Hebrew Scriptures – Amos 5: 18-24
18Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; 19as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. 20Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it? 21I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
Gospel Lesson – Mark 6: 1-12
1[Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown [of Nazareth], and his disciples followed him. 2On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 5And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6And he was amazed at their unbelief.
Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.
“Let
Justice Roll Down Like Waters,
and Righteousness Like an
Everflowing Stream.”
On the holiday tomorrow, we commemorate the universal and unconditional love, the forgiveness and commitment to active nonviolence, that empowered the revolutionary spirit of one Martin Luther King, Jr. I encourage you all – as part of your celebration of the holiday in his memory tomorrow – to take time to read something of this man’s life and work.1 As his wife, Coretta Scott King has put it:
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example -- the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s character and empowered his leadership. We commemorate Dr. King’s inspiring words, because his voice and his vision filled a great void in our nation, and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lived by its noblest principles. Yet, Dr. King knew that it wasn’t enough just to talk the talk, that he had to walk the walk for his words to be credible. And so we commemorate on this holiday the man of action, who put his life on the line for freedom and justice every day, the man who braved threats and jail and beatings and who ultimately paid the highest price to make democracy a reality for all Americans.2
On this same weekend each year you and I are invited to remember Dr. King’s great dream – symbolized by the photograph on our bulletin cover of that memorable speech that he gave in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 19633 – of a vibrant, multiracial nation that one day would be united in justice, peace and reconciliation, a nation that has a place at the lunch table for children of every race and room at the inn for every human being in need. You and I are called on the holiday tomorrow, not just to remember, but to honor and to celebrate the values of equality and tolerance, the interracial sense of family, that Dr. King so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America.
As his wife has so eloquently put it:
This is not a black holiday; it is a peoples' holiday. And it is the young people of all races and religions who hold the keys to the fulfillment of his dream. … The Holiday provides a unique opportunity to teach young people to fight evil, not people, to get in the habit of asking themselves, “what is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict?”4
So you and I need to begin our celebration by remembering that none of us is innocent – we are all complicit at some level or other – in harboring some of the same kinds of prejudices that Dr. King struggled against with such quiet courage. Indeed the words of the prophet, Amos, should be ringing in our own ears as he might say, too, to us today:
Even though you dedicate to me your Sunday morning offerings, I will not accept them; and the beauty of your sanctuaries I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the sound of your pious prayers, the sanctimonious affirmations of your well-being. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.5
We all have some measure of repenting to do; and in keeping with the original meaning of the word, in many ways we should be turning around and heading in a new direction, finding a new way of being in the world.6
There’s a quaint but curious legend from the Middle Ages about a young woman who – so the story goes – was banished from heaven. As she left, she was told that if she were able to bring back the one gift that is most valued by God, she would be welcomed back.
Over the years she brought back many gifts: drops of blood from a dying patriot; some coins that a destitute widow had given to the poor; dust from the shoes of a missionary laboring in a remote wasteland. But she was always turned away.
On one particular day, as she was watching a small boy playing by a town fountain, a man rode up on horseback and dismounted to take a drink. The man paused, however, gazed at the child and suddenly remembered the innocence of his own boyhood. Looking into the fountain and seeing the reflection of his now hardened face, what he had done with his life began to overwhelm him. Tears of repentance welled up in his eyes and began to trickle down his cheeks. Coming to stand by his side, the young woman reached out and took one of these tears and carried it back to heaven. It was then that she was received back into heaven with joy and love.
A quaint story, but it does point out that if there is a heaven and a hell it is of our own making.
For some church-goers the call to “repent” is one of the foundational concepts of the church. And yet, surprisingly, with all that he had to say about life, it’s very rare that we hear Jesus say anything at all about it – and even then it’s usually put there by the storytellers themselves. When Mark’s version has Jesus using it, it isn’t a call to any one person in particular, but the context of an open invitation to everybody – an invitation that would also bring both the people of that day and us into relationship with the likes of Herod Antipas and the political powers of this world. Surprisingly, when it’s not used as an invitation in the Bible, it’s most often directed toward the religious leaders of that time. It seems that the professionals who were most worried about other people’s so-called sins, were themselves the most in need of repentance.
If you’d like contemporary examples, here’s just a few:
Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Officials fear more than 100,000 people have died as a result of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti [and] Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” blamed the tragedy on something [he says] that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.” …. The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it's a deal.’”7
Another person in need of the true flavor of biblical repentance could easily be the legislator identified in this news report:
In October 2009, Parliamentarian David Bahati introduced… legislation in Uganda that would make “any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex” punishable by prison or…death. The bill even takes aim at those offering protection or support to any lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) person by instituting harsh prison sentences of up to 7 years. …. If the Ugandan Parliament chooses to endorse this…legislation, it would be responsible for depriving countless Ugandans of their human rights as well as placing LGBT people throughout the world at significantly greater risk.8
And finally there’s enough need for repentance to cover any number of people in this account of just this past week:
A Wichita district court judge will allow Scott Roeder to use a voluntary manslaughter defense – a tactic that could allow him to walk free after just four years if he is convicted of killing abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. … Roeder has admitted shooting Dr. Tiller in the head as the physician ushered at [a] Sunday morning church service. But Roeder and his lawyers say this heinous act wasn't murder because he was driven by his religious fervor to save unborn children. Under Kansas law, voluntary manslaughter is the "unreasonable but honest belief" that the use of force was justified. … Judge Warren Wilbert insisted he was only following the rule of the law in allowing Roeder to claim he committed voluntary manslaughter instead of premeditated murder. Although the judge won't rule on giving instruction to the jury until after the evidence has been submitted, he has nevertheless opened the door that voluntary manslaughter can possibly be used as a defense….9
Significantly enough, if you were to read about the repentance and conversion experience of Paul (who, some of us believe, is the real founder of Christianity), it was not to turn away from a life of so-called “sin” to living a life of everlasting moral purity. It was to stop persecuting others in the name of God and one’s religion. So the call to “repent” is a call to live life in all of its fullness. It’s because we fail to hear this ourselves, and then fail to communicate this call to others, that the world hears the word “repent” and assumes that we’re saying: “Become religious like us…,” when if anything it should be heard as the complete opposite: “Become lovers of others, as you have been loved by Jesus.”
