I guess I could say I began preparing this message on Friday, April 4th.
I did not know at the time that I was preparing for a sermon at all,
no less one which would suit the lectionary texts for Holy Wednesday.
I was merely listening to a sermon being delivered by Dean Ewing at
the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Actually I was not merely listening
to the Dean’s sermon; I was truly engaged in it. No, it was even more
than that, much more; I found myself reliving the events of Dean
Ewing’s sermon as he recalled the day 35 years ago on April 4th,
1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King was struck down by an assassin’s
bullet. I was feeling the horror of that moment once again. And so
was Dean Ewing who was visibly shaken as he narrated the events of
that day, events which still open to our deepest wounds and revisit
our darkest despair. At the time of Dr. King’s death, Dean Ewing was
a young priest serving a church in Memphis. I was a young mother,
living far from Memphis, in Northeast Pennsylvania. But both the Dean
and I were actively engaged in the Civil Rights Movement. And just
like so many others, we experienced much the same abuse and
humiliation, scorn and reproach as did the psalmist and the prophet
Isaiah in our scripture lessons for this night. Even worse, many
people died in that struggle for civil rights, and many more of us
faced serious danger and the real possibility of death. I remember a
message I received unceremoniously one night from members of the local
KKK. The note threatened that if I did not stop my public support of
civil rights, my house would be burned down and my small children
taken into the woods where I would never find them again. This was a
very difficult time for me. I had virtually no fear of placing my
life in danger, but I was terribly afraid for my children. I was also
afraid of my anger and my desire to lash out in some kind of vengeful
response to this threat. The church I attended was sympathetic to my
fear, but most did not support my position on civil rights. A few
silent supporters encouraged me to silence. One, a history teacher in
our local high school told me I should find another way to express my
beliefs. Quoting from Shakespeare she said, “Remember, Donna,
‘discretion is the better part of valor.’” But discrete was not a
viable category for those who were seeking to right wrongs of
injustice in our world. It was not long after that I moved away from
that community. But I have never been able away from the
memory—especially in those times when the memory of Dr. King and the
Civil Rights Movement are honored as they were on April 4th
by the Dean of our seminary. As I became caught up in the
remembering, Dean Ewing went on to recount the extraordinary
leadership of Dr. King, and the strength and courage of civil rights
activists as they met the abuse and violence of their opponents with
non-violent direct action. Even more compelling, the Dean brought a
tape recorder and allowed Dr. King’s voice to speak for itself. It
was the voice of assurance and hope and love, even for his enemies.
The critical point for me was when we heard Dr. King’s “mountain top”
speech. Do you remember these words? “We’re going to the promised
land. I may not get there with you,” he said, but I will meet you on
the other side. “I may not get there with you.”
Those
are the words that leaped into the consciousness of so many of us the
day Dr. King died. They stung us, because they had come true. And
after the stinging, we became numb. Our hope seemed empty. Our
resolve was paralyzed by our shock. We wandered aimlessly in the
darkness of our souls, only too eager to feel something again. But
when the feeling returned all we had was our pain and anguish, our
uncertainty and despair, our grief and our loss. And now, as Dean
Ewing spoke, I found myself feeling all of that again. I remained in
those feelings for some time. When I was finally able to think about
Dean Ewing’s sermon, it occurred to me that my experience of
remembering the dark days of the Civil Rights Movement was much like
the experience we Christians will enter into beginning tonight, this
Wednesday of Holy Week, for tonight begins our dark night of
remembering. The kind of remembering which goes far beyond merely
recalling the events of our past. This is the kind of remembering
which requires us to live into it. The kind of remembering our Jewish
brethren participate in when they celebrate their religious feasts and
festivals. Or when they remember the holocaust. They remember these
events by reliving them. They participate in them as if they were
happening in the present moment, or as if they were present in them as
they happened. Such remembering is vital to their understanding of
God and their life together in community. It is vital to us a
Christians as well. For it is the same remembering we are called to
whenever we participate in the Lord’s Supper. “We remember his
suffering and death upon the cross.” We “do this in remembrance of
him” so that we can take his life into our life, and into the world.
It is this kind of remembering which provokes the life of Mohandas
Gandhi to “BE the change you want to see in the world,” and it is the
kind of remembering which brings Martin Luther King to his death for
BEING that change. It is what God did for us in coming to our world
in human form. He came to BE Jesus—to BE the change he wanted to make
in the world.
