MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR - 'A KNOCK AT MIDNIGHT'

Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him"?

Luke 11:5-6, rsv

Although this parable is concerned with the power of persistent prayer, it may also serve as a basis for our thought concerning many contemporary problems and the role of the church in grappling with them. It is midnight in the parable; it is also midnight in our world, and the darkness is so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn.
....

It is also midnight within the moral order. At midnight colours lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of grey. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein's theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, to the moral and ethical realm.
....

The traveller asks for three loaves of bread. He wants the bread of faith. In a generation of so many colossal disappointments, men have lost faith in God, faith in man, and faith in the future. Many feel as did William Wilberforce, who in 1801 said, "I dare not marry---for the future is so unsettled," or as did William Pitt, who in 1806 said, "There is scarcely anything round us but ruin and despair." In the midst of staggering disillusionment, many cry for the bread of faith.

There is also a deep longing for the bread of hope. In the early years of this century many people did not hunger for this bread. The days of the first telephones, automobiles, and aeroplanes gave them a radiant optimism. They worshipped at the shrine of inevitable progress. They believed that every new scientific achievement lifted man to higher levels of perfection. But then a series of tragic developments, revealing the selfishness and corruption of man, illustrated with frightening clarity the truth of Lord Acton's dictum, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This awful discovery led to one of the most colossal breakdowns of optimism in history. For so many people, young and old, the light of hope went out, and they roamed wearily in the dark chambers of pessimism. Many concluded that life has no meaning. Some agreed with the philosopher Schopenhauer that life is an endless pain with a painful end, and that life is a tragicomedy played over and over again with only slight changes in costume and scenery. Others cried out with Shakespeare's Macbeth that life

is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

But even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonizing desperation they cry for the bread of hope.

And there is the deep longing for the bread of love. Everybody wishes to love and be loved. He who feels that he is not loved feels that he does not count. Much has happened in the modern world to make men feel that they do not belong. Living in a world which has become oppressively impersonal, many of us have come to feel that we are little more than numbers.
....

When the man in the parable knocked on his friend's door and asked for the three loaves of bread, he received the impatient retort, "Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything."....

Millions of Africans, patiently knocking on the door of the Christian church where they seek the bread of social justice, have either been altogether ignored or told to wait until later, which almost always means never.
....

In the terrible midnight of war men have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace, but the church has often disappointed them. What more pathetically reveals the irrelevancy of the church in present-day world affairs than its witness regarding war?
....

And those who have gone to the church to seek the bread of economic justice have been left in the frustrating midnight of economic privation. In many instances the church has so aligned itself with the privileged classes and so defended the status quo that it has been unwilling to answer the knock at midnight.
....

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause men everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will. But if the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace. Men far and near will know the church as a great fellowship of love that provides light and bread for lonely travellers at midnight.
....

Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful. The most inspiring word that the church must speak is that no midnight long remains. The weary traveller by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come. Our slave foreparents realized this. They were never unmindful of the fact of midnight, for always there was the rawhide whip of the overseer and the auction block where families were torn asunder to remind them of its reality. When they thought of the agonizing darkness of midnight, they sang:

Oh, nobody knows de trouble I've seen,

Glory Hallelujah!

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down,

Oh, yes, Lord,Sometimes I'm almost to de groun'
....

Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, he knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. He can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.

Read the entire speech.

Choosing excerpts from MLK's sermons and speeches is difficult, and my post, of necessity, runs long. With adjustments of references to the situation in the present day, the Rev King's words appear cutting edge, though the sermon was delivered on June 11, 1967.

Picture from Wikipedia.

HE PITCHED HIS TENT AMONGST US

The Very Rev Tracey Lind preached one of the best Christmas sermons I've come across in my life at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio.

The real symbol of Christmas is not the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, an angel, or even a star; no, the real symbol of Christmas is a newborn baby. Writing from a Nazi prison during World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer articulated this radical truth about Christmas. “We are talking about the birth of a child, not the revolutionary act of a strong man, not the breathtaking discovery of a sage, not the pious act of a saint.”
....

The paradox of Christmas is that God chose to enter the world in the very form to which human beings are drawn, and yet in circumstances from which we tend to turn away. Jesus – Emmanuel – God with us was born as a homeless baby on a bed of straw in a cold and dirty stable, amid barn animals. His parents were poor and unwed, a teenage mother and her fiancé who were forced to travel far from home to register for taxes with an oppressive government. Then, after a brief but powerful ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing, at the age of thirty-three, he was condemned of treason and heresy, and executed as a criminal on a cross of wood. Our God’s coming into the world was like that of thousands of children born in similar circumstances every day; his ministry has been both an inspiration and a threat to people, institutions, governments, and yes, even churches throughout the ages; and his death has been repeated all too often in virtually every country on earth.
....

As I stand among you tonight, I am mindful of those who, because of war, economic hardship or natural disaster, are forced to sleep in tents and under tarps around the world, and I know that the Risen Christ is dwelling among them. But I’m also aware of those who are intentionally pitching tents on public squares, sidewalks, parks, parking lots, and even church steps as part of what-has-come-to be- known-as the Occupy Movement; and I keep seeing the face of Jesus in that crowd.
....