Indeed one of the reasons I’ve become very wary, now, of being called a “Christian,” (I prefer to be considered “a follower of Jesus”) isn’t just because it seems to have been captured and defamed by fundamentalists and charismatics like Pat Robertson, but because the Bible and the doctrines of the church have been used to attack and to denigrate others for far, far too long. We are on dangerous ground when we do that - especially with the Bible – because so many assumptions that’ve been made about the Bible are just not correct:
The Bible never has encouraged abject conformity.
The Bible has been suspicious of orthodoxy ever since the time of the prophets.
And the modern habit of too many neo-conservatives quoting proof-texts to legitimize their own policies and rulings, is completely beyond the Bible’s interpretive tradition.
The call to repent, then, is not to say that we’re not measuring up to the standards set by self-appointed religious authorities, nor even those standards that we assume God expects of us. It is a call, though, to love and be more accepting of other people – whether it be for their faith or their lack of faith. The call to repent does not give us the authority to write people off just because they don’t profess the religious faith in the particular terms that we do, or even to live the same kind of life that you or I try to live. The call to repent is a call, however, to show compassion and respect toward all people.
I remember a statement made by that radical English theologian and philosopher, Don Cupitt, during one of his wonderfully controversial television programs that he’s called the Sea of Faith; in that program Cupitt said this:
Religion [is] a way of affirming the value of human life, from the first breath to the very last. It is up to us to give it that value: to affirm human dignity in the face of [an] indifferent universe.
Listening to Cupitt’s thoughts in the light of who The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, a different approach may be offered to us today in a prayer by Michael Leunig called, simply, “We shall be careful:”
We pray for the fragile ecology of the heart and the mind
a sense of meaning so finely assembled and balanced
and so easily overturned.
We pray for the careful, ongoing construction of love
as painful and exhausting as the struggle for truth
and just as easily abandoned.
Hard fought and won are the shifting sands of
this sacred ground
this ecology.
Easy to desecrate and difficult to defend
this vulnerable joy
this exposed faith
this precious order
this sanity.
We shall be careful
with others
and with ourselves.10
Amen.
* * *
1 A small sample might be this from The King Center website:
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929 into a family of pastors – both his father and his grandfather served as pastors for many years. King came of age in a time where blacks and whites were separated in much of the U.S. The two groups were unable to attend the same schools, drink from the same water fountains, or eat in the same restaurants. King himself attended segregated public elementary and high schools. He also went to an all-black college in Atlanta, Morehouse, from which he graduated in 1948.
King saw his calling in the family business, going on to attain graduate degrees at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and Boston University, where he received a doctorate in Systematic Theology in 1955. This schooling set him up to lead a church, but his beliefs and determination--and, certainly, his circumstances – propelled him to do even more.
After marrying a woman named Coretta Scott, whom he met while in graduate school in Boston, King moved to the South, where racial segregation and prejudice was deep-seated and rampant. The situation was especially marked in towns like Montgomery, Alabama, where, in 1955, as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King started fighting for change. Spurred on by Rosa Parks’ refusal – and subsequent arrest – to sit in the rear, “colored” section of the bus, King advocated a boycott of public buses that lasted more than a year. In 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation on public buses, and a movement fueled by nonviolent protest began.
For more than ten years, King’s inspiring speeches (he gave more than 2,500 in his lifetime) earned him followers across the United States and internationally. He travelled millions of miles; led protest marches, sit-ins and boycotts (which often led to his arrest) everywhere he saw racial disparity; published five books, numerous articles and essays, including the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” now famously known as the call to action for the civil rights movement; and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Yet King is perhaps best remembered for delivering his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech in front of a quarter of a million people in the Mall in Washington, DC. His famous line, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," still resonate today.
Five years later, he was killed in Memphis, where he was to lead a protest march – shot by an assassin while standing on the balcony outside his motel room.
2 Coretta Scott King in “The Meaning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday,” from The King Center website: http://www.thekingcenter.org/KingHoliday/Default.aspx.
4 Ibid.
5 What might well be a contemporary translation of Amos 5: 22-24
6 The Greek verb metanoeo, “repent,” occurs thirty-two times in the New Testament; the noun metanoia, “repentance,” twenty-two times and both have the understanding “to change one’s mind” as much as to “turn back, be converted” to a new way of being in the world.
8 Taken from a news story presented at Amnesty USA’s website: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=13583&ICID=E1001A01&tr=y&auid=5801233.
10 Michael Leunig, from “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God,” in Common Prayer Collection, 1993.
