Animals abound in the gospel reading from John. Jesus is called a lamb and the Holy Spirit is a dove. God’s creation is on the move. Not just as symbols, but a sense all of creation is alive. It is a reminder that the incarnation is God appearing as human amidst the animals, the plants, the water, the land, and the air. It is an image of movement, God at work in the world.
God is also at work in the world this weekend which many celebrate as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Dr. King is recognized in the US and around the world. His birthday is January 15. The public holiday in the US is this Monday and it will be the 10th anniversary of the MLK parade Florentien and I helped found in Lexington, Virginia. I am appreciative to the friends who have continued the parade all these years. When we received pushback from white supremacists ten years ago, little did we know just how bad things would become politically. It was a case of seeing an illness flare up, but without fully realizing just how deep the illness had spread in the body politic. It’s a similar story in Canada as well if we’re honest. I don’t think we realized just how fragmented our communities had become until after the Covid shutdown. It was only then that we saw the levels of mistrust and retreat into silos became more fully entrenched. We ignore these realities to our own peril. Just this summer there was a gathering of white supremacists in Vancouver and there are community business owners and leaders from the island and coast who took part. There was a man who worked in a Langford gym, there was the director of the Prince George symphony, all reported in the news, and more. There is a presence of hate groups on the island, which we need to reckon with. Such things are far more common than we care to admit. And that’s not even getting into the ways the US is dragging us into chaos as a federal militia beats up migrants and US citizens alike on the streets of Minneapolis and beyond.
There is also good news as we hear in the gospel. Jesus as the lamb of God is present. John is witnessing to Jesus’ ministry. And the Holy Spirit is alight as a dove, enlivening the Word for those of us who came after the original disciples. Through the work of the Spirit, the prophets keep on prophesying. Friends marching in the streets on Monday, offer a Lutheran connection between Virginia and Victoria. All our communities also extend beyond the island and BC to Alberta, Ontario, Germany, Finland, South America, South Asia, and beyond. People keep protesting violence in their streets and neighbourhoods. The voice of Martin Luther King Jr. keeps resounding. And prophets of old, John the Baptist, keep pointing to Jesus as the source of our salvation.
Martin Luther King Jr. While Dr. King is idolized today, featured on postage stamps, has bridges and parks named after him around the world, that wasn’t so just a short while ago. When Dr. King was assassinated, he was among the most reviled American leaders. He was too loud, too bold, too Black, didn’t know his place according to the white establishment. Today his non-violence and community organizing is upheld as a best practice, but that was not how early Civil Rights followers were received in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They were reviled, spat upon, beaten, even killed. Yet they persevered until there was change for racial justice. They held the line through the hardest times. We’re learning today that we need to keep working for justice. Victories in justice are never one and done. Everything we consider public morals and norms are fluid. Things can regress to the way they were before. But that’s not the whole story. Something athletic trainers will tell you is that your body develops muscle memory. Even if you stop working out, you can regain your strength more quickly than you lose it. That is true of us as the body of Christ and communities. We can remember what it’s like to exercise muscles and regain abilities to lead.
On a personal note I was at the physio the other day and working through some movement issues. Things that have been there awhile but creep up in middle age. My physio is amazing. He’s also a harbinger of pain. He says generally we don’t want to go above a 7/10 on a pain scale, but if I want to make quicker gains I could entertain more pain. To his credit he can evoke intense pain both through manual manipulation and IMS – sticking needles in muscles. It hurts so much! And then afterwards I felt a little lighter, a little more flexible. Prophets are like this. Their words sometimes sting, but the effect can release all kind of residue that is gumming up our ability move and thrive. The words of a prophet are a balm for muscles that have lost flexibility, knotted up.
Consider the following excerpt from Dr. King’s Sermon “Loving Your Enemies” which he gave at a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1957:
There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.
That has been the case hearing some news sources describe everyday Lutherans in Minnesota defending the schools, businesses, and homes right where they live. They are called violent protesters when a federal militia brings automatic weapons and tear gas onto their front lawns. The way Renee Nicole Good was killed and shortly after in an absurd twist, the blame was shifted to her widow. And MAGA followers calling in death threats to their six-year-old child’s school. It is an extraordinary level of hate that doesn’t let you see the humanity of someone the federal government killed in cold blood. It’s a message Dr. King and others have been saying for decades. None of this is new.
I also need to watch in my own heart the way I view people I don’t like. It’s healthy to call evil actions evil. Martin Luther encouraged that. But it can be poisonous to let hate well up in our hearts for individual people. I need to watch my own vision doesn’t become distorted. That doesn’t mean we don’t stop working toward justice in the kingdom of God. But it means we believe no one is beyond redemption. No one lays outside the grace of God. But we don’t need to sit by idly while neighbours are getting beaten in the streets. And we may enjoy a certain amount of remove watching this from Canada. But we know there are people hankering for a fight on our streets too. Look how quickly people turned even in BC on residential school denialism.
It is God leading us toward Christ, toward truth, toward a community grounded in love that will save us. Listen to the first disciples in the gospel. “Come and see!” they exclaim. When God orients us toward Jesus, the hardness in our hearts melts. I truly believe that. Because in my own mind I concoct all kinds of schemes to get back at hateful actions in the world. All of them will fail. None of them are realistic. But worse than living in the land of make believe is the way our minds poison our own wells. We become possessed by make believe plans, “If I was in charge for a day, then I’d really set things straight.” No we wouldn’t! We’d likely just make things worse. God is orienting us all toward the one who is grounded in love. That is what sets us free. Dr. King got this when he said to let go of hate because it disfigures the one doing the hating. We don’t want that for ourselves or for everyone. God is doing a new thing in our midst. Let’s recognize that and trust it is leading to something good. That doesn’t mean we can simply defeat all the evil in the world. But it does mean we’re on the right path. And we have Jesus and we have each other. And that’s all we got. And it’s enough. Amen.
