by Kate Lore, Director of Social Justice

A sermon given January 14, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Reading #1: MLK Jr.’s Epiphany When He Was About to Give Up

After a particularly strenuous day, I settled in bed at a late hour.  My wife had already fallen asleep and I was about to doze off when the telephone rang.  An angry voice said, “Listen, nigger, we’ve taken all we want from you.  Before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.”  I hung up, but I could not sleep.  It seemed to me that all my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point.

I got out of bed and began to walk the floor.  Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee.  I was ready to give up.  I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward.  In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God.  My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.  The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory.  “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right.  But now I am afraid.  The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter.  I am at the end of my powers.  I have nothing left.  I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”

At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him.  It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth.  God will be at your side forever.”  Almost at once my fears began to pass from me. My uncertainty disappeared.  I was ready to face anything.  The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me an inner calm.

The passage is from Strength to Love (1963), page 509 of the anthology A Testament of Hope, which is a very useful collection of Dr. King’s work.

Reading #2: ICorinthians 13:1-8

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Sermon

Last March I went on a 10-day Civil Rights Tour of the South and had the pleasure of speaking with an amazing man by the name of the Rev. Billy Kyles. His name probably doesn’t ring a bell for most of you, but I’m pretty sure some of you have at least seen his picture. He was one of the men at Martin Luther King Jr.’s side when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.

Rev. Kyles and Dr. King had been close friends. They were both Black Baptist ministers from the South bravely working for the right of Blacks to vote. Whenever Dr. King came through town, the two men always made a point of sharing a meal and conversation. In fact, Rev. Sykes had just gone to Dr. King’s motel room to take him home for dinner when Dr. King’s life was abruptly ended by a bullet.

Of course Rev. Kyles was devastated by the murder. Not only had he lost a personal friend, he was forced to face a future without the persuasive passion and skill of a key leader. It was a critical blow to the Civil Rights Movement.

Given what he had gone through, one might expect that Rev. Kyles would be rather dried up and bitter—or at least angry—but that is not at all who I encountered at that dinner in Memphis, Tennessee.  No. Rev. Kyles was just the opposite: he was one of the most loving and warm people I have ever met.  He is one of those rare individuals who seem to emanate light and love.  Have you ever encountered a person people who—just by being near you—make you want to be the best kind of person you can be?  Well, Rev. Kyles is that kind of person.  So naturally, I jumped at the chance to speak with him after his presentation.  I needed to ask this man some questions.  I wanted to know how in the heck someone who had gone through such hell could still stay in the struggle while radiating such goodness.

So that’s what I did.   And when I asked him to provide me some insights, Rev. Kyles told me that the first couple of years after Martin’s assassination were indeed some of the most difficult in his life. But, he told me, that was a long time ago; he had moved on. “Moved on?!” I asked, “How does someone move on from such a tragedy, after such a thundering and evil blow—not only to him personally but to the very psyche of our country?”  Many Americans, especially Black Americans, had given up hope on this country after Martin was murdered.  How was it that Rev. Kyles still held out hope?

At that point in our conversation, Rev. Kyles paused and then chuckled.  He took my hand in his in a way reminiscent of what one might expect from a grandfather.  Then he told me a story that I could tell was one that he had told many times before.  It went like this:

One night when Robert Louis Stevenson was a young child, his nanny just couldn’t get him to sleep. Young Robert just kept staring out the window, oblivious to her attempts to get him to go to bed.  Finally, she said, “Robert, what in the world are you looking at out there?” As she pulled back the curtain, she realized he was watching the lamplighter making his way down the street, lighting one street lamp after another. Ah—but young Robert Louis Stevenson saw something more. He said, “Look at that man, Nanna! He’s punching holes in the darkness!” He’s punching holes in the darkness.

