Tag: Martin Luther KIng Jr.

Home by Another Way

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Advent and Christmas, Sermons Year CLeave a comment

 

Participating in a nonviolent Moral Monday March in Raleigh NC in 2015

Matthew 2:1-12 NRSV

As many of you know, my wife Lori works downtown at the Free Clinic of Central Virginia which has recently suffered major damage from a fire which was started outside in the parking lot. The building has been condemned and it will take weeks, maybe eve months, before it can be used again. It is a tragic situation as many with low income depend on the clinic not only for healthcare, but for emergency dental services. So, as a church in Lynchburg, it is important that we pray for the staff, and for the Free non-profit’s board of directors, that they will be able to wisely respond to this disaster so they can continue serving this community.

Our church’s support of the Free Clinic seems to be more important when we consider that it was one of our very own, Anne Bishop, who worked with another one of our church members, Jack Scudder, to found the free clinic thirty years ago.

Lori and I had the opportunity to visit with Anne on the Sunday after leading my first worship service here, and I had the honor of officiating Anne’s memorial service just a couple of weeks later. To describe Anne’s trail-blazing, pioneering spirit which led her to start the Free Clinic, during her service, I talked about the unique way that Anne drove a car.

Whenever Anne traveled, she always made sure she returned home by another way. To make the trip more interesting, and to learn more about her surroundings, she was always fond of taking a different route home, even, when she traveled in other country. When she traveled overseas, she would order maps and highlight the roads to make sure she always arrived back to her starting point by another way. Her daughter Kathy said: “After returning a rental car in England, the clerk, who evidently had some type of GPS history on the car, asked: ‘Ma’am, did you drive down every road in Great Britain?’”

It was then that I pointed out that “Home by Another Way” are the exact words that Matthew uses to describe the journey of the wise men after they worshipped Jesus, laying down their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Having been warned in a dream not to return to King Herod as the king had requested, Matthew says they went “home by another way.”

I then pointed out that death is often described as a homecoming or a homegoing, and as people of faith, we believe this journey home called life matters. How we go home makes a difference. Do we go home following the instructions of King Herod? Do we collaborate with the empire, bow down to those in power, accept the status quo, go with the culture? Or do we choose to go home by another way?

Do we go home following the way of power and greed, of fear and violence? Or do we go home following the way of love and generosity, of compassion and of peace?

After King Herod’s encounter with the Wise Ones looking for the child who was said to be “king of the Jews,” Matthew says that King Herod was “afraid.” And then adds: “And all of Jerusalem with him.”

For the nation instinctively knew that if its self-absorbed, narcissistic, authoritarian leader was afraid, everyone should be afraid. Because, as almost always the case with the King Herod’s of the world, fear leads to violence.

Obviously, the Wise Ones sensed Herod’s fear, and knowing his violent reputation and his propensity to stoke and orchestrate violence against the innocents, when they went to bed that night, one, or maybe all of them, had a dream which warned them to go home by another way.

For when it comes to fear and to violence, when it comes to bowing down to authoritarians who stoke fear and promote violence, wise people of faith are always led to go home by another way.

 It was surreal to awakened on the first day of the year to the news of violence in New Orleans. And it certainly didn’t take long for the King Herods of the world to use that violence to stoke even more fear in the nation, scapegoating immigrants, which will certainly lead to more violence.

The good news is, as you may have read in the newsletter this week, our church’s outreach team has proposed that our church use 2025 to go home by another way, by committing ourselves to a movement of nonviolence.

During this first quarter, our church is honored to have the opportunity host Father John Dear, a world-renowned author and advocate for nonviolence who was nominated by Desmond Tutu for the Nobel Peace Prize. As this year’s Turner-Warren/Shumate Lecturer, Father Dear will host a workshop on non-violence on March 22, speak here in this sanctuary the 23rd and at the University of Lynchburg on the 25th.

We may have awakened this year to the news of violence and fear, but we are going to go through this new year by another way, a way of love and grace, a way of truth and compassion, a way of doing justice and making peace. We are going to go through 2025 by a way of nonviolence, a way of living that is encouraged by all the great world religions, as it is rooted in the belief that the creative force of the universe is love; God, God’s self, is love.

