Laura Ruth Jarrett

January 22, 2017 Laura Ruth Jarrett

Oh God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, Oh God, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

On September 15th, 1963, four member of the KKK in Birmingham, Alaba- ma bound together fifteen sticks of dynamite and put it on a timer so that when the good people of the 16th Street Baptist Church were gathered for church, the dynamite went off and Addie May Collins and Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair were killed. A friend of mine for her dissertation went to all the churches, the white churches in Birmingham and found as many bulletins and she could for the Sunday fol- lowing September the 15th and in no one bulletin was there any mention of the bombing of the 16th street Baptist Church. No record of prayers of- fered. No community gathering. No white people do we know mourned the bombing of that church and those four blessed saints. Just months before when Dr. King was sent to prison he wrote a long letter to clergy in the area. It was a very long letter expressing his great wish that more had spo- ken, not just for the four girls. He didn’t mention them. But for the neces- sary work of ending terrorism against citizens of the United States. And in that letter Dr. King wrote this paragraph

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct ac- tion"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more be- wildering than outright rejection. Can I get an Amen? Dr. King hits on something that is so potent to me. Shallow Understanding. I just want to talk a minute about Shallow Under- standing. Shallow Understanding, I believe, is an injury of trauma, trauma to white people, trauma to people of color, trauma to bystanders. People who experience violence or who see violence tend to flatten ourselves out. We get shallow. We think that we can’t be multi-dimensional. We think that if we feel, if we see, if we know, it will kill us. And as a means of survival we flatten ourselves out. We go to a shallow understanding and it leads to an absence of empathy when we can’t see what we know is there, we have a hard time feeling for ourselves and feeling for each other and when we can’t see, when we can’t feel, we have an inability to see what it really happening. We say “Oh, that can’t really be happening.” We say “Oh, that must be some misunderstanding.” “Oh, there must be a real reason why that has happened.” It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I must get on with my life. It leads us to an inability to act. We don’t know how to get started. We can’t think dimensionally because we can’t see. We can’t figure out, then, how with another person we might gather ourselves up to go out to act to end this business of terrorism against citizens of our country.

Did you see Black-ish last week? You know this TV series. It’s about a fami- ly. The father is African American, grew up impoverished, married a light skinned woman of mixed descent and they have children and the whole show is about “How shall we survive this world? What shall we do to teach our children how to survive in the world?” In the episode last week, Dre, who is the father, was in a conference room and all his colleagues are saying “Oh, how terrible about the election. How terrible about the election.” And Dre is silent. And a man turns to him and says “You have had nothing to say about any of this all day. Why do you not care about this country?” And this is what Dre says and I want to read it to you:

You think I don’t care about this country? I love this country even though at times it does not love me back. For my whole life, my parents, my grand- parents, me, for most black people this system has never worked for us. But we still play ball, tried to do our best to live by the rules even though we knew it would never work out in our favor. Had to live in neighborhoods that you wouldn’t drive through, send our kids to school with books so beat up you couldn’t read them, worked jobs that you wouldn’t consider in your nightmares. Black people wake up every day thinking our lives are going to change even though everything around us says it is not. Truth be told, you ask most black people and they tell you, no matter who won the election, they don’t expect the hood to get better. But they still voted because that is what you’re supposed to do. You think I’m sad that Hillary didn’t win? That I’m not terrified of what Trump’s about to do? I’m used to things not going my way. I’m sorry that you’re not and that it’s blowing your minds. So please excuse me if I might get a little bit offended because I didn’t see all this outrage when everything was happening to all of my people since we were stuffed on boats in chains. I love this country as much as if not more than you do. And don’t you ever forget it.”

And we say “We will not.” Amen? We will not forget this.

Dr. King, I’m so sorry, is dead. And he is not coming back except in our hearts. And so who will be Dr. King for us? We will be Dr. King for us. The generation has turned over, you guys, and it’s for us now. Our sister Maryann has passed on. Our sister Betty Wiles has passed on. Our brother Graham Brown has passed on. And only Barbara is here to be our grand- mother and our spiritual leader. But we will become them for us, Amen? It’s our time, our generation. So what will we do?