This fumbling, stumbling and sometimes bumbling coalition of young people, many of whom are graduating from college with enormous debt and limited job prospects, joining forces with the out-of-work middle-aged and out-of-luck elders, are doing their best to speak and act prophetically about the transformation they see as essential in today’s world.
....

You see, when God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, God comes and sleeps beside us, sometimes as a new born child and sometimes as homeless adult. And then God waits to see how we respond.

Please read the entire sermon, especially the conclusion, which proclaims the gift of hope, the Good News that the Christ Incarnate dwells amongst us.

While growing up, I heard over and over in my Roman Catholic school religion classes that Easter, the feast of Christ's Resurrection, was the greatest feast in the church. All the children I knew, and I include myself, thought Christmas was the greatest feast, and I wonder if this idea of the children was not just about Santa and presents, but rather that they grasped, if only in a shadowy way, a truth that grown-ups miss. Once again, in my dotage, filled with awe and wonder, I've come to believe that the Incarnation/Nativity, the momentous event of God come down to be one of us, born a helpless babe, human, just like us, sharing our joys and sorrows, is the greatest feast of the Christian church. Without the Incarnation, none of the rest of the Jesus story, including the Resurrection, would have happened.

And I've run on about the Occupy movement probably to the point of boring some of you, and I'm not sure where the movement will go, but I believe the Christian churches ought to be a presence with the rag-tag groups who have pitched their tents around the country, because who knows but that they are God's angels, bearing messages we need to hear?

The lovely Nativity set is Raku pottery and belongs to Penelopepiscopal at One Cannot Have Too Large a Party.

CHRISTMAS SERMON FROM CANTERBURY

Whenever I read or listen to a speech or a sermon by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, I confess that I wait for the "Gotcha!" moment. Very likely, all of us, myself included, have moments when we appear to contradict ourselves by our words or by our actions. So I preface my comments here with the sorry disclaimer of a bad attitude, hardly in the spirit of the present season, because I have been puzzled more times than I can count by the seeming contradictions in the words and actions of the ABC. I read the text of the archbishop's Christmas sermon in just such a manner. There is much that is good and true in the sermon, but I did not have long to wait for the moment. Early in the sermon, come the following wonderful words:

The story of Jesus is the story of a God who keeps promises. As St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 'however many the promises God made, the Yes to them all is in him'. God shows himself to be the same God he always was. He brings hope out of hopelessness – out of the barrenness of unhappy childless women like Sarah and Hannah. He takes strangers and makes them at home; he brings his greatest gifts out of those moments when the barriers are down between insiders and outsiders. He draws people from the ends of the earth to wonder – not this time at the glory of Solomon but at the miracle of his presence among the humble and outcast. He identifies with those, especially children, who are the innocent and helpless victims of insane pride and fear. He walks into exile with those he loves and leads them home again. (My emphasis)

Inevitably, my mind moves to the daft Anglican Covenant. If the covenant is put in place, the result could be to raise barriers between member churches of the Communion, rather than bring barriers down, to declare certain members insiders and other members outsiders, or the lesser discipline, to label certain churches of the Communion as second tier, not quite up to par, assigned to the fringe as "not like us".

I cannot resolve in my mind the seeming contradiction that the man who speaks such words in the sermon about bringing down barriers, at the same time, urges upon the member churches of the Anglican Communion the exclusionary and divisive Anglican Covenant. I don't get it.

Archbishop Williams goes on:

And lastly, a point that we rightly return to on every great Christian festival, there is our solidarity with those of our brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world who are suffering for their Christian faith or their witness to justice or both. Yet again, I remind you of our Zimbabwean friends, still suffering harassment, beatings and arrests, legal pressures and lockouts from their churches; of the dwindling Christian population in Iraq, facing more and more extreme violence from fanatics – and it is a great grace that both Christians and Muslims in this country have joined in expressing their solidarity with this beleaguered minority. Our prayers continue for Asia Bibi in Pakistan and others from minority groups who suffer from the abuse of the law by certain groups there. We may feel powerless to help; yet we should also know that people in such circumstances are strengthened simply by knowing they have not been forgotten. And if we find we have time to spare for joining in letter-writing campaigns for all prisoners of conscience, Amnesty International and Christian Solidarity worldwide will have plenty of opportunities for us to make use of.

Our Christian brothers and sisters call out for help and we must pray for them, support them, and help in any way possible.

Those who suffer for conscience sake as they strive for justice and equality deserve our same help and support.

But what about our brothers and sisters who suffer persecution, violence, and even death in areas of the world because of who they are? What about our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, many of them Christians, many of them Anglican? A mention urging prayer, support, and help for LGTB persons is strangely absent from the archbishop's Christmas sermon.

Is it just me? Is my habitual nitpicking of the archbishop's words and actions in play here in an unjust manner?