Here is a link to the sermon preached at the National Cathedral yesterday, because you deserve the best.
Below it is the text of my sermon from yesterday, preached in English and Spanish at Saint John's Episcopal Church, Waterbury, Connecticut.
If you want the Spanish version, please let me know.
As you read these sermons, I want you to know that I did not see the Very Rev. Gary Hall's sermon until tonight, Monday, August 26. Any likeness of intent between the two is coincidental absolutely.
The Adventure continues.
Sermon August 25, 2013 by
or copy and paste:
http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/grh20130825.shtml
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Sermon by the Reverend Lois Keen
August 25,
2013
St. John’s
Waterbury
Luke 13:10-17
Isaiah 58:9b-14
If you remove the yoke
from among you,
the pointing of the
finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to
the hungry
and satisfy the needs
of the afflicted,
then your light shall
rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like
the noonday.
On Tuesday I saw the movie The Butler.
The movie is the story about a man, an African-American man, who becomes a
butler in the White House. His name is Cecil Gaines. I expected the movie would
be about life in the White House. I expected state dinners and famous guests.
Instead the movie is about the fight for civil rights for African-Americans.
The character Cecil Gaines is based on a real butler who worked in the White
House during the time of the freedom riders, desegregation, and the Black
Panthers, from Eisenhower to Reagan. So we see Cecil in the White House,
standing as a servant, silent, invisible, in the Oval Office listening to
arguments about his people, black people, alongside scenes of his son at a lunch counter
sit-in.
We see his son in jail.
We see his son following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We see his son on a freedom bus when it is fire bombed.
We see his son in jail again.
We see his son in jail a lot.
When Dr. King is murdered, we see the son of the butler cease following Dr.
King’s way of non-violence.
We see him join the Black Panthers, a militant organization pledged to get
freedom for African-Americans at any cost.
We see him decide to leave when the Panthers begin to talk about killing
people.
I grew up during the era of civil rights. I was fourteen when my family
moved to Lewes Beach, Delaware where I saw and experienced segregation and
racism. My mother was told by our new white neighbors that we white children were not
allowed to play with the black children who lived in the ghetto one block from
our house. I attended a segregated school. I worked at a soda fountain news stand where I was instructed to not serve any black person who sat at the counter. I
was fired from the job after one week.
I was a freshman in college during the freedom rides and the assassination
of President John Kennedy. I was at the University of Delaware in Newark
Delaware when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and Newark, Delaware
erupted in riots.
I was on the side of desegregation, on the side of assuring the right to
vote to African Americans, on the side of full civil liberties for all people.
I still am.
The movie about the butler, Cecil Gaines, brought back that time so
strongly that I was crying uncontrollably because of my memories of the horror
of living in a racist society and the cost of making racism illegal. A horror I hadn't even dared to think about at the time. And
because when I and others dared to elect an African American man as president
of these United States, all the hate that is racism came back again. I asked
myself, “Will it ever end? Will I ever live in a nation that is not racist?”
And my question now includes the racist underpinning to our attitude toward
immigrants.
Racism is
bondage. It binds the African-American; it binds the immigrant. And it
binds the racist. This coming Wednesday, August 28, this country marks the
fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. Fifty years ago two hundred fifty thousand
people demonstrated peacefully for civil rights and economic equality for
African-Americans. The people walked down Constitution Avenue, down Independence
Avenue, and then gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for speeches, songs,
and prayers. It was exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation freeing the African slaves in this country. At 3:00 Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Well, 50 years later, things are a little
better, but not much better. Racism is still alive and well in these United
States. And racism has been extended to immigrants of all kinds.
Two thousand years ago a crippled woman,
bent over double, enters the synagogue. Jesus heals her. It is the Sabbath. The
religious authorities scold the woman. “Come any day for healing, but not on
the Sabbath!” they cry. You can have freedom any day of the week, but not on
the Sabbath!
And Jesus, who came to free all those who are in
bondage of any kind, replies, “You hypocrites! Does not
each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead
it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom
Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the
sabbath day?"
Christians are
expected to follow Jesus. We are expected to do what Jesus did. Jesus came to
free everyone from bondage and, therefore, we are to work to free everyone from
bondage too. When we do not work to make everyone free, when we do not counter
racism in ourselves and in others, we become like the leaders of the synagogue
who wanted the crippled woman to remain bent over double one more day. Wait a
little, they say. Freedom will come eventually. Be patient.
This is what the
ministers in Birmingham, Alabama said to Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Be
patient. Someday your people will have equal rights with white people. Someday
they will be free. Be patient.
There is no more
time for patience. When we work for freedom for everyone – freedom to vote
without restriction of sex, color, or culture, freedom to earn a living wage,
freedom from being imprisoned because of what a person wears or the color of
their skin or the language they speak – then we become like Jesus, who has no
patience for waiting just one more day to set free a woman in bondage.
Bishop Michael Curry, in his sermon for today, is preaching
that God has a dream. God has a divine purpose for this world. God has a dream
for every person who is living today and every person who ever lived. God will
not rest until God’s dream comes is realized.
This is what Jesus is all about. This is what Jesus came to
show us. This is what Jesus is telling us in today’s story: In God’s dream,
there is no one in bondage. And God expects us to work with Jesus to free
everyone who is in bondage – to free everyone from poverty, hunger,
discrimination, crippling fear, racism.
In Jesus, God shows us how to become more than a collection
of our own self-interests. “[Jesus] came to show us how to become the human
family of God.” You and I are expected to help God’s dream become true.
For me, this means I must
understand the unwarranted privilege I have of being a person with fair skin
whose ancestors came from northern Europe. I will not be free until this land
is free for everyone. I will not be free until I have done everything I can to
assure that every person of whatever color, faith, or land of origin is as free
and as privileged as my race is. I long for that day. I know many who long
for that day. I know of others who will keep that day from coming as long as
they can. But Jesus will not wait forever. Jesus is for freedom. The day will
come when those who are in bondage are set free.
God will not rest until God’s dream is realized. And, Bishop
Michael Curry says, “…miraculously God will not do it without us.”
Or, to paraphrase
St. Augustine and Bishop Desmond Tutu, according to Bp. Michael,
Alone, God won’t do it.
Alone, we can’t do it.
But together with God, we can.
Pray to become one of the people who will do everything they
can to help Jesus to make God’s dream come true, through the power of the Holy
Spirit. And God help me to become one of those people, too.
For, “If you remove the yoke from among
you, …
The LORD will guide you
continually,
and satisfy your needs
in parched places,
and make your bones
strong;
and you shall be like a
watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never
fail.
Your ancient ruins shall
be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the
foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the
repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets
to live in…”
for the mouth of the
LORD has spoken it.
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