Be part of the answer
Take down the fences erected by the evil one
Editor’s note: Look for a sermon or lesson from Houston’s diverse faiths every week in Belief. To submit a sermon, email robert.morast@chron.com.
There is a compelling photograph that lingers in my mind these days.
Taken on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; it shows several political and religious leaders, black and white, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, standing together, hands over hearts during the singing of the National Anthem.
Of the five on the front row — one looks more resolute, more determined, more invested than any other in the crowd — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would later deliver his famous “I have a Dream” speech to the eager ears of more than 250,000 Americans during the March on Washington.
I’ve thought much about that photograph as we have witnessed the debate about athletes, and other public figures, refusing to stand for our nation’s anthem in protest of the inequality that continues to plague the human family here in the land of the free. I am assuming most of us try to live godly lives as it relates to others — or at least we want to live that way. But maybe some of us don’t. If we don’t, well, we need to be convicted of that. If you know anything about the early Church, one of the things that baffled the world around the Body of Believers is that they would, it seemed, take anybody. The early Christian family was a hodgepodge of wealthy and poor, old and young, colors, languages. They did not seek to be diverse as a kind of ancient form of political correctness, they just knew that their chief identity was found not in a litany of adjectives — but instead in Christ.
King, and his legion of devotees, were (and are) right to push for laws of protection and fairness; but his weapons were rather simple — words of truth and actions of love.
King never gave way to calls for violence. He never looted, or burned a building, or physically harmed others. He chose the higher way. Why would King “stand,” and place his hand over his heart for our National Anthem, in
the most racially divided season of the last century? Because he was motivated by the dream and promises of America and his faith — not by its realities at the time. Rather than drag people down, he chose to lift people up. When given the chance to only curse the darkness, he chose instead to light a torch.
And regardless of what you may be feeling at this very moment, I am asking you to consider whether you need to repent.
Everyone is talking about race right now; the heat is turned way up, especially between blacks and whites. In my mind, what is missing is that higher voice. Not the shrill one, but the great one — a voice that does not just say what is wrong about this great divide, but helps point us to what is right.
What might it take? Faith to believe that things we might have held on to, need to be released. Faith to confess when I have been part of the problem, not part of the answer. Faith to give myself over to the transforming power of Jesus Christ, who can set me free from a bondage that puts up barriers in my life; a bondage that draws on my fears such that I’d rather pull down the blinds of my heart, rather than open its doors.
You don’t have to carry the burden of pushing away others because of who they are. That may seem obvious, but maybe you feel like you are betraying something — your past, your circle of friends, the way you were reared. It may feel like a bit of betrayal to change the channel when someone on the television screen or on talk radio is revving up the old racial divide, because it is all too easy to just go with the flow of the stream, rather than to swim your way out of the undertow to safer shores.
But, you know, we are called to do that.
So there are a lot of things I could talk about, but the big one before us today is our great divide — between political parties, between genders, between faith communities and perhaps most especially right now, between those who are painted with a variety of the colors in God’s paint box. When it happens, it emboldens the evil one, and it breaks God’s heart.
But here’s the good news; you and I don’t have to give in. We can confess, and repent, and change. And in changing, we can change the world. It is a noble calling; it is a matter of the content of our character — it is what Jesus would have us do.
Through the death of Christ on the Cross and his resurrection from the dead God was moving a fence to include us in God’s Kingdom where there are no fences. You know, we too are called to move fences.
What do you say; let’s show the world how God’s family is suppose to work. Let’s root out any fences we have allowed to be planted in our own lives. Let’s go into the world, and uproot the ones planted by the evil one.
All it takes is faith to tell the world every chance we get, by what we do and what we say: “There’s just one kind of folks, folks we call the children of God.”