Thus, peacemakers like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. gave their lives teaching that the most important thing that human beings can do is to exercise this creative force by learning to love the way we were created to love. For Gandhi and King, following a way of nonviolence was understood as the science of how we create life in the image of God, how we create a world that practices justice, truth, and compassion.

Dr. King noted that Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective “social force on a large scale.” “Love, for Gandhi,” said King, “was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation,” and [the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi] was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

Dr. King understood that although the way of nonviolence sounds passive and ineffective, it is the most active and effective resistance of evil in the world.

 Through the way nonviolence, courage displaces fear. Love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice. Hope ends despair. Peace dominates war. Faith reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows all injustice. And the redemptive community supersedes the systems of gross social immorality.

Nonviolence is not for cowards and passive people but requires much bravery and courage.

Nonviolence is not just a temporary attitude. It’s a full-time way of life. Nonviolence is assertive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Nonviolence is always informing and persuading the opponents of justice.

Dorothy Day wrote in 1967 that she regretted that she had not done more to promote nonviolence “as a way of life.” Father John Dear comments: “I think we can all do more to nourish, study, cultivate and promote nonviolence as a way of life, as a spiritual path, as the basis for people in power, as a political methodology for change, and as a hermeneutic for Christian discipleship. Active nonviolence is the best hope for humanity.”

In response to the fear that King Herod possessed and stoked among the people, and to the violence that would surely follow, after paying homage to the baby Jesus, the Wise Men decided to go home by another way, the way of nonviolence. But they were not retreating. They were not running away. And they were not being passive in any way.

Choosing to go home another way was very active resistance. It was a way of telling the world that they would not bow down to King Herod. They would not be attracted to his power, seduced by his fame, duped by his wealth, or conned by his charisma.

And neither are we.

By choosing to go home by another way, the way of nonviolence, we are joining a movement of most active resistance—

One which actively wages peace, not war; passionately fights poverty, not people who are poor; ferociously attacks homelessness, not the homeless; aggressively opposes bigotry, not people who are queer.

We are choosing to go home by a way that dynamically endangers easy gun access, not school children; assiduously admonishes men who attempt to control the bodies of women, not the women who are those bodies.

This way wholeheartedly works to banish unkind immigration policies, not immigrants. It vehemently demands fair living wages, adequate housing, and free access to education and healthcare, not the exact opposite.

We are choosing a way that fervently heals spiritual trauma and never causes it; vigorously protects the environment and doesn’t threaten it; and tirelessly works for justice that is restorative, not punitive.

We are choosing a way that defeats evil, not the evil doers. It destroys fascism, not the fascist. It kills Christian Nationalism and religious extremism, not religious people. It vanquishes the fool heartedness of our neighbors, not our neighbors.

So, you see, this way is not for the coward nor the passive. It is for the courageous and the brave.

And it is also for the wise.

Because choosing the peace-making, compassion-loving, justice-doing way of nonviolence is always our best response to the fear-mongering King Herods of this world, especially when those kings can cause an entire nation to be afraid with them.

The question our gospel lesson asks us today is simply: Will we be wise ones too and choose this way? Will we be brave and courageous and choose to actively resist the King Herods of the world?

I pray we will. Amen.

There’s a Cross Involved

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year A7 Comments

I have a confession this morning. This preaching thing is hard. It’s hard on me, and I know it’s hard on you. And there are some Sundays I wished I didn’t have to do it. Not because it’s Labor Day weekend and half the congregation is out of town, but because as a lectionary preacher, as someone who does not choose my own scripture to preach, I sometimes have to preach scripture that I don’t want to preach.

This morning’s lectionary gospel lesson is especially problematic for a new preacher, one who really likes their new congregation, and who really wants their congregation to like them.

Sometimes preaching can be fun, like last Sunday when the text speaks of the church possessing the keys to break loose some heaven on earth, of the church being on the offensive, confronting the forces of death, darkness and despair, with the promise that, in the end, love always wins! Now, that will preach!

But then you have a text like the one we have this morning. After Jesus announces that love will indeed win, freedom will ring, death will be defeated, Easter will happen, he says, “but before any of that can take place, somebody needs to pick up and carry a cross.”

Peter immediately takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. Of course, he does! For who wants to hear a sermon like that?

And then we hear what are perhaps the most offensive words Jesus ever spoke: “Get behind me Satan.”

