I perform to attain God?”
The master replies, “If you wish to attain God then there are two things you must know. The first is that all efforts to attain the Divine are of no avail.”
“And the second?” the novice asks.
“You must act as if you do not know the first,” the master replies.
Just maybe there is a basis for everything.
“Where are you staying, Jesus?”
“Come and see,” Jesus replies.
“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability,” writes The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. “It comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co -workers with God.”
Come and see.
“Almighty God whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.”
Amen.
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter, a parish of The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina
Copyright ©2007 The Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter. All rights reserved.