Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, January 19, 2024.
This hymn, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” makes me think about Martin Luther King, Jr., and a story he told from back in the winter of 1956. He was 27 years old, less than two years into his pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and in the thick of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Every day King and his family were getting threats, and they were wearing him down. One night, just as he was going to bed, the phone rang. An angry voice threatened him, invoking the N word and saying, “Before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.”
After that, King couldn’t sleep. He went to the kitchen, and made a cup of coffee. “I was ready to give up,” he wrote. “… In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud… ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.’”
“At that moment,” he wrote, “I experienced the presence of the Divine as I have never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.”
I share his story because it puts things in perspective. For those of us who are worried or afraid or discouraged in these days, it calls us to ask ourselves, “What do I really have to fear? Is my life in danger; is anyone threatening me or bombing my home? And who does have reason to be afraid?” And it calls us to take stock of our spiritual resources, to ask ourselves, “Who am I going to call on in my own dark night? Who or what is the source of my strength and courage?”
We had a meeting here on Thursday to talk about organizing for justice. We acknowledged that talking only gets you so far. Two weeks from today, after church we’re having a conversation about social justice with some local justice leaders and organizers. I hope you’ll come, but please don’t come expecting to feel better after some talking. This is about moving from taking to doing. Because whatever you have to offer is needed right now. And like the Civli Rights Movement that we celebrate this weekend showed us, when you organize for justice and for change, that change will happen. Not easily, but it will happen. And sometimes it takes things getting bad for us to show up and stand up for what is right. So if you are concerned for our immigrant friends and neighbors, and others who are vulnerable these days; if you care about the rule of law and the state of our democracy, then come be part of this meeting on February 2, ok?
A few minutes ago we heard Rep. John Lewis sharing his story of growing up in the days of segregation, and how many folks seem resigned to that reality. “But,” he said, “attending church and Sunday school, reading the Bible, the teaching of the great teacher, and being deeply influenced by what I saw all around me, it was this belief that somehow and some way things were going to get better, that you have this sense of hope, a sense of optimism and have faith.”
I find John Lewis as inspiring as Martin Luther King. And if you don’t do anything else to observe the King holiday tomorrow, I hope you will take 50 minutes to listen to the interview his words came from, which I know you’ll find encouraging for these days and the work that lies ahead. I’ll put the link up on our website this afternoon with the sermon recording. Or you can just Google “John Lewis Love in Action.”
We should remember that the Civil Rights Movement was accomplished because of the struggle and sacrifice and gifts of regular, ordinary people. There were leaders and foot soldiers with all kinds of gifts and skills, and everyone was needed—orators and organizers, singers and sign-makers, and people who knew how to show up. Because you can’t have a social movement for change without people showing up! Martin Luther King, Jr. is the one person who has a holiday and is most remembered, but the movement was so much bigger than him, and he would tell you that. I love that the Movement was fueled by so many church people, from the Black church and from other faith traditions too, including Unitarian Universalists. A number of our ministers went South in those days, and one, James Reeb, was murdered in Selma because of his work there.
Do you know that most famous, and this weekend, the most quoted, part King’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington, was not in King’s text? That he didn’t plan to say those words that day? It was the singer Mahalia Jackson, who has sung earlier, standing behind King at the Lincoln Memorial, who called out, “Tell us about the dream, Martin.” Because she had heard him preach about that dream. And so, at the urging of that singer, Rev. Dr. King left his prepared text and spoke words that our nation will never forget.
I am envious of the Black church, and its spirit-filled worship, and forever moved by what the church brought to the struggle for civil rights. One of those things was singing, with its power to bring people together, to give encouragement and strength, inspiration and joy when we need it most. Bernice Johnson Reagon, who later co-founded the a cappella group “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” was a civil rights leader because of her voice. As a young woman, she sang at rallies and mass meetings, and years later, reflecting on this, she said communal singing gives people power; it announcing that they own the air in a space, singing is saying “we are here, and this is real; singing is a way of owning the space that you’re in.”
She says, “I’ve seen meetings where a sheriff has walked into a mass meeting and established the air because this is a sheriff everybody knows. And they’re taking pictures or taking names and you just know your job is in trouble… The only way people could take the space back was by starting a song. And inevitably, when police would walk into mass meetings, somebody would start a song and then people would join in, and as people joined in, the air would change.” (read her conversation with Bill Moyers here)
Can you picture it? Haven’t you felt this yourself—how singing can lift you up, or console you, or put you in touch with strength you didn’t know you had? There’s a group of people who started a thing called “Justice Choir,” with the idea that working for justice goes better if it includes singing. They created a songbook for this. And I so love this idea of people working for justice and singing together, and taking their songs into public spaces, announcing “we are here and we are taking this space back, for justice.” Is there anyone among us who might want to start a Justice Choir here? Wouldn’t that be a good thing to do in these days?
Singing is both a real, embodied, life-giving practice, and it is also a symbol for how we might comport ourselves in this moment. We need to decide—are we going to be overwhelmed and afraid, or are we going to choose to be awake and alive? Are we going to go along with whatever happens, or are we going to resist? Are we going to be quietly troubled, or are we going to be singing?
Dear faithful companions, this is no time to be isolated or alone, resigned or afraid. This is the time when we need to join our voices, and reach out our hands, to say to one another, and anyone who will join us, “Let’s be singing.” For ourselves, for those who need our help, for our world. Let’s be singing.
Amen.
We’re going to sing a song that was written in a particular context and for a particular purpose, it’s been called the Negro National Anthem. For those of us who are white, we need to acknowledge that this is not our song, and not our experience; but still we sing it in solidarity with those whose lives and experience it describes, and we sing it—in our shared commitment to what is good and right. Let this be our prayer: “Lift every voice and sing, ’til earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty…”