It is then that our scripture lesson becomes even more difficult to hear: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Jesus is implying for love to win, for heaven to break loose, for freedom to ring, there’s a cross involved. And it’s not just Jesus who has to carry a cross, it’s anyone who wants to follow him, anyone who wants to bring some heaven to this earth, some wholeness to this fragmented world. Although we possess the keys to break loose some heaven on earth; to use those keys, for love to truly win, we must be willing to sacrifice everything.

Can you see why I don’t want to preach this text this morning? Nobody wants to hear that!

So, what we preachers do with a text like this, especially preachers who want their congregations to like them, is to walk it back, or dial it back.

 To avoid upsetting too many congregants, preachers interpret carrying a cross (a symbol of execution, assassination and murder) as simply doing things for the church that we might not want to do.

For example, we say things like:

“Somebody needs to carry a cross by volunteering one Sunday morning to help in the nursery” (By the way, Gretchen did call me this week and asked me to mention that).

“Somebody needs to carry a cross by stepping up to chair a ministry team” (By the way, I understand that the Christian Education team currently needs someone).

Or “the preacher needs to carry a cross by showing up on Sunday morning to preach a sermon, even a sermon he doesn’t want to preach.

Now, that’s a sermon we can all tolerate. Right?

However, I often wonder how much better this world would be if preachers did not walk or dial back these words of Jesus? What if we preached these words the way Peter heard them, in a way that was so offensive, that made Peter do something as audacious as pulling aside and rebuking the Messiah and Son of the living God?

Jesus said: “…he must go to Jerusalem” (notice the urgency here. “He must”). “He must go to Jerusalem” to serve on a ministry team?  No. To preach a difficult sermon? No. “To undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.”

In other words, I believe Jesus is saying: If you follow the way of love that you see me demonstrate. If you love all people and teach others to love all people, especially those who have been pushed to the margins by self-serving religion: sick people, Eunuchs (who, today, would be considered a part of the LBGTQ community); poor people; people of other ethnicities, and people of other religions—if you teach people that God even wants us to love our enemies—if you point out, speak out and call out the demonic forces of evil that are oppressing people, if you stand up to hate and attempt to disarm hate, then there will be some people, probably religious people, who are going to want to kill you.

This past Monday, I attended a beautiful gathering of clergy on the campus of the University of Lynchburg to consider ways we can work together in this city. Meeting in that room vowing to partner with white and black pastors, male and female pastors, along with a Jewish Rabbi, I could not help to think how far we have come in the last 100 years. But in order to get here, the truth is: somebody had to pick up and carry a cross.

I believe Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this.

Bonhoeffer did not have to return to Germany to stand against the Nazi aggression. After all, he was safe and sound visiting New York City in the early 1940’s. He was free to stay in America and preach the gospel from the safety of a free church pulpit or teach New Testament in the peace and freedom of a university. But when he decided to follow Jesus, he knew there would be a cross involved. Bonhoeffer understood “saying ’yes’ to God requires saying ‘no’ to all injustice, to all lies, and to all oppression” even if it gets you killed. So, he returned to Germany, and for helping Jews escape and flee to Switzerland, he was arrested and executed by the Nazis just days before the war ended in 1945.

Ten years later, the Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people to register to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, despite the many death threats he received. White government officials offered Lee protection on the condition he end his voter registration efforts. However, Rev. Lee understood that if justice was going to prevail, if heaven was going to break loose, somebody needed to pick up and carry a cross. So, Rev. Lee kept preaching, and he kept printing, until he was murdered by White Supremacists.

William Lewis Moore, a postman in Baltimore, could have remained safe and comfortable in his home in Maryland in 1963. But instead, he decided to pick up a cross and travel to Mississippi.  There, Moore staged a one-man march against segregation to deliver a letter to the governor urging an end to the hate. But before making it to Jackson, he was shot and killed.

In 1964, the Rev. Bruce Klunder, a Presbyterian minister, was aware he was carrying a cross every time he demonstrated for fair housing and spoke out against segregation and discrimination. But when he decided to follow Jesus, he decided that there were things more important in this world than his life. And one day, while out protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio, he was brutally murdered when he was crushed to death by racist operating a bulldozer.

The following year, after watching state troopers attack civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, the Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, drove to Selma, picked up a cross and joined the marchers. After the march, while he was walking down a street in Selma, he was attacked and beaten to death by white men.

