Psalm 40:1-11 February 3, 2008

Isaiah 49:1-7 J. Mark Davidson

John 12:20-26

“Honoring the Dream”

We gather for worship on this Sunday to worship our God, to hear the Word, to share in the Lord’s Supper, to pray, to raise our voices in song, to be with one another in this community of faith. We gather to find nourishment for the week ahead, to support each other in our celebrations and our sorrows, and to find strength for the work of justice and peace. And we gather this morning for our rescheduled observance and celebration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day due to the weather. Even though his birthday weekend was two weeks ago, this is the first Sunday in African-American Heritage Month, so it is a fitting time to remember Dr. King – an extraordinary man, a prophet of God, a servant of the Kingdom, whose life and witness changed a nation. As far as we’ve come from the shameful days of Jim Crow, there is still a long way to go. His dream of racial equality remains unfulfilled.

The achievement gap, the disproportionate number of black men in prison and on death row, the decline in the financial stability of historically black colleges and universities, the systemic inequities in the courts as we saw recently in the indictments of the Gena 6, high rates of unemployment among young black men, red-lining and predatory lending, and environmental racism… these tell a very different story than the high-profile success of BET, Oprah, and sports and hip hop celebrities living the high life. They point to a still deeply entrenched racial bias in many of the major institutions of our society. Dr. King’s dream of racial equality is still a dream awaiting its true fulfillment.

Although Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech is the one that is most often recited and most often associated with the thought and activism of MLK, the fullest, most radical articulation of his prophetic vision came 4 years later in a speech he gave at the Riverside Church in New York City to the gathering of the Clergy and Laity Concerned. In this speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, he identified the American trinity of racism, materialism, and militarism as the source of so much suffering in this country and throughout the world. He came out as a vigorous opponent of the war in Vietnam. This, more than his powerful dream of racial equality, earned him the ire of the powers that be and I believe sealed his fate as a martyr. It was never safe to denounce racism… never safe to be an apostle of integration. But to take on the military-industrial complex, to throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machinery of war, put him in serious jeopardy. King didn’t simply decry violence and war. He made the connections between poverty and racism and war. He spoke of the War on Poverty as a “shining moment” in the struggle. He said it seemed as if there was “a real promise of hope for the poor… both black and white.” Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and he says, “I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” That was 40 years ago. Substitute “adventures like Iraq” for “adventures like Vietnam” in that last sentence and you have the exact same dynamic going on today in America. Imagine what the 500 billion squandered in Iraq could have done to address the problems in America – how much health care that could fund, how much renewable energy that could underwrite, how many scholarships and Pell Grants, job training and affordable housing in America. It was in this speech given in April of 1967, that Dr. King railed against our nation “sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged…” and made his famous statement, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Dr. King blazed a path 40 years ago we have yet to pursue: he named militarism as an evil that was destroying not only other countries around the world, but destroying our own soul; and in unmasking militarism as evil he set himself against the prevailing American mythology of unthinking patriotism, the glory and honor of war, and flag-waving support for American virtue and power. His dream was not only the dream of racial equality, but it was the threefold dream of racial equality, the end of poverty, and the abolition of war. And in dreaming this dream he was dreaming nothing less than God’s own dream.

For me, the political choices the followers of Jesus Christ will be called upon to make in this presidential election year should be less about personalities and parties and more about which candidate has the deepest affinity with this threefold kingdom dream. Which candidate will do the most to end the scandal of poverty in the richest country in the world? Which candidate will dare to take on the monolith of the Pentagon and cut their budget in half and redirect those funds to programs of social uplift? Which candidate will do the most to create a climate of unity and reconciliation instead of opening a new chapter in the “culture wars”? I know one thing: whichever candidate occupies the Oval Office this time next year will find himself or herself under enormous pressure to perpetuate the status quo – to keep in place a vicious social Darwinism in America that inevitably relegates millions of our most vulnerable citizens to the shadows of poverty while at the same time paving the way for millions of our most talented and well-connected to preserve their privileges and advantages. The occupant of the Oval Office will be under enormous pressure to give the war-planners, the generals, the military contractors, and the 7-figure lobbyists for the military-industrial complex just about everything they say they need to protect “the American way of life” and continue endless war.

In truth, enormous pressure is also exerted upon ordinary change-agents like you and me to leave the savage inequalities in place, to consider them too much to tackle, to quietly retreat from the fight. You can see this in the Servant Song… how the servant reached a point where it seemed all his efforts were for naught, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” The psalmist felt it too: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he bent down to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my foot upon a rock, making my steps secure.” This rock is faith… this rock is trust… “Happy are those who make the Lord their trust.” This is every servant’s recourse, every servant’s refuge. Like a weary hiker entering a wilderness hut and seeing the signs of those who had stayed there before him and waited out many a storm: “Yet surely my course is with the Lord… my God has become my strength… my reward is with my God.” God bends down and whispers in the servant’s ear, in our ears, “No, you have not spent your strength for nothing. No, you have not labored in vain. You are honored in my sight. I give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

We honor the dream by the very act of dreaming. There isn’t enough dreaming. We need an outpouring of the Spirit, so our young men and young women will dream dreams, our old men and old women will see visions…not private dreams of personal gain and material fulfillment – we have too much of that already. We need public dreams of social uplift and reconciliation and moving beyond militarism and endless war. It was so powerful to have a prophet like King in our midst… one who had more than enough reason to have long ago abdicated the dream, who had already paid a heavier price for the dream than almost everyone else within the sound of his voice… and yet Behold the Dreamer? Behold God filling his soul and his voice, his mind and his heart with this dream – so public, so clear, so out there. What a lift it was to cynics then and to cynics now! For what is a cynic but a dreamer overpowered by disappointment? Behold the dreamer, behold the One so filled with trust in his God! … with trust in the One who called him before he was born… “The Lord made my mouth sharp like a sword…” “I was a polished arrow hidden in the quiver of God;” kept by the Archer God until the time was right to launch the arrow to its intended mark. The servant, the instrument, the vessel… the seed falling into the ground and bearing much fruit… God putting our lives to good purpose, far beyond our telling. Behold the servants in these uncertain times… polished arrows hidden in the quiver of God… behold, the Archer God who sends the servants at the appointed times, the appointed places, to accomplish their appointed work. So, let us offer ourselves and our gifts and talents to our appointed work.

Let us honor the dream, Dr. King’s threefold dream of racial equality, the end of poverty, and the abolition of war, for it is the kingdom dream of Jesus made powerfully real in the gospel, it is God’s own dream. By dreaming dreams in our own time, and doing the hard work of making them real, and above all, putting our trust in God, we honor the dream, and my friends, God always honors the dreamers, bending down to us, whispering in our ears, “You are honored in my sight… see, I send you as a light to the nations, so my salvation will reach to the ends of the earth.”

J. Mark Davidson

February 3, 2008