Then Rev. Kyles told me that the hate that killed Dr. King was just one example of the spiritual darkness that exists all around us. And that he had decided a long ago to commit himself to punching holes in that darkness by letting God’s love shine through him. Sometimes the holes he punched were small, such as when he showed up with joy on his face instead of gloom. Other times the holes were bigger like when he helped someone who was struggling. The holes that Dr. King had punched, on the other hand, were huge and were in fact still growing as more people read his words or honored his memory.

“So would you say it was love that ultimately saved you?” I asked. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, “God’s love.” There was something very touching about his certainty, his unwavering belief that God and love were on the side of justice.A And although it wasn’t likely that I would ever be able to adopt his Baptist faith or even share his understanding of God, I knew that this remarkable Baptist minister had something to teach me. You see, I’d just had a brush with evil and was still struggling to make theological sense out of it.   I needed to grab onto the wisdom of this man before I lost all hope for humanity.

Just one day before my dinner with Rev. Kyles, I had been crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with two friends. Those of you who know your Civil Rights history will recall that this bridge was the site of “Bloody Sunday.” That was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to lead a group of protesters from Selma to Montgomery to lay Jimmy Lee Jackson’s dead black body at the steps of the Capitol. Jackson, you see, was a young church deacon who had been killed by state troopers in his own church. He had put his body between them and his grandma, whom they were beating, and these troopers wanted to make an example of him.  So they killed him.

Jimmy Lee’s death sparked outrage in the community—which is why the march had been organized. Church-going folks of all ages had gathered and were just stepping onto the bridge when they were met by hoards of armed troopers who quickly descended upon them with clubs and tear gas. Those of you who are my age or older may very well have seen news footage of this horrific scene. I have seen it over and over in my lifetime and it still gets to me. The reason why it is shown so often—even though it is difficult to look at—is because it exemplifies the challenges faced by Blacks during that time and the courage they displayed in response to it. Bloody Sunday is considered a key turning point in Martin Luther King’s ministry.

So it was significant that my two girlfriends, Wendy and Petra, and I were making a trek across that very bridge the prior day. We were women of three different races who felt a common yearning to retrace the heroic steps taken on this bridge. So there we were, walking slowly over the crest of the bridge in a very prayerful state, when a car full of young white men came careening towards us—practically running us down. My friend, Petra, wrote a poem about what happened next, of which I’ll read a portion:

Suddenly we felt the hurl of a

Curse, all too familiar,

Pulling that age old trigger,

As a passing driver called out, “Nigger!”

On our sacred walk through time,

We were jolted back to the present

To the sting and the burn

--In a word!

Wendy turned to us and questioned,

With the nod of our heads and heavy hearts,

We confirmed the word she’d heard.

From the weight of the hate thrown at us

Kate began to cry.

And I was Angry for the power

They were still able to hold over us.

Saddened that words of hate are still commonplace, as if no step was ever taken.

But embraced—all three,

Ministers to be,

Black, White, Latina.

Yes, the three of us were stunned by this sacrilege, this flippant and ugly act of racism. We had encountered evil and we knew it.  And as if by instinct, the first thing we did after the car drove away was embrace each other—for a long, long time. 

In the days that followed that event, Petra, Wendy and I spent a lot of time reflecting upon the meaning of the bridge incident. In the process, our friendship deepened, and so did our resolve to work together to end racism.  Wendy and I have been working on the Sankofa Project, something you can learn more about if you attend General Assembly this June.

In the months that have passed since returning from my trip through the South, I have read book after book about evil. It’s as if I felt I must somehow figure it all out before I could adequately address and transform evil.  These are such evil times, after all, that are reminiscent in many ways to the Civil Rights era.  I was looking for some insights and some answers so I could figure out how best to deal with the challenges we are currently facing. But then I remembered the simple and profound faith of Rev. Kyles who put all his faith in the power of God’s love. Maybe opening up to love is the answer. Maybe there is even a gift in our brushes with evil—if those events forge new understandings, or deepen relationships and prompt increased level of commitment.   After all, it’s hard to imagine that Rev. Kyles would be so inspiring today if he hadn’t endured such evil and hardship. But I do know that even my teenaged sons have figured out that some of the best people in the world are those who have endured great suffering but then turn around and commit themselves to the power of love.