After Viola Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, saw the televised reports of the attack on the Edmund Pettus bridge by state troopers, she decided to pick up a cross and follow Jesus alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march. Though none went with her, she still followed. And while she was helping to ferry marchers between Selma and Montgomery, she was shot and killed by a Klansmen.

That same year, Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal Seminary student in Boston, decided to pick up a cross and go to Alabama to help with black voter registration. He was arrested at a demonstration, jailed, and then suddenly released, only to be immediately shot to death by a deputy sheriff.

In 1966, Vernon Dahmer, a wealthy businessman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, picked up a cross when he offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote. The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his house was fire-bombed. Days later, Dahmer died from severe burns.

Two years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement, knew that if freedom was to ever ring, if his dream of a beloved community was ever to be realized, somebody needed to pick up and carry a cross. Thus, despite receiving countless death threats, King kept preaching. He kept marching. He kept protesting. He kept carrying a cross, no turning back, until he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

As the late Frank Tupper, my seminary professor of theology, once said: “There’s a lot of correlation between what happened in Memphis in 1968 and what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.”

Whether we like it or not, when Jesus talked about carrying a cross, he wasn’t talking about working in the nursery or serving on a ministry team, as important as those things are. He was talking about a passionate, courageous willingness to put it all on the line. His words are nothing less than radical. For he doesn’t say that we cannot be exemplary disciples, super-hero disciples, unless we carry a cross. He says that we cannot call ourselves disciples at all unless we are willing to sacrifice it all.

I recently saw a sign outside of a church which boasted: “We help people win.”

The problem with that is that our faith is not about winning. Our faith is about losing.

This thing called “discipleship,” this thing called “church,” is not about achieving a good, better, happy or successful life, or even gaining an eternal life. It’s about dying to self.

It’s not about receiving a blessing. It’s about a willingness to risk it all to be a blessing.

It’s not about having our souls fed. It’s about sacrificing it all to feed the hungry.

It’s not about finding a home. It’s about giving it all to provide a home for the homeless.

It’s not about prosperity. It’s about giving everything we have to the poor.

It’s not about getting ahead. It’s about sharing with people who can barely get by.

It’s about courageously taking risks. It’s about challenging the powers-that-be. It’s about raising our voices in front of the city council, getting arrested if we must. It’s about an unwavering, fearless willingness to lose it all while fighting for the marginalized and standing against the haters.

The Rev. Dr. William Barber, a Disciples minister who has been arrested 17 times for protesting injustices, says that one of his arrest records reads: “praying too loud.”

When we call ourselves disciples, we are saying that we have decided to follow Jesus, which always involves praying loudly for God’s peace and justice, standing on the side of love, even if it costs us our very lives. We are saying that we’re going to follow Jesus wherever he leads us, even into dark, dreadful, dangerous places. Though none go with us, though friends and family forsake us, though proud boys threaten us, we still will follow. Our crosses we’ll carry, forward together, not one step back. Until we see Jesus. No turning back, no walking it back, no dialing it back, no turning back, no turning back.

-Sermon inspired the prophetic preaching of Rev. Dr. William Barber

Pastoral Prayer

Before he was executed by the Nazis in 1945, German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following words that I believe the American Church needs to hear again:

Cheap grace is the preaching of…forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession…  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Costly grace is…the gospel which must be sought again and again. The gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs us our lives. It is grace because it gives us the only true life.

The following pastoral prayer was inspired by Bonhoeffer’s timeless words:

O good and gracious God, we come to this place this morning to recommit ourselves to being faithful disciples of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. However, if we are ever going to truly follow Jesus, we will first need to repent of our sins that are derived from our love with what your servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”

We gather in this place to hear preaching that will remind us that we are loved and forgiven; not to hear that we need to change our selfish ways.

We gather to remember the way we came up out of the waters of our baptism to symbolize life abundant and eternal; not to remember our immersion into the waters to symbolize death to self.

We come to gather around a table to receive the gift of Holy Communion; not to confess our sins and our shortcomings.

We come to this place to be accepted with grace and love; not to be encouraged to accept others with grace.

We come here to worship at the foot of the cross; not to pick it up and carry it ourselves.

We come here to worship Christ in the safety and comfort of this sanctuary; not fully realizing that the Christ is actually alive today, present here, calling us, prodding us, pulling us to follow him out into a risky and uncomfortable world.

