Show and Tell

In Honor of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beloved Community Sunday

DATE: January 19, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 1:1-9 and John 1:35-42
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

This weekend, and tomorrow in particular, our nation sets aside time to honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Christian preacher, civil rights leader, a drum major for justice, a ‘dreamer,’ but more than a dreamer: a man who exposed and upended the racist norms of his day; a witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ which demands of us nothing less than all our love for all our neighbors — including our enemies. Dr. King, and the many, many women and men who marched with him, who faced the dogs and bore the beatings on their way to reclaiming dignity for people of color, (and, in truth, for all of us) Dr. King insisted that the only world worth pursuing is a world in which oppressed and oppressor might one day sit together at the welcome table. That was his vision of the “Beloved Community,” a vision inspired by his Christian faith, and by the witness of Muslim peace activist Mahatma Gandhi. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.” ¹

Dr. King spoke those words during a sermon on Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence in 1959. And it’s that vision that has led churches to name this particular Sunday Beloved Community Sunday. Because Dr. King’s legacy is our labor: the on-going holy work of constructing communities defined not by who we leave out, but by how we make space; not by what we hold in common (our skin color, economic status, or political allegiance) but by how we honor our differences — and are made better for them. A community defined not by the intensity of our fear but by our capacity to listen to and to learn from one another.

This is not a new labor. Indeed, as long as there has been community, there has been community conflict. And as long as there has been Christian Community, there have been divisions in the church. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has witnessed more life-rending division, more violence, than most of us can fathom, believed none the less that we are all ‘made for goodness’ — that we love first; that fear and discord are ugly distortions of who and what God created us to be. We are made with love, for love, made for one another; and made whole in each other’s company.

Still, it seems that it doesn’t take much for fear to unseat that love — only one generation in Biblical time, before Cane was overwhelmed by fear that God might love his brother more than him. So Cane killed Able with a rock in the field. You could say that we’ve been throwing rocks at each other ever since.

By the time Jesus came along, rock throwing had become a sanctioned form of capital punishment. He pointed out the madness of that, and the irony: Let you who are guiltless throw the first stone, he said. In a rare bit of honest self-reflection, and the whole lot of them put down their rocks and went home.

Would that that had been the end of it. Would that the arrival of the Prince of Peace had restored peace and justice to the land. Would that his followers might have seen the profound wisdom — and the benefit — of loving their enemies.

But they did not. True, Jesus did transform hearts and minds. True, an entire movement emerged in the wake of his execution and resurrection, a movement made up of people who described themselves as Christ’s own body: a community of Christ. Many scholars make the case that the earliest Christian community was known for its pacifism; that Christians refused to fight in the Roman army, even when conscripted. Once baptized, they laid down their arms and built communities governed by agape – or unconditional love. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

But even that did not hold up. The letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church, the introduction of which we read this morning — He wrote it in response to rumors that conflict had divided the members over at First Church Corinth. It seems factions had broken out: some wanted to follow Apollos, some Cephas, some Christ. They argued about their purpose — whether and how much they should help the poor, and about authority — who (if anyone) could tell them what to do. They argued about whether it was better to be smart or faithful; and whether to serve coffee hour snacks at square tables or round…

They might not have been throwing stones, but they were likely hurling insults. Clearly, they were struggling to achieve the unity in Christ to which Paul had called them – and to which Paul re-directed them in his now famous letter.

Skip ahead to Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, and we find the words so often read at weddings: “If I have all knowledge, all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” It seems the beloved community remained elusive – a work in progress, then as now.

Dr. King knew his Christian history, knew how often folks have stumbled over and fallen short of Christ’s mandate that we love one another. He did not invoke the vision of beloved community lightly; he had no illusion that love comes easily. On the contrary Dr. King knew, knew it like the shock of a water hose, like the cold and unforgiving floor of a prison cell; like the heart-rending pain of little girls killed in a flash; knew it like Jesus knew: love comes hard, as anything of value always does. Love is sacrifice, and eating with the sick, and breaking bread with adversaries… ²

I wonder whether John’s disciples realized that, the day they met Jesus, realized what they were getting into. Perhaps they had an inkling, because the first thing they did was ask Jesis this question:

Where are you staying? Which sounds like they’re asking about his accommodations (as in, “How’s the local inn? Comfortable?”), but which might also have meant: Where do you plant your feet? Where are you staying — Among the elite, or right here in the neighborhood? At the white-only club, or at the back of the bus? With whom do you hang out? With the mayor or with members of the local sanitation workers union? Tell us about yourself: What matters to you? Who matters to you? Where are you staying? They asked it, as if to size him up. “Can we trust you to stick around when it gets hard?” Surely, Jesus wondered the same of them.

