Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
1 Samuel 8:4-20
4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7and the Lord said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only--you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." 10So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day." 19But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."
It was not big news in Montgomery, Alabama nor was it much of a surprise to his family when the Rev. Vernon Johns was fired by the Deacon Avenue Baptist Church. Johns had been fired before and he would be fired several more times after he left Deacon Ave. Baptist. He was just too political. He couldn't help himself. The irony is, however, that the board of this particular church told Johns that they wanted to hire a minister who was more "conventional."
James Earl Jones plays Johns in a movie about his life and it depicts the scene when Johns was introduced to his younger, safer, more conventional replacement, the newly graduated Martin Luther King, Jr. The idea that a church wanted to hire a minister who was more conventional and less political and ended up with Martin Luther King, Jr. has always amused me but I believe that when King accepted that call that he really did intend to be just what Deacon Avenue Baptist Church wanted him to be.
It was precisely because he was a young college graduate who had not stirred the pot or made any political enemies that the community of black pastors in Montgomery asked him to take the lead in a meeting they held to discuss this incident that had been created when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus.
There were other actions, protests, resistance before this incident but the real start of the Civil Rights Movement began when Rosa Parks made this courageous gesture. African American pastors realized that this was the right opportunity for them to organize and act but the competition for recognition among them made it difficult for anyone to emerge as the leader of the boycott so someone called and basically cajoled King out of his home to come chair the meeting.
King became the greatest leader and spokesperson of the Civil Rights Movement and he deserves every bit of recognition and praise that he has received but he became that because the circumstances of America's version of racial apartheid combined with his devotion to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth compelled him to become the man for whom we now have a national holiday.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 44 years ago and for all of my adult life I have heard people asking, "Who is the next Martin Luther King?" And for many years they have asked, "Why did no one become a leader like King was?" There may be a myriad of answers to those questions but at the top of the list of answers would have to be that churches still fire pastors who try to speak out about social justice and they tell the successors that they want a more conventional and less political preacher.
To keep their jobs, two generations of preachers have talked about heaven and hell but not much about Main St. and Commercial St. and certainly not Wall St.
The Bible is about 1200 pages long. If you took the texts read in churches for almost every sermon preached.... Passages about going to heaven. Accounts of super natural miracles and warnings against going to hell.... And those passages are in the Bible, but you could consolidate them to about ten or twelve pages. And it makes you wonder if people in church don't ever get curious about what is written on the other 1,190 pages? Because most of the Bible addresses what the board members at the Deacon Ave. Baptist church called "politics."
Most of the Bible speaks to the just treatment of the poor, about compassion for the elderly, orphans, the sick and the hungry. Most of the prophetic books have preachers addressing sermons to kings and politicians, condemning them, as we see in this text from 1 Samuel that Dr. Trobisch told us this morning, about the excessive militarism of the government, indifference towards the poor, abusive taxation to serve the interests of the wealthy.... Folks, this is from three thousand years ago and that theme of liberation, of passionate and sacrificial concern for justice is a theme that marches through the history of the judges, prophets, apostles and saints, many of whom were assassinated, imprisoned or repeatedly fired for doing and saying the right things.
I believe that the largest single reason why the mainstream church is dying so rapidly right now is because they have become morally irrelevant. And fundamentalist churches are growing because they tell people exactly what they want to hear.... They tell people that God is just as militaristic, greedy, racist and sexist as they are and people will eat that up with a spoon.... For a while.
Those of us who regularly go down to Bill's Place to take lunch to the unsheltered homeless of Springfield have gotten to know some of the regulars there. We were all a bit shocked one day this week when I inquired about one of those regulars who hasn't been around in the last week.
I first noticed Slick months ago because no matter what we were serving, he wanted hot sauce.... Lot's of hot sauce, and we started keeping big bottles of hot sauce in our supplies because we knew Slick would want it. But the last few weeks I couldn't escape noticing that more often than not Slick would have his wife bring his plate to him in his chair because he was too drunk to stand in line. I talked to him, encouraged him to be sober the next time I came back but last week he and his wife got into a fight and he tried to cut her throat with a hack saw.
We've been told that she was not seriously injured and that she is recovering well but Slick will be in jail for a long time. That story was hard for us to hear and I apologize to you for telling you such a gruesome account here in church today because I know it is hard for you to hear too.... But the point is that this is the real world. This is the world of unemployment, of poverty, of the addiction and violence that comes with racism, with cuts to education, with the transfer of wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller class of aristocrats.
When poverty rates go down, violent crime goes down. When education rates go up, unemployment goes down. If we refuse to see the big picture... if we refuse to read from those other 1190 pages.... If we become the church that prays for the sick but doesn't fight for health care access for all.... If we will feed the hungry and walk away without also fighting for jobs, safe housing and meaningful living then we become one of those dying institutions that everyone is trying to leave as fast as they can.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions.... Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."
There is tremendous pressure on every church in America to steer to the safety of the middle ground.... To talk about what is called "spiritual" concerns without recognizing that poverty, addiction, war, domestic violence, homelessness, hunger, racism, gender and sexual orientation prejudices ARE spiritual concerns.
Jim Wallis was fond of telling us in class at Harvard that no one goes to heaven without three letters of reference from homeless people. We're not here to sing hymns and study religious history. We come here to get ready to change the world..... and that will inevitably put us at cross purposes with the people who are currently in power.
Winston Churchill said, "So you have enemies? Good. That means that at some point in your life you stood up for something."
The narrator of the movie about the life of Rev. Vernon Johns starts the film by saying:
"Before the civil rights movement could begin, it would take the actions of a few brave souls to start that movement into motion. This is a story of one of them."
Fifty years later, we stand at a time when we will either watch the church become as dry as death itself or we will have to be the brave souls to start a prophetic movement that will give life back to the institution that bears the name of Jesus."
Most churches build sanctuaries, gymnasiums and fellowship halls so that they can keep their kids safe and so they can stay far away from people like Slick. I don't know about you, but I just want to make sure that we keep going to the places where we might be able to show enough compassion to really change Commercial St. and Main St. and Wall St. but whether we succeed or whether we fail, I want to be sure that people like Slick know my name because I just might need a good letter of reference myself someday.
Before the church can come to life again, it is necessary that some brave souls will take the kinds of actions that gives life back to the gospels and the prophets.... And I am betting that you are those people.