Our
participation in the events of Holy Week requires no less of us. It
is a time for deep remembering, the kind which places us in the midst
of betrayal and trials of humiliation, of suffering through torture
and anguish, of pain and loss which comes to death. This is the time
for us to descend with Jesus into his darkness, to BE with him there,
to participate in his humanity so that we can come close to his glory,
that we might know him deeply, both as man and as God. John’s Gospel
will not let us settle for less. For in John’s Gospel Jesus knows the
dark necessity of his death. And he does what he has to do; he gives
Judas permission to act on it, and he warns his disciples that he
cannot remain with them, nor will they be able to go where his is
going. He advises them to continue to be in discipleship by showing
their love for one another. And then he waits for what is a certain
outcome. Jesus is “troubled in spirit,” John tells us. That’s
because he is human. Nevertheless he will move through these dark
days to the cross. That’s because he is God. Our Easter sermon will
tell us the good things God reveals to us in the glory of the cross.
Tonight we must remember who sent him to it. The text of hymn # 158
in our hymnal is brutally truthful in its indictment. “Ah, holy
Jesus, how hast thou offended, that man to judge thee hath in hate
pretended. By foes derided, by thine own rejected. Oh most
afflicted. Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee. Alas, my
treason, Jesus, has undone thee. ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus. I it was
denied thee. I crucified thee.” That Jesus had to die. That Martin
Luther King Jr. had to die. That countless others have died and will
die, or continue to suffer hatred and violence and oppression in our
world is an indictment of our human failure to honor the work of
divine and human righteousness in our world, to do what is right and
good for the purposes of God’s creation. This is the message of Holy
Week. It is a message which “troubles my spirit.” It urges me to
make the journey with Jesus through his week of humiliation and
suffering, of pain and death so that I can remember. So that I can
remember that this dark necessity is not about God; it is about us.
It is not about love; it is about fear. And our response to fear is
always about violence, a violence which has become systemic in our
society and in our institutions, and has even become embedded in the
ways and means by which we believe we can protect ourselves or even
achieve peace. I come to the end of Holy Week remembering that the
hatred and violence and death are not part of God’s plan. I come to
the cross and to the assassin’s bullet knowing that violence and death
happen not because of who God is, but because of who we are.
It is because of who I am, and because of who I wish to BE as a
follower of Christ that I am compelled to journey with Jesus through
this week of darkness and death. And if I have the strength and
courage, I will have to be willing to see role in drama of Jesus’
Passion. I will have to ask myself some hard questions—like where are
those places in my life when I have been Judas, the betrayer? When
have I seen myself as one of Jesus’ disciples —clueless, frightened,
and very needy? When have I let people down and been as undependable
as Peter? Or how has the doubt and stubbornness of a Thomas distanced
me from the love of others? When have I been one of the voices of
fear embedded in the volatile masses? And when have I pronounced the
judgments of Pilate? and washed my hands of their consequences?
Such questions are not easy to ask, nor are the answers easy to
admit. For they will necessarily show us our own complicity in the
personal, communal and systemic hatred and violence of our world.
They show us a life lived in fear more than in love. But even in the
darkness of Holy Week there is good news. We don’t have to stay in
the sin and guilt of our human failing. In fact by our willingness to
go into our own dark places, especially in the company of Jesus, we
have already broken into the darkness and broken open the light of
God’s countenance upon our redemption. We have glimpsed Easter, and
the liberation of love, and the possibility that our lives can be
redeemed from the bonds of fear and death.
But first we must make the journey. We must walk the walk that Jesus
will walk through the rest of this week. Tonight is when it all
begins. The night which brings us out of the light into the darkness
in order to remember. Our service of Tenebrae will lead us into that
deep place of remembrance of Jesus passion and death. And that is
where we must go to encounter our fear so that we can be restored to
love, the love which is stronger than hate or violence or death.
And it
is certain that as deeply as we can accompany Jesus into his darkness
through Holy Week, we will as deeply encounter our own. There may be
much to fear in that, or perhaps not very much at all, but it would be
well for us to go there; for we will see that Jesus is also
accompanying us in our dark places, showing us the deepest power of
God’s love to redeem us, not FROM this world, but IN it. What better
way to honor Christ’s incarnation in the final days of his life—to
live as if everything can be redeemed in this world. What better way
to honor the glory of his cross—by living as if everything in this
world can be redeemed. I suspect that was what Dr. King’s life was
about. I suspect that this is what God envisions for the life of his
church. I suspect that our journey with Jesus through Holy Week is
part of the plan. God grant us the strength and courage….