So, O God, forgive us of our love for “cheap grace.” Help us to truly repent, turn from our selfish ways and seek to live for a grace, in a grace, and by a grace that is worthy of your sacrificial love for us, even if it is “costly.”

May we keep asking, keep knocking at your door, keep giving our lives away to you, keep denying ourselves, and keep looking to you for the strength we need to pick up our crosses and follow our Lord and our Savior wherever he leads. Because we know that this grace, although it costs us our very lives, is the only way to experience life now and forever.

A National Emergency

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short ArticlesLeave a comment

national emergency

There is no doubt that we have a crisis in this country. It is a spiritual crisis. It is a crisis of the soul. And it is a national emergency.

There is an anti-Christ spirit in our land that refuses to love our neighbors as ourselves. This spirit has poisoned religion in our culture to the point that people of faith are not only indifferent to the suffering of their neighbors, but they actually doing harm to their neighbors.

This spirit has reduced faith in God to something that is merely private and personal. Faith is understood as something that can save one’s own life, rather than saving the lives of others. It is understood as a ticket to leave this world, rather than keys to loving and blessing this world. Whereas Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” the church has made life’s most urgent question: “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior so you can one day go to heaven?”

It is a spirit of selfishness. It is a spirit of greed. It is a spirit of power and privilege.

And although this anti-Christ spirit is obviously demonic, this spirit is not other-worldly. It is a familiar spirit that has haunted our nation since its founding.

The source of this spirit is most revealed today in the politics of Christian White Nationalism that is being fueled by the fear that black and brown people will soon be in the majority. The source of the anti-Christ spirit in our land and our national emergency is racism.

I suppose we think: “If we keep our faith in God personal and private, then we don’t have to obey what Jesus said is the greatest commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that include those who do not look like us.

The good news is that this evil spirit is no match for the power of love. It never has been and it never will. Love always finds a way.

A bullet in Memphis could not stop it. Jim Crow could not silence it. Civil War could not end it. And a cross in Jerusalem could not crucify it.

I believe the best way to fight an anti-Christ spirit is with the spirit of Love Himself, the spirit of Christ. We can respond to our national emergency and defeat the spirit of the anti-Christ by being the body of Christ, understanding that our faith is not solely a personal matter and should never be private.

The Gospels paint a portrait of a Jesus who is continually tearing down the walls that divide us. From the wall of heaven being ripped apart at his baptism to the temple curtain being being torn in two at his crucifixion, it is evident in the Gospel stories that no wall on heaven or on earth can contain or limit the love of God.

Jesus breaks every barrier erected by religion and culture. He touches lepers and a woman with a hemorrhage, making himself ceremonially unclean. He allows Mary Magdalene to sit at his feet as a disciple, a position (the feet of a Jewish Rabbi) that was previously reserved for male disciples. He welcomes little children to the dismay of his disciples. He learns from a Syrophoenician woman. He asks a woman from Samaria for water. He breaks the chains and liberates a demoniac. He eats and drinks with known sinners. He raises the dead.

I believe this is what is needed to attend to our national emergency today. Understanding that nothing in all of creation separates any of us from the love of God, as the Body of Christ, we must do the public, social and political work of Jesus to proclaim every human being is united by this love. We are all beloved children of God; therefore, we must all learn to live as beloved sisters and brothers.

And trust that love will always find a way.

A Personal Thought on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Just a ThoughtLeave a comment

martin-luther-king-on-pulpit-robert-casillaWhen I moved to southern Louisiana to preach the gospel, my church had a policy to close the church office on Fat Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday), but not on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I immediately changed the holiday policy stating: “I believe that churches should especially honor the MLK holiday. After all, he was a preacher who was martyred for preaching the gospel of Jesus!”

So, for me, today is a day to remember not only the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., but to also reexamine my own preaching, or lack thereof.

I have always believed that there is a lot of correlation between what happened in Memphis in 1968 and what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. I truly believe that if you love all people, and live your life trying to convince others to love all people, then there will always be some people, probably religious, who will want to kill you.

Today, I am reminded that if my preaching does not take grave risks by offending and outraging those who do not believe that God’s love expands past the lines of race, class, religion, nationality and sexual orientation, then I am not preaching the gospel of Jesus.