“Come and see,” is what he said. And they did.

That’s how it started — the roots of our own community of Christ — with an exchange of questions and a first century round of Show and Tell. There’s a reason that circle time is a mainstay in our children’s classrooms. Community takes shape as we share our stories, as we show up and show off the details of our lives, and as we cede the floor to others, look and listen deeply while they do the same. You want to know what shapes me? Where I stand? What matters to me? Want to see what I’ve done for love? Come and see.

It’s what Dr. King said to his companions in the Civil Rights movement, and to his naysayers, including white moderates who too often remained silent: come and see. Come and listen to the pain; bear witness to generations of terror wielded by people of one race against another. Come and see what’s possible, when we march together. Do not presume that the beloved community can wait, that there is ‘a more convenient season’ in which to pursue freedom. Come and see how urgently we need it now.³

Come and see: It’s what marginalized communities continue to say: Do you think racial discrimination is a thing of the past? Come and see: come and see too many black and brown men in prison, and not enough in college; come and see children of color who are disproportionately poor, asthmatic, illiterate, hungry and at risk of being shot and killed before their eighteenth birthday. Come and hear what stories our black and brown sisters and brothers can tell about being unjustly accused of shop-lifting, or loitering, or walking ‘in the wrong neighborhood…’ Come and see the deep grief that reverberated through the African-American community, when Treyvon Martin was killed, and his killer acquitted; come and see the fear that has resurfaced since the Voting Rights Act was repealed.

Clearly, building the beloved community is a work in progress, but we are better equipped for that work, thanks to the life of Dr. King. He taught us how to be witnesses to pain and ambassadors for love. And he did something else. For folks of color, Dr. King offered up a powerful tool for disrupting the climate of fear that had held them captive for too long. Hamden Rice, an African-American blogger, says that’s what Dr. King really did for his community. How? By training African-Americans in non-violent direct action. Rice explains: the civil rights leaders said,

Go ahead: sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed. If we do it all together, we’ll be OK.

They made black people experience the worst of the worst, collectively, that white people could dish out, and discover that it wasn’t that bad. They taught black people how to take a beating — from the southern cops, from police dogs, from fire department hoses. They actually coached young people how to crouch, cover their heads with their arms and take the beating. They taught people how to go to jail, which terrified most decent people.

And you know what? The worst of the worst, wasn’t that bad.

Once people had been beaten, had dogs sicked on them, had fire hoses sprayed on them, and been thrown in jail, you know what happened?

These magnificent young black people began singing freedom songs in jail.

That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song.” ⁴

It’s testimonies like this that we are called to seek out and attend to, if ever we are going to build a beloved community. So this week, I commend to you a round of holy Show and Tell. Come and see what Dr. King has done, what stories folks can tell about reclaiming love as their birthright. Come and see what still needs to be done. Come and see what Christ has in store, what holy beloved-community-building labor he has prepared for us.

For this we know: we are a community of Christ. It says so, in our bulletin: ‘We are a community of Christ learning to love and serve God and one another.” In our covenant, we say, “We claim as our mission the promotion of justice, peace and human dignity in both word and deed.” So let’s embody that mission. Together, let’s look for new and continuing ways to respond to the invitation to ‘come and see;’ let’s walk out into the world which is, after all, God’s most beloved community, and seek out stories of hurt and hope. Here, too, in this corner of Christ’s community, let’s find ways to love one another into speaking; celebrate each story, embrace our differences, and marvel at the truth that fear does indeed fall away when we face our fears together, when we recognize the presence of Christ in our midst. What might it look like to do that? God only knows… Come and see!

Scripture Texts

1 Corinthians 1:1–9

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— 6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

John 1:35–42

35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).