In our scripture today, the second half, we have the story of Jesus calling the disciples. He called them by name and said “Come and do this work with me.” I have to say that both of our denominations have been doing this kind of discipleship program. Teach your people to be disciples of the church, disciples of Jesus. And I’ve been like “Oh no, I’m not doing that. I’m not teaching that to my people.” Because what it has meant in the past for us, black and white, queer and straight, is that we should go back to sleep. And I haven’t been willing to ask us to do this. But today I have a new understanding. I call you by name, Bobby and Rico and Beth and Tracy and Cheryl and Sawyer, beautiful Sawyer, and you too. And I call you by name to be disciples and to repair the world. It it on us now. It is on us now. We are the people who will do this.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to see our people and we are going to believe their testimony. We are going to believe our own testimony. We are going to say “This is what happened to me. And to you. I’m not just talking about the people of African descent. It has happened to you, you queer people, you women people, you men people, you trans people. You know what it’s like for it to be done to you. We will not stand for it. We will believe the stories of each other. We will hear and believe. We’re gonna keep our eyes off of King Baby. Do you know who King Baby is? I learned it from AA people and I learned it from the Al-Anon meeting that I go to. King Baby is the person who can’t get sober, the person in the household who runs around crashing things, acting like a baby but thinks he’s a king. Did I get it right? Oh, yes. And King Baby draws all the attention to him or herself and the rest of the people say “How will I keep out of trouble?” We’re going to pay no attention. Amen? This is what it looks like. “Oh, I got to tell you that there were more people at my inauguration than anybody else.” And then we spend four or five hours saying how many people were on the mall. No more of that. Together we’ll keep a thread on what is true for the majority of us. We will listen and hear each other and we will believe our combined testimony. But we will not spend ourselves wrapping ourselves around someone’s lies.

In our scripture today, John the Baptist saw Jesus and said “There he is. Here is the Messiah.” And the truth of the Messiah shone through and the combined testimony of the disciples shone through. And the people knew that it was something true. And so we, I don’t know if we will say this all of us, but we will keep our eyes on truth and we will call that truth “Jesus among us.”

Now I have a gift for you and you have to pass this around. And everybody take one, please? There’s different kinds and different shapes but we know that we can’t do everything, each one of us, but each of us have a tea- spoon to do our little piece of work. Some of us have never picked up a tea- spoon before to do a little bit of sugar shoveling or stirring or something maybe but you know how big that is. Manageable, eh? Everybody is to take spoon home. And this will be your reminder that we will each work side by side together. We won’t forget. These are yours to take home. We’re gonna be holding this for a long time. One of the things that I think people are in- clined to do, all kinds of people, is to get excited about going on a march and then forget the next day. I have got to tell you that our people of African descent have been doing this work for 500 years. And we will join and our ambition will be to do it as long as it takes. Can I get an Amen?

Lastly, for what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna rest while other people work. Sometimes we get tired and we must go down and take a nap. You can’t work endlessly. You can’t think endlessly. You can’t feel with other people endlessly and so when you’re ready you have to go take a rest and the rest of everybody will be working while you rest. Do we promise this to each other? Okay. Now I want to thank Ben, for he sent me this. Seth Godin in a blog article quoted Dr. King that the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice. But Seth Godin says specifically that the arc bends towards access, access to health care, access to reproductive rights, access to marriage, access to safety, access to food, Amen? The moral arc of the universe bends toward dignity, dignity for each of us. Regard each other’s dignity. No one must be a buffoon. No one must be more vulnerable than their dignity allows. The universe bends toward community. We in this con- gregation and you in your classroom and you at work and you with your crew, all of you, we are building relationships that will help us be community together so that we can believe each other’s stories, protect each other. The arc of the universe bends toward diversity. Our job is to notice who is in the room. Did you notice who was at the march yesterday? It wasn’t nearly diverse as, say, the gay pride march. Why? Why, we need to ask, are we only white people or only people of color? We need to ask are we only working class people or are we only educated people? We need to notice who is in the room and who is not in the room. Ask the question why. Maybe they’re out resting. Maybe they don’t want to be with a whole lot of white people downtown on Boston Common because that’s only meant danger. So we need to notice who is with us. And it bends toward responsibility. Our responsibility. Our taking up our teaspoons. Our doing the work that God calls us. Lastly, Seth Godin says History doesn’t bend itself. But we could bend it. And we will be the ones to do it. We will do it together with power and we will do it with love. We will not do power alone and we will not do love alone. For Dr. King says Power without Love is reckless and abusive. And Love without Power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is Love implementing the demands of Justice. Justice at its best cor- rects everything that stands against Love.

Beloved, join me, join the world, join the march, join the long haul. Join Je- sus. Amen.