Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, January 14, 2024.
Many years ago, my mom gave me this book: Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King’s first book. It tells the story of King’s first pastorate, at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in Montgomery. Alabama. He and his new wife Coretta had been living in Boston, and King had job offers in the north, both teaching and pastoral positions, where Coretta could develop her singing career. They liked living where there was no legalized segregation. But, he wrote, “We agreed that, in spite of the disadvantages and inevitable sacrifices, our greatest service could be rendered in our native South. We came to the conclusion that we had something of a moral obligation to return—at least for a few years.”
King writes about Dexter Avenue’s reputation as “a sort of silk stocking church, catering only to a certain class,” and his efforts from the beginning to welcome people from a diversity of backgrounds and classes. He was also concerned to broaden the programs and outreach of the congregation. He says,
“Among the new functions I decided to recommend were a committee to revitalize religious education; a social service committee to channel and invigorate services to the sick and needy; a social and political action committee; a committee to raise and administer scholarship funds for high school graduates; and a cultural committee to give encouragement to promising artists.”
He describes the work of those days: finishing up his doctoral dissertation, getting to know the members of the church, attending lots of meetings, and preparing his Sunday sermon, on which he spent “a minimum of fifteen hours a week.” In those days, as he dove into the good and demanding work of parish ministry, he had no idea what the future would hold.
Just a year later, a black woman named Rosa Parks was returning home on a city bus after a long day of working on her feet at a department store. She took a seat at the front of the bus, but before long, the bus driver ordered her, and three other black riders, to give up their seats for the white passengers boarding the crowded bus. Rather than stand at the back, Rosa Parks stayed where she was, refusing to give up her seat. Her feet were tired, and she was tired of the indignity and injustice of Jim Crow segregation. Rosa Parks was arrested, and put in jail, and this became a tipping point for some black leaders in Montgomery, who vowed to no longer cooperate with that oppressive and unjust system—they would stop riding the city buses. They spread the word in churches on Sunday morning, and passed out leaflets copied on church mimeograph machines. They formed an organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Martin Luther King their leader.
Monday, December 5, was the first day of the hastily organized boycott. King says that he and Coretta woke early that day. He thought the effort would be a success if sixty percent of black riders stayed off the buses. Around six AM, he was in the kitchen drinking coffee when Coretta called out, “Martin, Martin, come quickly.” Pointing to the first of the morning buses that would pass by their house, she called out, “Darling, it’s empty!” King writes, “I could hardly believe what I saw. I knew that the South Jackson line, which ran past our house, carried more Negro passengers than any other line in Montgomery, and that this first bus was usually filled with domestic workers going to their jobs… (fifteen minutes later the next bus) rolled down the street, and, like the first, it was empty.”
The Montgomery bus boycott went on for over a year. People walked miles to and from work, in all kinds of weather, sometimes under threats and intimidation. The protest ended only after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the city buses of Montgomery was unlawful, and black people and white people began riding the buses together. Slowly things began to change in Montgomery and the civil rights movement was underway
Our worship theme this month is “shared ministry,” and I’m so grateful to Sophia Lyons for her presence and preaching last Sunday. It was good to have her back, even if not in person, and her articulation of shared ministry will stay with me, and, I trust, with you. “Shared Ministry,” she said, “is the continuous practice of CENTERING IN YOUR GIFTS. That’s what it’s all about.”
Do you know what your gifts are? This is deep and important work, to acknowledge and claim your gifts, and put them to use. It is liberating and joyful work. My second year in seminary I did a field education in a UU congregation. I thought I was headed for some kind of chaplaincy, but working in a church changed me—one day I realized that it didn’t feel like work at all! It was challenging, and it was rewarding and joyful. I’d found my calling.
What about you? It can be easy to miss the things that you’re good at, that come naturally; it can be easy to take them for granted. Have you ever asked yourself, “What are my gifts? What do I love to do? What do I have to offer?” I hope that this church provides a space for connection, exploration, and sacred play where you might discover some gifts you didn’t know you had.
We should be a place that helps you, as Sophia described, to be “centered in your gifts and sharing in your ministries,” a place for “taking your turn and giving others turns… (a place where) you will tap into joy. You will feel spiritually deepened. You will feel connected. And this joy and spiritual deepening and connected-ness will spark resilience and wonder and presence and hope and healing.”
This project of shared ministry is certainly more than just a theme for a month. It’s a an ongoing conversation and a way of being, that I hope we will take up and embrace as a new and intentional practice, a life-giving and liberating way of doing church and of living in the world.
I often find myself wishing that I was a better organizer. There are lots of ways that could be helpful around here. But this is not one of my gifts. And you didn’t call me as your minister because of my stellar organizational skills! And it’s not my job.
When you heard Martin Luther King’s description of how he started off his ministry in Montgomery, did you notice the words he used about those new efforts? He said, “I decided to recommend…” He didn’t say, “I organized, I led, I supervised…” He recommended some things to the leaders of the church, trusting them to choose if they would move them forward. And the truth is, Martin Luther King, with all his gifts, he was no organizer.
Have you seen the new movie, “Rustin,” about Bayard Rustin, a friend of King’s and a leader in the Civil Rights Movement? Now Bayard Rustin, he was an organizer, and the movie shows him in all his glory. Rustin, and the many people he recruited and organized, were the ones who made the March on Washington possible; that day in 1963 when over 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I wonder: without Rustin, would King’s “I Have a Dream” speech ever have come to life? It was King’s poetic and prophetic vision that woke up white America, but it was organizers like Rustin, and thousands of ordinary citizens, courageous and committed citizens, who built the stage on which King stood, who in their bodies—marching, protesting, being beaten, and still responding to hate with love—they are the ones who carried forward the Civil Rights Movement that changed America.
This is an old story—Michal Walzer describes the Israel’s exodus from Egypt, which inspired the Civil Rights Moment, this way:
…that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
that there is a better place, a promised land;
that the winding way to that promise
passes through the wilderness.
That there is no way to get from here to there
except by joining hands, marching
together.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a first step in the Civil Rights Movement, and it shows what people can accomplish with inspiration and courage, joining hands and marching together. Do you see that this is a story of shared ministry? In his preface to Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King wrote,
“While the nature of this account causes me to make frequent use of the pronoun ‘I,’ in every important part of the story it should be ‘we.’This is not a drama with only one actor. More precisely it is the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. … The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement. One elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered, ‘My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.’”
Can we let this be our encouragement and inspiration? To give our hands to struggle, to put our gifts to use, to take up the work that we are called to do, so that at the end, our bodies will be tired, and our souls we will be at rest. Our souls will be at rest, and we will have done our part heal and bless our world.
Amen.