Now so far I’ve been using the word “evil” pretty frequently without even extending the courtesy of defining the word for you.  Sorry about that. Let me do so now. Evil is a pretty loaded word with so many different connotations.  So let me be clear in what I mean when I say “evil.” After all the books I’ve read, I like Reinhold Niebuhr’s definition the best.  He says, “Evil is always the assertion of some interest without regard to the whole, whether the whole be conceived as the immediate community or the total community of humanity or the total order of the world.” Good, on the other hand, is the intention for the common good, the harmony of the whole. So whether we’re talking about racism, war, or environmental degradation, evil takes place when the desires of a few outweigh the good of the whole.  And the reason why I’m referencing evil today is because, like many of us, I am worried about the state of our country. It appears to me, at least, that we have institutionalized evil.  How?  By supporting policies that benefit a few at the expense of the many.

I have come to the conclusion that there will always be evil in and around us.  This is because I believe that evil is inherent to the structure of our world and that it is, in fact, required for life to be sustained.  But that doesn’t mean we should be complacent in its presence.  There are times—and this is one of them—when evil gains such a stronghold that it threatens everyone’s survival.

Paul Tillich reminds us that every generation in every nation has to decide whether we act for or against the law of love. It is part of the human experience. And if we are going to support the law of love during these difficult times, as Dr. King and Rev. Kyles did during the Civil Rights Movement, I think we must become more comfortable naming and challenging evil—both in ourselves and in the social fabric.

So how do we do that?  UU theologian James Luther Adams provides us some guidance. He well understood the great American innovation of “voluntary associations”—the same phenomenon deTocqueville publicized in the 1800s. Adams took the Christian imperative, “by their fruits ye shall know them,” and expanded it to: “by their groups you will know them.” That is, he claimed that the only way to practice modern faith had to be within a voluntary association—the only structure capable of counteracting the power of modern corporations and governments.

Church, argued Adams, is where we learn how to be human. This is because churches are built by people who want to create communities of meaning, conscience, hope, and transformative love. Congregations, then, provide the best places to discern—with others—what is real, ultimate, and worthy of our love, worthy of devotion, time, and commitment.

So what is great and worthy enough of our love and devotion, our loyalty and commitment? I would suggest it’s something the size of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, our highest principles and purpose. It’s something the size of the sacred scriptures of all the world’s religions. It’s something the size of the sacred web of all existence.

I believe that our church is an institution whose people—rooted in shared spiritual values—is devoted to creating more love in the world.  May I suggest that we take this commitment and apply it daily as a sort of spiritual practice.  If you feel love inside the walls of this church, hold on to that feeling. Let it grow inside you. Let it become you. Fan its flames each and every day.  Let the beauty of humanity overwhelm your soul so that love bursts out of you each day as you encounter people, and animals and nature.  Let yourself be an ambassador of love, so to speak, so that you inspire others to do likewise. 

Because in the end there is nothing more important, and nothing more healing or more redemptive than love. And in this spirit of love, let us improve our world.  If you want to get a taste of what love in action feels like, please join us for the Martin Luther King, Jr. march and rally tomorrow.  The details are in your bulletin.

Like James Luther Adams, I put my hope in all of you.  I believe that the very qualities that define this church and our larger denomination—your minds, your hearts, your moral courage— are the very qualities that can overcome both the evil without and the evil within. And perhaps can even save the world.  May it be so.

PRAYER

Will you pray with me? Creator God, help us be more courageous and more loving during these challenging times.  Help us continue the legacy of Martin Luther King so that we may do our part to hew new hope out of our mountains of despair.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Take courage friends.  The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high.  Take courage.  For deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.

----------------------------------------------- 

Copyright 2007, Kate Lore.  All rights reserved.