Sermons

When Someone Steps Up and Yells NO

I have always wanted to see ZooLights, so two tickets to the show were part of my Christmas stocking this year. Michelle and I set off on the 26th of December, a Boxing Day present, and drove over to the National Zoo. We parked in the middle, and as we walked in, we decided to turn left and head downhill, which is what we did. The lights were extraordinary, and we had a lot of fun, but there were also these tableaux.

The very first one we walked up on before I could get a good look at the featured animal, I saw a giant ant and said to my wife, ” Oh, look, it’s an anteater. And just as I said, the woman in front of us also said, ” oh look, everybody, it’s an anteater. And her child, a little boy probably about 5 years old, yelled NO loudly and with more conviction than I could swing over just about anything these days. It was a no from the deepest part of his tiny body, and then he crouched forward, and he put his hands up over his head, and he said it with even more conviction NO, and we all stopped what we were doing, and we looked at him, and he said that’s a Pangolin (pang·guh·luhn). We looked, and indeed, that scaly anteater was indeed a Pangolin. So we all – his mum, family, and independently, Michelle and I – shrugged, looked around, nodded, and said, indeed, it was a pangolin.

Sometimes, we have to point out that we are wrong and that something in the system is terrible. Sometimes, even when we all agree that something was one thing, one way, or even one reality, someone has to step up and say NO. If we are not heard, we have to lean in, put our hands up, and pull the answer from the very core of our being. This little boy knew he was right, and we all listened.

I have spent a fair amount of time in this pulpit saying that our job is to be people of faith, called people, people chasing the divine spark, having a higher-mindedness, and following a good, orderly direction. That work is to pay attention and move with a deeper and more profound purpose than our selfish desires. We do that by coming here.

● Being together

● Praying our prayers

● Hearing the stories of scripture

● Rejecting what does not create more love and light in the world

● Pouring ourselves through them

● Measuring our lives

This Sunday, we pause and honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Jonathan Eig, in his new biography of King: A Life, reminds us of what we do here meets up with Dr. King’s call. “He warned that materialism undermined our moral values, that nationalism threatened to crush all hope of universal brotherhood, that militarism bred cynicism and distrust. He saw a moral rot at the core of American life and worried that racism had blinded many of us.”

So we come to church and do our best to not only unbind us from the secular side of all of this and that the church We are called to bring the best of our intention forward, as Dr King wrote in the speech we heard earlier given in Montgomery 60 years ago, “ The confrontation of good and evil compressed in the tiny community of Selma generated the massive power to turn the whole nation to a new course.”

We are the ones to turn our attention to those who govern who do not have the best interests of the poor in their sight, who do not care for those on the margins, the trans people in our midst, the woman seeking health care, the migrants who are here without authorization. We are called to see those folks and to be the conscience of the state. That is who follow as people of god. “To accept evil without challenging it, King concluded, would be to condone it.”

I went to a teach-in on Friday night about how to stand in solidarity with our migrant siblings. The work is for us to be together and learn how to support folks who are afraid for themselves, their families, and their communities. If you want to know how you can help and be useful, talk to our SSJ folks, our Deacon Thom, and Julie Murphy.

The gospel today is a famous piece of Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus. It says Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, and we know how this will end for Jesus. When prophets head to Jerusalem, they are part of their movement, and their life will be over. Jesus knows this will be the last section of his ministry and calls us to continue to move forward and see who we are and whose we are. Few are called to be martyrs, and yet Dr. King reminds us, “If you can do one single thing towards a just, durable, and creative peace, you will have fulfilled your major obligation to the world.”

This is our work

So we go on, we show up for those in the margins, we worship, we reach out, and we live into what we heard over 60 years ago: we change, and we act in love, and may all of it carry us forward into this new year, into this new administration and who we are called to be.

Amen